I really don’t know what this post is going to turn into, so “beware” ☺️ and continue reading at your own “risk” ?

The Lord took me back through my journals again this morning, this time it was 2016.

I think He wanted to remind me of where He has taken me over the last couple of years.

…Rewind just a bit to when I first sat down with Him this morning…

I wrote a few notes down from my day yesterday, and then I just stopped…. I laid my head back and got quiet with the Lord… I needed to focus on Him to break through some stuff again this morning before I went any further.

Then I said,

“Lord, I need You.” …because I do, I really, really do… and then the tears came, and whatever that was broke and I felt the sweetness of His presence. Thank you, Lord. ☀️

Then the Lord took me back to two of my 2016 and 2017 journals. I have a few papers that I’ve printed out that have been given to me, and I return to them often to remember how I felt in the moment I received them. I remember how I had such a deep witness, even though I couldn’t understand in the moment, but I felt it.

Has that ever happened to you? Someone gives you a word, or they share a vision or dream with you and something from it just hits you so deeply, that even though you don’t understand it in the moment, even though you maybe don’t understand the significance of it in the moment — you can feel it, and you know. You know it is meant for you, and you know it’s a Holy Spirit moment — moments like these I will cherish always. They’re life changing. They help to carry you, they keep you hanging on when you’re feeling that you are at your end. Lord, bless those who obediently do what You ask them to do.

Then I went back into 2016, read about some of the struggles I was facing around that time. So often I wrote about how disqualified I felt, how unusable I felt, how unsure I was that the Lord could possibly use me in any kind of way. Jason and I were going through all kinds of things around that time. I felt that I was drowning in all of my issues so much that there could be no way I could do anything to help anyone else.

I wrote about things that I went through, I can see now what was happening… I can see in what I wrote, the attempts of the enemy and how he so tried to keep me from where the Lord was wanting to take me. He tried just about everything you could think of to hold me back.

But the Lord wasn’t having that, and He pulled me and pulled me and put in me this sense of “I’ve got to keep going, I’ve got to keep going, this is SO HARD, what am I even doing, but I’ve got to keep going”. He also put this extreme sense of curiosity in me, causing me to dig into anything I could to learn more about the ways of the Lord. Little did I realize what the Lord was setting the stage for in my life. (Do I even have a clue now? ha!)

In 2016, I was still facing some of the unhealthy fear of God. Here is a note the Lord led me to this morning from October 4, 2016:

“I feel I need to pray out loud today…” (maybe my hand was tired of writing LOL)

Then I wrote…

“Just want to sit and talk to God all morning…”

“Free of feeling afraid of Him and His presence, thank you Jesus!”

Yes, I was afraid of the Holy Spirit for most of my life.

The Lord was setting me free of so many things around that time, it was intense, there was an urgency to break, to tear down, to pull up roots, to dig deep. Oh how I was experiencing some major growing pains!

As I look at what the Lord has us doing now, I can see why the Lord pulled me and led me and dealt with me with such an urgency around that time. I can understand why He did what had to be done around that time, I understand why I had to go through that pain, those growing pains. I get it, Lord. You were not going to let me get left behind, You were not going to let me miss out, You were not going to let that happen to me because that day that I cried out to You in desperation, begging You to not let me miss out on what You wanted to do in my life, and what You wanted to do within our church…. You heard my cry, You saw my heart. ?You came to my rescue.

He is faithful. Sometimes we have to go through growing pains and sometimes we have to go through seasons were we don’t understand why we are dealing with so much pain, so much unknowingness, but we can trust Him and know that one day, we will get to look back and see what He did, we will get to look back and say, “Behold! This is my God! He has come to my rescue! Look at what He has done! I could not have done it for myself!”

I need You, Lord. Thank you for never giving up on me.

-Heather ?