I have received several messages lately about the health issues I am facing with words of encouragements that have truly filled my soul. Today, a precious friend that checks on me every day, told me my faith challenges and encourages him on a daily basis. I truly stand in awe as God is using my suffering to bring encouragement to others, even when I feel so depleted. Truth be told, I am weak right now, BUT GOD and the cross, they are my only source of hope that I can cling too.
So as I breathe in and mediate on all that God and I have been wrestling with these past several months, here is the absolute truth on which my faith stands.
God has done such an amazing work in and through our lives and we want what we have walked through, what we continue to walk through to be a testimony to His faithfulness and to His unfailing love. We, the Vorlicky crew, are willing to suffer to advance the kingdom. That doesn’t mean it doesn’t get hard, that we don’t get weary, that we don’t grieve, but what it does mean is that in our weakness He is our strength. That we can conquer and do all things because He gives us enough strength and courage as we fix our eyes on Him. The reality is that He meets us in the valley and He continuously stretches out His righteous right hand to not only pull us out of the treacherous storms, but to prune us and refine us in the process so that we can be a reflection of Him and His illuminating light shinning through us.
We know that we are His vessels to preach the gospel, and I stand firm on His promises of Isaiah 61, allowing our story, His testimony through our lives, to release the prisoners so they are free to run into a posture of surrender, dedicating their lives over to Jesus. To me, that makes it all worth it. We die to self, we take up the cross and we walk our journey out praising Him in and through the storms. He uses all things for His glory and His kingdom. We surrender and say, “Not my will, but THY will be done.” We proclaim on earth and it is in heaven and we cry out as His name will be glorified through this chapter of our story. To God be all the glory!
To be honest, this is when my faith goes into overdrive and I want to stand on the mountaintop, with a microphone/loudspeaker in my hands and PREACH the gospel all the more louder. It is through our suffering that He is magnified and gloried. We just have to be in a posture that is willing and available to go, even when our bodies are weak and somewhat fragile, to the places He is asking us to go. And through that journey of obedience we receive mercy upon mercy, grace upon grace, blessings upon blessings and we receive His abounding love in exponential ways. This is what fills me and this is what I live for.
So, yes my faith has been stretched. I have been in a fragile and vulnerable place where lots of tears have been shed. My body is exhausted from fighting and I desperately want normal again. But as i patiently wait upon the Lord and trust in Him, my strength, my hope is being renewed and I know I WILL fly high upon the wings of eagles. As I surrender my body as a living sacrifice, I know He will meet me in the broken and shattered pieces of my soul and I know He will restore me with His redeeming love and resurrected power. I will overcome this. A greater testimony is being written out in and through this story and I pray that even if it is just one person, that someone comes to know Jesus, and knows Him on a deeper, more profound level through my suffering. To live is Christ, to doe is gain.
Come Holy Spirit come. Come and fill this atmosphere while you pour down your anointed, healing rain upon me. Allow your testimony through my suffering to be a testament to your goodness, to your faithfulness, and to your love. As I remain in you, as I remain in your love, I pray you trim the unwanted, the dead branches off of the vine so that I can continue to be used in the magnitude in which you are calling me without any hindrance to fully walk out the Gospel. I am yours. I am available. Now send me to the ends of the earth to PREACH the incredibly, amazing GREAT NEWS of who you are.
Thank you for choosing my family, for choosing me to endure this suffering. Although gut wrenching hard at times, I would not change a thing. All honor and praise belongs to you. In Jesus all mighty name. AMEN!!
Please contact me with any questions or prayer requests. My suffering is not in vein, my prayer is that it is being used to advance the kingdom. We are in this journey of life together and neither you nor myself are alone.
Isaiah 61:1-3, “The Spirit of the Sovereign Lord is on me, because the Lord has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor.He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim freedom for the captives and release from darkness for the prisoners, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor and the day of vengeance of our God, to comfort all who mourn, and provide for those who grieve in Zion, to bestow on them a crown of beauty instead of ashes, the oil of joy instead of mourning, and a garment of praise instead of a spirit of despair.”
