A WHOLENESS SO TANGIBLE

Growing up as a child, my mom had tried so hard to protect my sister and me from “a broken world,” as many parents will do. The world seemed so perfect, big, and beautiful from my little eye’s perspective, but as I started to grow older and differentiate between good and bad, I learnt it wasn’t all that I thought it to be. As I advanced in life, I encountered situations that only took from me. These experiences created a dent in my soul, but of course my parents, still present, loving and supportive, were limited by time, distance, and much more. However, they gave me something they had that nothing could take away, which was “Jesus.” My mother’s baby had quickly grown, so it was only a matter of time before I started my own journey.

I went from being bullied at school and my neighbourhood, for being privileged and speaking differently until I had to fit into what was their norm [I had started to believe eloquence was a bad thing], to being exposed to spiritual attacks and demonic activities at a young age, to watching my mom fight for her life and overcoming death severally, to narrowly escaping rape twice as a teenager with torn clothes and bruises from the physical trauma of trying to beat me, to having to wait for an extended period of time for what was a norm in the life of others to happen in mine, the list goes on…

Going through all these several phases of my life, I held on to the Jesus I was introduced to. I kept trying to build a relationship with him in the little way I knew how best to, but of course a lot of these negative experiences had happened in my character formation years. I seemed confident but, in the actual sense, was timid and couldn’t stand up for myself even in situations that challenged my morals and beliefs. Confidence was only a coping mechanism I had built against bullies. I was serving my mother’s Jesus because I was afraid of dying, since I had seen him deliver her from death a couple times. I was harbouring anger and unforgiveness without knowing towards the person who had put me in the situation with the paedophile. I had continued to live life unaware of the effect those experiences had caused, unable to serve God in the lives of men for the fear of rejection; I couldn’t properly discern seasons and the role I played in their lives, so I probably overstayed, understayed, or even never stayed in the lives of some.

At some point in my life, when I started to gradually invest in my relationship with God, I began to hear the voice of I AM. I began to feel a love so great that the word ‘intimacy’ doesn’t begin to describe it; He began to teach me, and even though it took a long process to finally get me unarmed and willing to yield to Him, I finally got there. Unbeknownst to me, He was preparing me for a season where He was going to deal with my excesses, the unforgiveness, the timidity, the anger, the hurt, and the constant feeling of disappointment. He knew I was ready for this season because He had shown me a love so undiluted, a love so whole. So, when God started to teach me the hard lessons, there was no way I could receive it as rejection because I already knew his thoughts for me.

Jeremiah 29:11 “For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, saith the Lord, thoughts of peace, and not of evil, to give you an expected end.” KJV

Suddenly mercy had found me! The kind of mercy spoken about in Titus 3:5

Titus 3:5: “But when God, our kind and loving Savior God, stepped in, he saved us from all that. It was all his doing; we had nothing to do with it. He gave us a good bath, and we came out of it new people, washed inside and out by the Holy Spirit.” MSG

I began to seek for something real; one thing about my Jesus is that when you come before Him, when you behold Him just enough, whatever doesn’t look like His original intent for you gets unearthed and begins to shrink, He knows how to infiltrate a man, fills in the gap, and covers loopholes. In the words of my spiritual mother, “The Holy Spirit will only operate in your life to the extent to which you allow him to.” I decided to let Jesus break through my walls, but even then, I still made poor decisions because I honestly didn’t know how to do better. I was looking for validation and approval of men and not God, too afraid to be alone and not have any friends, such that any form of kindness passed off as genuineness. Many times, we’ve carried these yokes for so long that we’ve forgotten what it means to be free of them. Others have carried it their whole lives, and so the word “whole” is a strange concept, a myth, or just a bible story. Can you imagine yourself in the time where the woman with the issue of blood got healed? She probably woke up the next couple of weeks expecting to be in a pool of blood; instead, she relived wholeness every day after then. How about the one leper who came back to say thank you to Jesus and experienced what it means to be whole for the first time? It came so complete, so tangible, so thick, so real you can almost touch it.

If you carefully observe, you’ll learn that many people around you wake up anxious about what the next challenge is, scared of the unknown; some have never experienced peace or what it means to be still within. What I’m trying to say is that Jesus heals but He doesn’t just stop in that one area of your expectations, He brings complete wholeness to the other aspects of life you didn’t expect needed healing too. It takes a reach for his garment to be whole and it takes applying pressure for Jesus to take you by the hand and say talitha cumi! The path to wholeness may be deserted and lonely; it may have harsh conditions and put you under the kind of pressure you never knew you had the innate ability to withstand, but please keep in mind that God had created a perfect world, a world void of sin, a whole world. And I dare to say that the journey back to His initial intent for you is possible; to live complete and experience wholeness to its best is possible even in a broken world. Remember, being in “the world” does not mean you’re “of” it. Wholeness isn’t just a myth; it’s a reality you too can live.

Prayer: Father, I thank you for your child reading this, thank you for healing, I pray in this moment that he/she experiences your touch for wholeness, that you restore what was lost and bring them back to your original intent for them in Jesus name.