Heidi's Story

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Read 1 Peter 5:6-10

6Humble yourselves, therefore, under the mighty hand of God, so that he may exalt you at the proper time, 7 casting all your cares on him, because he cares about you. 8 Be sober-minded, be alert. Your adversary the devil is prowling around like a roaring lion, looking for anyone he can devour. 9 Resist him, firm in the faith, knowing that the same kind of sufferings are being experienced by your fellow believers throughout the world. 10 The God of all grace, who called you to his eternal glory in Christ,will himself restore, establish, strengthen, and support you after you have suffered a little while.

Pray!

Why I, Averted

We are doing this series because our testimonies point to the glory and faithfulness of our God.

Our stories are reminders that God is compassionate , loving, merciful, powerful and active in all of our lives.

Our stories can be used to point others to Christ.

Where is my identity Section:

First I wanna thank Heidi for sharing her story.

And I wanna let you all know that if you are here and have been suffering on your own as you have carried the weight of being sexually assaulted and the unbelievable pain and emotions that it brings.

There is hope and people willing to walk with you to be free from it. And I want to remind you that it is not your fault it happened to you. There is resource page of place to reach out to for help. Grabs one on your way out today if you need it.

I wanna really start this off with a question for us to ponder for a minute. Where is your identity?

We can find our identity in multiple different way and honestly most of them are the wrong things that we allow to become our identity.

In todays world we can have our money, career, relationships, achievements, family, sexual orientation, if we are being honest some of us can make depression our identity or our past traumas (I’m guilty of this)

May I remind you the only place Point1:our identity should be found is in Christ alone!

2 Corinthians 5:17 says, Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has passed away, and see, the new has come!

Once you have given your life to Jesus you have been made new. You are new person. This doesn’t mean all your problems fall away or that you won’t struggle with the same things you did before Christ. You will even struggle with your identity still. But let me remind you now for those of you in this room who haVe given their lives to Christ at some point. You are his son and daughter he has paid for all your sines and they have been covered past, present, and future. Your Identity is in Jesus not yourself or this world.

For those in this room who maybe haven’t given their lives to Jesus. You don’t have to struggle alone any longer. There is hope to be found in Jesus. You have wrestled long enough on your own finding your identity in all the wrong places. God reminds us that in Psalm 139 “For it was you who created my inward parts; you knit me together in my mother’s womb.”

If you haven’t given your life over to Jesus stop running and give your life to Him and allow him to start a new work in your life and help you become the some or daughter He has desired for you to be. You no longer have to be bound to the things of this world that are fighting for our attention and want us to be consumed with. Let’s us be consumed by God.

Guilt & Shame Section:

Often times when we struggle to find our identity in Christ or continually seek after Him is because of guilt and shame.

We can allow guilt in shame to paralyze us and another since consume us so much that we feel that this guilt and shame is all we will ever know and is what we deserve. Well this is lie that must be exposed.

Guilt happens for this of us who have done terrible things to ourselves or others and when we know it’s wrong… but we can also feel guilt because of what has happened to us in the past… we begin to feel that what the traumatic or abusive things that happened to us as children or at any point in our Iives was our fault so therefore we walk around feeling guilty and anytime something goes wrong it has to be our fault.

Or we we do sin and do something wrong we ask for forgiveness and know God has forgiven us yet we continue to feel guilty and try to beat ourselves up about it this is false guilt.

Many struggle with false guilt. They are forgiven, yet they still feel guilty. They feel stuck in guilt. They may think, “I know God has forgiven me, but I can’t forgive myself.” They have prayed, confessed their sin, and believe that God has granted them forgiveness because of Jesus. Yet they continue to beat themselves up. The reason for false guilt might not be what we think. Satan whispers into our souls that we don’t deserve full pardon until we prove to God how sorry we are. We must continue to carry the load of shame; we deserve it. We are not worthy to accept God’s pardon until we have punished ourselves, Satan says. And then he lies some more, telling us that, in hanging on to guilt, we are being humble

The opposite is true. In hanging on to guilty feelings after we have been forgiven, we are being prideful. Humility gratefully accepts a pardon it can never earn and lives to demonstrate that gratefulness. Pride says, “God may forgive me, but my standard is higher than God’s. What Jesus did on the cross may be sufficient to cover other sins, but not mine. I must help Jesus pay for this sin by punishing myself. I will continue to carry my shame until I decide I have paid for it.” In clinging to false guilt, we insult the sacrifice of Christ by implying that His death on the cross was not powerful enough to cover every sin. False guilt can keep us from growing into the mature Christians God wants us to be.

True feelings of guilt keep us humble as we recognize no one can be good enough to earn God’s favor. A recognition of guilt should drive us to gratefully receive all God has done on our behalf.

Point 2:True guilt propels us toward God; false guilt drives us away.

False guilt sees failure as a life sentence; true guilt sees failure as another opportunity to experience more of God’s mercy and grace. True guilt is erased by repentance and restoration; false guilt continues to cling to us even after we’ve repented. When we learn to recognize the difference, guilt does not have to dominate our lives.

Some of us may also feel shame from what we have done or what has been done to us… we feel dirty, condemned and not worthy of anyones love including God… my friend this is the furthest thing from the truth….

Romans 8:1 is a great comfort to any believer who struggles with feelings of shame and regret: “There is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.” Jesus has set you free or offers you that freedom if you have received it yet. He doesn’t see you as a broken useless person. He sees you as his hurting son or daughter and only He can truly heal you from all your hurts, sins, shame, and guilt.

We are all sinners, but we are justified. We have a shameful past, but we have a better future. We used to walk in foolishness and rebellion, but now we walk in newness of life. God has forgiven those sins we feel shame and regret over. We can move on. “I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me, and delivered Himself up for me” (Galatians 2:20).

God meets us where we are… we don’t have to strive to get to Him. He has come to us.

He met Heidi at the movies, he met me in the side of the road (share some about this) but something interesting about this is someone had planted seeds in us about Jesus at some point in time before that moment and led us to that moment for God to meet us.

We must do the same for others. We must plant seed of Jesus in the people around us who are lost, lonely, and hurting (even they aren’t willing to admit it) you might not see the fruit if it, but that doesn’t matter because God does the work on people we just introduce people to the greets Gardner who meets and cares for His people where they are.