Battlefield of the mind

By Carolyn Young

All praise to our God and Father of our master Jesus the Messiah. Father of all mercy! God of all healing counsel! He comes alongside us when we go through hard times, and before you know it, he brings us alongside someone else who is going through hard times so that we can be there for that person just as God was there for us. We have plenty of hard times that come from following the Messiah, but no more so than the good times of his healing comfort-we get a full measure of that too. ( 2 cor 1:3-5) 

I wasn't sure what I needed to share writing this blog..but our Father knows all our needs so here goes..this is what I felt He told me to write..

Our minds are like a battlefield, everything starts with a thought and so on. With the word of God we can rest assured that His word is pure, it's wonderful, it's truth and it's powerful.

There was a time in my life when I struggled to know what I was here on earth for! What was i doing here?

Growing up was far from normal, it was turbulent and there was a lot of drama, but that I guess became normal to me. I can't remember there being many happy family moments that I would want to share with others but neither did I want to share about how disfunctional things felt for me either.  As time went on I grew overwhelmed with disappointment and discouragement.  I hid the fact that I was disatisfied because everyone around me seemed ok with it so I believed it would pass.
 
Thankfully I met with The Lord and He rescued me.  God totally transformed me physically and mentally and I believe  it was a miracle. Today I stand in the glory of His loving arms: the victory I finally conquered through Him because He won't be shaken.

Trying to keep it brief I want to highlight how awesome God really is.  He brought me to a place where I am now alive.  He rescued me from a place of anxiety and fear. He opened my heart and helped me to trust again and most of all He filled me with love and a sound mind.  God healed my body when I was sick. He healed my scars. He renewed my mind; He comforted me when I was isolated; He listened when I was screaming; He restored my heart; He forgave me, and He gave me strength when I couldn't go on.  He helped me to forgive when I didn't want to.  He gave me confidence and He made me beautiful.  What the enemy stole from me at a young age, God gave it all back and even more, and He still hasn't finished yet.  If He can do that for me then He will do it for you. I am an overcomer because of Him.

How does it really feel to be the victim all the time?
Firstly to be the victim,
Then feel like the victim,
and then always be treated as a victim! 

With Jesus there  is hope to break these chains. Today there are so many labels that we all become attached too.   Labels that aren't truth but lies! Whatever it is it can be broken with the love of the Father and His love never fails.
So how does the rest of the world react to this when the enemy is defeated? I mean, how do you walk  consistently and confidently upright away from your past! It might be hard but i can do ALL things with him who strengthens me. (Phil 4v13)

That was me in my early years of becoming a Christian. I had taken the step to change but everything around me was staying the same! I had given my life over but I wasn't walking in freedom every day.  I was a Christian but I wasn't perfect and that is okay, but the choice is always much easier to go backwards instead of forwards.  But in God's strength he can do immeasurable things when we are hungry and ready to accept Him. I needed guidance; I needed wisdom;  I needed protection, but most of all I needed a place where I would just be accepted. God fulfilled all those desires.  I was now a new me, the princess that I always was, the daughter that so desperately just wanted to shine by just being herself. The overcomer, the purpose driven character that had passion in her heart to live for Him.

I became a Christian at the age of 24 ( I am now 30) .  Before that I was wrestling with life and myself..and I was wasting away. I had anorexia/bulimia for many many years..a terrifying eating disorder that controlled my life in every way and near killed me.  It was a battle in my mind and the enemy was having a field day.  I hated my reflection in the mirror, and so sad to say, I tried to end my life many times because of those distorted lies from the bondage of body dismorphia.

I was a person that seemed like she was failing everything she ever started, a person that felt disappointed and was always in the way.  I was completely dead inside and the mask I wore was just so exhausting that if I was going to survive, it was going to have to come off!  From the outside it looked like I had everything to live for:  I was a perfectionist and I held it together for so long until I collapsed into a very dark place of destruction before I knew about the Jesus that saved me. What was I doing before I ever met with him?

How could my Father God love me and accept me the way I was?  I struggled trying to work that out and that his grace is enough! 

My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in my weakness. Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses so that Christs power may rest on me. That is why for Christs sake I delight in weaknesses in insults in hardships in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong.(2Cor12v9-10 ) 

It had been a painful time for me, a vicious cycle of hell, but today I am separated from that person I used to be.  I am now the beautiful woman God so carefully handcrafted me to be. Not only do I believe I carry beauty within, but I believe it is reflected in my beauty outside which God uses to lead life to others. Oh how that gentleness of love and affection makes people feel wonderful.

