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It was as though her eyes were a window into her soul and what I saw was unsettling. I’m not sure I’ve ever met hopelessness before but I believe we were introduced that day. I got a vision of a woman who had been crushed by life circumstances and past choices and who had lost all hope. Leia began to share of her present situation but her past gave me insight into why she was sitting before me battered and bruised. She had recently learned her husband was having an affair with her best friend . . . her sister. I couldn’t fathom her pain but it was clearly exposed on her countenance.
“I don’t know how it’s possible but I still love him,” she paused, “how do I reconcile my love for him after all he’s done?” She hesitated…“I’m reeling over my sister . . . we’ve been best friends forever . . . but why am I willing to forgive her and not him?”
I guarded my emotions in this session. I couldn’t go off half-cocked when I only got bits and pieces of the situation. I needed to be deliberate in ferreting out the truth. “I’m so sorry for what they’ve done to you. My heart breaks over your loss and I know that the Lord is grieving over the way they have treated you. He loves you Leia.”
A sob escaped her; “I don’t see how God could grieve over me? You would not believe what I’ve done with my life!”
“Maybe I wouldn’t,” I responded, “but what I do know about our Heavenly Father is that He cares deeply for you and me no matter what we’ve done. As a matter of fact He says, ‘I demonstrated My love for you in this: while you were still a sinner, Christ died for you’ (Romans 5:8). It’s not about what you’ve done, it’s about what He has done for you.”
Tears rolled steadily down her cheeks as she shook her head; “I’ve made a mess of my life.”
Every time I hear that I wonder, “Did Eve say that after being sent out of the Garden of Eden?”
Leia continued, “I’ve made some bad choices. I have a beautiful daughter because of a relationship I had before I married. Maybe God intervened at that point because shortly after that, I met and married a wonderful Christian man who loved us both and adopted her as his own and provided well for us – a good guy. Not long after that we got pregnant with our first son and couldn’t wait for his arrival. I then got pregnant again and I was upset, furious. We hadn’t planned to have another, certainly not so soon. I was barely holding my head above water taking care of two toddlers, the home and everything else that went along with being a wife and a mom. I began to resent my life. I felt that I was missing out on something important, being cooped up with three babies. That’s when I started drinking – a glass of wine here, a glass of wine there – to take the edge off and make it through the day. By the time my husband would arrive home I would be in a frenzy, lashing out at him for no good reason. He tried so hard to please me but I had come to hate our life, him included. Before long, he’d walk in the door from work and I’d rushed out the door because I ‘needed’ a break. Bars became my refuge where I could drown my misery in alcohol. I lived and breathed for my next drink - that’s how I coped. And yet, my husband would pack up three babies, come looking for me and bring me home because I was so drunk. This became our life, he’d come home from work and I’d run off to the bar. He tried hard to keep us together and I worked hard to divide us. To this day, I don’t know why he kept fighting for me.”
I responded quietly, “That’s what men of God do.” A wow escaped from her lips and she got utterly still.
She continued, “I found myself going places he couldn’t find me, staying out all night. I woke up one morning in bed with a man I didn’t know. Life changed after that, my husband no longer came looking for me. I lost him; I lost my children; I lost my home . . . I lost everything worth living for. And here I am now in another marriage that’s failing.” She looked at me and said, “Can you help me?”
Is this your story? If it is, there is an Answer…
Leia’s story reveals how easy discontentment takes root. Eve is another woman who became discontent with life (Read Genesis 3). Her story begins like this: the serpent was the craftiest of all the creatures the Lord God had made. We must recognize that the serpent gave Satan access to the Garden. Why would Satan want access? The thief (Satan) comes only in order to steal, kill and destroy LIFE (John 10:10a). How? Satan slithers into our thoughts, plants the seed of discontentment with half-truths (lies) and persuades us to believe God is keeping something from us that we are entitled to. Satan said to Eve, “Did God really say you must not eat the fruit from any of the trees in the garden? God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” Suddenly the tree God said not to eat from became attractive to Eve because when she saw that the tree was good for food, a delight to the eyes and to be desired, to make one wise, she took and ate.’ Eve followed her thoughts right into action - contrary to God’s thoughts and plans and her life radically changed. She no longer had access to what she once knew and loved.
What about you and me? What seed of bitter discontent has captured our thinking? Do we obey the voice of the One who brings life? Or, do we follow the one who comes to manipulate our thinking so he can steal and destroy our life?
When a woman lives contrary to God’s thoughts and plans set out in His Word, she gives sin the power to build an idol (stronghold) that grows more complex over time. If we are oblivious to sin, we will establish a way of doing life that will eventually destroy the life Jesus died to give us. Without Jesus, the Master of our God-designed life, we are ineffective, anxious, intimidated and unable to live life according to God’s thoughts and plans. The sacrifice of Christ’s blood that poured from the Cross abolished slavery to sin and freed us of the penalty our misdeeds deserve. We aren’t just barely set free . . . we are abundantly free! But God warns us, “Stay alert! Watch out for your great enemy, the devil. He prowls around like a roaring lion, looking for someone to devour. Stand firm against him; be strong in your faith” (1 Peter 5:8-9). The woman who recognizes she’s messed up her life and realizes she needs Jesus to live must consistently, daily, diligently read, meditate, ponder daily the prophetic, life-changing Word of God. It is His voice,(the Word of God) God’s majestic power that will transform a woman from brokenness to beauty because it is alive and full of power.
Leia would share that this battle is not easy but it’s worth fighting for victory! She would say she is winning more battles than she’s losing but she must feed on the Word daily or she finds herself back in defeat mode. She is committed to a weekly accountability group filled with God’s women who fight against the same issues of sin but they are encouraging, lifting up and spurring each other on to learn to make choices that bring glory, honor and praise to their King Jesus.
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