Dear Ones,
Happy weekend! Today is party day here and we will be going to Costco for the cake. We are short one helper today, so Al may have to pour coffee too!!
Devotions from Judy’s heart
It’s wonderful that we can go to the Lord just as we are, knowing that He will forgive whatever we have done in our past and forgive whatever we will do in the future if we come to Him in repentance. We all have things we have done in our past that we would like to forget and also hurts that were done to us, but we don’t have to live in regret the rest of our lives. We can trust the Lord to not only forgive, but to cast all those things in the sea of forgetfulness.

God wants to heal us from whatever evil has happened in our lives, but we need to give it to Him. We might feel like a caterpillar that is all bound up in a cocoon and can’t move. When we are willing to give everything to the Lord, it is like we open up, shake our wrinkles away as beautiful changes take place, and we can fly freely as that butterfly.

We are loved so much by our Heavenly Father, and He desires to restore us so we don’t have to continue to live in the pain of the past. Then we can come to Him as our true selves and worship Him with hearts set free. I was reading from John 4:23-24 of Jesus’ conversation with the Samaritan woman at the well who had had five husbands and was now living with another man. Jesus’ words, “It’s who you are and the way you live that count before God. Your worship must engage your spirit in the pursuit of truth. That’s the kind of people the Father is out looking for who are simply and honestly themselves before Him in their worship. God is sheer being itself—Spirit. Those who worship Him must do it out of their very being, their spirits their true selves, in adoration.”

We can become the true persons God created us to be as we give everything to the Lord, including our past, and let Him heal us. Then we can be free and worship and love Him from our true selves.

Challenge for today: Ask the Holy Spirit to reveal anything from your past that is hindering your relationship with God and others, and give it all to Him in repentance that you may be healed.
Blessings on your weekend and prayers and love, Judy