Proverbs 4:23 - "Guard your heart above all else for it determines the course of your life." So this is where my journey begins with all of you, my heart.
Struggle one - learning to guard my heart.
Out of the things God has commanded me to do, this has been my biggest challenge and frankly it may always be. I am almost certain that I may live the rest of my life learning this lesson; learning new ways to guard my heart, learning to recognize when wordly things are effecting it, and learning to trust and believe that apart from Christ this is not possible. I recognize why this is so hard for: I have spent 25 years NOT guarding it. I have let people effect it, tear it down, trample over and most of all I have not let Christ heal it or even trust that He can.
To be honest, one year ago I thought I was a lost cause. I had lived my life in opposition of Christ's calling me for that I was not sure He would ever accept me back, but guess what HE did. In fact, He accepted me back with open arms as if He had been waiting His whole existence for me to return to Him (and by the way He does, He wants all of us to accept Him). This has left me in astonishment of His love and His continued acceptance of me and trust me when I say I do not deserve it. So when this journey began with Christ I was completely broken and humiliated of how I had lived. So much so that I thought sharing my story would only bring disgrace. But here I am about to start sharing with you my story and it starts with my heart.
Some of you may know this but I had been engaged once prior to be married to my husband now. Who by the way, is the best husband I could ask for. God has truly blessed me. I love how He always knows what is best for us. Anyways, I truly believed that this man I was going to marry was the one and I can honestly say I had given my whole heart to this person. We had a lot of good times and I shared some great high school years with him. So logically after high school it seems to make sense that we should be married. I spend the better part of a year convincing him that we should get married. Then he finally asked me. Something happened the minute after I said yes though, I got this aching feeling that it was just not right. God had an incredible way of protecting me even when I was not trusting in Him. He used my gut to do it. I do not know if any of you have experienced that gut retching feeling like something was just not right but if you have you know exactly what I am talking about. I ignored this feeling for as long as I could until one day I had to just walk away from it. I called off the wedding and let me just tell you that was the easy part. The hard part was that I had not guarded my heart from a man God did not intend to have me spend the rest of my life with. And then I became destructive, doing anything and everything that would temporarily ease my pain (I may elaborate on that more later, depends on where God leads me in this blog). And I hung on because part of my heart was taken with him when he was gone.
It was not until about 2 months ago when I attended a healing prayer session that I got that back (I realize that sounds like a LONG time). Although I was married to another man, I still had not let go of the hurt that was in my heart from that situation. Honestly I had not even realized that part of my was not whole. God revealed to me that night that I could just take back what I had given but it was not until I came before Him that I could. As the two women were praying over me I felt my heart being made whole again. Just laying it before Him was all I need. It was as if it all the pain and hurt had vanished into thin. In Matthew 11:28 Christ says "Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest." It is funny because I had read that verse so many times but until this moment I did not really get what Christ was telling us.
STOP carrying our burden. Give it to me. You do not need to do that anymore. He is bagging us to just turn it over. And there the connection begins. In proverbs God is telling us to guard our hearts and in Matthew Christ is showing us how to. Give him your burdens so that your heart can be guarded. I love that. Most of all I love how God uses His book to reveal and teach us new things. All the praise be to Him!
I will continue to share with all of you how God is teaching and revealing things to me. I would love to hear from all of you how is He is doing the same. We all have so much to learn from another. I encourage you to share. I hope you what I have written today will touch you in some way. All my blessings to each and every one of you.
Please feel free to send me your prayer requests.
Kara Jess
