I CHOSE JESUS, BUT WHY AM I HURTING?
DECEMBER 2012
by Lisa Maki
This article was inspired by a young woman who sought my counsel regarding this very topic. She wrote: The reason I am writing to you is not only to maybe get some advice on my issue but to also maybe have an article for women who have the same issue as I ... women who have decided to let go of a boyfriend for Christ but are hurting over their choice.
My answer to her question is what I will write for this article. I can so relate with this because I have been there. And just as all my writings are based from my own personal experiences; this too is founded on what I have experienced and what God taught me through it.
When I got saved back in 2001 I was still in a wrong relationship; wrong because I was sleeping with a man I was not married to; and doubly wrong because he was still married: estranged from his wife but still married. With my very limited understanding of God and His Word, I thought that he will just divorce his wife and marry me and everything was going to be ok. I prayed and prayed for him to divorce his wife and nothing happened. One day God removed the scales from my eyes and showed me my sin for what it was. I felt stabbed in my chest. I could barely breathe. I lay prostrate on the floor and repented before the Lord, so ashamed of what I did. That night, when my boyfriend came home (we were living in one house with my two sons and they were like a father to them), I told him that we can’t be together anymore. I told him what God showed me and how determined I was to obey the Lord.
Was it easy? No way! This man has treated me and my children well. He is a very good man – highly responsible, very generous, and full of love for me. I have been with him for a while and was really looking forward to a marriage with him. He was well received by my family and friends. He also took very good care of me, even providing a house for me and my children to stay in. In short, he was paying for the house we were living in and every other house expense we had. He also received Jesus a few months after I got saved. Everything seemed perfect except for the fact that he could not marry me. Everything seemed perfect from my perspective, but not from God’s perspective.
One thing I’ve learned in this walk is that when God finally opens your eyes to some truth, He will hold you accountable to it. Until the scales fall off your eyes, He will be more gracious to you. But once you see, you have to obey, otherwise you will suffer.
When I finally saw the sin for what it was, it became easier for me to obey. Obedience was the easy part. The days, weeks, months, and even years that followed were not as easy. Why? Because those were times of healing, purging, and cleansing.
God is in the healing business and would do everything to restore you. Yet, until your heart has settled down, He can’t do His work in you. Think about it this way ... how can a heart surgeon operate on you unless you are fully sedated? This is the same thing with God. He can only perform a heart surgery on you when you are fully surrendered to him, which will never happen if you are entangled in a relationship that is not His will for you.
Breaking up from someone who is not God’s will for you is just the beginning of the healing process. In the first place, you were the one who got yourself in that predicament. Why are you in a relationship with an unbeliever if you already know that God was clear on His Word about not being equally yoked with non-believers? Why are you in a relationship with a married person if you know very well that adulterers will not inherit the Kingdom of God? Why are you having sex with a man who is not your husband if God already said that fornication is a sin? My point is, God can just leave us in our self-made problems and let us suffer in our sin, and even go to hell for it. But no ... He loves us and wants to save, deliver, heal, and restore us. Yet, even after forgiving us of our sins, we are not spared of the consequences of our wrong doings.
These consequences, plus the healing process itself, are the reasons why you are still hurting even after you have obeyed God and surrendered to His Word.
Let’s talk about consequences first.
God is a just God. His very nature will never allow Him to go against the principles that He Himself created. And one of the foundational principles that He established from the beginning is the principle of sowing and reaping or the law of reward and consequence.
Let’s take a look at the Scripture below.
Then the Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to tend and keep it. And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, “Of every tree of the garden you may freely eat; but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.” (Gen. 2:15-17)
God gave Adam the responsibility and authority to tend and keep the garden. Yet God warned him of the tree that he should not eat from, otherwise he will die. The principle here is: If you eat of the tree, you will die; if you don’t, you will live.
In Deuteronomy 28 God laid the blessings and curses to the Israelites: blessings if they will follow His commands, curses if they disobey. This has been the case throughout history ... if we obey the Word, it will be well with us, if not, we will suffer. This explains why, even after we decide to obey God, we will still reap the consequences of our disobedience.
The hurts that you are going through right now are part of the result of your disobedience. I was living a life of fornication since I was 14. As a result, I got pregnant and married at 19. This sin brought about a miserable marriage that resulted to much more sins and sufferings. When I got reborn, these sins were washed away. I was declared guilt-free. Yet, I was not spared of the consequences. Until now there are still some hurts from my past that form part of what I have reaped through my disobedience.
