LIFE

Whoa the last few days have been quite experiential something that I have NEVER experienced in my life. We learned and read the book called Pure Heart. We all long to have pure hearts before God, not just for ourselves but for others as well. We want to have a heart that forgives. Forgiving is different that trusting. Forgiving is saying, I forgive you for what you did, but that doesn’t mean I will continue to trust you. Forgiving is so hard to learn because we don’t understand the importance it has on our life. When we forgive we are breaking down walls for Jesus to come and heal those places completely,  so that Jesus can forgive us too. It says in the Bible that when we get to heaven we will be rewarded. Donna said, “I don’t want to stand before God and He tell me I’m only 95% forgiven because I had left this part in my heart and didn’t forgive. And God said so justly and kind, I’m sorry but you can’t have these other rewards. God wants to give us rewards. He knows exactly what we love exactly what we want. He is going to bless us with those things.

            Its so hard for us to fathom heaven. Because we are not there, and it just surpasses our understanding. Heaven is filled with streets of gold, where the grass is full of life, with mansions of rooms full of everything we love, especially JESUS walking and talking with us.  For so long I use to be afraid of heaven. This fear was so irrational, because heaven is a wonderful place, it’s a real place.

          I use to be afraid of not being able to go to heaven. When my sister died I was 6, I didn’t understand what death was. What does it mean to die? I had never known anyone to die before my sister. It was unfathomable to me. But my mom said Sierra is in Heaven with Jesus, walking on the streets of gold playing and dancing and living a life we could only dream about till one day. I asked, do all people go to heaven? And my mom said, no only if you love Jesus, and believe that He died for our sins. I acknowledged I believed and that day became a Christian. However since that day, I wanted to go to heaven to see Sierra, I wanted to die before I became older to guarantee my spot in Heaven. I never wanted to doubt whether or not I was going to be in heaven. Every day I would wonder and think about this. When I was 13 I thought, oh no is this the age where I can’t get into heaven automatically anymore? And I convinced myself it had to be older… SO when I turned 16 I realized I can no longer get into heaven because I am too old. I have to really believe that God is who He says, because if I don’t I won’t go to heaven and I won’t see Sierra. Since then the enemy took captive that thought and twisted this view of God. He made me always question, resulting in a fear of death. A paralyzing fear, one that I could not handle and it came out through rebellion, or anxiety. I often thought, I shouldn’t do that because what if I die. This thought continued. I started to believe that God just wanted me to die, but I was so afraid of it. Many times I would find myself thinking about my funeral, who would come, how it would play out who would sing. What would happen to my family. The enemy completely took my thoughts and twisted them and made me so fearful. BUT this week I learned, there is NOTHING to fear. I have been redeemed and the Lord speaks LIFE over me. The Lord has plans for me, huge plans. He has my destiny and I will not afraid any longer and I will no longer let the enemy lie to me and there is NO FEAR IN DEATH because that is only the beginning. Heaven in a beautiful real place, there is NO fear in Jesus Christ. He died to take away my fear, pains, sickness, iniquity. God is a good Father, who is always protecting us and comforting us. DO you really understand what this means? It means I don’t have to fear because Abba God has me in His hand. He is watching over me, not just peeking over my shoulder, but standing in front of me. Showing me that His heart for me and plans for me are bigger and better then I could ever imagine. God brings life. I can’t wait to share this LIFE with the people that I meet in Poland and that there is no death in God, He speaks life over His children. He speaks hope and joy that we don’t understand. He gives us a PEACE that we can learn to live in. Wow I cannot thank Him enough. Thank you Jesus for what you have done in my life and your story of redemption continues to live on.