“For the word of God is living and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the division of soul and spirit, and of joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart.” -Hebrews 4:12
Until age 36, I had lived my whole life completely unaware of what was contained within the pages of the Bible. I knew there were stories about Jesus. I knew there were stories about miracles that God did. I knew “Sunday School” type stories (Noah’s Ark, Daniel in the Lion’s Den, Moses and the Red Sea, etc.) that had been told to me, but I never read them for myself. In fact, anytime I ever tried to read the Bible for myself I couldn’t make any sense of it, or why it was important.
When I finally learned about the Holy Spirit and invited Him to change me, He opened up my understanding. I started feeling drawn to start reading the Bible, even if my mind couldn’t make sense of it. I felt hungry for it all of a sudden. So, I picked it up one day and as soon as I sat down Romans 8:28 popped in my mind. “Ok,” I thought, “I’ll start there.” I open my Bible up to look for Romans 8:28 and I found that my bookmark was already there. Coincidence? Nope. He was giving me my starter scripture. I like to think of it as my “square one scripture.” Anytime I feel lost and I’m not sure what to think I go back to square one and move one from there.
Romans 8:28 “And we know that all things work together for good to those who love God and are called according to His purpose.”
I tried to read all of Romans 8, but I didn’t quite grasp anything from it, I just knew I needed to hook onto this particular verse and make it one of my steppingstones. The next scripture I felt compelled to look at was Esther 4:14. For weeks I kept having the phrase “For such a time as this” come to me. I would see it, think it, hear it somewhere randomly and I didn’t even know it came from the Bible. Once I realized it was from a scripture, I went to look it up.
Esther 4:14 “For if you remain completely silent at this time, relief and deliverance will arise for the Jews from another place, but you and your father’s house will perish. Yet who knows whether you have come to the kingdom for such a time as this?”
I had absolutely no idea what was happening in this context, so I sat down and read the entire book of Esther. It’s a short book of only 10 chapters but I really struggled with it. I had to keep re-reading parts because my mind would wander off and I just couldn’t stay focused. But even so, I knew something about that particular verse was meant for me to hold onto.
Still feeling hungry for something I knew was there but not knowing how to find it, I finally settled on one conclusion: Jesus had told me in a dream that He was the way (see about page for dream). I thought, “If Jesus is the way, then I better get to know Jesus.” And by this time, I learned that the Gospels at the beginning of the New Testament: Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, were all written to tell of the life of Jesus. I decided I would start with Matthew, read through the 4 gospels, and then go on to read the rest of the New Testament.
I also had concluded that I couldn’t just sit and read it. I am a student. I love to learn. But to learn, I have to study. I always found when I would study in school that making my own notes really helped me to connect with the information I was trying to learn. It allowed me to process the information and work it into my understanding. I would always format my notes using bullets, colors, and drawings that would help create images in my mind of what I was trying to learn. I knew if I was going to get to know Jesus, I needed to study Him. I set myself up at the table every evening with my Bible, a notebook, and an array of colored pens and I started feeding my hunger.
My journey in studying the Bible has evolved a bit. Now it looks like me sitting with 2 or 3 different translations of a Bible, my tablet with the Blue Letter Bible App and the Logos Bible App, my phone with the Strong’s Concordance/Lexicon App, my computer with Google, a notebook, and an array of colored pens. See, what I found when I started to study the Bible, is that there is an alternative reality available to me. Jesus didn’t just say He was the Way. He also said He was the Truth and the Life. Well, the “truth” and the “life” that I had learned up to that point was completely shaped by this world that I live in. But I started to see that the Bible tells me how to think about God, myself, others. How to relate to God, myself, and others. How to think about my life, how to think about sin, how to reason and make choices, how to stay healthy and full of joy. And it tells me all of this according to how God always intended for me to function. There is a totally different path for me to travel through life on, and I never would have found it without reading the Bible.
