Encouragement
On this day as I thought back over last nights conversation with my husband about personalities, those hurtful childhood memories came back. Feeling discouraged, I took out pen and paper to write down what I believed to be true about my personality. What I believed was true about me as a person.
Doesn’t have good personality
Is not social
Is sharp spoken
Introverted
Has few friends
Not out-going
Can be charming but is not natural characteristic
What is real and what is not
I don’t like me, so how can anybody else like me
I want people to like me and accept me
In essence, I repeated to myself what my mother had told me when I was a young teenager. I believed there was nothing about me worth knowing or accepting. Of course, all of this was lies straight out of the pit of hell meant to crush and destroy me. Nevertheless, it was lies that I believed as truth about myself. And if I saw myself like this, then surely other people did too.
With Holy Spirit’s loving and consistent help, I learned that I had to accept ‘me’ because God accepts me in Christ Jesus (Eph.1:6). The blood of Jesus has made me worthy to become a daughter of the most high God. I have learned and am continuing to learn that my true acceptance, being a unique creation is not based on what anyone else thinks or says about me, especially if it is contrary to what Father God says. It only matters what HE says about me and not whether I believe it or not. I have come to believe it.
Everything in the Kingdom of God is based on God’s character (righteousness), and His nature (love). It is also based on His word and the Spirit empowering the blood of Jesus, who loved me enough to take my place at Calvary. He personally bought my freedom from the slave pits of hell so that I could be free to fulfill my purpose in the earth. Doing Kingdom business as the unique individual I was created to be. Demolishing every hellish lie of the devil with the truth of the living God! Jesus is THE truth and His revelation truth will make us free, if received by faith and acted on. Praise God!
As I looked over the list I had written about myself, it was depressing and I wondered what was real for me as a person? I said out loud to myself, “If I’ve ever been real in the past…” This is as far as I got because Holy Spirit said:
“You have My nature, that’s real. When your heart is broken and tender with compassion for hurting people, that’s real. That is My compassion in you. When you allow My nature (love) to take over and operate through you toward others, that’s real. The rest of the time, you’re hiding like a frightened rabbit. But even frightened rabbits come out of their holes. This is your year to come out of your holes of hiding.” (Romans 5:5---Galatians 5:22-23).
Adam said in the garden, “I was afraid and I hid my-SELF.” He had taken control to try and protect Himself from anymore pain. I had done the same thing---just like many of you have. I had hidden my-SELF for the same reasons until I had lost touch with the real me. I hid myself for protection, not only from emotional pain, but also because of fear and shame. I responded back to Holy Spirit and said, “But God, sometimes, it’s a whole lot safer to stay in that hole of hiding.” He responded, “Yes, but you don’t get to enjoy the Son very much.”
For a brief second, I thought He was talking about the natural sun, but then, I knew He was talking about the SON, Jesus Christ. The message I got was, you don’t get to enjoy to the fullest the presence of the Son as much when you’re in hiding holes. I couldn’t deny this truth.
Rabbit holes of hiding serves to isolate you from God and others. They will isolate you from the SON and tend to keep you in spiritual darkness due to deception. Very little grows in darkness (unless you’re a root vegetable), therefore your growth as a Christian will be stunted. It is only in the SON that we have the light (revelation) of truth and we grow in the Father’s love. It’s only in Him that we can live productively to the fullest and overflow with the fruit love to be a blessing to others in need.
Rabbit holes of hiding will cause you to have wrong perspectives due to wrong beliefs. Your perception will be cloudy so that you have narrowed vision. “Without a vision the people perish.” Narrowed vision will put the main focus on you, not on God first, then others. Many of God’s children are in rabbit holes of hiding, trying to protect themselves from anymore emotional pain.
If you are like I was, you will come out of hiding as is necessary to do those things you have to. Things like, go to work, go to church, go to the market, etc. The whole time, you’re braced and ready to spring back into that hiding hole the very second you feel threatened by someone or something that might stir up old wounds. Or cause new wounds. To one degree or another, every person is here but we don’t have to stay here. Today is a new day. A new day of change and transformation. It’s a new day of transition.
God has been patiently working with me and loving me unconditionally, revealing truth whereby I can walk in more degrees of freedom. Free to love God with all my might, all my soul, and love my neighbor as I’m learning to love myself. The real me. He has been teaching me to know Him more intimately and to experience more fully the embrace of a Father’s love. I am to KNOW His heart, as He desires all of His children to be here at this place. Many are, many are not but can be.
