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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Chapter 4 was a hard read for me. At certain points I found myself holding back tears and wondering why I even had the urge to cry. It was then that I realized that on the surface I was “fine”, but the pain of past hurts is still like a fresh wound. Honestly, I don’t know if I want to come face to face with those who have hurt me and share my feelings with them and express forgiveness to them. Do I have to in order to have a confident heart? Can’t I just forgive them from a distance and press on? This is something I definitely have to pray about.
Four years ago this month, my 33 year old son was diagnosed with a malignant brain tumor after only a week of symptomatic headaches. The neurosurgeon told us he expected it may be the worst type of brain tumor. However, the surgeon asked me to go home and ask everyone I knew to pray. He explained that he had been in for the worst and had seen miracles. What a blessing. On the day of the surgery, my sister unexpectedly was given a Bible verse that came along with a receipt from a local pharmacy. It was Jeremiah 29:11-14. I held that little card in my hand throughout the surgery. Reading over and over. I claimed it as a promise for my son. He came through the surgery beautifully. It was NOT the most malignant tumor. It was malignant, but slow growing. The oncologist told us “our cup was half full” The treatment was grueling, but he managed to work. I kept the card with the verse in my wallet. One day when he was discouraged, I gave it to him. He carries it now. He has faith and courage and has had many challenges in this journey. But, he is now cancer free, off of chemo after 31/2 years. I still claim the promise of God to Jeremiah for us all. He has perfect plan no matter what. God does want us to prosper. The most remarkable part of these verses is the part that tells us, “when you pray, I will listen. And, when you look for me with all your heart, I can be found by you.” Really finding God is the greatest part of all.
Thank you again for the personable videos and your vulnerability. I can identify very much with you! This “Confident Heart” study and the support you give by your words, verses, and your testimony is very powerful!! Love, Giselle from Fellowship Church- Miami
Checking to see if my email address will be displayed in the comments bar. I prefer that it remains private.
I thought I had finished processing my childhood disappointments but now I realize that I had just buried them. Now I think I can face them head on with God’s help.
Praying for the walls to come down and God’s truth to find it’s way in.
Reading and watching the video has been enlightening for me. I do have past hurts from others and disappointments in myself that I have and continuing to learn to let go, to give it all to God. I can see daily how the past with hurts has effected my daughters out look on life and now how it has hindered my life also.With some of my past hurts I have been able to forgive, let go and have peace with it with the Lord and myself, but it took me a long time, of continual daily praying with asking for forgiveness before the situation when heard or thought about did not raise my blood pressure and cause anger. After being able to deal with this which was very close to home/family, I did find peace, even thought to this day, I do not know if with saying I was sorry for my part and asking for forgiveness from those that I hurt has been accepted. And even though my childhood does not bring back memories of sadness, I know that when finding out I had a sister, years and years later, it did bring up thoughts of finding my biological father and anger knowing that he left mom and I and has never once attempted to find out anything about me. It did leave a scar for my sister due to the situation. I do believe that her scars hindered us from having a sister to sister relationship at first even though I tried to reach out, but I find that now we are bonding to be closer and I give all the glory to God, for I continue to pray for us both in this matter. So now it is time to work on the timeline of the past and resolve those issues so that any hard feeling or resentment I have will leave my heart so that the Lord can fill those spaces with His love, hope and His word. I thank you for sharing your stories and this wonderful bible study and your ministry to women, for this touches my heart, for I can see where I need help with dealing with my past and my mistakes so that my heart can be filled with Gods love. God Bless
I downloaded a Confident Heart and read through it on Kindle . I read the first few chapters of the book at lightening speed….it was as if you were voicing all my past hurts and fears and insecurities. . I wish I would have read this book 20 years ago! I am now going back and working the exercises and re-reading the chapters. It truly has been a blessing and a healing in my life. I’ve known God from a very young age but until I’ve read your book couldn’t understand why I just didn’t feel good enough and thought I must be the only one out there that felt this way. One thing you wrote particularly touched me and it went something like this…”When we compare ourselves to others we are comparing our insides to their outsides” How true and no wonder we don’t ever feel we measure up!.The hardest part for me was allowing God to help me revist and heal those hurts, and not just bury them…and I’m still a work in progress!!!. Thank you for sharing your experiences and know that you are blessing others in your ministry!
