weekly newsletter // july 14, 2023

>>>”What’s keeping you from the heart of God?” series

A few weeks ago I started a series on Instagram and Facebook about the barriers that keep us from feeling close to God. So far I’ve shared videos about three things that cause us to feel far from the Lord:

The first thing that comes to mind when I ask the question, “What is keeping you from the heart of God?” is some form of shame. Many of us have core beliefs about ourselves that are rooted in shame. Deep down, we might think that we aren’t good enough for God.  We’ve been taught that our sin separates us from God, which is why Jesus went to the cross… but I think we hang onto this idea that every time we sin or fail to do certain things, it separates us from God again. This is not true! The Holy Spirit dwells in us, so there is never any distance between you and God. Shame causes us to be disconnected from the awareness of His presence, but this awareness can be renewed by calling out to Him.

The second thing that I think causes us to feel far from God is that we do not have enough experiential knowledge of the love of God. Remember in Eph 3:14-19 when Pauls prays for the people to experience the width and length and depth and height of Christ’s love? He says that the result of this deeper revelation of His love results in being filled with all the fullness of God. To experience Him more, we need to understand his love! We know about his love, and we can preach it to others, but when it comes down to it, we think His love has limits, don’t we? We aren’t “fully convinced” of his love. But we can ask for a tangible revelation of His love.

The third thing that I think causes us to feel far from God would be old hurts that we hold against him. Maybe we don’t outright blame God, but we don’t understand why He didn’t prevent some of the painful things in our lives from happening. This affects our ability to trust Him and open our hearts to him.  When working through my own hurts, I found two things very helpful. First, someone counseled me to ask God, “Where were you when this happened?” It took some time, but the Holy Spirit gave me eyes to see Jesus in some of the most wounding moments of my life.  This started me on a quest of asking the Lord what I call “the hard questions”. I found Psalm 77, where the writer poses several hard inquiries to the Lord and this confirmed that God wanted me to wrestle out these questions with him.  The other thing that helped me was recognizing that God has given us free will. Though he tries to guide me and you, he does not outright stop us from sinning against him or anyone else. I had to come to terms with the fact that he gave free will to the people who hurt me. If you want to understand God’s role in your hurts, it’s ok to ask Him hard questions .

I will be sharing two more barriers in this series! Check out Instagram or Facebook over the next two weeks.

>>>Free Mini-Retreat Webinar!!

You may have already registered for the webinar that will complete the “What’s Keeping You” series! We’ll explore barriers that keep us from feeling connected to God’s heart and then practice techniques to overcome these barriers during the webinar. My goal is to help you grow in intimacy with God. If you haven’t registered yet, you can sign up here: Webinar Registration

>>>Podcast Episode 2.7 // Pressing in to Mark 5 & the call to meet Jesus face-to-face

Join me as we press in to Mark 5:24-34 and discuss the familiar story of the woman with an issue of blood. Let’s take a closer look at the way Jesus drew her into a face-to-face encounter that was far more than she asked for. Click here to listen: Pressing In Podcast