June 21, 2010

• Healing

  Driving away from church yesterday, Sam and I found ourselves discussing again how much we love our church.  Sometimes it’s something in the sermon, sometimes it’s a song during the time of worship, sometimes it’s a thought that God gives while we’re engaged with him there, sometimes it’s a testimony that somebody has shared… it happens because there’s a Presence there, and the space is conducive to an encounter with the living God.  We have been worshiping at Coast Vineyard for about a year and a half now, and though developing friendships there has been sadly slower than molasses, the work of regeneration in me has not.

  Looking back now, it’s hard really to know how many years of wandering and woundedness I had been wallowing in.  For a long time, I was so tangled up by fears and hurt that I was incapable and undesirous of doing anything productive in the Kingdom.  Not even making and keeping friends.  But Abigail Van Buren once said, “A church should be a hospital for sinners, not a museum for saints,” and that is exactly how I would describe my experience at Coast.  It’s like I walked into a hospital two years ago and have been steadily healing and recovering ever since. 

  I’m not sure how it happened — just that my heart has been in my hands, poised with an open invitation to God to, “Breakthrough in my life, breakthrough, like only You can do.”  “Sing over me, Jesus…sing your songs of healing over me.”  “Chains be broken, lives be healed…” (Please break the chains that hold me and heal my wounded heart.)  After making these songs my constant prayer over the course of these many months, God really did come to me — he really did break through into my life and bring about a significant amount of healing. 

  And he continues to do so.  For as my friend, a therapist, often reminds me, “Grief is like a moving river.”  It really doesn’t ever end but ebbs and flows and moves in different directions at differing paces.  I’m thankful that as the river continues to move, so does the Spirit.  And healing does and can come.  There is a balm in Gilead!  There is a Physician there!  And he came to me.

  • 3:20 pm
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