To be wrapped up in Father God’s arms of love is where we will find healing and wholeness for the pain of our wounded soul. We will find peaceful rest and joy unspeakable in His presence. If we’re going to hide, it should be in that hiding place of Father’s ever present love, learning how to know true freedom. Through the Son, Jesus, everything you or I will ever need can be found in the Father’s loving embrace. Amen!
With Holy Spirit’s help, I began learning more of how to be ‘me.’ I haven’t reached perfection but I’m a lot further along than I was before. In order to release the loving nature of God, you have to believe that God has poured His love in your spirit. Once you do, you will begin coming out of those hiding holes that fear and shame drove you into. There is no fear in His perfect love. Its never easy to take that first step out of hiding but with God’s enabling grace, you CAN do it. He is always there to help you take that first step and do what you think is impossible. Nothing is impossible with our God, nor to them who believes (Mark 9:23).
God wants to bring each of us out of our respective hiding holes and into His glorious and intimate presence. Into the light of truth. Holy Spirit will help you face the fears, the shame, the rejections and overcome the hurt through His anointed word and by the blood of Jesus. Holy Spirit will help you move into that intimate place of abiding (settling down to live) in Father’s eternal love. It is a place where that wicked one touches you not. Hallelujah!
I want to say again that if you have experienced the new birth in Jesus Christ, then understand clearly that His “love nature” is in you. You were created to love. You were created to receive His love then give His love to others in need of it. We are a partaker of the divine nature. John 4:8 says, “God is love.” His love has been poured into your spirit by Holy Spirit the moment you were born into the Kingdom of God. I’ve said this many times before but I want to say again, the royal law of the Kingdom is “love.” That is because the nature of the King Himself is ‘love.’
Not only have I been able to understand more about my past, but I’ve been able to forgive a lot of things through God’s grace. Many times it has been difficult but I have had to accept my responsibility for wrong thoughts, wrong perceptions and actions while growing up and maturing both naturally and spiritually.
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Getting to the Core:
================
I knew the Lord was leading me to take a look back but I had not counted on going back so far. He did so in order to begin exposing lies I had believed as truth for many years. For God’s truth to have a place to settle in our spirit’s, the lies must be exposed and destroyed. In order to do that, we have to allow the Lord to lead us back to that one core lie that started it all. We have to allow Him to walk us through processing the emotional pain that the lies created and we believed. Then we have to choose to allow God’s truth to replace them, to settle down and live within us. He will lead us to experience victory and freedom over any left over ghosts of our past. Praise God!
We have to realize that the very thing that caused our world to begin tilting out of balance was a core lie. There is always a root cause for the often less than perfect behavior we
exhibit at times, but let me make this clear, we, as a spirit being, are not our behavior. Our behavior is a result of events that have taken place in our growing up years and has now become negative thought patterns and habits. We must have God’s revelatory truth to expose those wrong habitual patterns and set us free from them. We must extend our faith and rely on His grace to enable us to develop good godly habits.
.Any lie satan tells you that goes against the truth of God has two options, it can live or it can die, depending on whether we choose it as truth or cast it down as false (II Cor. 10:4-5). The lie we choose to believe lives in our minds and is accepted into our memory bank. In other words, its on file and we can pull it out and look at it any time we want to. If we choose to resist the devil with the sword of the Spirit and in the name of Jesus, the lie will die out. Another way the lie will die out is by not giving it a ‘voice.’
Proverbs 18:21, “Death and life are in the power of the tongue…”
The tongue is used to form words and since people are prone to self-talk, this can be a good thing. For instance, David, having his family and possessions stolen at Ziglag, “encouraged himself in the Lord.” This means, he talked to himself. He gave himself a pep talk, if you will, according to God‘s Word. So, in this positive sense its okay for us to do the same. But if you verbally dis-courage yourself by repeating lies of the devil, you have given ‘life’ to it, hence the scripture from Proverbs. The more you rehearse the lie with self-talk, or rehearse it to others, it grows stronger and can eventually become embedded in your soul. It will have become a stronghold of unbelief.
II Corinthians 10:4-5 says, “The weapons of our warfare are not carnal (fleshly), but mighty through God to the pulling down of strongholds.”
Over the years, Holy Spirit has spotlighted so many areas of ungodly beliefs that I didn’t realize I had. Many have truly surprised me but as these wrong beliefs were torn down, He would show me what truth was needed to replace the lie. You can never leave those places empty or the devil will be quick to try and fill them again with more clever and dangerous deception.
