Sloughing Off The Old, Dead Places

     As the layers of my “old man” are peeled away, sometimes I feel the rawness.  It am reminded of my children’s skinned knees that ached until the fresh skin settled in.    It is integral that I enter into the new creation Papa God gave to me when I accepted Jesus’ invitation to life.  But sometimes I feel the scraping away of the “old” in order for the new to settle in.

      Yesterday was one of those days.  It all started with a perception of something.  There were no facts to back it up, just vain imagination.    Something I perceived from someone was speaking to my identity.  

      As it ate away at me I knew that the only way to find the truth was to draw away and talk to Jesus.  He is the only one who sees things as they are and tells me the truth.   His gentle rebuke brought me back to my senses with words that cut to the quick, dividing the soul from the spirit.

      “If you look to others actions to give or take your value, Jewel, where does that leave me?”  “If someone determines your value by what they do, then what am I?”  “How can a person’s actions knock out what I say?”

       “When you allow a person to take your value, you agree with your enemy while judging them by their actions.  You give them a power I did not give them.”

      “Not only that, you put a heavy yoke on them that they were never meant to carry.”  “You make them God.”  “I alone give value.”

      OUCH!  I feel His words cutting down through the sinews and marrow, straight to my heart.  How often through the years have I fallen into seeing value through others’ actions? It has been my life.  I have looked for approval in others.  If they did not include me or give me the significance I looked for, then I hurt.  I judged people by my perceptions of their reactions.

     I’ve played games, showed off, spoken of my “credentials”, tried to please, all for the sake of significance.  The saddest part is that each time I have allowed someone else to give to or take value from me, I have given them God’s place.  No one was made to bear that yoke.

      Not only that I have been left hurting, uncertain of being loved and wanted.  Jesus has been waiting there all along to settle my heart’s longing with His truth.  I’ve been blind for so long.  What did it do to His heart to wait and watch?

     We as people try to find others who want us, places we are needed, ways we can be useful all for the sake of being esteemed.  We look for approval, and identity in what we do, and see significance in how we are treated, and received.  All the while our value and identity are sealed inside us and we don’t even know it.  Jesus is the only one who has our identity and value.  Do we look to Him alone? Do we ask Him what He thinks about what we are hearing and believing?

     There is something inside each one of us, a signature, an image, a stamp of Papa God on our lives.  We are created by Him for Him... to be loved.  Why is it we look so easily to others for what only He can give? 

      He waits to love us into who He knows us to be.  He watches and waits for us to be done with looking to others for what they can never give us.

      As He spoke to my heart yesterday, I felt more skin of the old man being scraped away.  I am raw today.  I ache for the years, that I have wasted looking to others, to be restored.  I long to nestle into the sweetness of His embrace and heal, while He whispers to those deep places how grateful He is to love me.

     He is my value.  He is my approval.  He is my inclusion.  If I am included in Him I can never be excluded again.  I will always be wanted, pursued and loved in His eyes.  They are the eyes that matter.  

     As I snuggle in close I feel His heartbeat, and hear His breath.  The tenderness of His love draws me in and I once again settle down into Him.

      

     "For the word of God is living and active and sharper than any two-edged sword, and piercing as far as the division of soul and spirit, of both joints and marrow, and able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart."  Hebrews 4:12

 ©copyrighted:  2009 Julie L. Todd