Thoughtful Thursday – Reminiscing – God’s Working In My Life

I have been going through old writings. Some of them I may have already posted, but I feel as though I should start re-posting them as they are still relevant today and may be needed by someone new to this site. I am going to put these under the heading of Reminiscing. You can find them in the menu (under the picture above) if you miss any. Today’s is from August 27, 2020.

I come this morning, in humble joyousness for the work that the Lord God has done in my life. Our God is awesome. Powerful. Loving. Merciful. Gracious.

He has given me the love and power to overcome a past filled with pain and heartache. He has led me through battles that, without Him, would have crushed my soul. He has strengthened me as I faced this hostile world with only Him at my back. He has held me up as I faced down the lies and deception that were perpetrated against me.

He has wrapped me in His arms as I have cried out the tears and anguish that have overwhelmed me more times than I can count. He has given me the courage to face down my fears and hand them over to Him, conquering what Satan would have used for my destruction.

He has been my rock and my shield. My strength and my Hope.

He brought me through a childhood brain injury that the doctors said should have killed me, and, at the very least should have left me mentally impaired. He has brought me through subsequent injuries that, though not yet healed, I have full hope and expectation that He will deal with in His good time and pleasure.

I am sure of this, and declare His healing power as I sit now and listen to Lauren Daigle with an ear that had been completely deaf.

I had suffered from an ear infection while in Elementary School, and a burst ear drum in my right ear as a result of that infection. He healed that burst eardrum, not allowing it to take my hearing. Then as an adult, I had been to too many rock concerts, listened to too much music with headphones on, and had destroyed my hearing completely in my right ear.

Recently I had begun to ask for restoration of my hearing and began to listen to old Hymns, and Praise and Worship music more than ever. I felt led to pray that the power of the words and the praise in those songs would work through my ears and heal the damage. I had noticed a slight change, but nothing really significant.

It was Sunday, as I listened to the live streaming service from Faith Chapel in Syracuse, that I realized there was a wall between me and my Savior. I tried to feel Him with me and couldn‘t.

“Why can’t I feel You?’ I cried.

And right then Pastor Kelly took the stage and began to talk about fear, and the fact that we have not been given a spirit of fear but of power and of love and of a sound mind. Even though I had thought I had already dealt with the fear, I felt a check in my spirit and felt the Spirit of God urging me to let go. I held my hands out and felt the fear leave me. The presence of the Lord, His love and strength filled me, and I was finally able to submit to Him in complete surrender.

Then Pastor Kelly walked to the woman playing the piano and this woman said that she had been given a word from the Lord. There was someone that was having a tickling, something, in their right ear; and the Lord wanted to heal it. My hands shot up as if on a string and I said, “That’s me, Lord. I claim this healing.”

A couple hours later, I was talking to my brother on the phone and as a test I put the phone to my right ear. I could hear him!

The level of his voice was loud, but the words were muffled, as if he was yelling through a wall. BUT I COULD HEAR HIM!

A little later, I was praying and thanking God for His answer to my prayer; and I asked Him why He had not restored my hearing completely. He reminded me of all the times that I had said I did not want to take so many pain pills that the pain from the aforementioned injuries would be dulled so much I would forget about the injury and do something to re-injure it or make it worse. (Been there, done that. Too many times to count.)

So I asked Him, “But what does that have to do with my ear?”

The answer that I got was “Because I don’t want you to forget Me.”

The words were as clear as if He had actually spoken them out loud and I knew immediately what He meant.

I become so engrossed with my day-to-day living that quite often God is relegated to the back of my thoughts – there should I need Him, but not front and center in my thoughts the way He deserves to be.

He was telling me that if He healed me completely, my past history showed that I would not be as focused on Him as I have been for the past few weeks; and He did not want to lose that immediate, unending connection that we have been having.

Tears rolled down my face as His love and concern for me filled me.

