The Real Me

Truth led her to the Water…

“If you want to know the truth, go ask Tammy.” Yep, that’s what Mom would say because she knew I didn’t beat around the bush. It’s how God made me. Maybe that’s why it’s easy for me to speak truth into the lives of those who are hurting and struggling with life. To bring freedom from the grip of Satan’s lies.

 As we’ve learned in Chapter 8 of A Confident Heart by Renee Swope, God gives us different characteristics and spiritual gifts to make up the body of Christ. I’ve taken the test and here are the results: Choleric/ Sanguine   Spiritual gifts: Prophecy, Teaching and Exhortation.

If you have a few more minutes, I’d like to share a story of what happened when I allowed God to use…The Real Me

Sitting across from me in the Spring of 2011, I could see she was unsure about sharing her story (maybe for the first time) the reasons why she chose to abort the child within her. But she really didn’t need to mummer a word, her body language said it all… Shame. Angry. Guilt. Along with an emptiness that had taken residence in her heart.  The voice struggled to cry out. It wanted to take back all she had done but the past was now to be her future.

As her story started to unfold, her body began to relax and there in her eyes I saw a glimmer of hope... God was with us. She told me she had grown up religious but it wasn’t apart of her life today. Yet, she was willing to let me come along side of her to help with this pain that she was experiencing. A pain the world told her wouldn’t exist if she was to have this “procedure.”

 I knew this wasn’t going to be easy. Why? Well, it never is when you have to speak truth into  someone’s life who is blinded by darkness. Darkness has a clever way of making us think we are deserving of wants. It convinces us that life is all about us. I guess you could say its real name is…Pride.  Yes, pride, I knew it all to well. It had destroyed a life within me many years ago and it continued to steal the relationships around me for years to come. So, I knew where she was coming from, where she was and where she was going.

Our relationship grew as the weeks passed through this journey of healing and restoration. We shared, we laughed, we cried, yet I knew she wouldn’t be able to live in the present, until she trusted God. Believed in His Truth. I had asked her several times if she wanted to receive the gift of salvation and each time she would declined the wall grew a little stronger. Then on our fifth meeting the LORD whispered to me “ Tammy, lay out the truth boldly and I’ll do the rest.”   

Yep, you guessed it! She declined and went home. I thought did I hear God or was it my own hopeful desire to lead her to the living water. It wasn’t until our next meeting, she told me she’d been having a hard time swallowing some of the truth that was said to her, but she decided to seek God during the week and she found Him!

Its been two years since the day of her salvation, when Truth spoke into her life and believe me, she is on fire for God!

One thing I try to do is stay connected with the women I’ve worked with either through Facebook, email or texting. Many times my heart has been blessed to see the growth they’ve made, so when Kim invited me to her baptism on November 17, 2013 my heart was filled with a sense of thankfulness. Without hesitation, she stood in front of the congregation and told her testimony. A testimony that many of us are still ashamed to utter a word but not her. By her revealing the “secret” (her daughter) Bella’s life would be validated and Kim’s baptism was now the finally statement to…I belong to Christ Jesus.

Oh, one last thing. As we were all singing and worshiping before the baptism, God spoke these words to my heart... “Tell Kim that her daughter didn’t die in vain.”  Now, I don’t get these orders from God very often but when I told Kim, her eyes filled with tears, and I believed, she knew what God meant.

 My friends…it was a bittersweet moment.