Crises are opportunities to experience and know God to a degree and depth that you have never known before. -Tony Evans.
Based upon my experience with crises and trauma, I can agree with this statement and attest to its truth.
I’ve seen God heal me multiple times and others through my taking a step of faith, laying hands on them and seeing them healed. God removed lumps from my breast repeatedly. He healed me of horrible allergies that I took meds for daily, including an allergy to mangos. I ate mangos for brunch today with guests here at the ranch. I know that God can heal me and I believe He is going to in order to bring attention to Himself and in the meantime, He’s teaching me so much about myself, fulfilling my dreams in countless ways, and allowing the circumstances to make me desperate again for Him.
I told Steve, my husband of 16 years this month, this morning that I felt like I was a new believer again with such hunger and thirst for the Word and making the time to seek and pursue His presence. God doesn’t play games and His Word is solid, not shady, if He says He’s going to do something, He will do it.
Now, it may not be in our timing, the way we want or think it should happen, but in due time it will happen as long as we don’t abort it with disobedience. God has taught me a lot about resting in Him, being quiet and trusting Him in the past three years. Life lessons, spiritual principles and keys to peace that I dare say that I would not have received had the crisis/trauma not occurred. And for the good that has transpired out of the trials, challenges, the betrayal, rejection, abandonment, persecution, and all those situations that ended up serving to grow my faith roots even deeper.
I learned to soar above the storms and use the resistance of the situation to help me go even higher with the Lord, often by going to my knees. Between the mountain tops is the valley. It’s a journey and we’re best if we embrace it. It’s best for us also to embrace the process, no matter how hard emotionally, mentally, spiritually or physically it hurts. God NEVER wastes pain.
Our pain will not be wasted if we persevere and are able to assist others in going through that which we are or have. I used to think that God couldn’t use any of my pain or struggles until I was through them, which is not true at all. I tried to use that as a reason I couldn’t start blogging again about having a chronic illness. Like a Daddy, He let me know that He can use all things for His glory and my good. It doesn’t matter where I am in the process as long as I choose to embrace it and encourage others to do so.
That’s what I want to do, encourage you to #embracethejourney and process. Allow yourself to process through all the stages grief as you face changes in your health and the effects it will have on you. I strongly advise you not to try do it without God. Because contrary to the idea that God won’t give you more than you can bear, He will, so that WITH HIM, you can do it. We can do all things with Him, anything He calls or has destined for us to do. We can do it with Him.
Yes, we’ll have to call on Him, learn to live a lifestyle of worship and what it is to have an ongoing conversation with the Creator of the universe at all times. The more we seek Him and feed our spirit man by reading, studying, meditating on His Word, listen to teachings, worshipping, praising, and intentionally feeding our spirit man, the stronger it will get.
Be careful of what you’re feeding yourself with, not just physically, but mentally, emotionally and spiritually. Garbage in, garbage out. Junk in, junk out. Anything we starve will die, likewise whatever we feed will thrive. I’ll get more into holistic health, boundaries, and go more in depth about this in another blog.
Thanks for stopping by and reading this. I definitely appreciate your prayers in agreement with the Word that says by the blood of Jesus I AM HEALED. Know that I’m praying for you and am here to pray for your needs as well. Drop me a comment here or on social media. Let’s connect so that we can cheer each other on during this season.
Catch me on Instagram, SnapChat & YouTube (/julieshematz) and via my facebook fanpage.
God bless!
For further study, check out Tony Evan’s study plan on YouVersion called, “Why God Allows a Crisis”. Send me a friend request on YouVeresion and we can do studies together, see one another’s notes, highlights, images saved and more!
Here’s some scriptures that bring me peace and hope.
“Consider it wholly joyful, my brethren, whenever you are enveloped in or encounter trials of any sort or fall into various temptations. Be assured and understand that the trial and proving of your faith bring out endurance and steadfastness and patience. But let endurance and steadfastness and patience have full play and do a thorough work, so that you may be [people] perfectly and fully developed [with no defects], lacking in nothing.”
James 1:2-4 AMPC“Therefore I tell you, stop being perpetually uneasy (anxious and worried) about your life, what you shall eat or what you shall drink; or about your body, what you shall put on. Is not life greater [in quality] than food, and the body [far above and more excellent] than clothing? Look at the birds of the air; they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father keeps feeding them. Are you not worth much more than they? And who of you by worrying and being anxious can add one unit of measure (cubit) to his stature or to the span of his life? [Ps. 39:5-7.]
Yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his magnificence (excellence, dignity, and grace) was not arrayed like one of these. [I Kings 10:4-7.] But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is alive and green and tomorrow is tossed into the furnace, will He not much more surely clothe you, O you of little faith? Therefore do not worry and be anxious, saying, What are we going to have to eat? or, What are we going to have to drink? or, What are we going to have to wear? For the Gentiles (heathen) wish for and crave and diligently seek all these things, and your heavenly Father knows well that you need them all. But seek (aim at and strive after) first of all His kingdom and His righteousness (His way of doing and being right), and then all these things taken together will be given you besides. So do not worry or be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will have worries and anxieties of its own. Sufficient for each day is its own trouble.”
Matthew 6:25-27, 29-34 AMPC
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