I had the TV on as I sat there, and within minutes of this exchange, I heard the pastor that was on ask the question “Why doesn’t God heal you completely?” And then he answered the question with: “Because He doesn’t want you to forget Him.”

I was overwhelmed at this affirmation of what He had just said to me. I hit the record button and saved the program onto the DVR.

Since then, I have been periodically covering my left ear, testing my hearing to see if there is any other improvement. I must say that I have had a constant earache since Sunday, but I am able to hear things that I would not have been able to hear before — the sound of the fan motor, the TV and of course the praise and worship songs.

And then yesterday my husband was telling me something and I plugged my left ear with a finger and asked him to continue talking to me in a normal voice. His voice was muffled, but where I would not have been able to hear anything a week ago, I could hear him enough to be able to repeat his question back to him and answer him.

And as I postscript …

I decided to play back the TV recording from Sunday as I was writing this to make sure I got the pastor’s exact words. I discovered the sermon was about forgetting God in our day to day living — and nowhere can I find the question and following answer that I heard Sunday afternoon.

© Drusilla Mott and https://drusillamott.wordpress.com, 2020, 2022

Reminiscing – Led To Pray

I have been going through old writings. Some of them I may have already posted, but I feel as though I should start re-posting them as they are still relevant today and may be needed by someone new to this site. I was going to post one a week on Thursdays for the next few weeks, but with the predictions of the power grid going down, I have changed my mind on that. I will post one every morning until I run out of them or until I can no longer post. I find myself wanting to ask God to protect our power grid and not allow them to take it out, but if that is within His will in order for people to be pulled out of their complacency, then so be it. Anyway, I am going to put these under the heading of Reminiscing. You can find them in the menu (under the picture above) if you miss any. Today’s is from June 2020.

It began months ago, this feeling of being led, encouraged, prodded. A feeling of being gently pulled in a direction that was not what I had expected. I felt that I was being told that my life was not what it should be and that I needed to make changes.

I had watched the movie War Room and had been deeply touched by the idea of being an intercessor. The desire began to grow in me, to learn how to better pray the scriptures for those around me. I began to study the prayers in the Bible, especially those Paul shared in his letters, and with notebook and pen began to write out prayers for others.

I began to search out books that dealt in prayer. I learned how much intercessory prayer was needed, how much of it is lacking in the world today. I learned of the requirements to have God even hear my prayers, and what would hinder my prayers from being heard and answered.

I prayed for leading on what I must do to be used as a prayer warrior and felt that I had to do some deep soul searching, because one of the main causes of unanswered prayer is sin. Holy Spirit began to ease me down the road of self-examination, of self-judgment; and I was led far deeper than I had ever been led before.

It was a painful process at times, delving into the past and pulling up things that had been buried deep for years. Things that I had shoved down and chose to ignore, but which the Lord was now insisting that I deal with.

Pain. Shame. Feelings of inadequacy and weakness, feelings of being a victim of abuse – unlovable and unworthy. Anger. Resentment. Bitterness. Unforgiveness. All things that I felt I needed to hold onto for protection and defense; that had me pulling inward and away from others for most of my adult life.

And as each situation and feeling was brought to the forefront of my mind, I began to feel off balance, as if my world was being turned inside out and upside down. I wanted to fight this peeling away of my defenses, it left me feeling raw and bleeding as memories filled my thoughts. I often felt shaky, as if I would shatter if anyone so much as looked at me wrong, and I felt near tears most of the time.

I had gone years with these feelings simmering inside, not realizing just how adversely it was affecting my life, my faith and my walk with Jesus. I told myself that I had dealt with it all, I could talk with some of those responsible and act as if there were no lasting effects from their treatment of me. I told myself that there are some things that were always going to be there, at the edges of my thoughts but I could push those thoughts and memories away when they entered my head, as if they did not matter any more. I studied and prayed and wrote what was given me to write, and I told myself I was fine.

But Holy Spirit began to show me that I wasn’t. Not really.

