Retreat 2019

Have you ever thought that your story was over?

 

I found myself in this very place just about 6 years ago.

I’m going to call this place the wilderness…

I had walked with my mom as she fought a hard fight with pancreatic cancer. I had been married for 14 years, and had a 2.5 year old, and an 8 year old. I knew something was really off in my marriage. But I didn’t even have a clue that within three weeks of my mom’s death, my marriage would come to a screeching and sudden end.

 

I don’t know that I had ever experienced pain, grief, or agony the way that I did that summer.

In Genesis 1:1 & 2 it says that the Divine Presence hovered upon the surface of the water that was astonishingly empty and darkness was upon the surface…

In the deepest, darkest depths of pain-the Holy Spirit hovered over my chaos, the emptiness inside, and as I came up out of that place, the voice of my Savior began speaking life back into my soul.

I need to say this…I am absolutely 100% FOR a single marriage covenant. If anyone in this room has any issues with her marriage-I would be honored to pray my guts out with you, because I know that God longs to bring restoration and healing to that covenant. That is the heart of our Savior. And, If anyone in here knows the pain of divorce, I would link arms with you, and ask Jesus to heal your heart and restore you. I believe and always will believe that God loves the covenant of marriage and has the power and desire to restore broken covenants-and that is the will of our father. However, I have experienced the absolute beauty of healing and restoration within my own soul when divorce is experienced.

So I found myself absolutely broken and in new “Land” a wilderness that I had never known or thought that I would ever enter. I think the best way to describe how I felt in those months was devastation, and a loss that quite honestly hurt deeper the loss of my God-fearing mom. Because I knew exactly where she was. There was a peace the drenched my soul because I new she was with Jesus. But a covenant that is cut, severed, and lost, is truly death to dreams, hopes, thoughts and plans for the future. I can still envision myself at that time and see a picture of me sitting on beach and watching the sand in my hands fall through the spaces in my fingers as I experienced death to all I had planned.

Little did I know the beauty of the Wilderness..

Hosea 2:14

“Therefore I am now going to allure her;
I will lead her into the wilderness
and speak tenderly to her.
¹⁵ There I will give her back her vineyards,
and will make the Valley of Achor^[a] a door of hope.
There she will respond^[b] as in the days of her youth,
as in the day she came up out of Egypt.

 

 

 

In this place I had two choices. I see them clearly. I could choose to question my faith and my God and walk away from Him and allow my heart to grow bitter…Or I could choose to run straight into the arms of God who carried pain, acknowledged my pain and wanted to take me on journey with Him that would fill and satisfy my soul.

Thank you for the friends and family who upheld me in prayer and encouraged me to run after Jesus with my arms wide open. I chose my Healer Jesus.

You see the enemy had a goal. He set up the perfect storm. He had one goal in mind, and that was for my destruction.

The place of trust and intimacy that I would experience over the next 4-5 years is something I treasure more than anything on earth.

I found Jesus in my pain, my sorrows, my failures, my deep heart-breaking loneliness. He met me there. I know beyond a shadow of a doubt, that I began to know my Jesus in an incredible way. He became my friend, my rescuer, my redeemer, my husband, my source of life. Those years were wrought with struggles, and pain and difficulty, prayer, hope, and many many, many, promises God was giving to me for my future He held in His hands. My circumstances were not always delightful and joyful and fun. In fact, they were downright difficult and hard and lonely. But the beauty and trust, and fear, and faith that God began to develop within me were the most beautiful years with my Jesus.

The clarity of His voice, His Word, His truth, was crystal clear. His word came alive to me like never before. I gained an understanding for spiritual warfare, and I discovered an unconditional love that can only be experienced in the love of Jesus Christ.

He rebuilt me in the wilderness. In my questions, in all of the trauma and tragedy and pain. He taught me that my identity is solely based in who He says I am. He broke generational bondages and chains that that had held me in a prison of fear, insecurity, unforgiveness, depression, doubt, anxiety…He broke it all…

About a year after my tragedy, Jesus made a way for me to go to Israel, and on the very long plane ride, a song was given to me by our worship pastor. He said, “I never do this-but God told me this song is for you.”

It was by Kari Jobe and it was titled “Here” These are the first few words of that song…

Come and rest here
Come and lay your burdens down
Come and rest here
There is refuge for you now

[Pre-Chorus:]
You’ll find His peace
And know you’re not alone anymore
He is near
You’ll find His healing
Your heart isn’t shattered anymore
He is here

I accepted that promise and was expectantly waiting for what He was going to do.

I am convinced that the entire trip was just one giant love note from God to me.

Every. Single. Day. He revealed His truths to me, He opened up His Word to me, and He started showing me promises that He had for my future.

One of my favorite days was a day in Jerusalem. I had gone to the dead sea-and I was wandering around the gift shop. I had prayed at the beginning of the trip for God to show me which ring to buy. As I was looking, Rebecca and Gerry walked up to me, and I spotted the one I wanted. Rebecca read it to me and it was the scripture

” I am my beloveds and He is mine.”, Pastor Gerry had just walked up behind her, and I looked at both of them and said-this is my ring. All of our faces lit up and God’s Spirit just spoke His love to me.

