Day 29: Changing Your Story
I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. Ezekiel 36:26
Have you ever had your heart “redirected” by God? Have you ever had that “AHA” moment when your eyes are opened and you see life with new eyes? Sometimes those moments are not pretty, or hit you from left field. They force you to be honest and open with your life, they make you real, they make you stop and take a second look at yourself. Do you like what you see?
My husband and I had an “AHA” moment called CANCER.
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There isn’t much more that can happen to a person than hearing the words, “You have cancer, you may have up to 5 years at the most to live. You will need extensive surgery, and you may never talk again.”
What? How? Why? What about our kids? What about me? God why? When will he die? I can’t do life alone. We have 3 kids, our youngest is one, will he see them grow up? Some would think these questions would be our “AHA” moments, but no they weren’t.
The word “PEACE” was our AHA moment. You ask how?
We were leaving the doctor’s office that day and we were scared, scared out of our minds. We were trying to hold it together until we got to the car, but somewhere between the doctor’s office and the elevator God did something only he can do. ( I get chills now just think about it.)
Through our tears, through the shaking, through the questions, God came over me in that elevator and gave me COMPLETE PEACE. Peace that only He can give, peace that surpasses all understanding, any doctor, and any medical test, He gave me peace.
Unless you have experienced this peace you may not understand, but in that moment God changed my heart. I knew no matter what happened that we would be alright. God spoke to me and told me my husband would be healed, and that we would be alright.
In that elevator I looked my husband in the eyes with huge tears and spoke the words to my husband that God had just given me, “God told me you are going to be fine”, amen. This is when our story changed, a story of death to a story of life.
My husband tells me to this day that those words are words that he held onto to get him through this journey. Our hearts were changed and we trusted God like we have never trusted him before.
We got up! We got up and dusted the pain off, the questions, and we pushed through. Pushed through the treatments, pushed through our doubt, pushed through our roadblocks, we pushed through.
We fully trusted in God to finish what he promised in that elevator, and God did. My husband has been in remission for four years, he is cancer free.
Have you had a time in your life where you just wanted to hide your head in the sand? Have you wanted to ignore a problem that just won’t go away? How are you going to “Get Up”? How will you “Rise Above”?
Kyle Idleman is my pastor at Southeast Christian Church and has written a new devotional book about lasting change. 40 Days To Lasting Change is a devotional that will ask the hard questions, it will ask you to dive deep, and see the change that can happen and last.
How are you going to change your story?
The day we found out he was cancer free, April 2011. God is good!
Day 30: Getting Past Passivity
But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you… Acts 1:8
Live, I think that will be my word for 2015. Live a healthy life, live as an example to my children, live selfless, focus on my marriage more, and to just have fun. I don’t want to sit while my kiddos are outside, I want to run and play with them. I don’t want to neglect my marriage, I want to have more dates and getaways planned.
I want to live life, not feel like life is running me. I have sat by for far to long and lived a passive life that I have wanted to change. So I am no longer going to sit, I am going to run, I am going to live.
How about you? Do you have a word that you are declaring for yourself in 2015? Are you going to rise up and run? I challenge you to choose your word, and post it somewhere in your house as a daily reminder, and just do it.
Choose a word as a family too! Live that word with them throughout this next year. You could change you family tree with just one word.
I am excited to see what this new year has in store, what about you?
Kyle Idleman is my pastor at Southeast Christian Church and has written a new devotional book about lasting change. 40 Days To Lasting Change is a devotional that will ask the hard questions, it will ask you to dive deep, and see the change that can happen and last. It is a devotion that I encourage you to study.
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