I was screaming inside to be heard but never had a voice.  I feel Satan stole my voice and God gave it back, and I use it more powerfully now.  Today I just love sharing what Jesus has done for me, and how He lives inside me, and how He set me free. God knows my heart.  He knows the pain that I carried.  He sees; He hears and He dealt with the despair I so desperately went through growing  up.  He cares, He loves, and He carried my burden and yours.  He helps me to forgive the people that hurt me.  He forgives my flaws too, and that means I must forgive myseIf! He is so generous with His love because He wants the best for me so I can only want to be more like Him. 

He is beautiful.  He is peace.  He is calm in the storm. He is gentle. He is different.  He is mighty.

You see...darkness hates the light, and light overcomes darkness.  Satan has no power over me. He is a liar and a thief.

For all those precious girls who are starved with the pain from their past,  please reach out to Jesus who takes all that shame away! For the ones that were robbed of their innocence and for those who carry those horrible thoughts in life that just overwhelm us with worry... For all those that wanted life to end and believed that they were a mistake..I understand and I encourage you to take captive those thoughts right now in the name of Jesus. I am a testimony of what freedom looks like and I choose Jesus everyday and stand on His promises of truth! Let me tell you that God uses it all. 

He transformed my mess into massive plans.  I know I have power when I use my voice to speak His words of affirmation about how He sees me.  God will use you too. He can turn everything around for the good.  

Running from a past is very exhausting. I was so terrified of being vunerable. Even though I hated my flesh I was so afraid of loosing control.  I surrendered all to Him because 
freedom tastes so good!

Trust me and trust Him..because there is rest in our Heavenly Father.

I love to worship God. Sometimes  I find myself just standing there weeping with joy because of how He has carried me to a place of love and security. I just close my eyes so not to be distracted and imagine how beautiful it is to be with Jesus in a place of peace. I am so proud to be His and so grateful to be where I am right now... not looking to where I want to be. That is called being content..saying I trust you, I love you, and I need you...

What you're made for

By Liz Simpson

Ever been in that situation where you’re getting to know someone new, maybe at a party, or at work and you start to feel nervous as the conversation goes on because you know what question they are going to ask next? You get past the “Hi my name is” … “I’m from…” wait... Here it comes…
“So what do you do?”

Yes... THAT question. This is the question that used to make my stomach do somersaults every time someone asked me it. For some time my answer was “I’m an art student” to which the conversation would then progress to whether or not I brought crayons with me to college. Then it moved on to “I work in a bank” (you can imagine the conversation that followed that one). Finally it went to “well I’m doing an internship but actually I’m not sure what I want to do”. 

People around you usually want to know what career you’re in, what part of society you contribute to and sometimes even what you’re passionate about. But what happens when you don’t know any of these things about yourself?

No one ever prepares you for this stage of life, when you feel stuck in the “in between."  Perhaps you have a vague memory of lost or forgotten dreams you used to have as a child but due to circumstance these dreams never quite moulded into reality. You feel a ridiculous amount of pressure to label yourself as something, just to make these conversations easier, never mind the lie that keeps going round in your head that “you’re a failure."

It seems that society is screaming so many of these labels at us, we are never sure which one is best. The world is telling us that “we need” money, fame, beauty… and most of the time we’re grabbing onto so many ideas because we don’t have a clue what we want or need ourselves. The real question we are wrestling with here is not "what am I doing"….but "who am I?" "How do I fit in?"

Let me save you some time here. You were never made to fit in. You were born to stand out.

It’s who you are, not what you say and do, that counts. Your true being brims over into true words and deeds. 

Luke 6:43  “No good tree bears bad fruit, nor does a bad tree bear good fruit.

When people would say “Oh you’re an Artist” I would often question did I really want to be an artist and was this really who I was made to be? I never really liked the whole stereotype or even the idea of cutting my ear off anyway…

Last July when I was coming to the end of my youth internship, I kept asking God, "what is your plan for me?" "What do I do next?" This time I felt God spoke to me and said “Just be”. This was the first time I realised I needed to not have any distractions from God- no clutching at straws trying to be something I wasn’t. 

God was calling me to not “do” anything, and I was so afraid. I was afraid I wouldn’t know how to fill the time. Although…I’m not going to lie to you, at first it was great- it felt like a holiday, but as time drew on, it grew harder and harder to say no to things I would have loved to be involved in and help with, but God kept saying “Come find me”.