Now let’s talk about the healing process.
Yet God, in all His goodness, made these consequences a part of the healing process. Though the consequences hurt, God makes sure that these hurts will lead to your healing. When you break up from a relationship, the pulling away is not going to be easy. If you became intimate with your boyfriend, meaning you had sex with him; then the situation is even stickier. You are talking about someone who meshed with your soul. This is the very reason why God does not allow sex outside of marriage. The union of the man and the woman through sexual intercourse makes them one. So think about all the men you’ve had sex with, other than your last boyfriend. All these men established soul ties with you. Are you still wondering why the healing process would hurt?
Think about God as pulling out every soul that was attached to your soul. We are not talking about some physical ties here. That is easy to take out. We are talking about meshing of souls ... a part of a person being one with you. This may be his bad habits, his personality, how he treated you, what he expected from you, what you felt from him, etc. And if we are talking about more than one man here, whoa! That is surely a very difficult job. This is why God has to pull out all these soul ties with utmost precision so that you won’t be destroyed as a result of this pulling out. This is also why when you resist or rebel, God can’t complete His healing process in you.
So my dear sisters ...
If you chose to obey God and gave up a relationship that means so much to you, then don’t even look back. Don’t even think of going back to that man. If it is God’s will for you and him to get back together someday, then let God do it. And if this is His plan someday, He won’t be able to do it until you completely let go. You can’t keep looking back. You can’t keep asking the “what ifs”, otherwise you are not acting in faith. Romans 14:23 says: Anything that is not done in faith is sin.
Of course it will hurt if you find out that the man you used to love ... the man you gave up ... the man who you wanted to be with ... falls in love with somebody. It will hurt because of your soul ties with him. It will hurt because you have not completely healed. It will hurt because you have a heart that feels. And when you start feeling hurt, just close your eyes and let those tears run down your cheeks. Let those hurts pierce you and then you can say: I chose God over these feelings. I love God more than anyone. Let those hurts remind you of what God Himself went through when He gave up His only begotten Son for you ... for your sins ... for all the hurts you’ve been through, going through, and will go through. Let those hurts remind you that you have chosen to follow the narrow path.
Then your healing process will produce a wonderful harvest in you, restoring you back to who God designed you to be.
My answer to her question is what I will write for this article. I can so relate with this because I have been there. And just as all my writings are based from my own personal experiences; this too is founded on what I have experienced and what God taught me through it.
When I got saved back in 2001 I was still in a wrong relationship; wrong because I was sleeping with a man I was not married to; and doubly wrong because he was still married: estranged from his wife but still married. With my very limited understanding of God and His Word, I thought that he will just divorce his wife and marry me and everything was going to be ok. I prayed and prayed for him to divorce his wife and nothing happened. One day God removed the scales from my eyes and showed me my sin for what it was. I felt stabbed in my chest. I could barely breathe. I lay prostrate on the floor and repented before the Lord, so ashamed of what I did. That night, when my boyfriend came home (we were living in one house with my two sons and they were like a father to them), I told him that we can’t be together anymore. I told him what God showed me and how determined I was to obey the Lord.
Was it easy? No way! This man has treated me and my children well. He is a very good man – highly responsible, very generous, and full of love for me. I have been with him for a while and was really looking forward to a marriage with him. He was well received by my family and friends. He also took very good care of me, even providing a house for me and my children to stay in. In short, he was paying for the house we were living in and every other house expense we had. He also received Jesus a few months after I got saved. Everything seemed perfect except for the fact that he could not marry me. Everything seemed perfect from my perspective, but not from God’s perspective.
One thing I’ve learned in this walk is that when God finally opens your eyes to some truth, He will hold you accountable to it. Until the scales fall off your eyes, He will be more gracious to you. But once you see, you have to obey, otherwise you will suffer.
When I finally saw the sin for what it was, it became easier for me to obey. Obedience was the easy part. The days, weeks, months, and even years that followed were not as easy. Why? Because those were times of healing, purging, and cleansing.
God is in the healing business and would do everything to restore you. Yet, until your heart has settled down, He can’t do His work in you. Think about it this way ... how can a heart surgeon operate on you unless you are fully sedated? This is the same thing with God. He can only perform a heart surgery on you when you are fully surrendered to him, which will never happen if you are entangled in a relationship that is not His will for you.
