Beauty from Ashes

As you read my testimony of my life’s poor choices and the mistakes I repeated, over and over, you see I kept going back to what I was a slave to. How insanely quick I would forget what He saved me from and delivered me from; He restored my life, but I went back to it, each time worse than the time before. God has rescued me over and over, and it has taken a pandemic to slow me down to see what He is doing with my life and through my life. My past does not define my present or predict my future. Yes, there are still consequences, but they do not define who I am. I am not the woman with the scarlet letter. I am the daughter of the Most High. I am not the woman that lacks wisdom, I am the woman who is filled with the wisdom from her Father, the King of the World. I am no longer a slave to making wrong choices or lacking wisdom. I see myself through the eyes of my Father. Left to my own devices and thoughts, my flesh could easily take over, and I could run to acceptance of people, but He constantly pursues me so sweetly and gently and without end, that I can’t help but fall into His arms and love Him, instead of falling for what someone offers outside of God’s plan for me.

You may think you’ve done something unthinkable (maybe you’ve had an abortion or committed murder), but if you were the only person alive, He would see you. He would have still paid for all your sins, both in thought and deed. Speaking of thoughts, He tells us in Matthew 5:27–28 (NIV), “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall not commit adultery.’ But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart.” Does pornography have a secret hold on you? Do you desire someone who doesn’t belong to you? Maybe not a person, but a life that isn’t yours? Are you not content to live out the role God gave you? Only you can do that. You are pretty important and special and needed to live out your part. No one can do it for you. If you don’t, that role dies.