We’re told over and over to “be filled…” That means, according to the way we were created, we have the capacity to be filled with something, be it the truth or lies for example. We’re told to be filled with the Spirit. Be filled with the word of God, be filled with God’s love, etc. etc. For me, each lie that has been exposed and dealt with, the truth that replaced it brings me another degree of freedom that is mine to walk in through the blood and the anointing of Jesus.
As Holy Spirit has led me and is leading me on this journey to freedom, He’s clearly pointed out to me that a person will only act on what they believe to be true, whether it is God’s truth or a lie. For example, if your car windows are down and someone tells you
the weather forecast is calling for rain and you’d better get your windows up, what will you do? You will only act on what you believe to be true.
If you don’t believe its going to rain, you will ignore the person’s warning and leave your windows down. Later, you see that they were telling the truth and you didn’t choose to believe it. The end result was destruction. The downpour of rain ruined your cloth car seats and they had to be replaced. It takes faith to believe what we can’t see (Romans 4:17--Hebrews 11:1). That’s why its faith.
During childhood and beyond, like I said, I dealt with shame and experienced times of feeling utterly stupid. There is a legitimate shame prompted by Holy Spirit when we commit sin against God and others. This shame, when deal with in godly sorrow, the guilt vanishes once the sin has been repented of and forgiven. Then, peace and joy will naturally follow and you will have a sense of rightness in your spirit.
There is also an illegitimate shame that is imposed on us by the devil working through other people. It can come through generational heredity, etc. Never forget that Satan is behind all illegitimate shame. For example, a woman doesn’t ask for someone to rape her. Should it happen, the woman feels imposed shame, guilt and condemnation. She feels soiled and dirty. She has fear---fear that others will reject her because of the rape, even though she didn’t invite it. She fears people will feel disgust for her, just as she feels disgust for herself.
The fear and the shame leads her to control, thus, the rabbit hole of hiding. For whatever the reason, a person will be drawn there because they believe it is a safe place from anymore emotional pain. A wrong belief system based on systematic lies of the devil that you believe to be true about yourself will keep you there. Exposing the lies so truth can come to make you free is what brings you out of hiding your imperfect ‘self’ from others. Its time for God’s people to come out of rabbit holes of hiding. Amen.
I had no idea that the negative words I had heard as a child and teenager had followed me all through my life to the extent it had until I was faced with having to look at it with a new perspective. God’s perspective, that is. Those words went deep inside to wound my soul. Don’t misunderstand, I’m not trying to throw out a bunch of sad stories so we can all get maudlin and cry buckets of tears because you and I have been a victim.
The truth is, we have all been victims at one time or the another. What I have been talking about is not to KEEP you a victim but to release you from that mentality. To show you how you can rise above being a victim of the past and become a victor in Jesus name over all deception that has kept you bound and in a rabbit hole of hiding.
You have to come to the point where you are tired of being a victim. You have to become tired of dragging the past along behind you like a ball and chain, slowing you down and hindering you from getting to where you need to be in God. You have to come to the place where you want to know experientially the victory you can have through the Lord Jesus Christ and His anointing.
You must desire to finally cut loose that ball and chain so you can freely move on to fulfill your destiny. In light of that, you must keep pressing toward receiving healing, wholeness and freedom. You can then come out of that rabbit hole of hiding and embrace the Father‘s love whereby, you will know the fullness of the Son in all His glory through the power of the Holy Spirit. Hallelujah!
We are not able to successfully move forward in the things of God until we come to terms with and resolve our past issues. Until you do, you will continue the cycle of two steps forward and two steps back. Sometimes trying to move forward and hitting a wall only to be knocked back three steps. Forgiveness of others is key to resolving your past. It takes making a quality decision to allow God to re-arrange your spiritual house. Allowing Him to re-define you to be the person He created you to be. I’ll say it again, you have to decide that you’re tired of carrying around the weight of the past on your back and you want to be free of it. Today! Amen.
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The Little Girl:
============
One day when the Lord had me look back at some of the early years of my childhood, I felt such a sadness, not only for myself but for my whole family. We had tried to be the best family we could be but in the midst of it, we had experienced much heartache. As my heart went out to my family, I began to cry. Directly, the Holy Spirit spoke to me and said, “You are not just crying for yourself now as an adult, you are also crying for that little girl of your past. It is this little girl who needs healing and wholeness to her soul. When she is free, you will be free as an adult. You will be able to move on toward the future I have prepared for you.”
Our heavenly Father wants His children to be absolutely free from the past so that we can follow Him without hindrance but rather follow Him with all our heart in passionate abandonment.
