In last week’s post, I called you, as a Woman of Breakthrough, to discover and rise up into your true identity – who Heaven sees you as. I hope you’ve been seeking God for the revelation of that identity, if you didn’t know it before. And I trust that you’ve been hearing or sensing Him speak to you, because He wants us to know who we are and to walk in all of the privilege and power that are part of such a life!
That being said, today I want to address what I believe is a great part of the hindrance to discovering our true selves and being able to walk in our real identities: divorce. Not just any divorce, but the great divorce – the separation between us and God, most often caused by misunderstanding, offense, and lies thrown at us by the enemy (who desperately does not want to see you become who you were always meant to be).
Because we live in a world full of broken people, who are broken images of God, we have a very distorted view of Who God really is. That distorted view becomes even more distorted when we experience broken relationships with broken people. When our families of origin and our marriages fall apart, or endure painful circumstances that wound our hearts, the once cherished images of the daughter and the bride are crushed and we begin to embrace a view of life and relationships which is much less than God ever intended it to be.
Once we begin to embrace a lesser experience, we begin to survive that experience, and we begin to forbid ourselves to expect anything more. We force ourselves into a settled place of becoming comfortable with something that was never part of God’s plan for our lives. And when we settle with such low expectations, it is difficult to rise into an identity that requires more than we believe is possible.
In such a place, we begin to resent God and to maintain a small and untrue view of Him as Father and Husband to the church. Because our experience has imprinted a Fatherhood and Husband-hood which have wounded us, our wounded hearts subconsciously attribute that wounding to the ultimate Father and Husband. We naturally expect to be wounded and disappointed in relationships and so shut out attempts at intimacy in order to protect ourselves from more woundedness and disappointment.
The problem with this is that our primary identity includes Beloved Daughter and Cherished Bride – images which have become distorted and even distasteful due to what we have experienced in our lives. And so we enter into the search for our identity, which is bestowed by a Loving Father and a Doting and Faithful Husband, as women who have learned to define ourselves outside of these relationships, in order to preserve ourselves from utter despair.
The truth that I’ve discovered – and which you, too, must discover – is that our experience is not the basis for Heaven’s reality. And since it is Heaven’s reality we are being invited to step into and live from, we have got to deal with the great divorce which casts upon the King of Heaven a host of lies that don’t allow us to trust Him or to know Him, much less enter into intimate relationship with Him. And intimate relationship is where all of our promises will be found.
In other words, there will be no discovery of our true identity without first discovering (or rediscovering) the Giver of that identity as Loving Father and Doting, Faithful Husband. There must be reconciliation in our relationship with God, Jesus and the Holy Spirit, because everything is born out of that relationship.
The good news is that God is so intentional and passionate about restoring that relationship with us! He desires nothing more than the opportunity to disprove our fears and suspicions and the lies and accusations that have been cast at Him. He longs to demonstrate His goodness and His deep care for us, if we will give Him the chance. He wants to bring us into an intimacy that does not wound, so He can heal us of the intimacy which has wounded. And once our relationship with Him is restored, once our trust in His nature is healed and we are able to receive what He has in mind for us, then He will be able to tell us who we are, and we will be able to live as that woman in a company of women created to be crowns of beauty in the hand of the King.
Dear, Beloved Daughter and Cherished Bride, Jesus loves you! He is madly, deeply in love with you and He is longing to draw you into the relationship that heals all other relationships, so that He can draw you into a life full of promise, love, peace, joy and deep satisfaction. Today is your day to accept the invitation!
Here’s how: would you commit to spend 15-30 minutes a day with God? Just get into a quiet space and wait for Him to say or show you something. Be brave enough to believe that He will, and make a daily habit out of this appointment. In time, you will discover how amazing He is, and He will help you to discover how amazing you are.
If you already have this habit of spending time alone with God, I challenge you to drop your agenda and give 30 minutes of that time to just listening, just being with Him. No requests. No plans. No seeking for anything but His company, just to know Him more.
We are walking into a season of unprecedented glory! Heaven is calling the Bride to arise, and so we must be healed and prepared for that rising.
Are you ready? Don’t worry, He will make us ready as we allow Him to lead us into the preparation. Start here, start now, and let’s become who we were always meant to be, in Christ, together!
{Photo images courtesy of http://www.pixabay.com}
She Dances Over Graves 