Family vacations are supposed to be relaxing: joyful, rejuvenating and fun. But on this particular day of our summer vacation, I was restless and mentally miserable. We were under a month from the 61A South-Asia mission trip and the enemy was pulling out all the stops to keep me from going. As I sat on the balcony of the home we had rented, he kept telling me that I needed to give up all this ministry stuff. He even went as far as to say that I’d “end up demon possessed if I kept imagining Jesus in the gospels.” Of course I knew his words were lies, but he was relentless with his fiery darts of fear.
I left the balcony and headed to the beach with my family feeling a bit haunted by his words. I knew I needed to get a handle on my thoughts and put a stop to this attack. But what was the truth?
Miraculously, my family occupied themselves at the beach for the next several hours. My husband started fishing, my kids started boogie boarding and I was left to myself. How often does that happen?!
As I sat on the beach, I began reading a book titled Living Fearlessly by Jamie Winship. The book covers several different topics with one of them being identity. While covering that topic, the author encourages his readers to write down everything they believe to be true about themselves and imagine that they are handing that piece of paper to Jesus. He references Isaiah 26:3 and writes, “…use your imagination, which is the place where you have dreams and visions. Your imagination is from God. Isaiah promises that the one whose mind and imagination are committed to and focused on God will be kept in perfect and constant peace by God.”
I had to ask myself, why did this author use that verse? I’ve never heard anyone reference that verse when speaking about imagination.So I did what any self-respecting educator would do, I looked it up.
Isaiah 26:3 reads, “You will keep the peace, a perfect peace, for all who trust in You, for those who dedicate their hearts and minds to You.” As I pondered the verse, I looked up the Hebrew word for mind and discovered that it means inclination, imagination, mind, purpose, or framework. Knowing that, it made perfect sense why this author would admonish his readers to use their imaginations when approaching Jesus!
At this point, I started to get really angry with the enemy! How dare he try to rob me of the goodness of picturing Jesus sitting with me on that balcony, or walking down the beach with me, or feeding the five thousand in the gospels. I was overcome with righteous indignation at how he comes to torment us with his lies and I decided, “No more!”
So I wrote out everything I believed about me…and it wasn’t pretty. I wrote down how I felt worthless, selfish, stupid, mean…the list went on and on. As I wrote down everything that came to mind, I noticed that the word selfish kept popping up. I wrote it four times. I wasn’t sure where that particular lie originated, but it was clear that it was deeply ingrained in my mind.
After writing all of these things, I imagined myself ripping a page out of my journal and handing it to Jesus and asking, “What do you call me?” In my heart I felt His response: “I call you free.”
I would love to tell you that instantly my heart leaped and I felt restored…but, that’s not quite how it happened.
Most often when I hear from the Lord it is in moments of solitude. As a working mama who is constantly keeping the family going, I typically have to get still and quiet so that I can focus on what God is speaking. Sitting at the beach that day, I could hear the noise of all the families around me and I wasn’t sure that this voice was from God. As I thought to myself, “I need to sit with the Lord on this and make sure this was really His response,” another voice came bursting on the scene with excitement. This voice was not so familiar.
A little boy had come from out of nowhere. I don’t know where he had been all day, but he was not a member of the families who had pitched their umbrellas near mine for the day. He was floating in the water over to my right and I heard him yell, “Look at that cloud. It looks like the gates of heaven!”
Jesus had not waited for me to get alone and quiet. He wanted to speak my identity clearly in that moment and without doubt! It was then that I covered my face and cried.
You might think that the story ends here, but Jesus never leaves His work incomplete.
A month later, I lay sleeplessly on the couch in an apartment in South-Asia fretting. Jet lag had taken its toll and I could not get my body acclimated to this new time zone in order to get a good night’s sleep. As I lay there, worry consumed me. I felt selfish for stealing the couch and I felt very afraid of my own temperament. I have not always handled being tired well. Usually it is when I am tired that I find myself short on patience and long on anger, snide remarks, and irritability. I lay there and told the Lord, “You have brought me all this way to minister to these women and I don’t want to be unkind.”
As the night wore on and morning came, I finally fell asleep. It was 7:30am. That day was spent shopping for culturally appropriate clothing and retreat supplies and I was running on fumes. Graciously, by bedtime the following evening, I fell asleep with no issues. Until…
A few hours into the night, Jesus tapped my brain. Although I didn’t hear any words, I had the impression that He wanted to have a little chat.
As I lay awake in bed, He began to replay the day I had just lived. He took me to every moment when I felt overcome by fatigue and showed me how I had patiently waited. In the store when I had collected all my purchases and wanted nothing more than to find a cup of coffee and sit, I stood and waited quietly for my team to finish selecting their clothing. In the coffee shop when I thought I might fall asleep standing at the counter waiting on caffeine, I stood quietly, without uttering even a sigh. When the uber took forever because it was pouring rain, I patiently waited.
After replaying all these memories, he said, “I want you to stop worrying about anger, because I have freed you from that.”
How powerful and how liberating! But, He wasn’t done.
Remember how I sat on the beach telling Him what I thought about myself and the word selfish kept coming up? His next memory was of me laying on the couch all night praying that He would help me be kind to others. He showed me that all night long when I couldn’t sleep not once was I worried about myself. Instead, I was worried about not being able to serve others in kindness.. Then He said, “You can stop believing that you’re selfish, too.”
At that moment, deep peace washed over my mind and I settled into the realization that I am not any of those lies that I had believed. Because of Christ, I am free. I am His creation and that makes me good!
In John 8:44 Jesus speaks about Satan and He says, “…there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks his native language, for he is a liar and the father of lies,” (NIV). Satan wants nothing more than to lie to us about Christ and about our own identity. His primary goal is to rob us of the truth of who Jesus is and the truth of who the Father has created us to be.
May I encourage you today to call him out? May I encourage you to take a deep look at yourself? Who do you believe that you are? Write it down and then hand it to Jesus and ask, “Who do you say that I am?”
-Liz