We’ve got an enthusiastic and dynamic young lady on the blog today. Dive into the heartfelt words of Ashley Radke who shares a journey of healing with Jesus. Her story of God’s love redeeming her perception of worth will most definitely move you in your own.
“What am I worth?” is a question we don’t find ourselves consciously asking, but we make thousands of decisions based on our answer every day. You may not find yourself assessing your worth outright when that coworker is a jerk to you, or in the painful moment after we ourselves do something high on the stupid scale, but our response says it all.
What are you worth?
If you’re Christian, maybe you grew up going to young men’s and women’s gatherings that told you all about how Jesus paid it all for you. Maybe you’re a newer Christian and this information is blowing your mind! I love it! I grew up in church hearing all the stories and I accepted the story of Jesus’ sacrifice into my life easily without actually understanding what it meant. Jesus paid it all for you, Jesus paid it all for you. It was about as poignant as if I were saying it ten times fast. Yeah, I felt good for a couple minutes when I would reflect on being saved, and no hell is a fun concept, right? Though I grew up learning about God, I grew up misunderstanding Him deeply and seeing only the cut-and-dry, black-and-white rules. This would have been somewhat comforting had I been perfect, but I grew up steeped in torment and wildly aware of what was wrong with the world, myself included.
All throughout life, I was learning and receiving false messages about what I was worth from people and experiences around me. I didn’t think God still spoke, and without the voice of Jesus in my ear, I believed that the actions of those around me were indicators of how much I was worth. That is, until Jesus completely flipped my life upside-down.
He won me early on at a university, through a few passionate fiery souls who lived on the other side of the country. By the end of a bumpy educational few years at college, I had watched many of my friends’ lives get radically beautified by Bethel School of Supernatural Ministry in Redding, California, and I decided it was time for my own adventure out there. As I entered the ministry school in the fall, I found that anyone who was on stage kept repeating the same statement over and over to my deepest chagrin. Wait for it…”You’re worthy of love!”
Screech those brakes honey.
That should be a comforting thing to hear, right?
In my life I had gathered that love wasn’t something to sign up for, it was actually best to not make eye contact at all. Love was being stuck together on an 80-year flight with no emergency exit. Love was something people felt about 5% of the time and reminisced about the other 95% of the time, during which they actively dislike everyone around them. Love, as I knew it, sucked! If I was worthy of what I “knew” love to be, then I had no interest in getting involved with a heavenly Father who handed it out! I knew God as a dealer with sharp emotional manipulation, and as a battering ram who conspired to jerk me around with tangled strings. My response to love was defensive, and my leaders referred to my first half of the year as ‘coming out of the cave.’ Love had an awful, brutalizing reputation with me. It took months of love being poured out from the heart of God, and radical consistent embraces from the brave people around me for me to see that it could look like anything resembling beneficial.
Love isn’t pain. GOD’S LOVE ISN’T PAIN! Even His correction won’t kill you. It’s so beautiful. It’s the kindest thing. His roar is for you, not against you.
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During the last half of the school year, God gave me the courage to begin chasing down fear, and we began to open some big lockboxes of pain. You know, like in an action movie where the good guy storms in and sees a scary box with a bunch of wires coming out of it. So fun. I had some really sad experiences that I needed to confront. I charged at some deep debilitating fears with safe leaders for the first time ever. My pastor’s theory was in essence: ‘go heal it where it broke.’ So, you can imagine, that was not at all traumatic. Just kidding! I had several hyper-ventilated, practically vomit-inducing, conversations that made me want to die, yet also set me free. Good people I trusted, who triggered fear from old relationships, stood in for me and loved me to life. Shame was strong, but never as strong as the light. And every time, this process was worth it.
I got what I came for.
In a few short months of chasing down fear, God had provided me with a completely new life. Fear wasn’t murdering me when I would look into a leader’s eyes. I was free to be okay for the first time, simply because of love. At the core of identity, greater than any other thing that I have found, is the ability to accept that I am worth the love I don’t even UNDERSTAND! It is the ability to just sit there and recognize that the thoughts God has about me are only good. He is not the one accusing me. He is not telling me what I should have done better.
I am here to tell you that the very core of who you are is wild worthiness. It’s expressive and it’s fire. You have always been worthy of wild pursuit. We have it wrong when we think we just chase God. He is relentless in ways that He, every day, aims to win your heart. Ask Him. You have always been worthy of kindness. You have always been worthy of just a little more grace than necessary. You were worth love in your most bitter, cruelest moments. If love is not what you were given, God is more than able to make up for that now.
Over the last six years, I’ve dealt with health issues that, for a long time, left me feeling abandoned and betrayed by God. Debilitating fatigue, depression, anxiety, migraines, and zero stress tolerance were just the most obvious icings on this nasty cake. Where was God in this supposedly lifelong, hormone-induced hopelessness? One day as I got deadly honest about what our relationship had felt like, I asked God angrily and breathlessly ‘where WERE you?’
I heard the tender voice of Jesus say, “I was hovering over the bed with you, and I was so proud when you let all the fear out. I was like the mattress underneath you, as close as I could get to you. I held you when you couldn’t move.” Then, he took me to difficult places from my childhood and began to show me how He walked in the woods with me when I would need an escape as a kid. In my hardest, most heart-breaking moments of confusion and pain, He had built things around me, specifically so He could interact with me and comfort me. It was dreamy forests, fields, wildflowers and flocks, teddy bears and sunsets. Rationally, it would have been cool for my tangible God to pop out of the bushes and introduce Himself at the time. On the other hand, it almost feels sweeter now as I find out that He has been weaving a tale of His sweetness long into my story since even before I came to be.
What you know about your worth and your relationship with love is everything. It’s the rudder that steers our whole lives. As we begin to discover how good God actually is, we will find ourselves tangled in a love that flies over our walls for us, goes beyond our parameters, and breaks through any kind of sense to attain its most desired prize —you.
ASHLEY RADKE authors the blog Adventures of a Lifetime and loves to inspire people to experience how deeply enjoyed they are by God. Ashley is a Cleveland born-and-raised writer whose life has been turned radically upside down by the love of God and good Cleveland coffee.