About a week later, I was writing down some notes about some new revelation Holy Spirit had given me. As I did, I began seeing this little girl in the spirit. At first, I ignored the vision and continued writing my notes. Trouble was, this little girl just would not go away. The more I tried to ignore the vision of her, the more vivid it became until finally, I set aside my pen and allowed it to unfold. I knew the Lord was trying to show me something important.
As I observed the little girl more closely now, I saw that she was about five years old with short, dark brown hair. I then saw the figure of a man with her and instantly, I knew it was Jesus. He walked alongside her, holding her left hand in His. The color of the child’s dress was multicolored, like colors of the rainbow. I looked at her feet and saw that she wore white lace socks and black patent shoes (my mother used to dress me like this).
Directly, my attention was drawn to look at Jesus, He was wearing a white robe with a crystal blue sash over it from his shoulder to his waist. I could not see His face clearly, even when He turned to look down at the little girl as they walked. I did see that His hair was nearly to His shoulders and it was a light brown with loose waves in it.
I continued to watch as Jesus and the little girl walked through what looked like a wide dark tunnel. This part wasn’t so strange to me as was the fact that the little girl was ‘me’ when I was five years old (the reason had already been revealed). I instinctively knew that the dark tunnel we were going through lead to my past. Light shown all around Jesus and the child but elsewhere, it was in shadows. The light was coming from Jesus (He’s the Light of the world). Our past is dark because it is dead. Jesus is light because He is life and He gives life. As we walked, the Lord spoke and said:
“Though it may seem like you’re walking through the valley of the shadow of death, don’t be afraid, I AM with you. You’re only visiting here. You’re just passing through.”
I wasn’t afraid because the Lord was walking by my side. I was in His hands and I felt totally at peace because my trust was in Jesus to take care of me. I knew without doubt that He would bring me through.
Suddenly, I saw the little girl stumble over her feet and come close to falling on her face. I also noticed that Jesus didn’t let go of her hand but He held her steady. She looked up at Him with tears in her eyes and I heard her say, “Daddy, I fell down and it hurts.” Jesus answered in a tender voice, “I know, but we’re going to fix that.”
I immediately knew that this incident in the vision paralleled a real life incident involving my earthly daddy. One day my daddy and I walked along a street in our small town, going to the car where my mother was waiting. I kept looking down and watching my feet as we walked. Eventually, my feet got tangled up and I fell on the pavement on my face and my nose started bleeding. Daddy had let go of my hand when I began falling. Afterwards, I was crying and he gave me his hanker-chief to hold to my nose, then he picked me up and carried me to the car.
It wasn’t that my earthly daddy had failed me that day by not preventing me from falling on my face. He was looking after me to the best of his ability. Besides, he had warned me to watch where I was going and to stop looking down at my feet. But for some reason, to do this was fascinating to me. As much as our earthly daddy’s love us and desires for us to never be hurt, our heavenly Father wants this in a far greater way. He never fails us or lets us down in any way, shape or form, regardless of the circumstances.
We are the one’s who let Him down by not obeying and trusting Him to know what He’s doing at any given time. He never gives up on us but at times, we give up on Him when we think He’s too slow in coming to our rescue. Or in answering prayer. Or He’s not doing something we think should be done the way we think it should be done, therefore, He failed us. No, He didn’t. Any failure is always on our part, not God’s. Amen.
We are the one’s who put limits and conditions on Him, saying, unless you take care of this thing the way I want, I’m not listening to You. “There is a way that seems right unto a man but the end thereof is death (destruction)” Proverbs 14:12. When things don’t go according to our way, our heavenly Father, ultimately gets the blame for not being a good Father. Oh, but He is a good Father. He’s the absolute best! He will always hold our hand, to hold us steady so we won’t fall if we will listen and do things His way. And if we do fall, He will always help us up to stand in faith again. Amen!
Psalm 56:13, “For you have delivered my life from death, yes, and my feet from falling, that I may walk before God in the light of the living.”
John 10:29, “My Father, Who has given them to Me, is greater and mightier than all (else); and no one is able to snatch (them) out of the Father’s hand.”
All through life, I would fall on my face many times and become bloody with emotional pain. I would have a tendency to look down because of shame, trying to cover my skinned up wounds. I would cry out in my pain, needing the strong arms of my “Daddy” to gather me up close to His heart and heal those wounds. The enemy would try to trip me up over and over to cause me to stumble in my walk with the Lord. But every time I would cry out, my “Daddy” would be there to pick me up, love me, heal me, and set me on the path of my destiny once again. Praise God for His faithfulness.
God would allow me to go through all the abuse and emotional pain I’ve experienced so that with His loving compassion and through my own healing, I would be able to reach out and touch others with His love and grace. I would be able to say with sincerity, ‘I understand, but let me tell you about the Healer, Jesus, Who can touch you with His love and anointing and set you free.’
