Loosed Women
I’m sure you are all wondering about
the title! Well it was meant to be a play on words for what I believe is God’s
intention for His women today: For you and I. I believe He wants His women, us,
to be free to be the women He created us to be. Free to be His women moving by
the Holy Spirit standing in our authority as His daughters, with all the
authority of the Heavenlies at our disposal. God is asking us to be wild women,
women of influence, women of security, loosed women walking in the power of the
Holy Spirit.
So how do we get there? How do we become what God wants us to be? Well for me it has been a process, a journey, and I suspect it will be a lifelong development. I always say that I should wear a tabard or poster over me saying “God’s work in progress”. And I’m sure it’s the same for you to.
All of us have grown up with messages from our past. As we were developing, the messages ingrained within us were developing too. Once developed; they portrayed a picture of what we thought about life, ourselves as women and God.
But before we take a closer look at life, how we see God and how we see ourselves, I would like you to turn to the person next to you and for the next 2 minutes describe who you are. You have one minute each.
Now I suspect you have all described yourselves by your different roles in life. For example as a wife, as a mother or your jobs! When in actual fact your primary identification of who you really are is a daughter of God. By the end of this talk, my prayer is that you will know in your soul that you were made by God (Psalm 139: 13-16) and that you were made for God (Col. 1:16). You will know an unspeakable, unshakable peace that fills you completely when you learn to rest in God’s love, who made you and has plans for you. You will discover that you are a limited edition, God’s treasure. No one on earth is exactly like you.
I used to be my worst enemy and no one could criticise me more than I could myself! I could and would wallow in negativity and feel that I could not accomplish anything. The Bible teaches us that we reap what we sow and boy did I do that! I became caged with low self worth, low self esteem, ridden with guilt and shame. But of course, negativity breeds negativity and leads to depression, bitterness and frustration. I used to compensate and feel I needed to be seen to be doing, which led to exhaustion and more frustration! Many of us are quick to condemn ourselves – if not in the face of mental illness, in the face of our own weakness. We constantly play back our failures and moments of falling; we beat ourselves over the head with the most “magnificent” moments and wish we could undo the damage. In so doing, we often condemn ourselves to hours, days, years (and, in some cases, a lifetime) of carrying guilt and remorse.
It’s inevitable that our failure and weakness will impact our confidence, not just before others or before our own mirror, but before God. “After all,” we reason, “who am I, after all I have done? Because of all I am as a person? How can I stand in confidence anywhere, before anyone, let alone God?
But that’s not the dwelling place God has chosen for us. God’s dwelling place for us is not one of condemnation but of grace: grace in partnership with repentance and a desire to live His way. If we live God’s way “in Christ Jesus” there will be no condemnation for us – now or in eternity.
If God doesn’t condemn us, why do we condemn ourselves? Why do we listen to those negative words and believe the names we call ourselves? It is His grace that justifies our very existence, His love that chose us and set us apart, so why do we allow circumstances, self criticism or the painfully remembered words of others to condemn us?
Sometimes we just need to choose to live somewhere else. Yes, it may be stressful initially – moving often is! But we need to recognise the condemned state in which we’re living and work to do something about it. That might mean praying through our self-assessment and self-condemnation with a wise friend, asking for forgiveness and letting go of guilt. It might also mean letting go of the “furniture” of our lives that has kept us sitting in comfortable condemnation. It might also mean avoiding the roads that lead us to its door: the habits, memories, props – even people, who direct us away from God’s view of ourselves and, importantly, from the life He has planned for us. It’s only when we move out of our condemned lives that we will discover how to live in the confidence, security and grace that comes from assurance of God’s love. For in Romans 8 verse 1 and 2 says, “Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, because through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit of life set me free from the law of sin and death.”
So how can we experience this freedom through the Holy Spirit? Well this has been a journey for me to. Through the teaching over the last ten years from New Wine and spending time with God, I have learnt that it’s not about doing but about being! Being a Christian is not about doing all the right things, following a set of rules, or adhering to certain rituals. Being a Christian is a matter of the heart. It is all about relationship with the God of the universe and the Creator of all things. Relationship with God is an intimate, up-close-and-personal relationship with the One who knows me most – and loves me still.
Religion is a belief in a supernatural power and an adherence to a set of rules and regulations.
