Quantum Leap

Quantum Leap was one of my favourite shows growing up.  If you weren't privileged enough to grow up in the 80s and 90s, I'll fill you in.  It was about a man who got to time travel back into different time zones and also into different people – male and female!  He had a travel buddy that always went with him, Al.  During his travels, he was going back to make right some wrongs or to settle some unsettled issues that those people had left undone.  He had a great responsibility and a rewarding job but he was never able to move on from that person’s life until he had completed the “mission.” 

Sometimes I feel like our lives can be just like that.  Like we go, not back into someone else’s life, but maybe back into areas or time zones in our own lives.  Circumstance happens to bring up some “stuff” in our inner being that we can trace back to our childhood or teenage years where there was something left undone. 

For me, this is how I viewed my broken foot experience.  Not only did my foot break, but I also suffered from a couple of really bad spouts of illness that left me bed ridden for at least a week all together.  In the early days a lady came and prayed for me and prophesied over me.  She had been praying for me the night before and asked God for a “word of knowledge” for me.  If you don’t know what that is, there are some good books out there in operating in the gifts of the Holy Spirit J

Anyway, her word for me, from God was that this was not from the devil.  That this was allowed by God because He wanted to spend some time with me.  And she was not the first person to tell me this message, so I have to believe it was from God.  See I am not the type of person who likes to rest.  I like to be doing something, going somewhere, spending time with people, helping people.  But as Christians, this can be damaging, even if it’s in the name of “ministry” because we can get so caught up that we forget to spend time with God. 

So I’m back in bed.  Resting.  Learning that going out is not always the best thing to do.  Learning that saying thank you is so important for building relationships that you depend on.  Learning that patience and time will calcify not only my bone but also the relationships and visions and purposes that may have been broken in the past.

While in that place God took me back into other time zones where I had been hurt.  He showed me that while He was COMPLETELY able and willing to heal my foot, that He was more out to heal my heart.  And that this “mission” he was on, was not going to finish until that had been completed.  My weary, broken, hole-ridden heart was about to be filled with His LOVE. 

I think if we all look back, we can see areas in our lives where we have been hurt, where our hearts have been broken, damaged, torn.  Those are the areas that, if not completely healed, will continue to surface and shape the way that we view our world and the future relationships we are entering into.  Hurt people, hurt people.  So important to know this when working with people.  If we are still in a place of hurt, we need to get that right! 

My life has been such a smorgasbord of different events that have shaped who I am today.  There have been good events and there have been bad.  There have been times where I’ve felt betrayed and times where I have been abused.  And over the years, God has brought healing to so many of those places. 

I continue to struggle though and never want to make out like I am perfect because I am so far from it.  I want to help people because I know what it’s like to feel unworthy, to feel shame and to feel unloved and unwanted.  The place that I help out of, though, is a place of restoration.  God has restored me and redeemed me from all of that “stuff”. 

My friend Marianne nailed it this morning when she read from James 1 in our devotion time:

Vs 2-8 Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance. Let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything. If any of you lacks wisdom, you should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to you. But when you ask, you must believe and not doubt, because the one who doubts is like a wave of the sea, blown and tossed by the wind. That person should not expect to receive anything from the Lord.  Such a person is double-minded and unstable in all they do.

What God wants us to be is “mature and complete” but that only comes when we face trials and have to persevere through that.  In those trial processes, we often come full frontal with the REAL us.  Let me own that- the real ME!  The ME that reacts and squirms like a baby when I don’t get my way!  Or the ME that realizes that she’s seeking satisfaction and recognition and love from people and not from the only one who can bring COMPLETE satisfaction-God.  That’s me. 

So sometimes I ask God for Him to help me to be mature and complete and so He sends me a trial or puts me through a test.  But that all comes with this promise found in verse 12 of the same chapter:

Blessed is the one who perseveres under trial because, having stood the test, that person will receive the crown of life that the Lord has promised to those who love him.

He LOVES us, oh, how HE loves US.  So we love Him, because He first loved us.  And because we know His love and His love has made us complete and mature, we are able to LOVE others and help them find the same thing.  This is my life.  I feel like I passed this test.  This recent one.  Not the final exam. But this one where He, the Creator of the Heavens and the Earth, laid me up in bed so HE could spend time with ME!  And show me all the places in my heart that needed healing, and I allowed HIM to heal me.  OH, I am so thankful for that Quantum Leap!