A Time to Share

This Sunday marked the end of our Life's Healing Choices series at church & I have to say I'm a little disappointed that things are ending. I've learned so much in this series & with it ending comes the hard part of actually putting everything into practice. However, I know that new sermon series will come that will give me the opportunity to learn even more.

This week was basically a quick recap of all that we have learned in the past 7 weeks. We quickly revisited some very important truths that I need to remember on a daily basis. I won't go into a deep discussion on them but they are all so important in the healing process.

• We are all Broken
• We all have a Choice
• Healing begins with Honesty
• Healing is a Journey
• Healing requires Action
• Healing happens through Helping Others

It's this last truth of helping others that was the focus of the final healing choice: The Sharing Choice. "I will yield myself to God to be used to bring this Good News to others, both by my example & by my words." Through our faults & failures, we are able to minister to others that may be experiencing the same difficulty.

The phrase that was used to describe this act of sharing was "recycling our pain." God can take all the garbage and hurts that we have experienced and use them to create something good for those around us. God wants to use our failures to help heal others & in turn heal us. It's always so hard to share our faults as we fear we may look weak; however, how many people could we be helping if we should just humble ourselves and show our true faces? Taking off our masks will not only help us to experience true healing but we can also show others that they are most definitely not the only ones struggling.

We have to recognize that even with all of our disgusting sin, God loves us & wants to give us a life full of hope & love. We need to pass on that hope & love to others around us even it means sharing some of our deepest darkest secrets.

"God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference. Living one day at a time, enjoying one moment at a time, accepting hardship as a pathway to peace, taking, as Jesus did, this sinful world as it is, not as I would have it; trusting that You will make all things right if I surrender to your will. " The Prayer of Serenity~Reinhold Niebuhr