As most of you know I had the opportunity to share Jesus at the women's ornamnent party on Saturday. I want to thank you all for your support because it was way out of my comfort zone but you all worked with me and made me feel more comfortable than I thought I would ever be. I said it was recorded but I have had download issues galore but I think I have it fixed. THINK. If you click the link it should pull it up via facebook even if we are not facebook friends. should. Let me know if it doesn't work and I will get frustrated with it some more LOL
https://www.facebook.com/allyson.hartman.3/videos/2230089540348792/?l=3523458466721859591
I forgot to mention at the time but there is another version of my talk that shares some graphic reality that was not really appropriate for the occasion but if you are interested keep reading.
Romans 3:21-26 The Message (MSG)
The
God-setting-things-right that we read about has become
Jesus-setting-things-right for us. And not only for us, but for everyone who
believes in him. For there is no difference between us. Since we’ve compiled
this long and sorry record as sinners and proved that we are utterly incapable
of living the glorious lives God wills for us, God did it for us. Out of sheer
generosity he put us in right standing with himself. A pure gift. He got us out
of the mess we’re in and restored us to where he always wanted us to be. And he
did it by means of Jesus Christ.
God sacrificed
Jesus on the altar of the world to clear that world of sin. Having faith in him
sets us in the clear. God decided on this course of action in full view of the
public—to set the world in the clear with himself through the sacrifice of
Jesus, finally taking care of the sins he had so patiently endured. God sets
things right through the hope of Jesus.
In
an act of such mercy and love God sent hope to meet us where we are. Jesus was
sent into a broken world to fulfill God’s perfect rescue plan that each one of
us need. But sin can leave us in such oblivion that we don’t even know hope is
out there in the first place or we wander so far away that we can no longer see
the hope we once had. Both are detrimental, but the good news is it doesn’t end
here.
Jeremiah 29:11
For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to
harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.
This plan doesn’t
always make sense to us, when we are living it, it can be very hard to see how
any good can come out of that circumstance but oh man are we wrong.
I think back on a time in my life where I
felt completely hopeless. I had been facing health battles due to some trapped
nerves for about 2 years. The physical pain brought me to a place where I
believed I could not possibly have faith in a God who makes THIS a part of His
plan for my life. Having pushed Jesus out of the picture I still had to have a
way to cope. I turned to cutting to escape this life that I could not handle
myself.
This cutting
coping mechanism I had began was soon not enough. I gave up and didn’t want to
fight anymore. I landed myself in a pediatric psych ward. In the background God
was still targeting me but I refused to even acknowledge it. My first day
involved a mandatory group therapy session where we all went around telling our
stories, I think I was maybe the 5th person in the lineup and I have
never felt like more of an idiot in my life. The first to go was actually my
roommate who shared that they brought her straight up from the ICU where she
was barely revived after her third suicide attempt. The second girl shared that
she has had several suicide attempts because her boyfriend had taken her hiking
one day and when they got to the top of the cliff he broke down, told her he
was sorry but he had to go and jumped off right in front of her. The third girl to go
had been raped by her uncle and was now pregnant with his baby. The next had no
one, she had been there for 3 straight months and never had a visit or a phone
call because nobody cared about her.
I was
stunned. I said a few fragmented sentences and we went on to the next person.
When it was over I quickly shuffled back to my room with embarrassment. I had a
nurse who immediately called me back out to sit at a table in the corner with
him to talk. He asked why I was here and again I stumbled through fragmented sentences,
but he stopped me. “You know God, don’t you?”. I quietly said yes, and he
proceeds to ask me again why I was there. When I didn’t answer he told me to
look around at all of these people with shattered and hopeless lives. I knew
you were different. You have something that none of them have, hope in Jesus
and yet here we are. I ask again why you are here but this time don’t answer me.
He reached over and grabbed a bible and gave me passages to look up and sent me
to my room to reflect. Letting God back into my life and trusting Him again
took effort but I had learned that I really cannot do this myself. I had to be
broken to the core in order to be restored. No matter where you run you are His
and He will target you, love you, and fix your broken pieces if you let Him. He
waits for your return with open arms.
Through the
birth of Jesus our true source for hope and joy came to meet us where we are. There
are so many hopeless people in this world who do not know they can be put back
together. They don’t know the good news that there is a rescue plan out there.
They don’t know they have a hope filled future, they don’t know that it’s
possible to find joy in pain. They don’t know that they are loved, cared for
and cherished. Jesus is desperately needed.
Once I grasped Jesus again my mindset changed. Only at that
point was I able to look back at my life as a whole and see the blessings in
disgiuse . The journey of life has many speed bumps that I used to look back at and see nothing but hurt but now
I am replaying how God moved mountains in ways nobody could ever imagine.
Psalm 139:13-14 New International Version
(NIV)
For you created my inmost being;
you
knit me together in my mother’s womb.
I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made;
your
works are wonderful,
I
know that full well
.,
God has a reason for knitting
you in your mother’s womb. You were wonderfully made for a designated God given
purpose no matter what. Complications of
pre-term labor made The doctors really push my parents to abort me, they said I would
be a vegetable and basically a worthless human being if I even survived in the
first place Against all odds., I was born alive at 24 weeks weighing 1 pound 8
ounces but still with little to no chance of survival. My life goes to show that
God doesn’t do “chances”. I
spent 4 months in the NICU with a lot of hurdles, scary times but more miracles
than can be counted. The doctors fully believed I would have severe brain
damage and my lungs would never be able to support me but Doctors are not the creator
and giver of life. The creator calls the shots.
Anytime
a loved one is ill in any way affects others. My life events have not only
brought me to despair also left my parents with some incredibly hard emotions and
feelings. I am fairly certain one of the
hardest moments was the day my mom happened to walk by my bedroom and heard
some weird noises. When she went to check on me I was unconscious, gurgling
when I tried to breathe. Of course the ambulance crew was called and they were trying
so hard to get my airway clear but for some still unknown reason my tongue was
so swollen they couldn’t and knew I needed to get to a hospital because my
brain and organs were not getting enough oxygen. At the hospital I had slipped
into a coma because at some point my organs had failed that night, nobody knows how long I had been
without oxygen and the doctors were not sure I would pull through. This was the
worst possible scenario. They knew my
brain was damaged but nobody knew how badly until I woke up. When I did the damage manifested itself in
severe short term memory loss, involuntary movements and I had the hardest time
trying to connect words. The MRI showed that the back portion of my brain had
died off from a lack of oxygen and doctors thought my deficits would be
permanent. I slowly improved and over the course of a few months everything but
the memory loss was gone and even that was significantly better. Not only did
He destroy brain damage He restored the rest of me at the same time. My trapped
nerve issues? Gone. My desire to cut? Gone. My will to live? Restored. My life?
Saved.
God
took the worst possible scenario and changed it to the best thing that could
have ever happened. To me, He gave me my life back. The following 3 years were basically
how you would expect a healthy persons life to be. What I assumed was over was not and trusting
is all I could do.
Proverbs 3:5-6 New
International Version (NIV)
Trust in the Lord with all
your heart
and lean not on your own
understanding;
in all
your ways submit to him,
and he will make your paths
straight.
.
It
will be 6 years on the 13th since I was diagnosed with nervous
system failure. This is where we have 2 options, fight with Jesus or fail to
fight without Jesus. I have done both and there is no hope when we try to do
this ourselves. We will fail every single time. This is why God sent us this
little baby , He knows we don’t stand a chance without Him. This birth of Jesus
changed my destiny, your destiny and the hope of a free destiny for the whole
world. This is the good news we celebrate
