Filling Your Voids
“If you’re seeking people to fill a void that was meant for God, you’ll never find complete healing”
If we could fill our own voids, many of us would be healed, fulfilled, and happy in all areas of our lives by now. However, what if I told you it is impossible for us as human beings to truly fill those empty places in our lives? Don't get me wrong, there are ways people can fill their voids, but most of our generation achieve that in negative ways. Some use social media, become workaholics, drink, smoke, get into wrong relationships, etc. However, they fail to recognize that those negative fillings have no long-term satisfaction. Most of the time, the things we use to occupy our feelings of emptiness don't contribute to our purpose in life.
Recently, I discovered that I have areas of my life that are voids that I was aware of but continued to fill with the wrong things. Ultimately, It was hard for me to embrace my feeling of emptiness because I failed to recognize that I wasn't completely healed or happy in this specific area of my life. The first step to filling our voids is honesty. It's important for our generation to be honest about those empty places. Whether it may be loneliness filled by platonic or intimate relationships, regret filled by anger, depression filled by drugs, or insecurities filled by attention. All of our emptiness have root causes. If we aren't honest about what hurt us or led us down a wrong spiral, we will never know what pure happiness, satisfaction, or healing may look like in our lives. The only way to be honest about those feelings of emptiness is, to be honest with God about it. God satisfies our soul (mind, will, and emotions) and fills it (Jeremiah 31:25). As a result of our honesty in voicing "God, I'm Empty" we allow Him to fill our emptiness (loneliness, anger, grief, etc.) with the things He knows we need.
The second step to filling our voids is forgiveness. The things that we choose not to forgive create voids in our lives. Most things that happen in our life result from our choices; others experience the effects of someone else's actions. It could be being neglected, bullied, growing up in a single-parent home, being cheated on, or anything that comes to your mind. Forgiveness is hard to swallow, but you can create so much beauty in your life when you finally heal from what hurt you. When God fills our voids, it is a different level of peace and joy that no human being can give or take away.
SOUL TIES (Part I)
The Entanglement
A lot of the time we want to keep the things that God wants us to let go. My Heart was in two different places.
It was another youth night at my church on a regular Friday. We would go to worship together and hear the word being preached or taught. Every Friday night after a long day in school, my older sister and I would attend the youth services. On a Friday night in 2016, I sat and listened to my youth pastor teach from the book of Daniel in the Bible. It was so profound and life-changing that it still rings in my ear today. She told the story about the three Hebrew boys who were thrown in a fiery furnace for choosing not to bow down to the golden image of a king, King Nebuchadnezzar. In the story, Israel was taken into captivity by another nation, Babylon. Hold on, I know it sounds like I’m preaching, but chill out and keep reading.
It was against their beliefs to serve any other God or to have idols. King Nebuchadnezzar demanded that a golden statue of himself be built in the city and when all the people hear the sound of the trumpet, they had to bow down to it. However, these three boys refused to bow down to the image because they’re God wasn’t King Nebuchadnezzar, but all the other people in the city did. At the closing of her message, she asked us “what is the golden image that you’ve bowed down to?” She asked us for the remaining minutes to tell God what that “thing” was that we would idolize before God. As I sat there with my eyes closed, I began to tell God that my golden image would be a “boyfriend.” Yes sis, a Boyfriend! Only to realize that two years later I would find myself bowing to the “golden image” because I ended up in a 3-year relationship.
Relationships
I’ve heard the saying that whenever God wants to do something in your life He’ll use a relationship and whenever, the devil wants to do something in your life he’ll use a relationship. The difference is that one is a godly relationship and the other is an ungodly relationship. I realized throughout high school the power a relationship would have on me. I didn't grow up having many friends, maybe 1 or 2 real friends, so I knew that if I ever could feel the void of my loneliness through a relationship whether friendly or intimate then I would be fine. The truth is I may have just been infatuated with the idea of love. I wanted to know what it felt like to be in love and to be in a relationship. I got myself into something I wasn’t prepared for. It has taught me a lot of about myself and loving someone else is no game.
Tea Time
When I was preparing to go to college during the summer of 2018, I met a guy. It started off in the regular talking stage and eventually grew into a relationship. (If you don’t know what the talking stage is, your old lol). Everything was going great. I was going away to school, away from my parents and I had a potential boyfriend who ironically lived in the same city I was going to school in. (Y'all wouldn't believe how ironic it was. You would’ve thought it was planned). Let’s just say that void of loneliness never went away. I thought I could suppress it. Hide it deep in my heart so that God could never remind me that He wanted to fill it. I thought that if I got a boyfriend, I would be more confident in my self-esteem. Every day I found myself feeling God’s conviction and hated every bit of it. I didn't want to feel His conviction for trying to let someone else fill my emptiness because I wouldn’t let God do it. As much I wanted to be in a relationship with this guy, I was broken spiritually and not the good kind of broken. I was dying spiritually. I didn’t want to talk to God, I thought he didn’t love me anymore, I thought he wouldn’t want to hear from me. I thought he forgot about me because of the condemnation that outweighed all the conviction I felt from all the things people typically do in relationships, but God wanted me all to himself. He’s a jealous God and he would go beyond the limits to have you all to himself. I’d rather be in a godly soul-tie than an ungodly one. Thus, it was a constant battle for me between choosing God or staying in this relationship. It was only a battle because I started to put him before God. It’s the most dangerous place to put someone on the “throne of your heart” instead of God. Somehow, I played that dangerous game. It resulted in me being in a soul tie.
