Walking Through the Fire: Immanuel - God with Us

When you pass through the waters,

   I will be with you;

and when you pass through the rivers,

   they will not sweep over you.

When you walk through the fire,

   you will not be burned;

   the flames will not set you ablaze.

For I am the Lord your God,

   the Holy One of Israel, your Savior;

I give Egypt for your ransom,

   Cush and Seba in your stead.

Isaiah 43:2-3 (NIV)

Have you ever been so overtaken by the Holy Spirit you felt completely swept away? Smack in the middle of a crowd of women, a long ways from my safe, little home, the Holy Spirit grabbed hold of me in a powerful way.

While at She Speaks 2015, I sat listening intently as Wendy Blight shared her message of the paralyzing fear that gripped her for years after being sexually assaulted. My mind swirled with memories of my own encounter that I had stuffed down for so long. Everything in me wanted to get up and run.

Run from the past.

Run from the shame.

Run from the pain.

Why would God put me here for this specific message? He knows the dark spaces within my heart. I know He loves me so why in the world would He bring me to such a hard place. I had the secret scars neatly tucked into the deep recesses of my heart. I just wanted to leave them there.

The Holy Spirit wasn’t willing to let me stay in that stagnant pool of shame anymore. He walked me through those hard places. There wasn’t anything pleasant about it in the moment. I physically shook as He dug deep to redeem what had been taken from me.

Yet the Lord reminds us in Isaiah, “When you walk through the fire, you will not be burned.”  The flames sure felt hot in that place but God walked through it with me and I wasn’t burned. The chains were being loosened and I was set free from the captivity of trying to hide my shame.

Free from the past.

Free from the shame.

Free from the pain.

Being present in the hard places leads to redemption.

All the stuffing down, covering up and pretending it never happened can ever come close to the freedom found in Christ’s redeeming power.

Only through Him can we put down our heavy burdens.

God wants to remove the chains we desperately try to loosen on our own. Some try to get rid of them in their own strength while others try to pretend they aren’t really there anymore. Some of us try both in a futile attempt at freedom.

Chains can ONLY be removed by the power of the Holy Spirit.

Honestly, looking back I see how God had been orchestrating my life for just a moment as this. I am redeemed and I want to share the good news that God can set you free too!

Let the redeemed of the Lord tell their story – those He redeemed from the hand of the foe. Psalm 107:2 (NIV)

Do you have some hard places in your heart you try to hide from the world, as well as from yourself? Call out to the One who redeems. His unfailing love will help you rise up and walk through those hard places to the redemption waiting for YOU.

If you want to know God, I invite you to check out Wendy Blight's new bible study I Know His Name.

I Know His Name is a Bible study for any woman who wants to move beyond simply knowing about God to really knowing God in a very personal way.

In this five-chapter Bible study book, Wendy implements her practical and approachable style to equip readers to study the Word of God and then apply it to their own lives in practical ways.

I’m so blessed to be a part of the launch team for I Know His Name! For More information please visit Wendy’s page:

Wendy Blight - I Know His Name

I Know His Name Video Trailer  

Praying to God Our Promise-Keeper

Do you believe in the power of prayer?

Therefore confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous person is powerful and effective. James 5:16 (NIV)

I invited my friend Wendy Blight to share with you today about Praying to God Our Promise-Keeper.

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Knowing God by name. Calling upon God by name. Praying His Word … His Promises … back to Him are powerful and effective ways to usher God’s life-transforming work into our lives because our God is a Promise-Keeper.

But prayer is hard. It doesn’t come naturally to most women. I know it didn’t for me. The thought of praying out loud intimidated me. Made me feel uncomfortable.

But I have also learned that without prayer, we will never get to know the promise-keeping side of God. In order to know our Promise-Keeper, we’ve got to interact with Him. Pray to Him. And more than just pray, pray His promises … His Word … back to Him. It’s the substance of His promises that transform our prayers to be those powerful and effective prayers James talks about in James 5:16.

This truth came alive to me last year at a women’s conference in Houston.

The women’s ministry leader invited me to share my testimony. It’s a hard story for me to tell. In 1986, just days after my graduation from Baylor University, I fell victim to an armed, masked man hiding in my apartment. The horrific events of that June day locked me in a prison of fear for years. I hated God. I felt abandoned and forgotten by the One I grew up believing loved and cared for me.

A few weeks after my attack, a friend gave me this promise: “Be strong and courageous. Do not be afraid or terrified because of them, for the LORD your God goes with you; he will never leave you nor forsake you” (Deut. 31:6, NIV). But at the time, it meant nothing. In fact, I saw it as a lie. He had forsaken me. He sat on his throne in heaven and watched what happened to me and did nothing.

Thankfully, God did not leave me in that dark place. As time passed, my heart slowly opened to God’s Word. It was a long and arduous journey, but over a decade later, through much prayer and the transforming power of His Word healing came. Freedom came. My test became a powerful testimony. 

As I closed my message and stepped off the stage, a woman walked up and shared her story. Little did I know it was my story too.

She had been a student at Baylor at the time of my attack. She was part of a ministry whose leader invited them to pray for the young woman who had been attacked (me). They prayed a passage from Psalm 62 over me every week … for two years!  They prayed the promises of the Promise-Keeper.

Grasp the miracle here. At the very time I felt abandoned by God, He had raised up believers to pray. And not just pray, but pray God’s Word. His promises. She showed me her Bible. Yes, she still had it! Next to the passage was 1986 and my name.

As I read the passage, I saw clearly how each promise had come alive in my life. My promise-keeping God had honored each and every one.

I pray my story not only encourages you to pray but also opens doors for you to invite others to pray. Because you never know what God is up to in the midst of all those prayers!

Will you join me in praying God’s Word back to the One who is our Promise-Keeper? He always honors His Word. In fact, Isaiah 55:11 promises His Word will never return void and will accomplish everything He desires and achieve every purpose for which He sent it … even thirty years later!

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In addition to God Our Promise-Keeper, there are hundreds of Names of God. I invite you to visit Wendy’s blog to get a sneak peek of her newest Bible study, I Know His Name and also sign up for her FREE companion devotional, “5 Days to Knowing God More Intimately.”