As I was paying for the ring, the shop owner looked at me and he said-there is something different about you. I don’t know what it is, but I want to speak a blessing over you. And in Hebrew, he spoke a blessing to me like a father would to a daughter. My bus driver was standing right beside me and his eyes got really big and he said-it is very rare for a Hebrew man to speak a blessing to someone who he does not know, and to someone who is not Jewish. I could feel the Holy Spirit just pouring out His love to me.

As I got on the bus, Rebecca said she wanted to take me to the western wall that evening. She said Jill-you need to marry Jesus-and I was like what? Huh?

Through a series of incredible events, several people who were on our trip loaded up that night, and we went to the western wall at sunset.

Rebecca and my dear friend Jodi both had the most tremendous verses to speak over my life. Rebecca read from Isaiah

 

Isaiah 54:5-7 The Passion Translation (TPT)

⁵ For your Maker is your husband;
his name is Yahweh, Commander of Angel Armies!
Your Kinsman-Redeemer is the Holy One of Israel!
He has the title Mighty God of All the Earth!^[a]
6 For I, Yahweh, have invited you to come back
like a depressed, deserted wife.
Like a young wife who has experienced rejection,
I am drawing you back to me,” says Yahweh.
⁷ “For just a brief moment I deserted you,
but with tender feelings of love
I will gather you back to me.

.

“In that day,” declares the Lord, “you will call me ‘my husband’; you will no longer call me ‘my master. ’ I will remove the names of the Baals from her lips; no longer will their names be invoked. In that day I will make a covenant for them with the beasts of the field, the birds in the sky and the creatures that move along the ground. Bow and sword and battle I will abolish from the land, so that all may lie down in safety. I will betroth you to me forever; I will betroth you in righteousness and justice, in love and compassion. I will betroth you in faithfulness, and you will acknowledge the Lord.

I placed my hand on the prayer wall, and immediately a vision of Jesus whose hand was on the other side of the wall came to my mind and I saw my Jesus carrying and receiving every ounce of grief and pain I felt upon His shoulders.

At this point, I was pretty much making a scene at the wall. Tears were pouring down my face, I probably snorted a bit and all these sweet jewish girls were just staring at me. But can I tell you what it does to a woman to know that Jesus knows our pain, feels our pain, and carries our pain with Him? My pain didn’t instantaneously leave in the moment, but knowing that He recognized, and felt my pain with me sustained me through so many lonely nights.

The Lord is close to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit. The righteous person may have many troubles, but the Lord delivers him from them all; he protects all his bones, not one of them will be broken. Evil will slay the wicked; the foes of the righteous will be condemned. The Lord will rescue his servants; no one who takes refuge in him will be condemned. (Psalm 34:18-22 NIV)

A God who feels what we feel and hurts for and with us! This is the God we serve! I could probably tell you so many encounters with Jesus that I had in Israel, and by the end of the trip one of our groups quotes was “You can’t make this stuff up.”

There is no way I could have made that story, that vision, that verse, any of that up. Over the next few years I did experience Jesus in a new way. There were three significant experiences I had in the wilderness…

1. He walked me into a deeper understanding of who I am in Him. He rearranged the way I thought about myself and I exchanged the lies for an identity in Him that gave me a security I had never known. He removed the names that had been invoked upon me, the lies the enemy told me about myself. He renamed me.
2. I no longer believed nor accepted that my identity was based on what others thought of me.
3. I no longer believed that my identity was wrapped up in my successes, my failures, my accomplishments or my performance.
4. For the first time in my life, I experienced the unconditional love of my Savior. I discovered that His love for me had absolutely nothing to do with my performance, my abilities, my faults, failures or weaknesses. I experienced the love of Jesus like I never have before.
5. And in the wildernesses I received promise after promise after promise. All of those promises became a Door of Hope and little by little I let go of the way I had thought my life would be, I laid it down at Jesus’ feet, and I accepted His plan and His will for my life. He showed me that my story was far from being over…It was only going to get deeper, richer, and filled with more of Him than I had ever known before.

So sometimes in the wilderness years I got a little impatient. Okay maybe it was a lot impatient. I had many, many friends and family praying for God to bring me a husband. To bring an earthly Kinsmen Redeemer. Many of the Scripture promises He had given me alluded to a life with a Godly husband.

Here is a verse that I know sustained me for many of those years and much of the waiting.

I remain confident of this: I will see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living. Wait for the Lord; be strong and take heart and wait for the Lord. (Psalm 27:13-14 NIV)

 

I would say that verse over and over and occasionally some doubt would creep in and I would begin to wonder and ask…alright God…like WHEN.

And in a story that would take entirely too long to tell tonight, God did bring me the most incredible, God-loving, God-fearing man right to my front door step.

Through many months of dating, praying, seeking counsel from our loved ones, and a bazillion trips back and forth from Artesia, the day came when Nathan, whose name by the way, means Gift From God, asked me to marry him.

That gorgeous day is etched in my memory and treasured in my heart. All I can say is that I know beyond a shadow of doubt that our covenant, is ordained by God, and our wedding day was anointed by His Spirit.

