I’ve noticed God has been doing some really cool, refining things in me recently, to make sure I’m ready to leave. 

I want to share this one thing thing He’s teaching me right now, which is hard, but really cool 🙂

So I’ve seen myself as a super vulnerable person, much more comfortable dealing with emotions, and opening up than most people I know. 

But God has shown me recently, that might not be as true as I think it is. 

I’m reading a book called “90 Minutes in Heaven” by Don Piper. 

It’s a true story about a man who gets in an awful car accident and dies on impact, going straight to heaven. He tells a bit of what it was like, and what he saw. But after 90 minutes, he is brought back to earth by God, (super cool story) and has a long recovery and a life full of incredible pain ahead of him. Most of the book is about his experience in recovery, what he went through, and how he felt. 

He shares about how he got extremely depressed, and wouldn’t let anyone help him, trying to pretend he was alright. He also talks about how he didn’t want to share his heavenly experience, because it was so personal, and he held it so close to his heart. 

Here’s a quote from the book of what he said about this. 

“That time I wouldn’t let anyone help me, and it was selfish. This time I wouldn’t share what had happened to me – and it was also selfish.” 

Boom. SO convicted the moment I read that. I’ve had an intense battle with depression, to say the very least. God flooded memories through my mind of all these amazing people he sent who got it, and wanted to help, but I wasn’t willing to admit to them what I was going through. I realized that I’m not actually very vulnerable when it comes to what I’m feeling in the moment – only after the fact. He showed me it could have been so much easier, and fostered deeper friendships, if I would have let them in on where my heart was. But I always tried to pretend I was better off than I was. Partly because I felt like nobody wanted to hear what I had to say, (but who am I to decide that?) and partly because it made me uncomfortable. 

By not letting people get close enough to help me, while I was definitely making my own life harder, I was also taking away from them. 

Whoever is kind to the poor lends to the Lord,
    and he will reward them for what they have done.

Proverbs 19:17

God let me know this battle was so I could help other people, which kept me going every day. But since I’ve been free from it, rather than holding onto that understanding, and burning passion to help destroy this oppression in other people’s lives, as he has in mine, somewhere I started believing this lie that nobody wants to hear all of this stuff that’s in my heart.

From the start, I knew God was calling me to share about what had happened to me, and I knew He would use it to set others free. At some point, I became complacent about this, and maybe even stopped believing it. Thinking it was about me, I was only selling other people short who needed what God’s put in my heart.

Hear this. Somebody needs what’s in your heart. God made it that way.

That’s why he let you go through it, and that’s why you’re here right now.  

In speaking all of this to me, God rang these song lyrics through my head. 

“Take your heart out of your holster.” 

I know I’ve been hiding my heart, in fear and in selfishness, where God has been calling me to let people see what He’s put in there, and what He’s done. And it matters. It’s powerful. 

If our hearts are in a holster, that means they’re a weapon. And they are. I know the enemy is terrified of our testimonies, and what God has put in our hearts. And he should be.

When we let our hearts out, as God calls us to, we learn who He’s created us to be, and our brothers and sisters need what God has given us. 

Whatever your life has been, whatever God’s put in your heart, it matters. 

 

They conquered him
by the blood of the Lamb
and by the word of their testimony;
for they did not love their lives
to the point of death.

Revelation 12:11

 

Those who sow with tears will reap with songs of joy.

Psalms 126:5