Will you be made whole?

This has been a week of self-examination for me. God has been taking me back to different situations and showing me how I responded to them. He’s been making me go beyond the emotion and look at the root. I started to see places where I rested and places where I got stuck. I saw places where I stood for the right and places where I fell for a trick. I saw places of maturity and places where it was blatantly missing. I saw ME. I know that God has been taking me through this process because things are changing in me, around me, and with me. What God has for me to do, requires me to be in a place of truth. And so it is with you! I don’t know where you are right now and I don’t know what God has been saying to you but I know that He is calling His people to wholeness and truth so that the world can be taken for the Kingdom. This might sound deep but it’s true. God is speaking and moving and if you don’t get on board with what He’s saying, you are going to miss it! This isn’t even what I thought I was supposed to be saying but this is what God is giving me. It’s time out for stale worship and bound up spirits. Freedom and deliverance are available and God wants you to take advantage of it! He wants you whole so that you can do what He has placed inside of you!

I know that this is making some of you nervous. When you say the word deliverance, people tend to get uncomfortable. There is a perception that it is all throwing up and exorcisms and that you have to have a demon to need deliverance. Wrong! There are times when that is very much what happens with deliverance but at the heart of it, it is a rescue from bondage or danger. It is to be set free from what has held you captive or bound up.  Some of you are walking around bound up because you are under the misconception that deliverance isn’t for you. If you are still dealing with memories and the effects of something that was done to you in your childhood, you need deliverance. If you are always angry and don’t understand why, you need deliverance. If you lie all the time, you need deliverance. It’s not just addiction and depression, those just tend to be visible. But God wants you free of those hidden things, those things that come up in the night, and those things that you secretly relive. You were meant to live a SOZO life which is saved, delivered and set free!

When David was on the run from Saul, there was a point when He was a captive of the Philistines and he had to act crazy to get away from them. He was at one of the lowest points of his life and God delivered him. He wrote Psalm 34 during this period and his words are speaking to me this morning. “When I needed the Lord, I looked for Him; I called out to Him, and He heard me and responded. He came and rescued me from everything that made me so afraid.  Look to Him and shine, so shame will never contort your faces.  This poor soul cried, and the Eternal heard me. He rescued me from my troubles. The messenger of the Eternal God surrounds everyone who walks with Him and is always there to protect and rescue us.” (Ps. 34: 4-7, VOICE) God is listening for your voice! He’s waiting to hear you and respond, if you just trust Him enough to cry out for deliverance, for rescue.

Folks, God is speaking truth and wholeness! Do you hear Him? Is He challenging you to deal with some hard issues in your life? Is He pressing you to look internally and evaluate what you see? You cannot fully walk into wholeness if you can’t be honest with yourself and God. There has to be acknowledgement in order to move to deliverance to then move to wholeness. My prayer for each of you today, is that God will give you clarity to see yourself, a willingness to be delivered from anything that has held you bound, and the lasting joy of freedom and wholeness. I pray that every hard place would be softened and every old hurt erased. I pray that peace would replace chaos in your spirit and joy would reign in your life. And no matter what you face, remember that “many are the afflictions of the righteous, but the Lord delivers him out of them all.” (Ps 34:19, NKJV)

Amen