Live Out Love

I love Celebrate Recovery.  I mean, I really love it.

The past 3(ish) years have been some of the loneliest years of my life.  I have moved to a completely new town and had everything that was familiar to me stripped away.  This has been a time of growth in the Lord and a time of leaning on Him for everything.  He has taken me through a time of complete and total isolation unto Him.  And let me just tell you, when I thought I couldn't take another moment of being in this place of utter loneliness, He transformed my life.

Last August I was sitting in church and looked in our bulletin to see an announcement about a program called Celebrate Recovery that was going to be starting.  They were looking for people who had a heart for the hurting.  I've always loved to listen to people.  I've always loved  talking people through the circumstances in their lives that were challenging.  I've always been a "fixer."  I met with the ministry leaders, found my place, and haven't looked back.  One of the MANY things I've learned over the past several months is that God didn't want me trying to fix anybody.  He wanted to fix me.  He wanted to clear through the junk in my life and shine His light on the darkness.  He wanted to wipe away all the heartache and guilt and shame.

One of the things I love most about my CR family is that each one was hand-picked by God for me!  It's absolutely amazing how the Lord knows just who you need in your life just when you need them.  I'm amazed by Him every single time I think about it.

Through the process of working the steps in the program, I've realized two major things.  First, God has really big plans for my life; and second, the enemy knows that.  The Lord has shown me that even as far back as elementary school the enemy sent attacks my way to create insecurity and inferiority in my life.  If we feel insecure and inferior, the enemy can lead us down paths of destruction.  He does this even to our children! Some of the things that I went through as a child led me to make some very wrong decisions later in my life.  And it was all part of the enemy's plan to destroy the destiny that God has for me.  I praise the Lord for grandparents who have prayed for me every single day of my life.  Because of their prayers and God's mercy, I am right where the Lord intends for me to be.

I can not begin to even describe some of the things that the people in CR have been through.  Every Wednesday and Friday I am more and more amazed at what the Lord brings people out of!  There is literally nothing too big for Him.  Some of the things that I've heard sound like they came from a horror movie.  These people have literally been through hell on earth, survived, and are praising God for His love, mercy, and deliverance.  This leads me to probably the thing I have most learned through this process...You have no idea what the person sitting next to you has been through.  No idea.  We have got to get our focus off of our own problems and reach out to a world that is lost, broken, and in desperate need of the love of our Heavenly Father.  We need to spend time lifting people up and not putting them down.  We need to do what the word of the Lord tells us to do and love our neighbors as ourselves.  We need to reach out to people with arms wide open and love them, because there are people who have never experienced real, true, pure love.  We can only do this when we stop focusing on ourselves and focus on Jesus.  He will change us from the inside out as we spend time in His presence.  He will teach us how to love the unlovable. You know what happens when we get out of ourselves - we find healing.  True, pure love is found at the feet of Jesus.  Once we find that, we have all we need to go out to this dark world and be salt and light.