Renee,
Chapter 4. It was hard for me as I was doing my timeline. Leading a bible study doesn’t make it any easier. But as a leader I have to be the first to be transparent. We first watched your video of “Don’t throw the book across the room” because some of us were feeling a little paralyzed with our feelings (not wanting to go deeper). Some of us have been doing “fine” not having to relive those areas in our lives. Thank you for your video of explaining further of the timeline. It really helped my group wanting to go deeper. You are a true blessing.
Thank you for sharing your message with us today. I truly believe this message was meant for me. My parents also divorced when I was very young (only nine years old) and my mom had to raise me and my sister ALONE. My father was hardly in our life and if it wasn’t for his mother I don’t think we would’ve had a relationship with him at all. Sometimes I think I look for my husband to give me the love I lack from having an absent father and when he doesn’t I get upset and feel like there is no true love in our marriage and I become resentful and want to let it all go.
My family has gone through some very difficult times (like never before) and it seems that once we get pass one struggle another one pops up. Just back in November my car was repossessed , then here at the end of April we had to move in with my sister and her family b/c we couldn’t make the payments on our rental home. And now it has been hard for us to find a decent-safe home b/c of credit issues. Just in the past few weeks my husband and I haven’t spoken and contemplating divorce. Sometimes, like now think it’s best b/c of all the past hurts. I pray daily for us to find a place to live and for answers on what to do about my marriage b/c I don’t want us to end in divorce but at the same time I no longer want to have to pry love from my husband when it should be given genuinely. This has been a very depressing time for me and I’m just at a lost. We still have our two youngest teenage daughters that we’re responsible for. Right now, I feel like I have failed as a mother & wife and can’t figure out how to get back on the right path. I’ve been praying continously and I know everything is done in God’s time and I trust God’s timing. I also know that all this will come to past and there will be happier days again in our life’s but it’s difficult going through it now and having my girls having to suffer too.
Thanks for the prayers for my family…we shall smile again!
Tara,
my heart goes out to you. I will pray for you.
I receive your devotional by e-mail, but today I was led to this site to listen to your words … I know my time line … it is filled with rejection after rejection after rejection. Thirty-two years ago I married a man who loves me and I love him … neither of us knew the Lord then. By the time our first child was celebrating his first birthday, my husband began to pull away and reject me … after our second son, my husband deserted me but stays in our home … I love him so much and I know that he loves me … I have faced death many times and at those times, he lets go and I can see the love…but then the walls go back up. There are days and days that go by without speaking. I sought the Lord and He is my saviour. Just recently my husband agreed to come with me to see my Psychiatrist … he was willing to go if it would ‘fix’ me … after two visits, he has refused to go back with me as “he knows what to do” … I feel like I am disappearing and my hope is gone … I get through my days by repeatedly reminding myself to just breath … when I speak, I am not heard unless the words I say are what he wants to hear … I have no idea why I am even sharing this … desperation perhaps. Anyway, thank you for your words … I hope your message will touch many lives. God bless you … and thank you for meeting me every morning …
Your comment at the top “{like pretty please even if you don’t normally watch video posts}” must have been for me. I don’t normally watch video posts preferring instead to read. But it is a wonderful message at a very appropriate time. My husband and I are struggling in our marriage and I have been struggling with the question of why God. Your post spoke truth into that question and had helpful suggestions that I will try. Thank you.