Relationship is the connection with that power. While religion is the head knowledge of spiritual things, relationship is the heart, connecting with the things of the spirit. It is possible to be religious while not having any personal relationship with God. This kind of religious experience is empty and frustrating.
Many people grow up in homes that teach religion in some form or another. I did. I grew up in a home where Sunday church was an occasional priority, but we never talked about God in our home except during a small handful of emergencies. Then we would say our memorized prayers and cry our eyes out to God to help. But once the crisis was over and we were back to the daily business of living. God was out of sight and out of mind. He seemed far away, perched up on a cloud somewhere watching to see if I was being a good little girl.
Because my family went to church, I guess I had religion. I know I didn’t have a relationship with God. I had no idea what it meant to connect with God or have my life tied into Him and His plans. My life was all about my plans and my dreams. I had no idea that God had plans for my life and that finding purpose in Him would be more fulfilling than all my own dreams.
To many of us God sometimes seems far away and removed from real life. Again my own earlier relationship with God the Father was a transient one. My own Father committed suicide when I was 4 and consequently my mum married and divorced another 3 times after that. Due to the transience of fatherly figures in my formative years that is also how I used to see God in my life. There occasionally and then, not there. And not there when I needed Him most. However I know that Father God is healing all my Father’s wounds and as I share with others my vulnerability, other women are able to draw near to our Father God with their own wounds. I have come to learn that He is interested in and involved with every one of us each day. I now know that He has given us access to a personal relationship with Himself through His Son, Jesus Christ.
One of my favourite prayers in the Bible is Paul’s prayer to the Ephesians. Ephesians 3:16-19. There are two themes here, God’s Power and God’s love. We need to know the love of God that fills us so that we can be strengthened with His power in our innermost being. So as we face the different struggles in life, and we will, that we don’t run away from them, but we stand encouraged by God in our innermost being. One of my favourite verses in the Bible for when I feel overwhelmed by something is Philippians 4 verse 13, “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.” As this truth resonates in my soul, I know I can carry on knowing that Christ is before me, and behind me and to the side of me. He gives me that confidence to carry on and I stand encouraged. I love the story about the house built in the rock for it’s an image of security, firm foundations, found on God’s Love. I encourage you to know the love of God with extravagance. God understands where we are. We are all cracked pots, we are imperfect. We fail and are often rebellious and weak. But God’s love doesn’t depend on our goodness at all. He lavishes love on us totally unearned. He loves each one of us perfectly, fully and unconditionally. Tune into God to hear Truth and Love.
As women of security in God we need to realise that we live in a negative culture. Rather than talk about what is right you hear the opposite, the wrong rather than the right. We live in a blame culture and because of this we see more depression and low self esteem than at any other time. We live in a culture fixated on youth, beauty and on body image. Nearly 225 million pounds was spent on plastic surgery last year! As a society we are being brainwashed into believing lies that beauty is all about youth, good looks and being slim.
We need to make sure that we as women realise that the images we are seeing in the media of models and celebrities who appear to have found the fountain of youth are not real. Most have been prepped for the photos session by hair and makeup artists, Botox, plastic surgery, and even after all that, will likely be airbrushed beyond recognition. We need to set a positive example for our daughters and make friends with the aging process. That doesn’t mean we have to let our hair grow gray and wear it in a tight bun atop our heads and fill our closets with twin sets and pearls. I for one enjoy dressing fashionably, getting my hair highlighted, walking to keep my legs toned and getting my eyebrows waxed!
There is nothing wrong with beautifying the temple as long as it’s done in good taste and not your primary focus. If our daughters and grand-daughters are constantly subjected to our grumblings as we journey through the aging process, it will leave them with the impression that life is somehow less appealing in the latter years. Seriously, who wants to go back to their teens and twenties?! No offense guys! But I’m 48 years old and I love being my age. I feel more confident as a woman of God than I have ever felt before. So let’s quit this nonsense of being shocked and surprised when our bodies begin to show wear and tear. Some (if not many) of the most beautiful women I know are over fifty and some even in their eighties put the polished and airbrushed models and celebs to shame.
When you look to the Bible you see that to be a woman of God is far more liberating. We owe it to ourselves and our daughters and the women in our churches not to buy into this lie and to live out God’s life with contentment and security, knowing who we are in God. Beauty is defined by God and God alone. He sets the standard for beauty and gives us clues throughout Scripture as to what defines a beautiful woman. “You are more than the sum of your parts”! Beauty surveys fail to recognize the key component that determines a woman’s happiness, confidence, dignity and humour. The key component, of course, is faith. Just as Proverbs 31 passage concludes. “Charm is deceptive, and beauty is fleeting; but a woman who fears the Lord is to be praised” (Prov. 31:30). Beauty fades with age, so if you are more concerned with your outer appearance, you will be unhappy when the wrinkles come and the number on the scale goes up. In fact, did you know that your body may show the beginning signs of aging as early as age twenty? That is why God wants us to “fear” Him. That doesn’t mean to be afraid of Him but rather to be in awe of Him and all that He has done. Let me put it this way. Faith in God frees you from anxiety, obsessiveness, compulsiveness, regrets of the past, worry for today, and negative projection of tomorrow. Faith liberates every part of us to be the women that God has designed us to be. Faith in a loving and forgiving God will be the root of any and all manifestations of beauty. Physical beauty will fade over time, but true beauty (virtue) is timeless.
So how can we experience this relationship with God and become loosed liberated women of confidence, free from the cage of low self worth, low self esteem, guilt and remorse and become women of God, loosed and free to move in our authority.........DVD.
1) We need to spend time with God. Like any relationship it needs to be worked at. We need to remind ourselves of “who God is, who I am in Christ and what life is about. That we are daughters to the King of Kings. You are his beloved, and His banner over you is love! The banner flies high each day, waving new each morning. I find variety helps me, sometimes it will be a Bible Study, sometimes I will simply soak in his presence with a CD and simply tell Him how much I love Him and give thanks for what He has done in my life. Sometimes I will meditate on a verse of scripture, for I find that in embracing the Word of God and meditating on the truth, we tear down the negative images on which we have built our lives in the past. There are ten references to meditation just in Psalm 119 alone. When I meditate on something, sitting with a thought for a time, it goes into my heart and usually affects my actions. If it is God’s truth that I am thinking of, His word comes alive and affects my daily experience. This is how truth goes from head to heart. God’s Word and prayer act like dynamite in the pulling down of strongholds. God is all powerful and can use even the sometimes–ugly events of our pasts to help mould us into strong, God-confident loosed women that He has designed us to be. Now we are going to do some meditation right now. Christian meditation is one of the best kept secrets of the Christian faith and yet nuns and monks have been practicing it for centuries! It is about focusing on God and helping us into God’s presence. I want you to look up Psalm 139 verse 13 and 14. I would like you to read it and I would like you to think about who created you? Why does that matter?............ Now I would like you to meditate on verse 14, “I praise you... because I’m.... fearfully and wonderfully made.”
“Arise my darling my beautiful one”. Song by Steve Mitchinson.
God created you in the image of God, and God doesn’t make mistakes! Like a snowflake, every person is unique. No two are the same. God sees you as a masterpiece; and when you look in the mirror, He wants you to “Know that full well.”
2) We need to forgive, it may be ourselves or someone else, but this will allow us to be strengthened with power in our most innermost being. RT Kendall’s book on “Forgiveness”, talks about how bearing a grudge can hold you back and damage your health. Hurts, disappointments, feeling undervalued-all these feelings will lead to depression and self despair-walk in the way of forgiveness and freedom. I had to learn to forgive my Father for committing suicide all those years ago. To this day I don’t know why He did it. The devastation He left behind. For decades, this emotional cavity left me with a deep seated sense of abandonment and an intense fear of separation. I was crippled for many years from low self esteem and low self worth. It has taken me many years to find healing for this great ache in my heart. The journey has been long, arduous and, at times painful. But in the end I can definitely say that it has been infinitely worthwhile. Lack of forgiveness, resentment and grumbling creates negative feeling. You reap what you sow! Due to the grumbling of the Israelites they were kept out of the Promised Land. Walk in forgiveness and you walk in freedom. Jesus says to the lady who committed adultery, “Daughter your sins are forgiven you, go in peace.”
3) Indwelling of the Holy Spirit. We are told in 2 Cor 3:17 “Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom”. The NIV Thematic Study Bible tells us that the Holy Spirit is: “the co-equal and co-eternal spirit of the Father and the Son, who inspired scripture and brings life to the people of God”. It also tells us that The Holy Spirit: “equips and empowers believers so that the reign and reality of God is revealed through them in the world.” Those words explain both the Person and the purpose of the Holy Spirit. It follows, then, that when we live lives that are open to Him, the Holy Spirit comforts, inspires, convicts, guides, counsels and empowers us. In doing so He gives us confidence in our faith and our future. Indwelling of the Holy Spirit, dwell in the Greek meaning means to inhabit a place as a stranger or to take up permanent residence. The Holy Spirit is often represented as a dove and in the Bible a dove in the original Greek was a wild rock dove. A dove that inhabited dark cold caves, where slime drips off the walls and where there is the stench of damp. So actually the Holy Spirit in the Biblical sense was seen as a wild rock dove which inhabits wild places. The Holy Spirit can inhabit those dark places. It’s there that He takes up permanent residence. We need to keep welcoming the Holy Spirit into those dark places of our lives so that we can receive forgiveness and restoration, so that we can live in truth and freedom.
4) Receive the Truth – grasp the truth of Scripture, know it, receive it and know this love. There is a diet inside of all of us of negative thinking, I’m not rather than I am! These thoughts produce an effect. Receive the truth of Scripture, meditate on the word of God, Psalm 119 v73 “Your hands made me and formed me” Phil 1 v6 “that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.” Eph 2 v 10 “I am God’s workmanship”. Col 1 v 16 “we were created by Him and for Him.” “I am accepted by God, Eph 1. I am a child of God (John 1:12). I am completely forgiven. (Col 1:14). When we have the truth residing in our souls the rubbish can be cast aside. Loving God’s way is a process of recognizing our value to God and in turn recognizing the value of others.
5) Expect God to do wonderful things – Have expectant hearts. Expect God to act, and do what you are hungry for. Take on board the truth of God. We may be cracked pots but God can do amazing things, extraordinary things through us. Through God’s Holy Spirit indwelling in us we can be the ordinary doing the extraordinary. We become women who are no longer bound but free to be ourselves. When this freedom is a result of growing in biblical truths, then we are set free indeed. We can be liberated, passionate loosed women for God. When we understand who we are in Christ, that we have the authority of heaven at our finger tips for we are God’s children.
Let’s Pray:
Thank you Lord for creating each and every woman here today. He created you in love because He values you. Everything God creates is good and for a purpose. Therefore, you don’t have to compare yourself with others ever again. Each woman here today is unique. God’s plan for each of us is different. Lord I ask you now to come with your Holy Spirit and minister to us. Help every woman here today know how intimately you are concerned with her, her soul and her eternal future.
So how do we get there? How do we become what God wants us to be? Well for me it has been a process, a journey, and I suspect it will be a lifelong development. I always say that I should wear a tabard or poster over me saying “God’s work in progress”. And I’m sure it’s the same for you to.
All of us have grown up with messages from our past. As we were developing, the messages ingrained within us were developing too. Once developed; they portrayed a picture of what we thought about life, ourselves as women and God.
But before we take a closer look at life, how we see God and how we see ourselves, I would like you to turn to the person next to you and for the next 2 minutes describe who you are. You have one minute each.
Now I suspect you have all described yourselves by your different roles in life. For example as a wife, as a mother or your jobs! When in actual fact your primary identification of who you really are is a daughter of God. By the end of this talk, my prayer is that you will know in your soul that you were made by God (Psalm 139: 13-16) and that you were made for God (Col. 1:16). You will know an unspeakable, unshakable peace that fills you completely when you learn to rest in God’s love, who made you and has plans for you. You will discover that you are a limited edition, God’s treasure. No one on earth is exactly like you.
I used to be my worst enemy and no one could criticise me more than I could myself! I could and would wallow in negativity and feel that I could not accomplish anything. The Bible teaches us that we reap what we sow and boy did I do that! I became caged with low self worth, low self esteem, ridden with guilt and shame. But of course, negativity breeds negativity and leads to depression, bitterness and frustration. I used to compensate and feel I needed to be seen to be doing, which led to exhaustion and more frustration! Many of us are quick to condemn ourselves – if not in the face of mental illness, in the face of our own weakness. We constantly play back our failures and moments of falling; we beat ourselves over the head with the most “magnificent” moments and wish we could undo the damage. In so doing, we often condemn ourselves to hours, days, years (and, in some cases, a lifetime) of carrying guilt and remorse.
It’s inevitable that our failure and weakness will impact our confidence, not just before others or before our own mirror, but before God. “After all,” we reason, “who am I, after all I have done? Because of all I am as a person? How can I stand in confidence anywhere, before anyone, let alone God?
But that’s not the dwelling place God has chosen for us. God’s dwelling place for us is not one of condemnation but of grace: grace in partnership with repentance and a desire to live His way. If we live God’s way “in Christ Jesus” there will be no condemnation for us – now or in eternity.
If God doesn’t condemn us, why do we condemn ourselves? Why do we listen to those negative words and believe the names we call ourselves? It is His grace that justifies our very existence, His love that chose us and set us apart, so why do we allow circumstances, self criticism or the painfully remembered words of others to condemn us?
Sometimes we just need to choose to live somewhere else. Yes, it may be stressful initially – moving often is! But we need to recognise the condemned state in which we’re living and work to do something about it. That might mean praying through our self-assessment and self-condemnation with a wise friend, asking for forgiveness and letting go of guilt. It might also mean letting go of the “furniture” of our lives that has kept us sitting in comfortable condemnation. It might also mean avoiding the roads that lead us to its door: the habits, memories, props – even people, who direct us away from God’s view of ourselves and, importantly, from the life He has planned for us. It’s only when we move out of our condemned lives that we will discover how to live in the confidence, security and grace that comes from assurance of God’s love. For in Romans 8 verse 1 and 2 says, “Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, because through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit of life set me free from the law of sin and death.”
So how can we experience this freedom through the Holy Spirit? Well this has been a journey for me to. Through the teaching over the last ten years from New Wine and spending time with God, I have learnt that it’s not about doing but about being! Being a Christian is not about doing all the right things, following a set of rules, or adhering to certain rituals. Being a Christian is a matter of the heart. It is all about relationship with the God of the universe and the Creator of all things. Relationship with God is an intimate, up-close-and-personal relationship with the One who knows me most – and loves me still.
Religion is a belief in a supernatural power and an adherence to a set of rules and regulations.
Relationship is the connection with that power. While religion is the head knowledge of spiritual things, relationship is the heart, connecting with the things of the spirit. It is possible to be religious while not having any personal relationship with God. This kind of religious experience is empty and frustrating.
Many people grow up in homes that teach religion in some form or another. I did. I grew up in a home where Sunday church was an occasional priority, but we never talked about God in our home except during a small handful of emergencies. Then we would say our memorized prayers and cry our eyes out to God to help. But once the crisis was over and we were back to the daily business of living. God was out of sight and out of mind. He seemed far away, perched up on a cloud somewhere watching to see if I was being a good little girl.
Because my family went to church, I guess I had religion. I know I didn’t have a relationship with God. I had no idea what it meant to connect with God or have my life tied into Him and His plans. My life was all about my plans and my dreams. I had no idea that God had plans for my life and that finding purpose in Him would be more fulfilling than all my own dreams.
To many of us God sometimes seems far away and removed from real life. Again my own earlier relationship with God the Father was a transient one. My own Father committed suicide when I was 4 and consequently my mum married and divorced another 3 times after that. Due to the transience of fatherly figures in my formative years that is also how I used to see God in my life. There occasionally and then, not there. And not there when I needed Him most. However I know that Father God is healing all my Father’s wounds and as I share with others my vulnerability, other women are able to draw near to our Father God with their own wounds. I have come to learn that He is interested in and involved with every one of us each day. I now know that He has given us access to a personal relationship with Himself through His Son, Jesus Christ.
One of my favourite prayers in the Bible is Paul’s prayer to the Ephesians. Ephesians 3:16-19. There are two themes here, God’s Power and God’s love. We need to know the love of God that fills us so that we can be strengthened with His power in our innermost being. So as we face the different struggles in life, and we will, that we don’t run away from them, but we stand encouraged by God in our innermost being. One of my favourite verses in the Bible for when I feel overwhelmed by something is Philippians 4 verse 13, “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.” As this truth resonates in my soul, I know I can carry on knowing that Christ is before me, and behind me and to the side of me. He gives me that confidence to carry on and I stand encouraged. I love the story about the house built in the rock for it’s an image of security, firm foundations, found on God’s Love. I encourage you to know the love of God with extravagance. God understands where we are. We are all cracked pots, we are imperfect. We fail and are often rebellious and weak. But God’s love doesn’t depend on our goodness at all. He lavishes love on us totally unearned. He loves each one of us perfectly, fully and unconditionally. Tune into God to hear Truth and Love.
As women of security in God we need to realise that we live in a negative culture. Rather than talk about what is right you hear the opposite, the wrong rather than the right. We live in a blame culture and because of this we see more depression and low self esteem than at any other time. We live in a culture fixated on youth, beauty and on body image. Nearly 225 million pounds was spent on plastic surgery last year! As a society we are being brainwashed into believing lies that beauty is all about youth, good looks and being slim.
We need to make sure that we as women realise that the images we are seeing in the media of models and celebrities who appear to have found the fountain of youth are not real. Most have been prepped for the photos session by hair and makeup artists, Botox, plastic surgery, and even after all that, will likely be airbrushed beyond recognition. We need to set a positive example for our daughters and make friends with the aging process. That doesn’t mean we have to let our hair grow gray and wear it in a tight bun atop our heads and fill our closets with twin sets and pearls. I for one enjoy dressing fashionably, getting my hair highlighted, walking to keep my legs toned and getting my eyebrows waxed!
There is nothing wrong with beautifying the temple as long as it’s done in good taste and not your primary focus. If our daughters and grand-daughters are constantly subjected to our grumblings as we journey through the aging process, it will leave them with the impression that life is somehow less appealing in the latter years. Seriously, who wants to go back to their teens and twenties?! No offense guys! But I’m 48 years old and I love being my age. I feel more confident as a woman of God than I have ever felt before. So let’s quit this nonsense of being shocked and surprised when our bodies begin to show wear and tear. Some (if not many) of the most beautiful women I know are over fifty and some even in their eighties put the polished and airbrushed models and celebs to shame.
When you look to the Bible you see that to be a woman of God is far more liberating. We owe it to ourselves and our daughters and the women in our churches not to buy into this lie and to live out God’s life with contentment and security, knowing who we are in God. Beauty is defined by God and God alone. He sets the standard for beauty and gives us clues throughout Scripture as to what defines a beautiful woman. “You are more than the sum of your parts”! Beauty surveys fail to recognize the key component that determines a woman’s happiness, confidence, dignity and humour. The key component, of course, is faith. Just as Proverbs 31 passage concludes. “Charm is deceptive, and beauty is fleeting; but a woman who fears the Lord is to be praised” (Prov. 31:30). Beauty fades with age, so if you are more concerned with your outer appearance, you will be unhappy when the wrinkles come and the number on the scale goes up. In fact, did you know that your body may show the beginning signs of aging as early as age twenty? That is why God wants us to “fear” Him. That doesn’t mean to be afraid of Him but rather to be in awe of Him and all that He has done. Let me put it this way. Faith in God frees you from anxiety, obsessiveness, compulsiveness, regrets of the past, worry for today, and negative projection of tomorrow. Faith liberates every part of us to be the women that God has designed us to be. Faith in a loving and forgiving God will be the root of any and all manifestations of beauty. Physical beauty will fade over time, but true beauty (virtue) is timeless.
So how can we experience this relationship with God and become loosed liberated women of confidence, free from the cage of low self worth, low self esteem, guilt and remorse and become women of God, loosed and free to move in our authority.........DVD.
1) We need to spend time with God. Like any relationship it needs to be worked at. We need to remind ourselves of “who God is, who I am in Christ and what life is about. That we are daughters to the King of Kings. You are his beloved, and His banner over you is love! The banner flies high each day, waving new each morning. I find variety helps me, sometimes it will be a Bible Study, sometimes I will simply soak in his presence with a CD and simply tell Him how much I love Him and give thanks for what He has done in my life. Sometimes I will meditate on a verse of scripture, for I find that in embracing the Word of God and meditating on the truth, we tear down the negative images on which we have built our lives in the past. There are ten references to meditation just in Psalm 119 alone. When I meditate on something, sitting with a thought for a time, it goes into my heart and usually affects my actions. If it is God’s truth that I am thinking of, His word comes alive and affects my daily experience. This is how truth goes from head to heart. God’s Word and prayer act like dynamite in the pulling down of strongholds. God is all powerful and can use even the sometimes–ugly events of our pasts to help mould us into strong, God-confident loosed women that He has designed us to be. Now we are going to do some meditation right now. Christian meditation is one of the best kept secrets of the Christian faith and yet nuns and monks have been practicing it for centuries! It is about focusing on God and helping us into God’s presence. I want you to look up Psalm 139 verse 13 and 14. I would like you to read it and I would like you to think about who created you? Why does that matter?............ Now I would like you to meditate on verse 14, “I praise you... because I’m.... fearfully and wonderfully made.”
