He Makes Me New

God is constantly using a series of events to reveal Himself to me. Yom Kippur is a special time for me; it is a Jewish holiday, one of the holiest and most solemn days of the year, which focuses on atonement and repentance. During Yom Kippur God was showing me that He makes me new. He removes my sin from me and makes me clean. Somehow even though I’ve always had the head knowledge of this, I was finally being awakened to this seemingly new reality. God continued to show me this in many ways throughout the next several weeks. Upon hearing the testimony of a friend, who had just received a medical diagnosis, I knew to have faith in God. He told me that all things were possible through Him, who is bigger than our diagnoses. God is not bound to our labels or the patterns from past evidence. The past does not in any way contribute to future outcome. God has removed the past from His memory, refusing to consult it in order to decide the future.

When we went to Redding, California for the Open Heavens Conference I was constantly being prophesied over and it was a huge encouragement. It was exciting to experience God’s love, knowing that He was thinking about me and cared about the things I think about. One encouraging word I was told was of God’s forgiveness. Of course I had knowledge of this, but I had always struggled with this concept. I had bought into the lie of the enemy, that I wasn’t good enough because of the past. I believed the lie that I was dirty and defiled for my past sins. I thought that I couldn’t be whole or renewed because I could never change from my old ways of living. I’ve been fighting this lie my whole life and I always try to remind myself of the truths of God. Somehow, by hearing the truth spoken by another person, I had a revelation. I knew that God was speaking to me. He cared enough about me to verbally speak through this person and express the truths of His love. The truth is God loved me enough to die and take my sins. Those sins of my past are no longer mine. I had lived my life taking Jesus’ sacrifice in vain, not applying its value to my life. While on this trip in Redding, we did an outreach ministry activity called a treasure hunt. Treasure hunting involves approaching strangers to pray for them and prophesy over them, sharing God’s love and miraculous power. This was a stretching experience and I learned that through God’s strength I will be able to do things I never thought I could do.