When I came to spend time with him, initially I felt stumped. I wasn’t sure what it looked like to spend alone time with God other than reading my bible and praying (which is great) but I am not the sort of person who could do that all day long. I wasn’t sure that just being me or doing what I have always known to love would be enough for Him. However, there was no other version of me left that I could be. I started to do the things I always loved doing but didn’t always get (or make) time to do, like picking up my paint brush once again.


In doing these things I started to feel more of God’s presence than I ever had. As if God was doing this with me. I felt more confident and that I could let go of the anxiety and uncertainty my future held. Through creativity, I felt a connection to God I rarely felt before. These times started to become my times with God, my intimacy with him.

You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart. Jeremiah 29:13

What if we were made for more? More than expectations, more than what society tries to constantly label us as. God is not a God that can be labelled or contained in a box, and if we carry Him in us and are also made in His image, then why would we do this to ourselves? What if what we were made to do was never meant to fit into the ideals and confines of a job description?

To truly know who you are, you have to know who He is, and what He is speaking over you. Then and only then will the world around you be transformed. You see, once I let go of what other people wanted me to do, or what society made me think I “should” do, I found the Author of my story: The God who had already called me into being. When we let go and let God, we start to become the person we were made to be, the person that’s been under there the whole time.

Home

by Emily Lynas

‘If you wanna go 

I’m going back down South now 

Come on take my hand 

I’m heading back down South now’ Kings of Leon.

‘I salute at the threshold of the North sea of my mind...Swim until you can't see land’
Frightened Rabbit.

My husband Dave can usually figure out quite quickly where my heart is in that moment depending on which song I’m spinning around the sitting room floor to. 

Sometimes I feel like I have a split personality or just that my heart is in two places!

There are days when I pine for my home county of Wicklow, with its tall trees and gorse covered mountains. 
I pine for my family home, sitting at my parents' kitchen table with a cup of coffee, and nieces and nephews charging around while we all talk over each other about nothing hugely significant, but no one wants to leave! 
I pine for Dublin and its winding streets littered beautifully with Georgian architecture and cobbled paths. I pine for how well I know it and how certain places flood my memory with college days and stolen kisses! I pine for old friends who have known me all my life and still seem to love me more than ever, friends that have weathered the worst of storms with me and celebrated the sweetest of life’s moments.

I pine for where I was born and grew up and this is when I play Kings of Leon’s aptly named song ‘Back Down South’ (I know its really about the Southern states of the US, but who cares)

But wait.....

There are the other days when I relish in the incredible fact that I live on the wild North coast of Ireland.
These are the days when I am running along the Portstewart Strand with two mad dogs and God is embarrassingly showing off again!! with a winter kissed sunset that puts all other sunsets to shame around the world. 

I fall in love daily with this land.

I love its unpredictable weather patterns and ever changing sea colour. I love when the ‘swell is pumping man’ and a flurry of texts fly around, and low and behold Dave, Dan, Tim, Spencey, Jonny and many more are suddenly not that busy!!! The sea is filled with wet suited clad men braving the cold temperatures and fixated on the rush that comes with the mighty ocean. I love the friends I’ve made here, people who are sold out for Jesus and never ashamed to brag about his glorious generosity. I love the church community we are privileged to be a part of and how it never ceases to surprise me how unique it really is. I love I can be myself in my oddness and joy filled craziness. I love that Dave came back to the place he was born and grew up in; I love that he returned a very different person than when he left. I love being around his family and the wisdom and warmth they bestow upon us.

So when I bubble over with the privilege of being planted here for this season of my life .... I play Frightened Rabbit ‘Swim until you cant see land’ because this place holds endless possibilities for me, many I can't even see yet..! and I ‘Salute at the threshold of the North sea..’

There is another song that I play which I believe calms my ever torn heart...and that is ‘Home’ by Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros (the band I will one day leave you all for and join...look them up and you will see why!)

‘Home, let me come home

 Home is whenever I’m with you’

You see I don’t believe God ‘called us North’ I believe he ‘called’ us to Himself. God is ‘home’ for me. I also believe that we needed a change, a challenge, an adventure. Both Dave and I are risk takers but this has been something we have grown into and through life circumstances we have become less afraid. 

Some days I have a long term memory and I can remember Gods promises and what our future is in Him. 
Some days I have a short term memory and I get caught up in my feelings of homesickness or panic about the cliff we are about to jump off!! This ‘cliff’ of course is the coffee shop Lost & Found we are shortly opening up with the incredible Daniel and Kathleen. 