As I continue to read “A confident Heart” and all of the comments that are posted here by other readers what sticks out in my mind more than anything is how there are so many other women who have experienced the same kinds of hurts, the same kinds of pain and heart aches as I have. I don’t know why I thought I was the only one; I don’t know why I hid my pain and disappointments behind the mask for so long……. but then again, I do. Shame, guilt, humiliation. Since beginning this study so many things have come to light that I had forgotten or perhaps maybe I had suppressed them so I would not remember. My step father who wanted to have sex with me when I was 13 and then who also thought it ok that he could pass me around to his friends as well, rape by gunpoint when I was 18; my own blood uncle who tried to molest me, my first husband who would beat me for even making eye contact with another man and accused me of being a lesbian if I was friends with a woman. I think of the relationships I have had where the man always had a reason why they did not want to marry me but when our relationship was no longer they found it easy to commit to the new woman in their lives. What was or is wrong with me that I am never good enough, always the bridesmaid but never the bride. Was I only good enough just to play house with but not for the real thing??? I guess these things; these memories that have re-surfaced have a lot to do with the tears that just won’t stop flowing as I read. I don’t want to keep going around the same o’le mountain over and over again. I want to experience the healing that I know God has for me and I guess He could never really do that until I allowed it to come to light. Thank you Renee for being obedient to the call that God has placed on your life. Thank you for sharing your story thru this book and your devotions and the videos. I thank God that even though you may have run from or avoided your calling for so many years that He has chosen this time and this place to use you. I pray for restoration, I pray for healing, I pray for the wonderful promises that I know God has for me. Jeremiah 29:11 has always been a favorite scripture for me along with Ephesians 3:20 but I’d never read verses 12-14. Now I know that God is waiting for me to get really serious about seeking Him and to want it more than anything else, then and only will He make sure that I won’t be disappointed.
Sweet Renee, thank you for sharing your heart with us! God is using your transparency to help so many including me! Thank you!
Thanks I like the hope you said of working through the pain of today and allowing God to fill us and work with that pain.
THANKS FOR THIS DEVOTIONAL.AS I PRAYED THIS MORNING I WAS TELLING GOD ABOUT HOW I DID NOT WANT TO DOUBT HIM BECAUSE I PUT ALL MY TRUST AND FAITH INTO HIM .BUT SOMETIMES THE DEVIL TRYS TO PUT THAT DOUBT IN YOUR MIND.BUT I AM STILL TRUSTING IN GOD .MY SON IS ABOUT TO GRADUATE TOMORROW AND GO OUT INTO THE WORLD.I VE BEEN THERE AND EXPERIENCED THING AND ALL WERE NOT GOOD THING AND ITS JUST SCARY TO KNOW THAT HES ABOUT TO GO OUT INTO A WORLD IN WHICH THERE IS NO LOVE .BUT THANK GOD FOR THIS CONFRIMATION LETTING ME KNOW THAT GOD HAS A PLAN FOR HIM BUT NOT ONLY HIM BUT ALL OF US.TO GOD BE THE GLORY.AMEN
I bought a hard copy of your book for a friend at Christmas-time. Then I got it for myself on my Kindle when it was on sale. Now I’m doing the study with you.:-) Thanks for being obedient to God and sharing your story! I have dealt with some of my past hurts over the years and as I was thinking about my sins that have brought such shame on my family, myself, and my God, He reminded me that where sin abounds, grace abounds even more. I have specific memories of such grace that remind me of His love. I am so undeserving, but He means what He says…”If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” Thank you, Jesus!
Thank you for sharing your story and letting us into the deepness of your heart. Today has been a rough day, one fully of humility, pain, all part of the healing process. I was cleaning my kitchen and just felt led to read a different devotion today, which led me to this video. I am going to go watch it now without distraction and try to let Jesus walk with me.
As I was reading ch 4 the statement being knocked off or feet struck up thoughts of my childhood, During those times of being knocked down I had no problem getting up – I did not know Jesus yet- so what came to mind was so profound as I reflect on how I felt. A one point I had said I am going thru this abuse because God knew I was strong enough to deal with it. As I sit here and write these words in my journal it dawned on me it was God’s strength that made me strong. It was only thru God that I could even attempt to get back up after being knocked down. It was only thru God I could continue to take one step in front of the other, Praise God !!! Because it was His Strength that sustained me and kept me going. In Him I had the power not to give up and give in. And yes there were moments i wanted to throw away the book but its on my kindle which is on my pc , so I couldn’t do that,, hehe. So glad i’m doing this study.
