Full Circle

“And you shall remember that the Lord your God led you all the way these forty years in the wilderness, to humble you and test you, to know what was in your heart, whether you would keep His commandments or not.”

Deuteronomy 8:2

I started this blog because God changed my life in Peru in June of 2014. He used that trip to bring me back to Him, to redeem and restore my life, to guide me back into a sweet relationship with Him.

Since then, I have constantly had to go out of my comfort zone, and it has been so rewarding every time. I have had to speak on stage with no prior warning, approach strangers and make friends with them (I scared a few of them away, sorry!), camp in the Bahamas in pretty horrible camping conditions, jump off a cliff (okay, that was just for fun), teach for the first time ever and in front of a panel of women, and now be part of a flashmob as I get ready to return to Peru in about a week.

This past year has been nothing short of adventurous and full of unknowns. But as I meditate on that verse above, I cannot help but see how God has led me from one situation to the next. I did not know where each step was leading, but I was willing to follow His lead.

As I became part of a discipleship group, I desired to be humbled and tested. I wanted God to reveal what was in my heart. I wanted to become a woman who follows His commandments out of joy, and not out of fear or indifference. And oh did He answer those prayers! The humbling came, the tests, the searching, the exposure of hidden things in my life, and the tears came. SO many tears. Tears of sorrow, tears of repentance, tears of yearning, and tears of joy.

I feel joy because It has been a year of letting God take the lead and seeing the difference it has made in my life. My first blog post starts out:

“If you, being a Jew, live in the manner of Gentiles and not as the Jews, why do you compel Gentiles to live as Jews?” Galatians 2:14

 A hypocrite. That’s what I was.”

But because of HIS never ending love and grace towards me, I can stand here, one year later, and write a blog that starts out:

“…For I have walked in my integrity. I have also trusted in the Lord; I shall not slip. Examine me, O Lord, and prove me; Try my mind and my heart. For Your lovingkindness is before my eyes, And I have walked in Your truth.” Psalm 26:1-3

Your life CAN be redeemed, my friends. He is a builder and repairer. Want to know the best part? He wants to. (Read Ezra and Nehemiah!)

Jeremiah 29:13 says “And you will seek Me and find Me, when you search for Me with all your heart.”

Just as He has been faithful with me, He is with you, even when you and I are not.

Seek him. Ask him to search you out. Repent from your sins and ask him to redeem you and build you up in Him. But don’t forget to also actually receive His forgiveness and His love. Accept it. Take it. Embrace it.

It is worth it.

#shamelessplug: If you’d like to donate any amount for my trip to help me finish fundraising, you may go here and click on my name, Gaby Herrera. It would mean the world to me, as all I want is to go and be used to transform lives as I myself am radically transformed into a woman who brings glory to God.  

When He searches you out

“Will it be well with you when He searches you out?”

Job 13:9

This is what Job asked his friends as he was going through the darkest time in his life. His friends had taken their God given wisdom and applied it deceitfully to reason away the things that were happening to him. Instead of believing them, Job tells them that God will judge them for their sins.

I can’t help but ask what would God find in me when He examines me.

In Luke 11, Jesus is speaking to the Pharisees, the religious leaders at the time. They were powerful and educated. They knew the Torah, and lived their lives according to it. But they also thought they were better than the rest, judged everyone who didn’t live up to their standards or have a lifestyle they approved of, and always looked for ways to humiliate and shame those outside their Pharisee bubble. They lived by a checklist and believed that was good enough. Anyone else who didn’t comply with the checklist was a target for them. It’s easy for us to look at them and criticize all their flaws, faults, and sins. But wouldn’t be we doing the same thing then?

You see, the Pharisees looked perfect on the outside: They went to temple, gave money, prayed, etc. But Jesus saw their hearts and knew they were rotten on the inside. He tells them “Now you Pharisees clean the outside of the cup and dish, but inside you are full of greed and evil.” (Luke 11:39)

Their checklist was not good enough for Jesus. In Matthew, Jesus explains to the disciples that “every plant My heavenly Father didn’t plant will be uprooted” (15:13). God will search you out, and He will point out things in your life which need to go, whether it is greed, pride, a judgmental mind, or a gambling problem. He does this because He doesn’t want you to have a dirty heart, He longs for us to be clean.

Once we accept His gift of grace and allow Jesus to come into our heart and we become His children, we are clean in His eyes. But we are still imperfect humans, and only over time and obediently giving our hearts to God every day for Him to point out things in our lives that need to be cleaned out, will we be able to be clean on the inside.

I encourage you to ask yourself the same thing I have been asking myself lately, ‘what are the things in my heart that need to go? what would Jesus say to me about my cups and dishes? would it be well with me when He searches me, or am I afraid of what He’ll find?’ Guys, He already knows. He doesn’t want you to do anything on your own, He wants to do it for us. He’s just waiting for us to be willing to have that conversation with Him.

“casting all your anxieties on Him, because He cares for you”

1 Peter 5:7

“Pour out your heart before Him; God is a refuge for us”

Psalm 62:8

Into the Wilderness

“If you look around you’ll be disgusted, if you look inward you’ll be disappointed, if you look upward you’ll be delighted.”

 Leonard Ravenhill

” ‘She decked herself with her earrings and jewelry, and went after her lovers; but me she forgot,’ says the Lord. ‘Therefore I will allure her, will bring her into the wilderness, and speak comfort to her…’ “

Hosea 2:13-14

After coming back from Peru and having my “aha! moment,” I started to analyze my life more in depth. Like Ravenhill said, the more I looked, the more disappointed I felt. I felt like a failure because I was starting to realize the gravity of my sins, and how many there were… there are. I started to feel unworthy and wonder why God hadn’t given up on me yet after having strayed so many times in the past.

So I looked upward instead, and I surely was delighted. I started reading Hosea, my favorite book in the Bible, a few days before going on my hiking trip to Iceland. Hosea marries Gomer, a woman who keeps walking away from her marriage because she used to be a prostitute and did not understand Hosea’s unconditional love. How sad would it be if that book ended right there, after ‘but me she forgot’? there would be no hope.

But there is hope: God loves us unconditionally. Therefore, He always finds a way to bring us back to Him. God took Gomer into the wilderness to speak comfort to her. And He also took me into the wilderness in Iceland to do the same.

While in the wilderness, He gave me new hope for my life, He restored my mind, He healed old wounds I didn’t even know were there, He brought joy to my heart, and song to my lips (and if any of you know me, you know that I, 1. suck at singing, and 2. always mess the lyrics up!)

Guys, this is a perfect picture of us and Jesus. Since we don’t understand how He could just love us so much, some of us tend to run back to things that are sins, sins we were once comfortable with. But it must not be so. All God wants from us is wholehearted love and loyalty.

Just like Hosea was with his wife, God is with you. He stands ready to forgive and restore if we turn to Him in repentance!

I pray you all find comfort in His unending love, and that no matter what we’ve done in the past, He wants us.

“I will betroth you to me forever…in righteousness and justice, in lovingkindness and mercy, in faithfulness, and you shall know the Lord”

Hosea 2:19-20