I would come to realize what a privilege and opportunity God had given to me in allowing me to experience life, both the good and the painful. He had trusted me to come forth as a willing and worthy vessel for Him to pour Himself through to touch other hurting people with His love. He had called me when I was ten years old. He recalled me in 1996, asking me to teach His word and to be a willing vessel for Him to pour Himself through to touch hurting people with His love. In order to help people in their pain and to be free from it, you have to understand pain yourself and gain freedom yourself.
I would one day come to the place where I could honestly and humbly say, ‘Thank You, Papa, for loving me and believing in me. Thank You for ALL my life.’ I did come to this place of thanksgiving, not when I was finally on the mountaintop, but while I was still in the valley on my way to the mountaintop. I’m still at this place of thanksgiving because I have received (and am receiving) so much from my heavenly Father. My Papa, God. He is truly the best! Praise His holy name.
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She’s Back:
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Within the space of two weeks, I had two more visions of the little girl. Each time, I was not expecting to see her. I could not will the visions to come, nor did I have any control over them once they did come. In this second vision, I saw the little girl run excitedly to her Father, her “Daddy” and crawl up in His lap like she belonged there. It amazed me at how comfortable she was in doing this---how natural a thing it was for her to do. I saw no fear in her whatsoever. There was no hesitation to come to her Father.
As I watched this scene, I heard the little girl say, “Daddy, I fell down again.” No matter how many times we stumble and fall, God is always waiting with open arms for us to come to Him with this same confidence. He wants each of His children to crawl up into His lap like we belong there, because we do in Christ and just love on Him. Our Father is always there to love us, bring correction when needed, heal us and set us free to keep going forward and growing in Him.
The little girl wasn’t crying when she told her Daddy that she had fallen again. I watched closely and saw the Father draw her even more securely into His lap and then say, “Where does it hurt? I’ll make it all better.” What love and compassion I saw from the Father to His child in this interaction.
Our heavenly Father knows what we have need of before we even ask, yet He still wants us to ask in faith. Though He already knows where we hurt, He wants us to come face to face with it and identify it. To acknowledge the truth of it. He desires for us to have faith and trust Him to address the hurt His way instead of trying to ‘fix it’ ourselves and ending up making a mess. The Father was there now for His child. With compassion, He would attend to and bind up every bruise and every hurt with loving care.
Shortly, I saw the little girl get down off Father’s lap. She was all better now and she wanted to go and play. This is representative of casting all your cares in the lap of Jesus and being at rest in Him.
“Cast all your care upon Him, for He cares for you” (I Peter 5:7
“Come unto Me all of you who are heavy laden, and I will give you rest” (Matt.11:28).
I saw the happy smile of joy on the little girl’s face because it was obvious that she didn’t have a care in the world now. Her “Daddy” had taken care of everything and she was now ‘care-free.’
I could not distinctly make out the Father’s face in the vision, yet I could see a smile of pleasure as He watched His child at rest. I saw the bright sparkle of the Father’s love and glory in the child’s eyes as she skipped and jumped around in joyful abandon, as if to say, “Look, Daddy! Look at me.” She could be care-free and do this because her “Daddy” had taken care of everything that had troubled her.
It was her child-like faith and her own delight to be with “Daddy” that I saw being displayed. It was the kind of faith that said, “MY Daddy can do ANYTHING!” With that kind of faith in our Father God, what do we have to worry and fret about? You’re right. Nothing! We can all be like this little girl, which is exactly what God wants from His sons and daughters in Christ. We can joy in the presence of the Lord, resting in faith and be care-free. Amen!
Psalm 33:18, “Behold, the Lord’s eye is upon those who fear Him (who revere and worship Him with awe), who wait for Him and hope in His mercy and loving-kindness.”
Deut.32:10, “And He led him about, He instructed him, He kept him as the apple of His eye.”
We are each one very special to the heart of God, our heavenly Father. He wants you and I to know that we are so valuable to Him that He doesn’t take His eyes off of us. As children of the most high God, we are ever under His loving and watchful care. Praise His name!
In all the times I was allowed to see visions of the little girl with Father God, it was obvious that she KNEW Him, not only as Father but as “Daddy.” She called Him, “Daddy” (Abba), which speaks of intimate relationship. There was no mistaking that she knew who she was with Him, as well as knowing who He was with her. I could see how secure she was with Him.
Plan As Day Ministries
Shirley Williams
November 13,1998
February 16, 2011
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