Renee thank you for your ministry. I read through many different life situations other women are/have dealt with. I have felt so utterly alone and angry at God for allowing hurtful event after hurtful event in my life. The one that has “taken the cake” so to speak has been my relationship with my husband. The second day of our marriage we began to deal with the effects of his past before Christ in addiction to pornography and his unrealistic expectations of what he thought his future wife’s body would be like. I didn’t meet the criteria and he admitted he was disappointed in me. He admitted that he didn’t really deal with his disappointment in taking it to God but avoided it expecting it to vanish. Before our wedding night he had never had sex. Only a past riddled with sexual sin and exposure to nakedness that reduced women to body parts rather than eternal souls. The expectations he had buried inside resurfaced and I was very sensitive to his response to me. My husband does find me beautiful and wants only me. He has repented and is asking God to renew his mind through His word at what the most important things are to Him because my husband really believes God brought us together for HIS purposes. It has just been under two months and I am still grieving the hurt.
We are both growing in Christ and love His Word and are striving to live holy lives that are pleasing to Him. Thus we are great targets for Satan to deceive us, cause division amongst us and stir up feelings of inadequacy and bitterness. The hardest thing for me to do has been to look to Jesus to remind me that I have been made adequate by the blood of the cross and that I am much more than just what I look like on the outside. Which used to be pretty nice in my eyes prior to all this.
All of this has led me down a road of asking God “Why?!” Why has life always been painful? Why has everyone important in my life always treated me like I wasn’t good enough?”
My current struggle is that church is the hardest place to be. It USED to be my favorite place, a place of freedom and joy. My husband has struggled with interest in other women physically (and at times lust) and comparing me to other women and we both get caught in a web of him being afraid of where his eyes are because I’m super sensitive to where he is looking and blame myself for not being enough. I hate church at times and I especially start to hate other women because I compare myself to them and at times I believe that my husband finds them more beautiful than me and that I am chopped liver and can never measure up. It’s a complete battle because I used to love being a part of the women’s ministry and so enjoyed getting to know other women and encourage them in their identity in Christ. I now approach much in fear and insecurity.
I have, in my pain and discouragement, turned to smoking cigarettes after 7 years of being free from its grip and now struggle with condemnation and walking without a clear conscience wondering what people would think if they knew.
I haven’t been running to God because I have been angry with Him.
BUT. Yesterday morning I prayed for the first time in a whileand told God that I missed the sheer JOY I used to have in just knowing and experiencing Jesus. I couldn’t sleep at all last night. I opened my bible with the right heart for the first time in a while. I spent three hours immersed in 1 Peter chapter 1. It was as if God was answering my heart’s cry: He would NOT let me sleep because He wanted me more than I even wanted Him.
He wanted to reassure me that my faith is being tested for a purpose. He reminded me that when my faith is being tested by various trials and distresses, if I ENDURE and hold on to Christ, this faith is proved genuine. He showed me that PRAISE, GLORY and HONOR are all the result of faith that has been stretched and gone through fire because the outcome of genuine faith in Jesus Christ is SALVATION of my soul. He revealed CHRIST to me afresh and in doing so reminded me of what is MOST important: not that my husband would meet all of my needs or vice versa, but that I SUBMIT my life and my whole self to the GOD who laid down His life for such a wretched sinner as myself. I owe Him everything.
This truth has renewed my mind to realize that while I struggle with bitterness that it seems as though I never had a “honeymoon” period in my marriage, God DOES have a future and a hope. And HIS idea of what that will be is so beyond my scope of understanding or short term sight. And the truth is that as believers, our best days are yet ahead. We are all just passing through this earth while God is transforming us from glory to glory making us more and more like His Son. It’s going to be painful, it’s going to be difficult, it’s going to not make sense. Because we are being changed from what we are and were into something otherworldly. But it’s going to be worth it all. And in the midst of it we can either die to ourselves and our dreams and expectations and praise God and proclaim to others the TRUTH about who He is OR we can shrink back in to self pity and allow ourselves and our dreams to continue to occupy the thrones of our hearts. Even still God has more compassion, mercy and grace than we could ever try to articulate and He knows just how hard each person’s battle is. He can meet us there if we ask Him to come in.