After a While...

It's interesting to me how God moves and works, how he shifts our lives and opens our eyes. I had a deep, heart-filling conversations with one of my best friends the other night. This conversation was wonderful and heart-wrenching, but I suppose you can cover almost every spectrum after almost 3 hours.

A few weeks back, she was struggling in how to walk out a situation that didn't seem to be changing and needed to. I realized as she was talking that she was experiencing a spiritual and mental battle similar to one I was walking out about this time last summer. And although the circumstances leading up to that were different for us both, the number of similarities were astonishing. As she poured her heart out to me, I felt like I was listening to myself from 12 months back. Although what I walked through is not something I would've ever chosen for myself and certainly not for her, I realized that God was using my past and all that he taught me in that moment to talk to her. I found myself grateful to God that I had walked through that trying situation, because it meant that he could use me now to help her. And I pray that God was able to use me the way he wanted as a source of encouragement for her.

Our latest conversation started out as a follow-up to the previously described conversation. But as the conversation progressed, we ended up talking about a subject that has affected our friendship very deeply and has been like a weight upon us. And that subject has to do with the consequences of disobeying God. There was a situation that God clearly told me not to walk into, and at first, that's exactly what I was intending...to listen and follow that. But I fell. And in doing so, I allowed another dear friend to be put into a situation God never intended. I've struggled a lot with guilt honestly. I know that she has repented and that I've repented...but I still struggle with feeling the weight of her decision because I chose to disobey God. But as the friend I was talking to reminded me, "We are here to be friends and be accountable to each other, but we are not responsible for each other."

This was exactly what God wanted me to know both then and now. There are definitely ramifications of each of our decisions, but my sin was my own and her sin was her own. I cannot accept the weight of that. And after repenting before the Almighty, I no longer can hold my own sin over myself either because of the redemption, forgiveness, and the loving grace bestowed upon me.

Through that situation where I stumbled so blatantly, God has brought me to such an amazing place. For quite some time now, there has been a huge battle going on in my life. One of my other (non-Christian) friends commented to me last summer that it seemed like there were 2 sides warring inside of me. After that situation happened, I knew that there was a choice that had to be made. And although God always provides a way out in the midst of our sin, this choice was a black and white choice between choosing to follow God or following a life of sin. And in that moment as I knew God was telling me to choose, to give it all to him in pure surrender and abandon, my flesh started warring anew. But I said no. It was time to give up that lifestyle, to grow up and move forward in my walk with God. A verse out of 1 Corinthians kept coming back to me.

"When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. But when I was  man, I gave up childish ways." -1 Corinthians 13:11

So much has changed in my life in the last month since the aforementioned incident. I'm different. I feel more like myself than I have in years. I haven't reverted back, but rather am going through a restoration process to what God has been intending for me to be all along. I've learned so much about how each decision I make really does have an effect in the spiritual realm, sometimes in ways much larger than I can actually comprehend. There has been freedom from the bondage that sin had been holding over me. There's freedom in knowing who I am in Christ, a forgiven child of the living God. There's freedom to no longer bear the weight of past sins, to release myself from all of it.

"You bring restoration
 You bring restoration
 You bring restoration to my soul

"You've taken my pain
 You've called me by a new name
 You've taken my shame
 And in its place, You give me joy

"You take my mourning and turn it into dancing
 You take my weeping and turn it into laughing
 You take my mourning and turn it into dancing
 You take my sadness and turn it into joy

"You give me joy, You give me joy
 You give me joy in my soul

"Hallelujah, hallelujah
 You make all things new, all things new
 Hallelujah, hallelujah
 You make all things new, all things new"
-"Restoration" by David Brymer

This whole experience has been one of pain, starting with my sin and ending with God's mercy in repentance. I was completely broken in a way I've never before experienced and there are still physical ramifications to my choice and my friend's choice. But God has called me out of that and set me free and for that I am beyond grateful. I pray and would appreciate your prayers as well that my life be a beacon of Christ to the lost.

"For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain."