Un-turtle-ing

“A large crowd followed and pressed around Him. And a woman was there who had been subject to bleeding for twelve years. She had suffered a great deal under the care of many doctors and had spent all she had, yet instead of getting better she grew worse. When she heard about Jesus, she came up behind Him in the crowd and touched his cloak, because she thought, ‘If I just touch His clothes, I will be healed.’ Immediately her bleeding stopped and she felt in her body that she was freed from her suffering. At once Jesus realized that power had gone out from Him. He turned around in the crowd and asked, ‘Who touched my clothes?’ ‘You see the people crowding against you,’ His disciples answered, ‘and yet you can ask, “Who touched Me?”’ But Jesus kept looking around to see who had done it. Then the woman, knowing what had happened to her, came and knelt at His feet, and trembling with fear, told Him the whole truth. He said to her, ‘Daughter, your faith has healed you. Go in peace and be freed from your suffering’” ~Mark 5:25-34

The vision I keep seeing is the woman with the issue of blood. Her face down, looking at the ground, in a large group of people who rejected her. She is on all fours and she approaches him. Tears stream down her face and leave tracks. She is anemic and pale, weary. She is shaking, she has Godly fear. She knows she has to have what He has but she is aware that there is going to be consequences to her decision. She has come to far to turn back, but she will continue to reach for his cloak until she can get the healing she so desires.

This is the place that I find myself. In a place where Jesus has made himself available but it is up to be to be diligent in my pursuit of Him and what He has for me. For years I have sat and been fed. Others have done the hard work for me but at this point in my life I feel like God is saying, "Honey, you aren't a baby anymore".

I was reading in Genesis 22 this morning with my children during Bible Study. Teaching them about Jehovah Jirah. Abraham went up the mountain prepared. He took the tools that he was going to need to make Issac the sacrifice for God. He didn't take someone else's wood, or knife. He took his own tools. He didn't ask someone else to do it for him, he took 2 servants, but this himself he had to do. God had walked with him and given him great promises of this child. He had built his dreams upon his precious Issac. He had to lay it on the altar, what I find so overwhelming is that he had so much faith in God.

The Provider met him prepared with his tools. He didn't just merely walk Issac up the mountain and expect it all to be taken care of for him. God is God, He can do all things at any time. But Abraham had to be prepared to make his own altar, his own sacrifice. I wonder as he packed did he bring his best knife, or his dullest. If you are going to meet God, and kill your own son, I would think that you would bring the best sharpest knife you owned. Somehow I would think that it would make it less painful for Issac.

I have been in a fast accelerated season of growth. I have been pulled out of my comfort zone, I have been asked to climb a mountain and to bring my tools. I can honestly say in my quiet past few months, I have hurt more, cried more and hurt more than probably any other time in my life. I have felt chewed up and left to die. I felt like that woman, bleeding without cease. I have been torchered with mockery of my peers, I felt at times like I was climbing on the cutting board for the butcher. God used a lot of mouths to prepare me for this climb, for this absolute surrender of my self and all that He has invested in me on the altar. I have been set up to fail. The fight has been intense. I remember one night sitting on the edge of my bed and knowing that I was in the fight of my life. It was life versus death that night. I am not done with this battle but I know that night, I decided that victory was mine. I was not going to lie down and die. I am willingly going to surrender to the will of God and raise my knife to kill my dreams and allow God to provide the replacement. God is a God of ressurrection power. He will kill what isn't of Him and bring back or create new what he desires in me.

I want to be fully reliant on God. I don't want to be dependant on anyone but God the Father. There is no sacrifice that can be the equivilent of Jesus. There is no comfort but that which comes from the Holy Spirit. There is nothing else that satisfies my soul, my hunger nor my needs except for these.

Father, the pain is unfathonable. However, today, I willingly choose to walk this path to healing. I thank you for no recovering, I want full healing. I don't want to deal with these issues again, I don't want them to resonate the hurt that they have for so many years. Lord, I pray that you pull it all the way out. That nothing remains. You are not a God that teaching coping, you are a God that sent your son for deliverance. I praise you Lord, my soul longs for you. In the name of the most powerful son that ever walked the planet. Jesus! Jesus! Jesus!