Breaking up from someone who is not God’s will for you is just the beginning of the healing process. In the first place, you were the one who got yourself in that predicament. Why are you in a relationship with an unbeliever if you already know that God was clear on His Word about not being equally yoked with non-believers? Why are you in a relationship with a married person if you know very well that adulterers will not inherit the Kingdom of God? Why are you having sex with a man who is not your husband if God already said that fornication is a sin? My point is, God can just leave us in our self-made problems and let us suffer in our sin, and even go to hell for it. But no ... He loves us and wants to save, deliver, heal, and restore us. Yet, even after forgiving us of our sins, we are not spared of the consequences of our wrong doings.
These consequences, plus the healing process itself, are the reasons why you are still hurting even after you have obeyed God and surrendered to His Word.
Let’s talk about consequences first.
God is a just God. His very nature will never allow Him to go against the principles that He Himself created. And one of the foundational principles that He established from the beginning is the principle of sowing and reaping or the law of reward and consequence.
Let’s take a look at the Scripture below.
Then the Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to tend and keep it. And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, “Of every tree of the garden you may freely eat; but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.” (Gen. 2:15-17)
God gave Adam the responsibility and authority to tend and keep the garden. Yet God warned him of the tree that he should not eat from, otherwise he will die. The principle here is: If you eat of the tree, you will die; if you don’t, you will live.
In Deuteronomy 28 God laid the blessings and curses to the Israelites: blessings if they will follow His commands, curses if they disobey. This has been the case throughout history ... if we obey the Word, it will be well with us, if not, we will suffer. This explains why, even after we decide to obey God, we will still reap the consequences of our disobedience.
The hurts that you are going through right now are part of the result of your disobedience. I was living a life of fornication since I was 14. As a result, I got pregnant and married at 19. This sin brought about a miserable marriage that resulted to much more sins and sufferings. When I got reborn, these sins were washed away. I was declared guilt-free. Yet, I was not spared of the consequences. Until now there are still some hurts from my past that form part of what I have reaped through my disobedience.
Now let’s talk about the healing process.
Yet God, in all His goodness, made these consequences a part of the healing process. Though the consequences hurt, God makes sure that these hurts will lead to your healing. When you break up from a relationship, the pulling away is not going to be easy. If you became intimate with your boyfriend, meaning you had sex with him; then the situation is even stickier. You are talking about someone who meshed with your soul. This is the very reason why God does not allow sex outside of marriage. The union of the man and the woman through sexual intercourse makes them one. So think about all the men you’ve had sex with, other than your last boyfriend. All these men established soul ties with you. Are you still wondering why the healing process would hurt?
Think about God as pulling out every soul that was attached to your soul. We are not talking about some physical ties here. That is easy to take out. We are talking about meshing of souls ... a part of a person being one with you. This may be his bad habits, his personality, how he treated you, what he expected from you, what you felt from him, etc. And if we are talking about more than one man here, whoa! That is surely a very difficult job. This is why God has to pull out all these soul ties with utmost precision so that you won’t be destroyed as a result of this pulling out. This is also why when you resist or rebel, God can’t complete His healing process in you.
So my dear sisters ...
If you chose to obey God and gave up a relationship that means so much to you, then don’t even look back. Don’t even think of going back to that man. If it is God’s will for you and him to get back together someday, then let God do it. And if this is His plan someday, He won’t be able to do it until you completely let go. You can’t keep looking back. You can’t keep asking the “what ifs”, otherwise you are not acting in faith. Romans 14:23 says: Anything that is not done in faith is sin.
Of course it will hurt if you find out that the man you used to love ... the man you gave up ... the man who you wanted to be with ... falls in love with somebody. It will hurt because of your soul ties with him. It will hurt because you have not completely healed. It will hurt because you have a heart that feels. And when you start feeling hurt, just close your eyes and let those tears run down your cheeks. Let those hurts pierce you and then you can say: I chose God over these feelings. I love God more than anyone. Let those hurts remind you of what God Himself went through when He gave up His only begotten Son for you ... for your sins ... for all the hurts you’ve been through, going through, and will go through. Let those hurts remind you that you have chosen to follow the narrow path.
Then your healing process will produce a wonderful harvest in you, restoring you back to who God designed you to be.
Lisa Maki is the founder, publisher, and editor of God'z Gurlz. More about Lisa at ...
http://www.godzgurlz.com/regular-contributors.html
http://www.godzgurlz.com/regular-contributors.html