Wednesday, June 3, 2009

"In acceptance lieth peace"

This Amy Carmichael quote has been my quote this past month.

I just finished reading a great book called "Changes that Heal" By Dr. Henry Cloud and I highly recommend it.

Once I began reading this book, I realized there were many things from my past that I had not dealt with. In these areas of my life I was not experiencing Christ's freedom.

As I read, I began to see that I had a really hard time dealing with emotions. I had a notion that any emotion that was not happiness was a bad emotion. I lived 23yrs of my life thinking it was bad to cry or get angry and as I began to read, I was assured that these emotions are all part of a healing process and that God has given us these emotions. I can't even begin to describe how much freedom I found in that.

I felt that these emotions were bad to show because for so long they had been attributed to weakness. Growing up, I was not allowed to show weakness, the motto was "tough it up and deal".

And although there is so much freedom in it, it's not an overnight process, this will definitely be a long lesson.

Lesson number 2, which also gave me a deeper understanding of God's grace is my attitude when I sin. So often I say to myself "I can't believe I just did that!" and I came to understand that is actually not a good attitude to have towards sin. Of course I am going to sin! My nature is sinful, so it should not come as a surprise to me, yet it does not justify the sin. Nothing makes the sin ok, but me saying "I can't believe I did that" is actually a prideful attitude to carry. It says I am better than that, which, I am not.

The overall lesson I have learned from this is that the more I understand my broken, sinful nature, the more I see the need for Jesus in my life and the more real He becomes to me.

1 comment:

Rhonda said...

Amanda - I enjoyed reading your post. Sounds like a really great book. I love it when I find something that speaks right to my spirit.

Sounds like God has you on a journey.