Depression/Redemption, Part 2

Click here to read Depression/Redemption, Part 1 if you missed it.

Redeem: to make worthwhile, to buy back, to buy out, to make something evil, good. To offset the bad effect of, to make purposeful, intentional, etc. 

When I finally started looking into redemption, here is what I found:

1. Redemption is painful. It comes with a price. A loss.  
2. Redemption begins with truth. God's truth and the truth of the circumstance. You have to believe the truth of God. You have face the truth of your circumstance.
3. Redemption requires action.  You have to act on your belief of God's truth. Taking that truth and applying it to your circumstance and obeying. 

I read a blog a long time ago about redemption during some research and one sentence the blogger wrote stuck out to me:

               "The suffering and anguish persist, but the redemption provides a                                        purpose to the pain that enables us to persevere."                                                                                                 (Click HERE to read her whole post)

Sometimes I think redemption only looks like the last chapter of Job, where God restored everything and gave Job twice more than what he had before it was taken all away.

For awhile I have been praying for someone to be healed. A few weeks ago, I realized I wasn't actually praying for healing. What I really mean was I wanted a complete change of the past and the present. I wanted God to shove everyone into Marty McFly's Delorean, ramp up to 88 miles per hour, and go back to undo the years of mess.  I viewed redemption and healing as if it were magic. It obviously doesn't work that way. We cannot physically "bippity, boppity, boo" our past away like it never happened. 

Moving forward - that is where redemption is found and perhaps it is more beautiful than time travel.  There's promise to make beauty from ashes. God takes  all the bad, the sins, the mistakes, the accidents of our past and uses them for good, for us to conformed to His Image. 

Would I rather some of the struggles have never happened? Absolutely. 100%. YES.

But if I hadn't had those struggles and messes maybe I never would have found God sitting with me from the beginning to end. The more I found God sitting with me, the more I looked for Him and saw Him, the more I wanted to know Him.

The good in all of this is God.  Learning His character was more valuable than the undoing of the circumstances. Getting to know God, learning to take pain straight to God, learning the Truth, believing it, seeing it, and acting on it was the prize. 

Sometimes you have to fight hard for your belief in the truth, but you know what? God is also fighting for you. God has not abandoned you. He is right beside you. He knows your name. He is here waiting with you, sitting with you, and knowing that there is value in the struggle. God is Redemption.  

You might be wanting to know the practical side in the first story. 

1. My physical location has changed some and that has helped. Sometimes you physically have to do something like move houses,  stop seeing people, quit your job, extremely limit your social media, etc.  
2. I had to change my mindset. I did this by making a point to repeat Biblical truth to myself daily and act on it.
3. I did not shrink back. Instead, I faced the problem head on and tried to handle the problems correctly. I knew that whatever happened, God had it under control. He would be with me the whole time. He wasn't afraid. My job was to obey. 

Here's an example: I chose to believe God was fighting for our family. So I did what mom's and wives do, I took care of my family's daily/weekly needs as best I could and I did not keep thinking on what I wished was different or on what I could not change.  Sometimes if a thought came into my mind, then I purposefully changed it by thinking about something else. Sometimes I would prayed about the thought. I probably said something like: "God, this is what I'm thinking, ________. I'm having a hard time stopping, but this is what You say (then speaking what God says), please help me to _________." Then I either acted on it by working to changing my mind, heart, attitude, tone of voice, etc. or I kept doing the next right thing. 

When I could feel myself starting to shrink back or if I worried about something, I started doing something new for me. Instead of keeping it to myself, I brought it up to Brent or whomever I thought could handle it (and me) and give me sound advice. It's amazing what happens when we voice our thoughts and worries by confronting them head on. They don't have so much control over us any more.  This also meant, even I really didn't want to, I had to talk to some people and address some issues. But I did it! I talked to them and made it! My worries were much less and my heart was much better for it. 

Redemption may look different for you. You may be Job and have it all restored back to you - times two! You may have a circumstance that lasts for your whole life, but your life is more abundant because you get to see and know God in different ways that you may not have without this path of redemption. Either way, it's good. 

P.S.  There's a song called, More Than Anything by Natalie Grant that I love and is fitting for this post. You'll have to give it a listen. Click HERE.