My hope in sharing The Word section of Deeper Steps with you is that you will be drawn in to discover the Way, the Truth, and the Life that is available to you and be able to live a life full of great blessing, joy, and peace. That you would be able to get rooted and grounded in Jesus. That you would bear much fruit.
“Psalm 1:1-3 “Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor stands in the path of sinners, nor sits in the seat of the scornful; but his delight is in the law of the LORD, and in His law he meditates day and night. He shall be like a tree planted by the rivers of water, that brings forth its fruit in its season, whose leaf also shall not wither; and whatever he does shall prosper.”
“Put on God’s complete set of armor provided for us, so that you will be protected as you fight against the evil strategies of the accuser! Your hand-to-hand combat is not with human beings, but with the highest principalities and authorities operating in rebellion under the heavenly realms. For they are a powerful class of demon-gods and evil spirits that hold this dark world in bondage. Because of this, you must wear all the armor that God provides so you’re protected as you confront the slanderer, for you are destined for all things and will rise victorious.
-Ephesians 6:11-13 TPT
I grew up in a Christian home, and Christian Church, surrounded by people with good Christian values. But I didn’t really have a heart change and relationship with God until I was in my mid-30’s, and I saw just how far in life I could get myself. I was not impressed with what I could attain on my own and I knew that God had more for me. I was finally ready to truly trust Him with my life, and I gave Him permission to completely rearrange my life to suit His plans.
For the first time I actually saw God interacting in my life. I would talk to Him about things and the next day see those things shift. I would ask questions and answers would come to me from all sorts of places. For the first time, God was real to me. And for the first time, I felt free. When I say I felt free, I mean I finally felt comfortable just being me. And I knew I didn’t have a clue who I really was yet, but I knew that I was on the right path to discovering that and I knew that I had a purpose. I didn’t care what anyone thought of me or how anyone judged me. I felt like I had a spotlight from heaven shining on me everywhere I went, like God was pointing at me saying, “You see that girl right there? She’s mine.” And that made me happy to be me.
Over time though, I found myself back in a web of insecurities, feelings of failure, unworthiness, and self-condemnation. I felt like God had dropped me in a dark hole and left me there to figure out how to get myself out of it. I envisioned Him sitting up in heaven looking down at me with His arms crossed waiting for me to “figure it out”. I was so confused about prayer and power and authority, and I felt like until I got it right, He wasn’t going to help me. I knew that my view of God was contradictory to who He truly was. But I couldn’t get away from the belief that for some reason He just had different standards for me, expected more of me. I could believe for anyone in any situation that God would meet them in it, but I couldn’t believe that for myself.
Out of desperation I finally I went to a Deliverance Ministry to get prayer. I knew that I wasn’t seeing God right, but I just couldn’t figure out what to do about it. I couldn’t get out of this cloud of darkness. I got prayer, and I got a revelation. God showed me that I may have figured out how to present myself as a “put together” package on the outside, but I was not so “put together” on the inside. When I asked Him to show me what that looked like I felt myself standing in a dark room. I knew that I was not there alone, there were things all around me, but I couldn’t see any of it. He said, “I am going to start shining my light on the things in this room, and we are going to start throwing things out.”
I had figured out how to “do the Christian life”. But I hadn’t yet been transformed by the renewing of my mind. (Romans 12:2). So, I was still carrying all of the perceptions and opinions and understandings I had accumulated throughout my life, and it was keeping me from Truth. That dark room I was in was my heart, and those things hiding in the darkness were lies that I had allowed to shape what I believed to be truth. And God indeed began to shine His light on each and every one.
There is a spirit realm that is alive and active and more real than the physical realm that we have grown accustomed to. There is an entire empire of darkness that is devoted to keeping us blind to that spirit realm, because they know that as long as we remain oblivious to its existence, they can use us for their purposes of destruction. Circumstances and events in our lives can make us vulnerable to the influence of these spirits and as they influence our thoughts and we accept them, they are permitted to have influence in our lives.
