Today is another day where I can’t just write what I want to say – I need to “show and tell” you. In today’s short video message below I share how God walked me through a process of looking back with courage – so I could move forward with hope. He helped me identify things I didn’t even know were affecting me and gently led my heart on a journey towards freedom – showing me how to of let go of the pain from my yesterdays so I could live with confident hope in my todays… and tomorrows.
{Are you a note-taker? If so, I created “Video Message Notes” in a PDF format here or in a MSWord doc here, just for you. Even included key verses and blanks to fill in.} 🙂
Today’s Giveaway:
I’m giving away 3 Confident Heart gift packs for 3 of you. Each one includes a copy of my book, A Confident Heart {for you or a friend?}, my “Rest Assured” message on CD and a Starbucks gift card!
Let’s Connect {and how to enter today’s drawing}:
I’d love to hear how God speaks to you through today’s video message… and this is an easy way to enter today’s giveaway too. Just click “share your thoughts” right below this post and do just that. I’ll be here reading and praying over each of you and your stories. {Also, I know the timelines I encourage you to create might sound overwhelming or scary, so I recorded a little video message to talk/walk you through that process – If you’d like to hear more click here to watch it after you share your thoughts below.}
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I am scared of the timeline. I am scared of the sorrows in my past. But your book is helping me find the courage to face my past hurts and look towards a promise filled future. Thank you.
This really spoke to my heart tis morning. This is so in line wit things I a struggling so deeply with right now and I’ve been hearing from the enemy that it is just me and that no one else is this messed up or miserable but I feel so much hope and encouragement just from what ou said and ht I’ve read. Thank you so much and I am looking forward to getting a copy of your amazing book! God showed me that He is thinking of me and lves me through you today, thank you.
Wow! This book is helping me to bring out things i didn’t even know was there. I’m on the path to freedom! I feel that it was meant for me to do this study so that God can take me to a higher level in him.
I just came upon your page from Proverbs 31……your devotion hit home! I can’t wait to explore your site and join your site. Hoping I can win a book…but if I don’t, it is getting ordered!
thanks. im here from proverbs 31, that your friend didnt have an answer made me feel better and sorry did too. b/c i’ve learned you never know what your born into. perhaps your forefathers made poor choices and now you are reaping the fruit. God doesnt promise to protect us from others bad mistakes. So to say im sorry is the right response. u see my dad was a criminal and because of it i suffered a great deal. I look back on my own mistakes which followed in suit with his and there’s more. God isnt going to change my reality but allow me the opportunity to choose Him to choose better. my dad took me to church a decision that is yielding tremendous fruit. so i suppose there is hope but its not going to happen overnight.
I am so, very excited about this study! I am in a Bible study group at my church, but they only do sessions in the spring and fall. I have a difficult time between sessions keeping up with my Bible studies. Our spring session just ended a few weeks ago and I was just starting to feel the disappointment of me failing to keep up with reading my Bible every day. I had come across your book via a Proverbs 31 Facebook post. It was when you were giving away free downloads of it. I glanced, thought “Eh, I’ll go ahead and download it, since it’s free and all, and SOMEday, I’ll read it.” A week or so later, I saw another post (also on Proverbs 31’s Facebook page) that you were doing a Bible study on it. I signed up immediately! It has really helped me in this “in between sessions” time.
I have not started Chapter 4 yet, but I am already nervous about it. 🙂 Until now, I have honestly felt like I really haven’t had THAT severe of a hurt in my life. I have had quite a good life, actually. But now I feel God tugging at my heart that there is SOMETHING down there that I need to deal with. Not quite sure what it is yet, but we’ll see!
~Heather~
P.S. – I see that to enter the contest, all you have to do is comment in this section. But how do you pick the winners? Do you just pick random posts? Or do you pick posts that you particularly like? Just curious how it works. :0)
We pray and choose randomly :0) Thanks for asking.
