This is where the Healing begins.

Last weekend, I had the opportunity to go to a conference in Northern Virginia called the Journey to Wholeness. I had no idea what I was getting into when I decided to go…but God set it up perfectly. It didn’t look like I would get the time off work, then all of a sudden it got approved. I am consistently poor, so I had no way to pay for the hotel or anything like that, and then we found that a couple in our church covered it for us. Seemed like a giant open door, so I took it.

It was held at an Anglican church. I grew up in a Baptist church, so it was very different. But I noticed immediately that these people loved the Lord. They were open to hearing His voice, to feeling His touch, and not just talking about it. Joy radiated from them more than any church I’ve ever stepped into.

The focus of the conference was on healing. Not weird charismatic healing…but inner healing. It was a 2-day process of softening up and allowing the Lord in and allowing Him to clean those dusty corners and cubicles of my heart that I hadn’t touched in years. Memories that I had willfully or absent-mindedly forgotten about were brought gently to my attention so that He could heal me of the pain they had caused me.

I’m still processing. I discovered how truly refreshing it is to just be quiet and still in the presence of God. GOD. He is so all-consuming. I could hear Him reassuring me that I am His beloved daughter, that I am valuable and special. He told me that even though people have treated me with evil intent, it is not because I deserved it. His heart broke when those things hurt me.

His heart breaks when evil happens. His heart breaks when the devil deceives His children.

I realized how many lies I had believed about God and myself. People in my life had made me feel inadequate and unimportant and un-valuable…but when I was listening to the Lord, He told me that He loved me. That those things were not true and never would be.

Security in God is better than anything.

I felt His peace. Literal perfect peace. It wasn’t a euphoric, energizing, exciting type of feeling…it was a quiet sense of goodness and wholeness and completion. That the Lord is really and truly all I need.

Now I understand that people act out of hurt sometimes…that because of those hurts, people are conditioned to act a certain way. I was conditioned not to trust guys because of things in my past. I was conditioned to put up walls to new people because I was scared they would abandon me like others have.

Fun fact: Did you know that 8,851 times in the Bible, God tells His children “I will not abandon you”?

That promise makes all the difference…it differentiates following Jesus from every other religion. That the deity we worship is WITH us always, never to leave us. It changes everything. It has definitely changed me.

So readers, even if a handful of people ever see this, I post this to encourage YOU. Get alone with Him and let Him in. He can wash you clean and give you His shalom. Let Him heal.