I love life. Allow me to be more specific. I love to look around me and see the lush trees, bushes, leaves and plants, teeming with life. It amazes me to see the variety of places the 'life' grows from. Sometimes it is planted in rich dirt, and sometimes the roots are forced to push through rocky soil. Often times, when I see something growing where I can't imagine how it does, I need to stop and ponder.
Lately, I have been reminded of a passage in Deuteronomy that says:
"Today I have given you the choice between life and death, between blessings and curses. Oh that you would choose life, so that you and your descendants might live!" (Deuteronomy 30:19, NLT)
It reminds me to choose life when I speak, to choose life in my thought life, and to choose to see life in the way I view situations. It doesn't generally come naturally to me, so it's something, by the grace of God, I practice daily.
This reminds me of a retreat I attended with my husband, the director of Indian Life, this past weekend. It is called Set Free, and its focus was on naming those areas in our lives that trip us up. The sins that keep us from truly being able to choose life. We looked at naming personal sin as well as those passed down to us from our family line, and those that may have been passed down to our children. It was a powerful time of praise and worship, naming sin, confessing them before God and our small group, repenting of them, and finally, having deliverance spoken over us.
At first, I was really nervous to confess my sin to the small group of three that I was put in. You see, I had been struggling deeply with unforgiveness and bitterness, and felt shame over it. I knew that Jesus told us how important it was to forgive. He even taught his disciples to pray about it (Matthew 6) in what we call The Lords Prayer: "Forgive us our sins, as we forgive those who sin against us." I felt ashamed and guilty. How was I possibly going to be able to speak out loud the sins that God was bringing to mind.
But you know what? It was one of the most freeing things I have ever done! And once I got over the shame and fear during our first session, once I named, confessed and repented, and had deliverance prayed over me, I jumped at the chance to get started during our second and third sessions. Did you want to know something else? All of that shame and fear I felt over confessing publicly, out loud to my small group, it could have been proven right, but it wasn't.
During one of my sessions, it had just become my turn. I had opened up my booklet, looked down, and watched as a tiny little leaf landed on my page. I looked up and noticed that the tree was just starting to bud, and barely had any green life on it. This was one of those moments that I stopped, pondered, and thanked God for encouraging me that I was headed in the right direction.
Friends, I was afraid to fess up and name what I was walking through. It kept me in a bad state for quite a while, and consumed a lot of my thought life. Just like God heard my prayer, he hears yours too. He hears each one of our prayers, and wants you to not only live, but thrive. He wants you to choose life! A thriving life. Be encouraged friends. If I can do it, you can too.
Krystal Wawrzyniak serves alongside her husband, Todd, in directing Indian Life Ministries.
