Divorce to Wholeness by Sharon Kay Ball & Paige Henderson

Author:Sharon Kay Ball & Paige Henderson
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781596367609
Publisher: Rose Publishing
Published: 2013-01-30T00:00:00+00:00

This issue here is not having dreams and plans, but it’s really how much we’re attached to them—and whether we’ll let God conform them to his will for us. If we clutch them to our chests like a four-year-old protecting her dolly—“Mine!”—then in a way we’ve made an idol out of them. We hang onto what we know tightly because letting go sometimes means a free-fall into the unknown. Will we hit bottom? Will we stop somewhere along the way? Is there a big blade down there somewhere that will chop us in half if we don’t have skills like a movie-screen spy?

In the book of Jeremiah the Lord gives his people instruction on how to live outside the plans that they once had and embrace the place in which they find themselves.

Read Jeremiah 29:4–14.

God’s people had been conquered by their enemies and carried off to Babylon far away from their home. They are a defeated people who are being marched into a life of exile. Do you feel like you’re in exile because of your divorce? Do you feel exiled from friends? From family? Even from your church? Does it seem like you were whisked away in the night from a place of familiarity to a place of discomfort? That’s what exile feels like.

What does God tell the people of Israel to do while in exile in verses 5–7?

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Where’s the mourning? Where’s the self-pity? Where’s the contempt for their captors? Where’s the desire for revenge? It’s not there, is it? God tells his people, in the words of a very old adage, to bloom where they are planted. He wants them to thrive where they are, not just survive. How can they do this? How can you do that when everything seems so foreign and unsynchronized? Could it be that you will be able to flourish, not just maintain, when you recognize that God has given you a strategic instruction to do so?

Picture God gathering all of his people around him like a coach in the middle of a team huddle, giving the strategy to the team: “You’re not going to like being where you are, but get in there and live!”

The strategy that God gives them is based on his goodness, his accessibility, and his plan for their restoration.

Read verses 11–13.

Who knows the plans that God has for you?

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What is the goal of those plans for you?

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What will the plans of God not result in for you?

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What will happen when you pray?

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What will happen when you look for him?

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From Sharon’s Story

“Through this surrender, I could finally see that Jesus had not abandoned me.”

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