My devotional writing is normally shorter than this message. I hope you will read it all for in it I pour out my heart to you with love and encouragement beyond measure!
The last thing in the world I expected just a few years after graduating from an Ivy League college was putting on a paper robe and paper slippers and walking into a hospital elevator and “falling in love” with some stranger in the elevator as though he had nothing better to do than fall in love with a totally broken woman – and dragging myself “voluntarily” onto the psychiatric ward.
I had gone to the emergency room earlier that day for the second time in a week as a result of my eating disorder and was way too far gone to be discharged. The hospital wanted to send me home. I said no way. But they didn’t have an eating disorders unit. Just a psychiatric ward where I could stay for long enough to give them time to send me to an eating disorders unit of another hospital for 5 weeks. My life was already broken beyond measure, and in the coming years it just got worse and worse. The psychiatric ward was utterly terrifying. So was having a life so messed up that for decades I had no sense of life’s purpose, a feeling like getting through each day would take a miracle, and brokenness beyond human hope.
If you read my personal story at www.GoodNews.love or hear it from me personally or read my Finding the Light Gospel tract which includes my story, you will quickly discover I have had a pretty challenging life to say the least. And suffice it to say I tried exceedingly hard to get help to turn my life around. NOTHING WORKED. Medications, hospitals, counselors, psychologists, psychiatrists, self-help groups, 12-step groups, self-help books, false religion, charity care, disability, food stamps, welfare, 12-step sponsors, NONE OF IT did more than put a band-aid over a broken life only getting worse. I grew worse – and worse.
If you think I am going to tell you my life turned around when I came to believe in the Lord Jesus Christ which came about through an utterly miraculous experience, you are wrong. See, I came to believe in Jesus but it took years before I became A TOTALLY DEVOTED FOLLOWER OF THE LORD JESUS CHRIST.
The band-aid is gone. So are all the things I tried to get better. My life is still hard. My personal challenges continue. I struggle daily with one thing or another. I have gone through more trials and tragedies than imaginable. I don’t have the kind of life everyone would want. BUT I HAVE A BEAUTIFUL BEYOND MEASURE AMAZINGLY WONDERFULLY FULFILLING PERSONAL FOREVER RELATIONSHIP WITH THE LORD JESUS CHRIST with which NOTHING and NOBODY on this earth can possibly compare.
I have a SENSE OF PURPOSE beyond imagination. I wake up with my heart filled with love, hope, peace, joy, passion, and an unfathomable resolve to love and worship the Lord forever and to fulfill my life’s calling to help people become and remain totally devoted followers of the Lord Jesus Christ. And my love, peace, hope, joy, and passion are NOT CONDITIONAL on my life’s circumstances and this challenging world. My HOPE IS IN THE LORD!
That psychiatric ward was just a tiny piece of decades of being lost and broken beyond human repair. Now it is nothing more than a piece of my history and a part of my testimony which shows the amazingly awesome work God has done in me over the years.
Friend, if you are struggling, if you feel lost, if you are broken, if you are depressed, if you want to give up on life like I did on and off for years, if you can’t imagine making it through today, if you can’t handle thinking of the future because of all of your anxiety, if you feel like taking the next breath may be more than you can bear, if you can’t find hope, if you forgot what joy feels like or have never known it, if you would give anything to know peace, if opening your eyes in the morning to face another day feels overwhelming, if you’re desperate for an escape from the trials of your life, or if you’re struggling in any way, shape, or form and desperate for hope, please hear me in these next words.
Jesus does not promise His followers an easy life. He says we will have tribulations. But He tells us He has overcome the world. In a nutshell, if you turn from your sins, believe Jesus Christ is Lord and that He died on the cross to pay your sin punishment of hell and the lake of fire forever apart from God, and TRULY TURN YOUR LIVE OVER TO GOD AND HIS WAYS, God will forgive your sins and give you a forever relationship with Himself. His Holy Spirit will come to live inside you.
AND YOU WILL HAVE FOREVER FELLOWSHIP WITH GOD ALMIGHTY. He will lead you through all the challenges of this life. In Jesus and the Bible and through the power of His Spirit living inside you, you can find LOVE, HOPE, PEACE, JOY, a SENSE OF PURPOSE, the most beautiful relationship in the universe, comfort, healing, wisdom, direction, strength, mercy, grace, the Truth of the Bible, friendship, and on and on.
And you will have the promise of forever in heaven with God where there will be no sorrow, no tears, no dying, no disease, no depression, no anxiety, no pain, nothing evil, nothing negative, not ever.
There is NOTHING and NOBODY in the universe as wonderful, beautiful, magnificent, and glorious than THE LORD and having a FOREVER RELATIONSHIP WITH HIM and than living on this earth and forever to love, honor, praise, worship, adore, serve, obey, glorify, experience, and enjoy THE LORD!
Please, friend, may now be the time you turn your heart and life over TO THE LORD JESUS CHRIST and to LIVING FOR HIM – forever and ever, AMEN!
“I love the LORD, because He has heard My voice and my supplications. Because He has inclined His ear to me, Therefore I will call upon Him as long as I live. The pains of death surrounded me, And the pangs of Sheol laid hold of me; I found trouble and sorrow. Then I called upon the name of the LORD: “O LORD, I implore You, deliver my soul!” Gracious is the LORD, and righteous; Yes, our God is merciful. The LORD preserves the simple; I was brought low, and He saved me. Return to your rest, O my soul, For the LORD has dealt bountifully with you. For You have delivered my soul from death, My eyes from tears, And my feet from falling. I will walk before the LORD In the land of the living.” Psalms 116:1-9 NKJV
“These things I have spoken to you, that in Me you may have peace. In the world you will have tribulation; but be of good cheer, I have overcome the world.”” John 16:33 NKJV