I thank God for placing you in my path. I just recently uncovered alot of hurt from my past and do not know how to deal with them. I am so used to covering them up with a smile and acting like everything is okay. You made me realize that I can’t heal unless I deal with my past hurts. Hurts that have been done to me and what I have done to myself. The enemy loves to keep reminding me of those hurts and uses it to distance me from God. I have just been too scared to ask for help, for fear of judgement in who I confide in. I know that Jesus gave us the ultimate sacrifice and through him we have grace from God. I just can’t find it in myself to forgive myself and that is what is holding me captive. I want to be able to have all of what God has for me, to see his purpose for me in my life.
I truly enjoyed your devotional on Proverbs 31 which led me to your web page and your story. I plan to purchase and read your book The Confident Heart. Thank you for sharing hope through God’s Word.
So encouraging – thank you. I definitely would love to read your book and work on ways to deal with past hurts and struggles along with current insecurities and truly give them over to the Lord.
I hope to share your book with my five children. We are dealing with an alcoholic husband/ father. We are just now beginning to talk about the pain it is causing in our life and learning how to deal with it. I know that god’s word and his love are the only thing that will see us through this. I am hoping with all my heart to help them to learn a healthy way to deal with the anger and bitterness that this is causing in our lives. Thank you.
Renee I want to thank you for sharing your struggles with us. I have a lot of issues with my husband that I feel will never be resolved for he committed adultry and conceived a child out of the affair. I struggle to let God take control of the situation. I leave it in His hands and then I take it back. It has been almost 4 years since I found out and though it isn’t as painful as it was when I found out, I still feel devasted about what my husband did. I still haven’t fully forgiven him and I hold a lot of bitterness and resentment towards him. I found out about his other child when she was already 3 years old. She is the same age as our youngest child we have together. I am at the stage where I just want to separate and move on. But then I listen to people like you and how you put all your Trust into God. I try, but as I said I stuggle. Reading your book is an eye and heart opener.
I can’t tell you have much you have touched a very tender spot in my heart right now. Thank you for sharing not only from your heart… but for sharing your heart. May GOD bless you as you have ministered to others. I know that there is much I need to pray thru with GOD.
God Bless You Renee!! I thought I was the only one that felt that way. I too did not have a good relationship with my father. I was married for 14 yrs and my marriage failed and I still do not know how it did. I have since then remarried and I am so exactly like the way you said you used to be. I am controlling, critical and so so bitter. Sometimes I do not even give my husband a chance. It’s like I am taking out my past happenings on him and he doesn’t deserve it. Our marriage is not perfect but who’s is? I feel like the problems we have stems from my past hurts and my mind set is that nobody is ever gonna hurt me again. The the reality is that I am the one that is doing all the damage. I pray everyday for God to help me let it go, because I want a good life, I want to feel whole. I cried the entire time I was watching your video. Thank you so much for sharing. There is light at the end of the tunnel after all. Please pray for me in your daily prayers.
Thank you for sharing Kimberly! There is a lot of power in the truth of Renee’s book and her message.
I am also praying for you that God will strengthen you in the journey of healing and awakening!
Blessings
Karen
Thank you for sharing your words with me today. God used you to get this message to me. I also come from a broken home. My father was a huge disappointment. To top things off, my high school sweetheart, whom I married after college, left me when I was nine months pregnant with our daughter. He disappeared from our lives. I don’t believe I ever truly grieved this loss because I had to focus on caring for a newborn. I tried to move on, clinging to God for dear life. I remarried years later and gave birth to a precious baby boy. My marriage, though, has been very difficult. My husband struggles with depression. He is often rude, and emotionally disconnected. I’ve often wondered if I should even stay in this marriage. I feel that I harbor resentment, and I don’t want to end up with bitterness in my heart. Jeremiah 29:11 (I have this on my screensaver) reminds me that there IS a light at the end of this tunnel. I pray for the Lord’s guidance every day and throughout the day. My daughter, now a preteen, loves to sing, and sang a worship song to me last night about fighting the unseen forces that try to bring us down. It’s called “We’re Waging War”. Between her song, and your words, I feel God is reaching out to me. Thank you for giving me hope.