I’ve found over the years that life really boils down to a daily decision of faith, to believe wholeheartedly that you can be sure of what you hope for and certain of what you have not yet seen.

Saving that, it’s always a good thing to listen to your favourite music and dance like nobody's watching....

Faith, Hope and Love

By Julie Wallace

I was blessed to be born into a wonderful, loving family, a happy family! My two sisters were 15 years older than me so I was spoiled .  We attended church every Sunday I went to Sunday school and Girls Brigade , we had a strong Faith. I had no idea just to what extremes this faith of mine was to be tested from the young age of 12.

I was looking forward to our first family holiday the following day, I was so excited asking “How long to we go?” “How long will it be to we get there?” I think my mum and Dad were probably sick listening to me! My mum had arranged for me to go and play with a friend for the day, so they left me off at her house. I waved them off and I remember saying “when you lift me it will only be 7 hours to we leave!” How wrong was I.

A few hours later the doorbell rang and my friends mum called us down stairs and I couldn’t believe it my two sisters and two family friends were all standing there just looking at me. Then one of my sisters took me in her arms and told me our mother had died. I remember saying don’t be silly she’s not even sick, but it was true. She took a massive heart attack and died suddenly while drinking a cup of tea. 

I refused to go home. Somewhere in my head I told myself that if I didn’t go home it wouldn’t be true. I didn’t cry. I didn’t scream.  I just pretended it wasn’t true. This is how I coped. I blocked it out.  I refused to deal with it. I refused to let anybody in including God. But I remember saying to God that day, “I’m done with you, look at what you have taken from me.”  So in my juvenile mind, that’s what I did.

My Dad and I were both devastated but we had to continue with our lives so we got on with it. My Dad gave up work to be at home for me, and with a strong family surrounding me and supporting me life continued. My Dad decided he would get a health check in the wake of what had happened to me mother. This health check showed abnormalities in his heart and he was admitted to hospital for 2 weeks of further tests. I stayed with my sister and we visited him 2 times a day. Once again I felt God had deserted me, why was my Dad now sick too??  Would God really do this to me?  My dad was diagnosed with a condition called Hypertrophic Cardiomyopathy

Considering he had no symptoms this was a shock to us. Then the consultant told us that it was a genetic condition and we were all at risk of developing it so we would all have to have heart scans immediately and be screened every 3 years for the rest of our lives.  My sisters’ children also were to be scanned. There was no cure and the main symptom was sudden death. We were all scanned and my father’s brother was also diagnosed with the condition. At this stage I didn’t realise the seriousness of it all I just knew my Dad wasn’t sick and I thought it would all be fine. How wrong was I.

My father died suddenly with a massive heart attack when I was 17 and sitting my A Levels. So at the age of 17  I had lost my mother, my father, my uncle and was living under the cloak of cardiomyopathy.

I had totally blocked God out of my life. I stopped attending church. I just didn’t want to know Him. I felt he didn’t love me. My faith was gone and I had little hope for my life.

I went off to university.  I was existing not living.

Then I met the wonderful Ryan, my hubby to be. We started going out a few years later. We got engaged. Ryan wanted me to start attending church with him. I thought about it and decided I would go to please him but I was not interested in God. The more I attended my heart became more receptive to God and very slowly I began to let Him in again. It was after the birth of my first child that I gave my life back to God. I realised that my life was in his hands and this gift that he had given me could only come from a God of Love. He had a plan for my life, to be a wife, a mother and servant of God.

I know that God never left my side through my journey but if I had walked it with Him instead of running from Him It would have been easier. I know that the trials I faced made me into the person I am today and I now accept that was the plan God had for my life. 

Everyday I carry these two verses with me –

Philippians 4:13 I can do all things through Him who strengthens me.

1 Corinthians 13 And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.

And it is with His strength, love and my faith that we face our next trial. My sister has recently been diagnosed with hypertrophic cardiomyopathy and we have very difficult decisions to make regarding genetic testing for our children. We will do this with God by our sides knowing he will direct our paths because He is forever faithful and always good.

It is tempting to live in fear.  But as I live my real faith through these real challenges I look to Him and trade my fear for His joy...my weakness for His strength.  With my hope and faith in Him I pray for healing across my family.

And my experience has given me such a sense of compassion and faith to believe for hope in the lives of those that have gone through similar experiences.

It is truly the gifts of faith, hope and love that have sustained my life and WILL sustain my life, my family, my joy, and my peace.