29.4.2020.
April is coming to an end.
The uncertainty over this time is prevalent in the UK.
The big question is: “how can we safely return to standard functioning in society?”
(33) Going for God
2016 – 2017. Age Thirty-Three.
In November 2016, I embarked on my first Christian mission trip to Chennai in India.
See the video below.
The eye-opening experience of this excursion could be described as ‘conspicuous reliance on faith.’
What I mean is, in travelling to a country I’d gone to at the will of God, I experienced the thoughts and feelings that come with full dependency on God’s protection.
Everywhere I looked, the poverty of Chennai was clear; I knew I was in a foreign land where my faculties–intelligence, wisdom, strength–were of no avail.
Unlike walking around in London where I took every single move for granted, whether it be crossing the road or going to the supermarket for groceries, in Chennai, I had to faithfully rely upon God that He’d keep me safe; this was extremely visible to me.
By 2017, my men’s purity walk had unveiled much of the deep wounds that had governed my life.
I think the biggest revelation was the coping mechanisms, self-protective devices, and mental-masks I’d created out of childhood wounds.
Despite my reliance upon them, each had been deconstructed as a deception.
They’d not healed me; only compounded and/or suppressed the hurt or trauma that was underneath.
For the whole of 2017, I was defenceless.
Having renounced these forms of protection, I was left as an open wound, practising how to take on a new form of defence: God’s protection and healing.
All coping mechanisms, defence strategies, survival instincts, pretences, and masks of strength had been exposed and thereby, destroyed.
It was an exceptionally difficult time.
When I’d look in the mirror, I was mentally taunted by thoughts of insignificance, inferiority, unworthiness, and ugliness. It was brutal, but I noticed very distinctly that it was my own voice doing the taunting.
It was as if my decision to no longer accept defence mechanisms and self-protective strategies, had unleashed all the wounds of my life upon me; like deciding not to feed a doberman, who had protected me for ages, it turned on me.
I was no longer feeding ego and in its starvation, all the self-affirmation and exaltation I would usually get, turned putrid and became my greatest enemy.
In August 2017, the self-deprecating voice took to fiercer levels.
It was at a Christian conference that I felt the deepest, most overwhelming revelation yet and through floods of tears, the words in my mind materialised like this:
“God. I realise there’s nothing of worth in this world, but serving your Kingdom. The only thing of importance is Kingdom work. I surrender everything.”
Message from Jesus – “Surrender all.”
Message from the World – “You are ugly, inferior, insignificant, and worthless.”
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