ROOTED RENEGADE

Jeremiah 1:19 “They will fight against you but will not overcome you, for I am with you and and will rescue you,” declares the Lord.

For a long time I was not sure if I would ever be rescued. There were many times throughout my life where I would pray for God to save me and I never saw it happen. I would suffer many different types of abuses from childhood into adulthood and I could never grasp the concept of this verse. I was the true definition of a victim.

I became so caught up in being a victim for all I had been through as a child that when I began to experience things into my teen and adult years it made me bitter. I became resentful towards God and those who I hurt me. I expected those around me to help me and they couldn’t. They didn’t know how. But that did not mean I didn’t carry high expectations for them to try. That didn’t mean the bitterness inside me which started out as roots turned into a fully grown garden of anger, hate, rage, self destruction, sorrow, shame, guilt, lack of self worth, bitterness, resentment, and anything else you can think of. My heart, although had goodness, was becoming hard. My mind, although intelligent, was becoming the devil’s playground.

I grew up as a child learning about God and his goodness and all of his wonderful and miraculous ways. How He saved his children, loved his children, and sent His only Son to die on the cross for our sins. But I also went home to a volitale house every night after school. I also watched my parents drink and fight. I was also abused as a child. So I never could fully connect the saving grace of a loving God.

I tried. I tried for years. My grandmother tried to help me. She used to tell me I was like Job in the Bible because I would try to cling to my faith when I felt I had nothing else. I strayed from God when I left home as a teenager. I wandered far in my walk but knee in my heart He was somewhere out there. When I had my first child I tried church again and and a spark was reignited inside me. But the devil’s grip was strong. I lived so many years of my life with always having one foot in the devil’s playground because I never fully believed I would be rescued. I always believed I would be a victim.

As I grew older my mistakes grew with me. I hid my pain with an addiction that was like a roller coaster ride at Six Flags. From alcohol to hard core drugs to abusing prescription pills. For the most part I hid a lot of it for years because I was taught manipulation as a child and I only learned to master it as an adult. The one thing I could never fully hide was the role of a victim I played. I could never let go of what had happened to me or the emotional damage it had caused.

After a second child, another church, a new job, new house, and counselors, I still could not let go. I lived with an internal agony. An untold story of sorts that held so much guilt because I always thought it was my fault for all the bad things that happened to me in my life. Because of that guilt I just knew that was why God didn’t send out an army. I just knew that was why I could not let go of all the pain. I knew that was why I clung to anything unhealthy for me, whether that was relationships, drugs and alcohol, circumstances, etc. I just knew I was not worth saving.

When I had reached what I thought was my final breaking point in life, that I could go no lower, after losing my kids, husband, and home because of our volitale marriage…I surely thought someone would save me from myself. Anyone. God. My family. My friends. Someone to hold onto me and help me. But help never came. Expectations certainly did. Places to stay off and on. But the kind of help I needed wasn’t there. No one ever sat me down and told me I needed to get clean. I needed rehab. They saw I had a problem and were willing to help me through it. Either doors were closed or my addiction was fed. There was not an intervention. Again, I ran from God.

I kept running. I saw no way out and no rescue. No one to help me save me. Most only wanted what I had to offer. If it was to help pay bills, help buy drugs, or use me as emotional and physical punching bags until I started doing the same back to them. Homelessness became a word I was used to and despair and hopelessness were also a norm for me. Where was my rescue? Where was my army?

Matthew 8:26 “You of little faith. Why are you so afraid?” Then He got up and rebuked the winds and the waves and it was completely calm.

What I didn’t know…what I didn’t realize through all of this. Was that I was scared. I was afraid. I was afraid to trust in the sovereignty of my creator. I didn’t know how to trust Jesus to calm the storm that had engulfed my life. I was no longer in the eye of the raging tornado. I was all up in the winds swirling around with the debris. I was thrashing about through life expecting people to save me and God to snap His fingers and make it all go away. But that is not how life works. Is it?

Jeremiah 1:19 “They will fight against you but will not overcome you, for I am with you and and will rescue you,” declares the Lord.

Meditating on this verse I realized through all I went through (and more), that I was never truly overcome. While I suffered, I did not perish. While I felt defeated, I did not lose the battle. While I felt alone, I never was. God really was with me and stayed with me from the day I was born and is with me now. The army came and it was mightier than I could have ever imagined! From a two women show visiting me in jail to a safe house to a massive army in a program. God showed me exactly what army he was preparing for me. I just had to come out of myself to see it. My perspective had to change and I honestly had to change my expectations. While I had relied on people to save me my whole life, I should have fully been relying on God. Only He can restore all the broken places. Only He can heal and bind up all the wounds we have inside.

You see, I could have chosen to go back to the life I once knew. I could have chosen to turn my back on God again and find myself in the pit of hell playing the victim because I in many, many ways was one. I could have chosen to stay stuck also in the guilt and shame for the damage I had also done myself to people I loved and those I held acquaintances with.

However, God showed me who He was. He showed me during my “Jacob” moment that He was not going to let me go (Genesis 32:22-31) and in that moment neither was I.

Genesis 32:24-28 “So Jacob was left alone, and a man wrestled with him until daybreak. When the man saw that he could not overpower him, he touched the socket of Jacob’s hip so that his hip was wrenched as he wrestled with the man. Then the man said, “Let me go, for it is daybreak.” But Jacob replied, “I will not let you go unless you bless me.” Then the man asked him, “What is your name?” “Jacob,” he answered. Then the man said, “Your name will no longer be Jacob, but Israel, because you have struggled with God and with humans and have overcome.”

I got my “limp” to keep me from ever going back to my addiction. A condition I developed due to being an addict that affects my vascular system so if I ever use again I won’t have a second chance at recovery.

So I took my dangling foot out of the devil’s playground. I stopped putting all my trust in people and what they could and could not do for me and started the process of putting my trust in God. Was it easy? Absolutely not! The hardest part about faith is dying to yourself and trusting in someone you cannot see who is bigger than you! It is not bringing God down eye level because that is not where He belongs. It is realising that when we pray for an army we need to wait for the army and stop thinking it isn’t coming! I was never overcome by people, myself, or circumstances! For my God went before me and paved the way for the army to find me!

Psalm 40:2 “He lifted me out of the slimy pit, out of the mud and the mire; he set my feet on the rock and gave me a firm place to stand.”

My God, my deliverer, my healer, my rescuer! The army he sent! The army I found! Now I am part of the army He sends for those just like me!

@B3autifullyR3deemed2018