The Forsaken Room:

Quite some time ago, God gave me a vision of the attic of my heart that I have since written into a story format for this blog  

In this vision, I wanted to look away from the room I was seeing before me because it was so incredibly painful to look at. Shame would flood in and I wanted to close my eyes and turn away from it. 

I somehow knew that this was The Forsaken Room. In the vision, I could see myself standing as a little girl in the middle of an empty, forlorn-looking room with tattered draperies over the windows. The air was thick with stagnant air and everything was drab and torn. A forlornness hung in the air. Gold-framed photos covered the walls and it looked like a scene out of the movie, "The Secret Garden" in the room that Mary Lennox discovered in the middle of the night that had been shut up for years and remained unlived in. 

I had been bullied and ostracized a lot as a kid and tears came down my cheeks. I felt wrapped in abandonment, loneliness, and a lack of love.

When I looked up, I saw that Jesus had come to the door and He asked to be invited in. 

Shame flooded the inside of me!

"Oh no, Lord. I can't let You in here...."

No, no, no, no! 

I looked at all of the framed photos and they were filled with photos of all the hurtful times in my life--times I had been verbally or physically hurt. They represented all the times I had been rejected from a child to adulthood and when the deep loneliness set in. It represented every time someone had moved away or had died and my heart grieved. Every time I had been pushed away instead of embraced. It was the blackest pit of my deepest and most painful emotions.

As my eyes moved across each one, they started to play the ugly scenes out, one by one and I could hear the negative voices that spoke and sometimes screamed inside my head when those things happened. The negative voices filled the room as more and more shame flooded the inside of me.

No. I couldn't let Him in.

"I can't let You in here. Please Lord, I can't..."

The Holy Spirit brought Isaiah 62:4-5 to mind and it caused me to weep:

"You shall no more be termed Forsaken, and your land shall no more be termed Desolate, but you shall be called My Delight Is in Her, and your land Married; for the LORD delights in you, and your land shall be married."

The vision ended.

The Weeping Room:

I woke up the next morning and as I sat on the side of my bed, the vision of The Forsaken Room came flooding back to my spirit. Jesus was standing at the door again asking to be invited in.

I protested.

I protested and begged Him to not keep asking to come in. I couldn't bear the thought.

But The Holy Spirit kept persisting with nudging and tugging at my heart and I finally relented.

"Okay Lord, You can come in here."

Jesus stepped through the doorway and to my horror, He started to go up to each picture and look at it. The ugly scenes played before Him and the shame of each scene again, flooded and pierced the deepest parts of my heart.

Here was the Holy Prince of Peace seeing what a worthless person I was and all the shame that had been spoken over me. Didn't the words of others matter? Did He feel the same way? 

Instead of shaming me, He invited me to another room and took me there. I stepped inside the room and was surprised that it looked exactly like The Forsaken Room. Confused, I asked The Lord about it.

He said, "This is The Weeping Room."

"The Weeping Room?" I wasn't getting it.

"Yes," He said. "This is where I've seen every hurtful and painful thing you have gone through." 

I felt a surge of comfort because He reminded me that He is close to the brokenhearted and rescues those crushed in spirit. He was despised and rejected so He understood every heart pang and sting of rejection. 

I thought I was living out those scenes alone, but He was there, crying over every hurt and comforting me in each one. He never left me or forsook me just as He had promised. Jesus met me in my sorrow and wept with me.

He was right there, ministering to me in the deep pain even though I couldn't see or feel Him. I looked and saw that the pictures on the walls of The Weeping Room were covered with tears that The Lord Himself had shed over the brokenness in each scene and the pain it had caused me.

He reminded me that He collects my tears in a bottle. I wondered, "Who is catching His?"

The Groaning Room:

Then, the next day, The Lord showed me another room that He said was The Groaning Room. He reminded me that He intercedes for me and that The Holy Spirit travails for me. Romans 8:26-27 says, "In the same way, The Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but The Spirit Himself intercedes for us through wordless groans."

He showed me that as I was processing it in The Forsaken Room, that He was there processing it for me in The Weeping Room and The Groaning Room." He was birthing something for me that would be met in the next room He took me to.

The Healing Room:

He led me to the next room which He said was The Healing Room. The tears He had shed for me in The Weeping Room and the prayers He had interceded for me in accordance with God's Will in The Groaning Room met and intertwined together, combining and finding their full culmination and completion for me in The Healing Room.

The Healing Room is where The Comforter (The Holy Spirit) transforms those old painful pictures hanging on the walls of The Forsaken Room into new, joy-filled memories. The air of The Healing Room is heavy. The air is pure and crisp. Light flows in through the windows and everything is fresh and new. The old, negative and hurtful voices that flowed out of the photos in The Forsaken Room are transformed in His glory to new, life-giving messages that are coming from His own voice.

He promises to give beauty for ashes and take what the enemy throws my way to try and destroy me and transforms it into something that strengthens me rather than takes me out. 

He takes the old, painful memories of the past and breathes purpose into them. He promises to work ALL things together for my good and for His glory. In the Healing Room, I find that He carries what I was never meant to carry and like a flower sprouting out of the fire-scorched ground of a burned-out forest, He brings life to dead places.

What Room Are You Currently In?:

We ALL have a Forsaken Room in our lives, but every room has different photos hanging on the wall.

What is hanging on the wall of your Forsaken Room?

It could be pictures of rejection, loss, anger, bitterness, brokenness, self-hatred, unforgiveness, addiction, loss of identity, abandonment, inadequacy, fear...

Whatever hurt is hanging on the walls of your heart, know that Jesus weeps for you, collecting your tears in His bottle (Psalm 56:8: "You keep track of all my sorrows. You have collected all my tears in Your bottle. You have recorded each one in Your book") and He intercedes for you (Romans 8:34: Jesus "..is at the right hand of God and is also interceding for us."

Trust Him to come into your Forsaken Room and transform those hurts and pains in the lavishness of His love for you and let Him transform those gaping heart wounds inside The Healing Room. Let Him bring purpose from your pain. He will transform rocks thrown at you into bricks to build something new from.

Invite Him in and He will come.

I pray this blesses you and that today is the first day of finding freedom from the things that satan brings to try to destroy you. Where satan comes only to steal, kill and destroy, Jesus comes that you might have life and more abundantly!