Regards,
Mari
On occasion, I have a horrible pain rise up into my throat and I do all I can to push it back down. It is so real that it leaves my throat sore because the lump is bigger than my throat can handle. I fight and fight to keep back the tears. You message today, May 16, and this video clip, help me realize that I’ve never even been able to have a true relationship with the Lord because of my past. It is so hindering my future with the Lord. I, like you, have been praying and asking the Lord what is causing this but in all honesty, I’ve not had the courage to look at so this morning, after reading your devotional, I told the Lord I want to hear the truth. I admit I’m afraid, but I so want an intimate relationship with the Lord, which I have never had with anyone in my life. There is a fear that it’s too late because I’m 58, but I remember Moses. I, too, come from a broken home and never knew my father living with us. I did know him and saw and spoke to him over the years, but it wasn’t a father/daughter relationship. Anyway, I found some hope in this message today and although I’m afraid of being hurt and disappointed again, I pray for strength and courage for just the next step only . . . nothing more . . . just the next step. What I became was not who I was created to be so thank You Lord for giving me hope today for my future with you through your daughter.
Wow! How did it take me so long to find your website/blog and to discover A Confident Heart? I need to read this whole book … and I need to read it soon! Thank you Renee!
I subscribe to Proverbs 31 email devotional, and I read your devotional this morning. I wanted to tell you thank you SO much for your devotional you wrote. I’ve been struggling a lot with finding a job, and feeling rejected, but your devotional really helped me this morning. I just have to trust that God will find something for me.
Thanks for guiding me through the reading of this book, it helps me in the moment I feel stuck. I find myself getting closer to God as I read the book and the videos along with your emails. you mention your situation with your husband in this video and it took me to the season I’m living right now. My husband and I are currently separated, going on four months but I have come to realize that it’s thru God that my healing will come, not my husband. its been a tough journey but I am still believing and know that God has a plan and a purpose for our life.
Thank you so much for sharing your heart in this devotion. The past couple of months have been really hard on me and my family. I started as a young Christian on fire for Jesus, however life has taken its toll and a lot of hurt has happened. I feel like every devotion I read is one more day of God calling me close, reminding me of His great truths and promises that I apparently have forgotten. I need to be reminded that I can trust God, even when there is nobody else I can trust in, because they’re not trustworthy or literally smearing my name in the dirt. Because that is truth. I appreciate you bringing up bitterness because it truly has clouded my vision. I hope today I can let some of that go, and rest in the comfort of my God. That He sees where I am, cares, and hopes to make new things.
This video was exactly what I needed today. I have had so much healing from the hurts and wounds of my past, but right now God is taking me deeper and it involves my marriage and resentment I have realized I held toward my husband. We have been married over 40 years and there have been a lot of good times, but also a lot of hard times as well. He is ill and critical of seemingly almost everything I do or say. And I was totally losing all hope. Even tho I am crying out to God. This video and the quote from page 81 …”As we process the pain of our yesterdays and live through the disappointments of our todays, doubts may still creep up, threatening to steal our hope. But each time that happens, we can stop and seek God in that place. We can ask Him to show us His purpose by revealing what is true about who we are and what we have been through to make us start doubting.”
Then we can ask Him to help us re-define our future, not through the filter of our past and pain, but through the power of His life-giving truth. And do you know what happens when we do that moment by moment, day by day, doubt by doubt? God tells us in Jeremiah 29:14, “I will be found by you…”
We find Him again and again. We find the One who longs to lead us out of captivity to our doubts into a place of freedom and hope. God’s love is not only unfailing, it redeems and restores. His Truth cuts to the core of our struggles, bringing purpose to our pain, redemption from our past and hope for our future!
Was exactly what my heart needed to hear today. I have got to continue to walk in love and forgiveness. I can not continue to be upset, or get angry or bitter. I still do not see how God will do that, but somehow listening to your video gave me a stirring of hope again.
Thank you.