Now those feelings were flooding through me, over me, like a tidal wave of emotion and memory as I was brought face to face with all those things from my past that I had not yet dealt with.

I was also dealing with the realization that my earthly support system had been taken from me, one at a time, leaving me feeling like I was stranded on an island watching a tidal wave rush toward me, as if I was standing alone against the world. There was no one to talk to, no one to seek council from, no one that understood or cared.

Until Jesus showed me that I had depended on them too much and now it was time to abide in Him, and Him alone.

And as I began to face each thing and hand them over to the Lord, satan stepped in and began to stir up more trouble for me.

I had been seeing evidence of lies and slander told against me, things that had undermined my witness and my testimony – even among people that I had known for years. There were things that had been done deliberately with the intent only to hurt; things that, by their doing cause problems for me even today. And as I struggled to put the past behind me …..

No, that’s wrong …..

I struggled to put the past into the hands of Almighty God and allow Him to deal with them and me – and as I did that, I continually came face to face with things that caused a good deal of anger and hurt to rise in me again. It was that old saying …. One step forward, two steps back ….. come to life within me.

But the amazing, humbling, awesome thing was that I felt the comfort and peace of my Lord fill my soul; felt His reassurance and love and strength as He led me through each situation and helped me move beyond it.

He brought things to me that showed me His plan for me, that reinforced and encouraged; things that lined up in a way to make clear His Hand was guiding, leading, strengthening me for the path ahead.

And as I delve deeper into prayer and intercession, He continues to place people and things into my life that show me I am on the right path.

He used a dear, sweet cousin to send me a link through Facebook for a blog post that coincided with the first meditation post, which in turn led me to a post that could have been written about me and for me.

He used sermons in church and parts of the books that I was reading to make His message to me even more clear.

I had often read 1 Corinthians 1:26 but never saw how it applied so directly to me until I read a booklet that quoted the Williams Translation of the New Testament:

“For consider, brothers, the way God called you; that not many of you, in accordance with human standards, were wise, not many influential, not many of high birth. Just the opposite: God chose what the world calls foolish to put the wise to shame; what the world calls weak to put the strong to shame; what the world calls of low degree, yea, what it counts as nothing and what it thinks does not exist, God chose to put a stop to what it thinks exists.”

Those words were exactly how I have been made to feel about myself for most of my life; but were also a reinforcement of God’s plan for me. A plan that I was only then beginning to really see and accept.

I try not to look back and wonder how I could have gone all those years with so much baggage weighing me down instead of dealing with it and going forward. I try not to regret the wasted time to the point that it hinders my present walk; but satan, that enemy of old, continues to throw boulders into my path in an attempt to stop me from moving on. As my intentions have become clear, I am encountering incident after incident whose only purpose is to create discord and chaos in my life.

But I have come to realize that it is not the circumstances around me that are hindering me, it is not people that are my true enemy. Rather, it is that father of lies that has been reminding me and luring me to focus more on the past than on the future; tempting me to hold on to all those sinful feelings as a shield from more pain and heartache instead of holding strong to the whole armor of God.

I feel an urgency in the air, a cry to intercede for those that are lost, to stand in the gap between earth and heaven; and so I cannot allow him to create chaos in my life. The Lord has led me to the point of realization that the fields are white to harvest but the laborers are few. And I refuse to let the enemy stand in my way any longer.

Get behind me satan. He that is in me is stronger than you and that which is in the world. I refuse to allow you to lead me back into the shame and pain of my past. I will no longer allow you to throw disorder and doubt, anger and anxiety at me, hoping it will stick. I belong to the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords. I am a child of the King, beloved and chosen before the creation of the world. I am beautifully and wonderfully made and in my weakness His strength is made perfect. I cling to the hope which is laid up for me in heaven, to the Anchor of my soul both sure and steadfast.

To God be the glory, forever and ever.

© Drusilla Mott and https://drusillamott.wordpress.com, 2020, 2022