After constant break-ups and feeling the tug of my deep attachment to him I choose God. I chose not to bow to the image but to stand for a life that is surrendered to God. Oh, and it wasn’t easy and still isn’t. Heartbreaks aren’t meant to feel beautiful. But when God takes you through heartbreaks, He picks up the pieces and restores to you a new heart. Leaving friends or history with a person isn’t easy, but to get out of it we must close our eyes and hold God’s hand.
What’s In Your Heart?
“For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also”.
~Matthew 6:21
We all have things that we treasure. Some of them are good, and some of them aren’t good. When I was between the ages of 9 and 12 years old, I was what today we call a “material girl.” I would cry when I couldn’t find my cute expensive shirts or couldn’t get the pair of Jordans I wanted. The only reason why I would get so emotional about those materialistic things was that I treasured them, and they were important to me.
Treasure can be something that a person adores or take esteem in. For example, some people can treasure material items, a significant other, friendships, opinions, education, and careers. The things or relationships we treasure become bad when we idolize them and put them at the forefront of our lives before God. Matthew 6: 21 (NIV) states, “For where your treasure is, there your HEART will be also.” Therefore “our hearts [become] owned by whatever we consider our `treasure’”. The things that we treasure/ love dearly have the potential to cause heartbreaks, confusion, anger, and a lot of other emotions because that kind of love should be reserved for God. God cares more for your heart than He does for your actions. Being young, I know it's hard for us not to be focused on our treasure, i.e., careers, which is not a bad thing, but when we idolize our treasure, we’ve replaced God.
Thus, it is important for us to always keep Jesus first in our lives and to choose His perfect will for our lives over our own will. Ways we can do this are by:
1. Desire things in our hearts that God wants for us
2. Desire godly friendships and relationships
3. Desire God more than worldly things
4. GUARD OUR HEART because “everything [we] do flows from it” Proverbs 4:23.
Letters to The Throne #1
Dear God,
I hate the process. I should’ve listened to you when you told me don’t get into it. I didn’t listen. You wanted to protect me from this but I wanted to experience things for myself. I regret it. I continue to put a smile on my face but I wish I can go back. Go back and do it all over again. This time I’ll listen to you. I reassure myself thousands of times that you’ll carry me through this because pain gives birth to purpose. Sometimes I wish I didn’t have to go through the process to get where you want me to be. I don’t have all the answers but I have to trust your intentions. I know you said all things work together for my good and most days I fail to take you at your word. This process I’m going through I hate it because some days feel easier than others. Every minute I’m being processed feels like eternity.
Love Des,
12/1/21
FEAR
Fear is like Will Smith. It smacks you out of pursuing your dreams.
Fear and I have the most toxic relationship! One minute I like it because it keeps me in my comfort zone, and the next minute, I hate it because I have so many creative ideas. Fear is contagious. It can spread like wildfire. It has the potential to ruin your dreams and others. Fear for me looked like living in my comfort because I was scared to live outside the box. I was afraid to live in my purpose. I feared the judgment of people. And when fear GRIPS you of your passion, dreams, mind, and emotions, it refuses to let go. The only cure for fear is being courageous. It sounds cliché, but it's the truth. Now Courageous means to be deterred by danger or pain. So, what is dangerous or painful about pursuing your purpose or dream? What do you have to lose to live outside the culture and its norms?
TTime (Transparency Time)
I lived in fear and sometimes struggled with loosening its grip on me. It’s a mixture of fear of the unknown and the things I must leave behind to pursue what God has for me. I had so many excuses not to launch my blog or other businesses I want to create. I was fearful of what people would say about me or how I would be perceived. It’s a difference between being afraid of little stuff like spiders, bees, and dogs than being afraid of your future. That’s me!
Overcoming Fear
Some things that fester fear can be rejection, childhood trauma, mental abuse, physical abuse, emotional abuse, and words. All of these play a huge part in holding us back. However, I think out of all… WORDS affect us in powerful ways which can create fear. Think about it! People become fearful of rejection because of the word “no,” people become afraid because someone may have threatened them, someone may have told them that they’d never be anything in life, or you can become fearful because of a threat. It all stems from words. The tongue is a significant body part. It helps create words, so without it, we cannot speak. Thus, to overcome fear, we should watch what we say, but also watch what we listen to and be careful of the people we allow to speak into our life. In all of this, we can create fear for ourselves and others. So, being courageous doesn’t mean you become a superhero. It looks different for everyone because everyone isn’t afraid of the same thing. Being courageous for me was starting this blog, and it took much talking to myself to overcome the thoughts of what people may think about me. However, we should never let fear be the ruler of your life.
Here I am, risking it all!