“Arise my darling my beautiful one”. Song by Steve Mitchinson.
God created you in the image of God, and God doesn’t make mistakes! Like a snowflake, every person is unique. No two are the same. God sees you as a masterpiece; and when you look in the mirror, He wants you to “Know that full well.”
2) We need to forgive, it may be ourselves or someone else, but this will allow us to be strengthened with power in our most innermost being. RT Kendall’s book on “Forgiveness”, talks about how bearing a grudge can hold you back and damage your health. Hurts, disappointments, feeling undervalued-all these feelings will lead to depression and self despair-walk in the way of forgiveness and freedom. I had to learn to forgive my Father for committing suicide all those years ago. To this day I don’t know why He did it. The devastation He left behind. For decades, this emotional cavity left me with a deep seated sense of abandonment and an intense fear of separation. I was crippled for many years from low self esteem and low self worth. It has taken me many years to find healing for this great ache in my heart. The journey has been long, arduous and, at times painful. But in the end I can definitely say that it has been infinitely worthwhile. Lack of forgiveness, resentment and grumbling creates negative feeling. You reap what you sow! Due to the grumbling of the Israelites they were kept out of the Promised Land. Walk in forgiveness and you walk in freedom. Jesus says to the lady who committed adultery, “Daughter your sins are forgiven you, go in peace.”
3) Indwelling of the Holy Spirit. We are told in 2 Cor 3:17 “Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom”. The NIV Thematic Study Bible tells us that the Holy Spirit is: “the co-equal and co-eternal spirit of the Father and the Son, who inspired scripture and brings life to the people of God”. It also tells us that The Holy Spirit: “equips and empowers believers so that the reign and reality of God is revealed through them in the world.” Those words explain both the Person and the purpose of the Holy Spirit. It follows, then, that when we live lives that are open to Him, the Holy Spirit comforts, inspires, convicts, guides, counsels and empowers us. In doing so He gives us confidence in our faith and our future. Indwelling of the Holy Spirit, dwell in the Greek meaning means to inhabit a place as a stranger or to take up permanent residence. The Holy Spirit is often represented as a dove and in the Bible a dove in the original Greek was a wild rock dove. A dove that inhabited dark cold caves, where slime drips off the walls and where there is the stench of damp. So actually the Holy Spirit in the Biblical sense was seen as a wild rock dove which inhabits wild places. The Holy Spirit can inhabit those dark places. It’s there that He takes up permanent residence. We need to keep welcoming the Holy Spirit into those dark places of our lives so that we can receive forgiveness and restoration, so that we can live in truth and freedom.
4) Receive the Truth – grasp the truth of Scripture, know it, receive it and know this love. There is a diet inside of all of us of negative thinking, I’m not rather than I am! These thoughts produce an effect. Receive the truth of Scripture, meditate on the word of God, Psalm 119 v73 “Your hands made me and formed me” Phil 1 v6 “that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.” Eph 2 v 10 “I am God’s workmanship”. Col 1 v 16 “we were created by Him and for Him.” “I am accepted by God, Eph 1. I am a child of God (John 1:12). I am completely forgiven. (Col 1:14). When we have the truth residing in our souls the rubbish can be cast aside. Loving God’s way is a process of recognizing our value to God and in turn recognizing the value of others.
5) Expect God to do wonderful things – Have expectant hearts. Expect God to act, and do what you are hungry for. Take on board the truth of God. We may be cracked pots but God can do amazing things, extraordinary things through us. Through God’s Holy Spirit indwelling in us we can be the ordinary doing the extraordinary. We become women who are no longer bound but free to be ourselves. When this freedom is a result of growing in biblical truths, then we are set free indeed. We can be liberated, passionate loosed women for God. When we understand who we are in Christ, that we have the authority of heaven at our finger tips for we are God’s children.
Let’s Pray:
Thank you Lord for creating each and every woman here today. He created you in love because He values you. Everything God creates is good and for a purpose. Therefore, you don’t have to compare yourself with others ever again. Each woman here today is unique. God’s plan for each of us is different. Lord I ask you now to come with your Holy Spirit and minister to us. Help every woman here today know how intimately you are concerned with her, her soul and her eternal future.