But here’s where my story takes another turn I didn’t see coming. By the end of our first week of marriage, I fell flat on my face and walked right into a trap that was set up for by the enemy to take me down back into a familiar place of misplaced identity, false security, fear, fear of rejection…

I am pretty sure when I fell on my face, I hit my head and got spiritual amnesia. This is no joke. I literally went from the strength of the intimacy I had with Jesus the security that I had come to understand about my identity in him and I traded it for a place that I pray I never go back to.

I can tell you the enemy tried with all his might to convince me that because of my failures, my weaknesses, my woundedness, my insecurities that I had single handedly ruined the beauty of the new covenant God had given me.

I knew that Jesus had fulfilled a promise to me and brought me into a land that was Good. That was purposed for His Kingdom, but the harder I tried to be the perfect wife, the more that I failed to be a loving and secure wife, the further and further I fell back into a pit of despair. The enemy had me convinced that I was ruining everything with Nathan.

Oh that pit of absolute emptiness returned. My words, actions, demands, expectations, were twisted with the lies of the enemy.

And somehow in all of the chaos he led me to a verse that revealed what happened to the Israelites as they entered their promise land…

When the Lord your God brings you into the land you are entering to possessand drives out before you many nations—the Hittites, Girgashites, Amorites,Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites, seven nations larger and stronger than you— ² and when the Lord your God has delivered them over to you and you have defeated them, then you must destroy them totally.^[a] Make no treaty with them, and show them no mercy.

Deteronomy 7:1-2

When you go into new territory, often times the enemy is occupying that land and the enemy has to be driven out.

Here I was in the gorgeous new land, this new covenant, and I found that I was absolutely nothing when I was operating from my insecurities.

I did exactly what this verse says…I went into the new land and made treaties with with the enemy who was occupying that space…fear, insecurity, performance based love, looking for my husband to meet all of my needs.

After a year of being my absolute worst, failing with my words, my anger, my frustrations, I made a treaty with depression, anxiety, and I found myself in the fetal position completely overcome with fear…

But God…He did what this verse says, slowly but surely he began revealing the treaties I had made with each of those enemies, and slowly, steadily, and faithfully, He pulled me up out of the pit I was in and this is what He said

And this is what He had for me in the Land of Overcoming…

1 Kings 19:11-14

The Lord said, “Go out and stand on the mountain in the presence of the Lord, for the Lord is about to pass by.”

Then a great and powerful wind tore the mountains apart and shattered the rocks before the Lord, but the Lord was not in the wind. After the wind there was an earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake. ¹² After the earthquake came a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire. And after the fire came a gentle whisper.

1. I had to get to His Presence. I had to crawl out of my cave, out of the pit and meet with Him again. His Presence was the same presence that met me at the wall in Jerusalem that day.

His presence is the only thing in the universe that can dispel the darkness that we can easily get entangled in. And in that presence you will find Him. You will find His healing and know you’re not alone any more.

The second thing He did was let me hear His voice again. This verse in first King so accurately expresses the power of the whisper of our God. His whisper caused a hurricane wind, torn mountains, an earthquake and a fire! That’s just His whisper!

God’s Word is His voice, and when I realized I had made treaties with the enemy to walk back in to the old names, the old ways, the key was that God was delivering that enemy to me, because He was strengthening me, even in my fear and doubt to take down those enemies, to defeat them and walk into my identity.

Two weeks ago I was visiting one of my dearest friends, who will be speaking tomorrow. And we were praying about the retreat.

And began sharing with her some of the most awful things I still carry with me that I said or did to my gift from God, my Nathan. I was lamenting and regretting, and just sick about some of the ways I have failed him,

And Jesus whispered into my spirit…

You have another treaty that you have never severed with the enemy. And I didn’t know what it was, and He showed me I had made a treaty with shame, and guilt, and He told me He wanted to deliver shame and guilt into my hands to be defeated once and for all. And in order to do this I had to exchange those names, and accept the one He was giving me.

I heard Him whisper my new name…”Forgiven”…

I am telling you in that instant those chains, that prison that has literally held me captive for years, and even more recently as I have muddied up a beautiful covenant, was instantly severed as I accepted my new name.

You see it doesn’t matter what you’ve done, how far you’ve gone, how many treaties you’ve made how many chains of bondange you have holding you back-those chains can be broken and you can walk in a greater freedom when you walk “Forgiven”

I want to invite you to embrace the transforming God. I don’t know where you are in your journey. Maybe you are in the greatest grief and pain you have ever walked in, maybe you are crippled with shame and defeat, maybe your scratching your head saying-I thought this was my promise land…but really it’s a time to be strengthened to be an overcomer, to sever ties with the enemy. Even though everything around you might look like it’s falling apart…you can get to His Presence. He has a new name to whisper to you. A new identity. Pages and pages of promises…

He wants to embrace you with a love that you may never have experienced in your life.

Will you Embrace the Chain Breaking, Powerful, Transforming God who specializes in hovering over chaos and darkness and depression and fear, and deep insecurities. Let’s Pray.