Secret Battles

There’s a story of a young woman who had been working on her two preschoolers’ scrapbooks during their nap times.  She finally decided that the project was complete.  She decided to search through her parents’ photographs and begin to document her family history for her children.

She quickly noticed that the photographs taken during the early years of her childhood were creatively arranged in the albums.  But there were no snapshots representing the two years of her parents’ separation.

Many of us have gaps in our photo albums that represent dark periods in our personal history.  They may even bring to mind a habit, or a hurt, or a hang up that you have.  

None of us ever wakes up one day and says today I’m going to be an alcoholic or I’m going to have a sexual addiction or I’m going to choose for gambling to ruin my personal finances.  Instead, it often starts with a slow drift towards destruction. 

This Sunday I'm looking forward to speaking from a passage in the New Testament that demonstrates the idea of freedom from the battle.  In John 8 it’s the narrative of the women who was caught in the act of adultery.  

Overcoming the past, overcoming our secret battles, experiencing freedom from the battle . . . takes faith . . . and something more . . . Courage.  Courage is what it takes to shed the problems and mistakes and secret battles of the past and dream again.

The best news ever is that hope remains.  No matter where you have been or what you have done, hope remains.  

"You are more than the choices that you've made.  You are more than the sum of your past mistakes.  You are more than the problems you create."