Turn the clocks forward, turn your life around.

Spring puts our minds on three things: clocks moving forward (more sunshine later in the evening!), the end of winter, and Easter. Trees with branches long withered and barren during winter slumber begin to slowly release new buds that will turn into leaves that will provide beauty, shade, and clean the air we breathe. The season’s cycle is one we look forward to each year and is as dependable as the rising sun itself.

Easter is about the rising Son of a very different kind. A long-withered, spiritually-barren, and separated from God were saved by Jesus’ ultimate sacrifice so that we could sprout, grow, and produce our own good fruit. Jesus sacrifice for our salvation was a certainty long before the sun ever rose the first time.

It truly is the season of rebirth, restoration, and reconciliation. But what is easy to overlook or to forget is that any time of year can be a season of rebirth, restoration, and reconciliation. Salvation – even though it resulted from a one-time sacrifice by Jesus Christ – is a never-ending gift that anyone at any moment can accept. Every day people across the globe accept Christ as his or her own personal savior, thus beginning their walk with Christ and reconnection to God.

However, the cycle of rebirth, restoration, and reconciliation is not confined solely to the context of the one-time acceptance of Jesus. No, this cycle can be played out immediately upon our transformation and in every area of our life throughout the rest of our days. As is found in Scripture, God is the Supreme molder of clay and that clay – in this instance – are His people. God can even mold things that we think are irrevocably broken into a new thing of beauty. That is certainly true for me.

And that brings us to this month’s post.

Sometimes we may look at ourselves and the markings of our past sins and become overwhelmed with thoughts of doubt about our God and His forgiveness but scripture says our sins were nailed to the cross with him on that first Good Friday! He did the work on the cross out of love for His children, our job is belief.

Believe me, I thought I had gotten myself trapped in something from which I would never be free but, oh, how I underestimated just what God can do!

My life, in all candor, was a bit of a mess. I had just been through a horrific divorce, coming out of a 20-year relationship/marriage that almost destroyed my life. The relationship was one of personal destruction that was filled with excessive drinking, drugs, infidelities, and no spiritual guidance. God was not the center of my life or my marriage.

I struggled with ending my marriage because I didn’t want to be a “double statistic” of being divorced twice and the same of another failed marriage that went with all of it. This second marriage was a life filled with undeniable sin and heartache that I wanted to be free of and to be healed mentally, emotionally, and spiritually.

I just didn’t know where or how to find that. 

I floundered and spun out of control for a long time. But God saved me from the grips of Satan’s hands. He had sent Jesus to die on the cross to save us all and at the moment I accepted Jesus as my savior and turned away from my sing, the veil over my eyes and over my heart lifted.

The clarity was staggering. I could see how I had loved and had pursued all the wrong things for all the wrong reasons. I thought I could be “captain of my ship” and could chart my own course to find true peace and joy. That peace and joy was elusive and the harder I tried to control life in the acquisition of the peace and joy I desired; the harder things became. It was a vicious cycle and a lonely existence. A cycle that always led me back to my sin nature, climbing into a bottle to numb the pain.

Fast forward 4 years to 2017.

Broken and seeking something I didn’t know how to find or recognize, God kept tugging at my heart in the direction of church. I began attending Southeast Christian and kept coming back Sunday after Sunday. Each week, God lovingly and relentlessly began peeling the sin, the pain, and the scars away from my heart. He transformed my heart into something that began seeking His peace and joy rather than the world’s version of it.

It was about this time I first noticed Tony Cash, another attendee at Southeast Christian. I didn’t know it then but God was working and it was about to become clear to me why God’s hand was pushing me out of bed every Sunday. He knew why I needed to be at Southeast Christian; He knew the peace and joy I was seeking was mine to the accepting if I surrendered my life to Him and trusted that His plans were much greater than mine. 

The emptiness, the old habits, the bad influences around me was exactly what Tony talks about today to the men we mentor who suffer from addiction: “When you take our eyes off of God your sin nature creeps in and you soon fall away and go back to your old ways. You can’t go back to your old lives. You have to change your scenery and your friends. You have to stay connected to God’s Word.”

That was certainly true of me then.

Tony began discipling me from the moment we met and that made an impression on me. Discipling was something I had never experienced before. I never had a spiritual leader in my life, someone who cared about my salvation first. 

As the relationship between Tony and me quickly developed, we knew God’s hand was moving in our lives. We married in September 2017. I laid my drinking habits at the cross on December 16th and, in January 2018, God called Tony into ministry, leaving the workforce to serve the Lord full-time. Five months later, I felt the Lord calling me to serve alongside my husband and said goodbye to my clients in the world of digital marketing. 

My word of encouragement for you is that if you’re struggling, if you feel trapped in a life or in a circumstance you feel you can never escape, never underestimate what God can and will do when you surrender your life to Him. If you hold fast to God, nothing and no one can pull you from His grip and the plans He has to prosper you.

 Rebirth, restoration, and reconciliation is close by and can happen at any time, not just at certain times of year noted by dates on a calendar.