God showed me that over my life I had accepted thoughts from spirits of fear, rejection, bitterness, and envy. These thoughts shaped how I saw God, myself, and others and I lived my life according to those thoughts as if they were truth. God also began to show me what really was TRUTH. You know how I know that it was the real TRUTH? Because it brought me into freedom.
In this Truth section of Deeper Steps, I intend to share what God has taught me about spiritual realities and how they have impacted my own life. It is a process of transformation to get to freedom. We have to learn to discern truth from lie and recognize, analyze, and take responsibility for the thoughts we allow to take up residence in us. But we have the upper hand because we have been given the Spirit of Truth who was promised to guide us into all truth.
“And I will pray the Father, and He will give you another Helper, that he may abide with you forever – the Spirit of Truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees Him nor knows Him; but you know Him, for he dwells with you and will be in you.” -John 14:15-17
“And you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.” -John 8:32
“Don’t be pulled in different directions or worried about a thing. Be saturated in prayer throughout each day, offering your faith-filled requests before God with overflowing gratitude. Tell Him every detail of your life, then God’s wonderful peace that transcends human understanding, will guard your heart and mind through Jesus Christ.”
-Philippians 4:6-7
I had a vision of a large dining table formally set. A long white table runner down the middle was decorated with wreaths and balsam leaves and tall white candles in the center of each wreath. There were placemats at each setting with white plates stacked according to size. I started walking backwards alongside the table and it seemed to continue on for as long as I was walking. Then I heard, “The table is set for all who will come.”
A table is symbolic of intimate fellowship. Communion with God is time spent in His presence, exchanging words and ideas, and sharing heart desires. God desires for us to come to Him and share everything that we think and feel and experience in our daily lives. He longs for us to bring Him in and let Him be part of each detail. And He longs for us to hear Him share His heart with us on each detail.
How often do we talk to friends and family about the things going on in our lives, but we forget to talk to God? We invite the opinions of people into our processing of a situation, but we forget to ask God for His opinion. Prayer isn’t just bringing our requests to God, its conversation, it’s hearing His thoughts, it’s connecting with His heart and allowing Him to influence our view of things. Prayer is like opening the door and inviting God into whatever situation we happen to be in and giving Him permission to be in it with us.
Sometimes I would find it difficult to talk to God. I didn’t always know what to say. I started writing out prayers that I came across in scripture and I kept them in a little notebook. Whenever I had a hard time getting started, I would just pray one or two of those scriptures and it helped me to begin my conversation with God. It seemed to serve as a prompt for me that positioned my heart and my thoughts toward God’s faithfulness and goodness and that became the channel for all things, whether they be praise or burden, to flow freely to Him. And it was a channel for things to flow freely from Him to me. Confidence, peace, instruction, love.
After my aunt passed away, I saw my uncle get so swept up in grief that he couldn’t even function. I knew that God wanted to help him out of it, but he didn’t know how to talk to God, didn’t know how to relate to or even think about God at that point. So, I compiled about 50 or so scriptures that I found having to do with anxiety, fear, depression, hopelessness, and sickness and I put them all in a book. I wrote out a prayer to go with each one and I called it Excerpts from God’s Answer Book. I gave it to him as a tool to help Him start his own conversations with God. I shared the book with a couple of co-workers and ended up making a copy for them too.
I have discovered a lot of people feel they just don’t know how to talk to God, how to relate to God. Even in the most desperate of situations, they just don’t know how to be with God.
I created this Communion section of Deeper Steps to share some of those scripture based prayers to inspire anyone having trouble establishing connection with God. The Bible helps us to rightly see God and rightly see ourselves in relation to God. Using scripture to propel our prayers helps to establish faith because we are affirming what scripture says about Him. I invite you to use these prayers as a starting point to build your own communion with God.
“The table is set for all who will come.”