Self-Growth

January 4, 2022

Can you hold onto hope this year? To your purpose? Really? What about when things look really grim? What about when you can’t see what’s ahead? What about when a new year has not given you a renewed sense of excitement? Honestly, could you hold on to your purpose in that space? Imagine being in a rut, a broken place. A dark place where your spirit, mind, and attitude are just clouded by your circumstances and negative emotions. A place in your life where the ones you love the hardest have broken your heart, a place where you are afraid and angry, a place where even the beginning of an uplifting song on the radio drags you further down and you just want to scream. Imagine telling people about this hell building up inside of you and all they can offer is, “I’ll pray for you” or a long story of how they know just how you feel because….(and this because has absolutely nothing to do with what you are going through). You finally believe that you are completely and utterly alone. Now, let me ask you, in this dark place where you can’t seem to win and it doesn’t look like anything will ever change, can you still hold on to the hope that you have a purpose?

You may have never experienced a place like this, but I have. And not only have I, so did the man in Mark 5. If you know anything about this guy, you know he was in a pretty dark place. The Bible says he was living among the tombs, crying out in pain, and no one could help him. If you read the entire passage you get the picture that this was not a weekend long kind of conflict- the situation had been going on for some time and no one could stop his torment. This man had gotten comfortable in his pain, he had tried to break free of the mess and the drama, but it wouldn’t let him go. I can imagine what that life must have been like. Constantly trying to move forward, constantly trying to find peace, and constantly being thrown back down into a rut. Can any of you relate? Maybe you’re at a job that you absolutely hate and it’s causing you more stress than it is worth, but you have to stay. You have no other choice. Maybe you’re in a relationship and no matter how hard you work at it the relationship refuses to grow and be what you need it to be. Maybe you have been hurt, tossed aside, and left with no reasonable answer. Maybe God gave you a dream and everything and everyone seems to get in the way. Maybe you’re at a point where you believe the dream was a lie. I would be bold enough to say we have all at one time or another been like the possessed man in Mark 5- we have all been crying out for a change and trying as hard as we can to hold on to our purpose. 

In Mark 5, something beautiful happens… a miracle, if you will, occurs. A Man, a very special Man, traveled through a storm to come save him. A man cared enough to go on a journey and bring peace to this broken situation. But that isn’t all, my friends, this wonderful Man named Jesus also gave this guy a new purpose. A purpose I am sure was better than his first one. At the end of the story we see that the possessed man was dressed, in his right mind, and given a very important task- he was to go and tell everyone he could about what the Lord had done for him. The broken tomb-dwelling man was supposed to go and tell his entire community how yesterday there was no hope in sight for him and today everything had changed. 

Being in a broken place, no matter the reason, can really break your spirit and have you believing a lie. But I beg of you, don’t believe what you see. You and I cannot rely on the tombs around us, the wavering emotions we have, or what we can physically see. No, you and I have to resolve to stay focused on what we know. And what we know is that the ruler of the world has a plan for us, a really good plan, to take us out of the rut we are in and give us a hope and a future (Jeremiah 29:11 paraphrased). What we know is that there is someone who loved us enough to go through the storm to save us from living among tombs. What I know to be true, my friends, is that you have a purpose so powerful, so great, so meaningful that not even hell can stop you. So can you hold on to hope and press towards your purpose bringing with you a beautiful testimony on the other side? Can you live by what you believe- not what you see or hear as we walk into 2022? Can you still have a purpose as you push past the tombs? Of course you can, you were made to do just that.

Peace, love, and strength

Victoria Wilson