Damaged Goods

When you secretly struggle with ongoing insecurities, FREEDOM comes with a substantial price but greater reward. Your commitment to God becomes an intentional act of daily surrender.

It’s a willingness to actively seek God to mend the broken pieces.
It’s a desire to rise up boldly in His power and silence the inner critic within.
It’s yielding to His authority and abandoning the need for “man made” endorsements.
It’s an opportunity to willfully submit in obedience rather than fold to the presence of surrounding sin.
It’s moving from the residence of despair to the palace of destiny.

Today, I spent time reminiscing on God’s faithfulness. I would love to say that my spiritual journey mirrored the life of Ruth (which name means pleasantness). We all know the story...she willfully relocated to become spiritually fed. Ruth abandoned the familiar and comfortable to embrace God’s best for her life. We are reminded of her incredible act of loyalty by this most familiar scripture:

Ruth 1:16-17
“But Ruth replied, “Don’t urge me to leave you or to turn back from you. Where you go I will go, and where you stay I will stay. Your people will be my people and your God my God. Where you die I will die, and there I will be buried. May the LORD deal with me, be it ever so severely, if even death separates you and me.”

My journey hasn’t always been driven by faithfulness towards God. My adolescent integrity collapsed many times during heightened peer pressure. No one ever taught me the significance of offering my body as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God. I never considered my body as a "sacred temple; so my reputation dwindled, as I searched for love in all the wrong places. I prematurely broke my precious alabaster box to unauthorized thieves disguised as ribs.

In the sight of my high school peers, I was already wrote off as an modern day “Rahab” with nothing meaningful to contribute to society. They’d already deemed me as “unworthy & insignificant” so my chances of survival were slim to none. Depression & loneliness would surely take me out! I was a vulnerable child prisoner enslaved to an adult reality. My most valuable life lesson, PRAYER, showed up through unconventional means. It was through repeated teachings of a sixth grade drop-out, my grandmother, that my framed my spiritual foundation. She defeated all odds stacked against her with dignity & grace. She taught me to wholeheartedly pray. I often wondered if God heard my prayers but I was certain that He heard hers. She was a “walking ministry” that lead by example.

Just like God rewarded Rahab with safety, He made a way of escape for me. God remembered Rahab’s faith, not her profession. She didn’t let fear overpower her faith in God’s ability to deliver.

God’s power resides in rejected, desolate people:

The ordinary, overlooked population that doesn’t stand out wearing red bottoms & sporting a Michael Kors handbag.
The quiet ones (behind the veils) who are frequently attacked by outdated, character flaws.
The ones who are judged because they don’t “look” the part.

The inadequate.
The social misfits.
The “damaged goods.”

However, in Christ there is comfort, healing, direction and purpose. Don’t write off the “unknown” for the familiar. You never know who God will use.

We, all, play a vital part in the kingdom, regardless of our past residence.