Aligning the Story of Your HeartSample

You now have language for all the barriers that once were hidden and unnamed. You know how to connect the dots and see the threads among the seemingly disconnected pieces of your life. You know how to call out your Sore Spot, your faulty Heart Logic, your little t truths, small solutions, and Life Lessons and bring all of them into light. And now you see the specific targets—God’s alternatives. Your understanding has power! Transformation doesn’t end when a heart is changed.

As a post-operation patient, you step down from the ICU into a general hospital unit where you continue to receive medical care. You’re required to take your medicine regularly and participate in rehab. Similarly, when God’s story has begun to be rewritten, your heart can come out of the ICU. Just like the medical patient, your gains are real, yet they’re fragile. You’ll need to keep investing in your progress in those early weeks and months to gain strength. The investment is necessary to engrave God’s story on your heart so that it will become indelible.

When you finally go home after your hospital stay, you go with an aftercare plan to keep your physical heart healthy. If you stop eating the heart-healthy foods, exercising, and taking the meds your doctor prescribed, you might be back in the hospital before too long. Likewise, the new story in your heart needs to be cared for and continually protected. When you get beyond the excitement of a moment of discovery and life settles back into the mundane, the real test begins.

God often uses what He’s taught us to speak directly into the lives of others who are still living their old stories. As we experience God’s comfort, we can comfort others. As you recall, that was Paul’s experience: “Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves receive from God” (2 Corinthians 1:3-4).

That’s certainly true for me. God has used what He’s taught me about finding my boldness to speak empowerment into the lives of others who, like me, have been held back by self-doubt or timidity. He has also used what He’s taught me about overcoming the desires of the flesh and leaning into the power of the Spirit to help others choose a path of sobriety. I have no doubt that God has someone in your path who will be blessed by the gifts He has given you!

Count on it: What God is doing in you will flow through you!

Dare to dream. Don’t hold back. Follow Jesus to incredible adventures. Run without hindrances the race God has marked out for you. You’re being blessed so that you might bless others.