Episode 5: Jesus Didn't Leave Me There

Welcome back to the Whole Hearted Woman Podcast. I'm Chris Ray, and this is your heart room, a place where your story is safe, your pain is welcome, and you never have to pretend to be okay. If you're joining me for the first time, welcome. I'm so glad you're here. I want to encourage you to go back and start with episode one because what we're building together is a journey. Each episode carries the one before it, and I don't want you to miss a thing. For those of you who have been walking this road with me, welcome back. Last week I told you about the door that finally opened, the job interview, the blue blazer, my boss, my pastor, the walk, the question, the yes. In the moment I met Jesus. I told you about the overwhelming need to repent before I even understood what repentance was about. I told you about God pursuing me long before I knew how to pursue him. And I told you about the conference where the Lord began touching places in me that 20 years of searching had never been able to reach. When episode 4 ended, I told you something important. Meeting Jesus was just the beginning, not the destination. And today I want to tell you about what happened next, because Jesus didn't lead me there. If I'm honest, I think I assumed that after giving my life to Christ, everything would instantly make sense, the world would open up, everything that I wanted to know would be revealed. Maybe all the pain would disappear too, and maybe the wounds, but that's not what happened. Something much better happened. He began a relationship with me, and the very first thing he did was teach me his voice. I remember waking up one morning between wake and sleep. I wasn't fully awake and not fully asleep, and I heard words so clearly that they startled me. The words were expect the extraordinary. I knew those words weren't my own, and so I quickly wrote them down. Something inside me came alive. I was excited. It was as though Jesus was saying, Chris, now that you found me, you're about to discover that life is far bigger than you ever imagined. That one sentence set my heart on fire. I wanted more. I wanted him. I wanted to know his face. I wanted to know the one who had spoken those words to me. And so began one of the most beautiful seasons of my life that I'll never forget. I used to journal a lot. And so, of course, I started journaling in this season. At first, it was simply me writing my thoughts, my prayers, my questions, my fears, my struggles. But somewhere along the way, something interesting and extraordinary began happening. I would start writing, and then it would feel as though at some point another voice entered the conversation. It wasn't an audible voice, but it had wisdom in it. It had insight. It had answers and even scriptures. And it was thoughts that were beyond my own understanding. I would write questions and then find myself getting answers. Answers I didn't know I knew. Concepts I had never even considered. Truths that felt far beyond my ability to create. And I began realizing that God was teaching me. The God I had searched for all those years was no longer an idea. He was alive. He was present and he was speaking to me. The more I listened, the more I wanted to know him. And I began to feel hungry for scripture. Hunger isn't even the right word. I was starving for it. I remember locking myself away for entire weekends just to read the Bible, hour after hour, page after page, story after story, and it was as though scales were falling off my eyes. Scriptures I had heard before suddenly came alive. The Bible wasn't a religious book anymore that was hard to comprehend or read. It was the story of a living God pursuing people he loved, and I couldn't get enough. I remember reading about the Israelites, reading about everything God had just done for them, the miracles, provision, deliverance, and the faithfulness, and then watching them doubt and turn away from him again and again, time after time, and I found myself crying because suddenly I wasn't reading about them. I was reading about me. I saw my own wandering. I saw my own searching, my own attempts to find life apart from him. And I was undone by the realization that he had never stopped loving me anyway. I had spent so many years believing God was distant. I believed he was disappointed, he was hard to reach, that he was there for other people, but not for me. What I didn't realize was that guilt and shame had been shaping my life and my relationship with him. Long before I met Jesus, I carried a deep belief that I wasn't good enough. I felt I had to perform, to please, to earn affection, and earn approval and earn love. And one of the first wounds Jesus began touching was that wound. The wound of never feeling good enough, the wound of striving, the wound of perfectionism, the wound of believing that if I could just get everything right, then maybe God would finally accept me. But Jesus didn't ask me to perform. And slowly, gently, patiently, he began undoing years of lies, not through condemnation and punishment, but through love. He began filling me with his presence, his thoughts, his heart, his dreams, his life. And suddenly signs of his nearness seemed to be everywhere. Scriptures would leap off the page. Songs even would come to mind, secular songs that I never really paid attention to before. I would hear the song and I would stop what I was doing and I would look it up and read the lyrics. And I realized that they were speaking directly into what God was doing in my life. Dreams became meaningful. Moments became meaningful. The world itself seemed alive with his fingerprints. I often describe that season as learning how to be alive again because that's what it felt like. I wasn't becoming religious, I was becoming alive. I truly was and felt born again. And like a newborn baby, I was being fed. Paul talks about spiritual milk, and I understand that now because that's exactly how I felt. I was learning and growing and discovering and receiving, and every day there seemed to be something new to learn about the one who created me, and he would show me, and that surprised me. The healing was an instant, the relationship was immediate, but the healing was a process. I still had wounds, I still had fears and insecurities, I still had patterns that had been built over decades. But Jesus wasn't rushing past those wounds. He was entering them with me, walking into them, touching them, healing them one layer at a time. And I think that was one of my biggest misconceptions. For years I had believed healing was something I had to achieve. That if I learned enough, meditated enough, practiced enough, studied enough, perfected myself enough, eventually I would arrive. Eventually, my hope was that I would become enlightened. Eventually, I would be healed. But Jesus showed me something completely different. He showed me healing wasn't a destination to be achieved, healing was a relationship. I spent years trying to climb my way to God, and then I discovered He had been already looking for me all the time. Then I discovered He had come looking for me the whole time. I spent years believing I needed a guru, a teacher, a method, a system, a practice, a lifetime of learning, and maybe another lifetime after that. But Jesus showed me something beautiful. He wasn't asking me to perfect myself before approaching him. He was asking me just to say yes. Just yes. And from that yes, everything else began. So I want to pause here and speak directly to you. Maybe you've already given your life to Jesus. Maybe you love him deeply, and yet maybe you still have wounds that ache, places that feel broken, questions you still carry. And I want you to hear this. The presence of wounds does not mean the absence of any faith. And healing taking time does not mean God is absent. Sometimes the greatest evidence of his presence is that he cares enough not to leave us where he found us. Jesus didn't leave me there, and he won't leave you where you are either. So next week I want to talk about something that changed the way I see my entire story. Because as God began healing me, I started looking back at all those years of searching, all the detours, the wrong turns, the wrong choices, all the roads I thought that had been wasted. All those years I thought were gone. And I discovered something I never expected. Nothing was wasted. So until then, spend some time asking God where He may already be speaking to you. And remember this you're loved, you're seen, and you do not have to earn his affection. The God who began a good work in you is faithful to complete it. So I love you, and I'll see you next week.