Julie Gillies - From Hot Mess to Blessed: Hope to Propel Your Soul and the Promises That Change Everything

A big, fat thank you to Harvest House Publishers, who challenged me to write this book: I am grateful you believed in me. Special thanks to Kathleen Kerr, editor extraordinaire and kind friend, who made my words more effective than they might have been. Thank you to my husband, Keith, for supporting me, praying for me, and bringing home dinner more nights than I can count. And huge thanks to my awesome Facebook prayer support team. Your prayers buoyed, strengthened, and enabled me. May the Lord pour out His abundant blessings on you all.

To my gracious heavenly Father,
Who breathed fresh hope and stunning promises into my very being.
It is through You alone I have dared to believe.

I ts a compelling thought: God speaks jaw-dropping promises to His women, and if we dare to believe Him, we will be blessed.

Consider Mary, an average young woman living her quiet little life in Nazareth, tending to her familys chores while daydreaming about her recent engagement to Joseph. Suddenly, the angel Gabriel steps from the heavenly dimension onto her humble patch of earth and says something outrageous. He makes a promise that could never be fulfilled through mere human effort.

He declares the upcoming birth of a Saviorthe long-awaited Messiahthrough her, a virgin. He makes it clear that she is Gods chosen vessel, and that through her the stunning plan of redemption will occur. And then Mary does something equally outrageous.

She believes.

In spite of her initial misgivings and not quite understanding how it will all work, she chooses to believe what God tells her. And history declares her blessed among women.

Meet the scripture where it all started. We find it in the first chapter of Luke. I call it every womans verse:

Blessed (happy, to be envied) is she who believed that there would be a fulfillment of the things that were spoken to her from the Lord (Luke 1:45 AMPC ).

The same mighty God who created the majestic Himalayas and the magnificent Milky Way galaxy, who created lavender fields and caterpillars that morph into multicolored butterflies, who created distinct snowflakes and every unique fingerprint and the intricate beauty and splendor of humanity itself, whispers to womens hearts. He whispers divine thingsholy promisesthat dont always make sense to our minds, but always stir our hearts.

God speaks. He gives the promise. And we believe. It sounds so simple, doesnt it?

And yet, believing Gods promises is sometimes the hardest part. Believing is daring. Believing flies in the face of all were experiencing. We feel uncertain, scared were making it all up in our heads. Our faith feels woefully wobbly and feeble. But if we dare to believe, we will be blessed among women.

The Two Struggles Every Woman Experiences

He came to her and said, Hail, O favored one [endued with grace]! The Lord is with you! Blessed (favored of God) are you before all other women! (Luke 1:28 AMPC ).

As Gabriel greeted Mary that momentous day, her mind struggled. The angels salutation flooded her with a plethora of emotions: She was troubled, disturbed, and confused not only by the angels appearance, but at the angels pronouncement of who she was.

Blessed?

Favored of God before all other women?

What?

Scripture records that Mary was greatly troubled and disturbed and confused at what he said and kept revolving in her mind what such a greeting might mean (Luke 1:29 AMPC ). Marys struggle is ours as well.

Our first struggle is to believe that we are who God says we are.

Marys struggle to understand and believe who God clearly declared her to be is familiar territory to women. We grapple with our own self-image, battling the continual war within us to believe that we really are who God says we are. That in spite of how we feel about ourselves at any given moment (but in particular in those moments we consider ourselves failures on some level), we are not defined by that failure, our past, how we look, our family heritage, or our woefully wrong choices and myriad distressing inadequacies.

Could it be that Mary made a twofold discovery on that exceptional, holy occasion? That on the day the Lord sent an angel to announce His stunning plans, before she even heard the news that she would conceive and give birth to the holy child, Mary would first ponder and come to understandand even acceptexactly how God saw her?

For some of us, the fresh, bold concept of embracing who God says we are is new ground. It feels surprising, and (unfortunately) maybe even slightly wrong. Were accustomed to living within the constraints of believing less of ourselvesthat how we are is how we will always be. Our mother was moody, and we are too. Our father was short-tempered, and thats just the way our family is wired. The fact that we struggle with stubbornness, strife, feelings of inadequacy, or the ability to hold a grudge like nobodys business is simply a givena family legacy like freckles or muscular legs or blue eyes.

Weve accepted a lesser version of ourselves.

Yet Mary learned she was not only blessed, but that she had found free, spontaneous, absolute favor and loving-kindness with God. This magnificent truth made Marys heart soar. It burst free from whatever inaccurate self-image shed formerly held as she embraced Gods view of her.

What if, like Mary, we pondered and then truly accepted and dared to believe that we are who God says we are? What if we really believed that we are favored? That we are beautiful (Song of Solomon 1:15), accepted (Ephesians 1:6), new creations (2 Corinthians 5:17), precious in His sight (Isaiah 43:4), really and unquestionably free (John 8:36), and chosen (John 15:16)?

Believing that we are who God says enables us to burst free from our inaccurate self-images. And our truth-grasping hearts will place us in the strongest possible position to believe when God then speaks promises to our hearts. A place of confidence. A place of boldness. A place of absolute trust and complete surrender. This is what I believe transpired with Mary.

Over time, as Mary heard many people exclaim and declare awesome words over Jesus concerning His future, she pondered and treasured those words in her heart (Luke 2:19). I believe Mary did the same with the angel Gabriels surprising declaration of who she was. She took time to meditate on those beautiful words and came to the place where she knew her value and worth in Gods eyes. She was able to accept and rest in Gods promise because she first accepted and rested in who He said she was.

We would be wise to do the same by emulating Marykeeping His truths about who we actually are in our hearts, thinking about them often, and allowing them to sink in. Heaven knows we engage in negative self-talk often enough. Why not turn that around and instead ponder Gods truth about who He says we are? We are not only loved, accepted, capable, and chosen, we are His image bearers (Genesis 1:27), created to reflect God: His beauty, His light, His truth, His grace, His joy, His peace, His love. Its a beautiful twofold truth: When we truly know who we are, we more accurately reflect Whose we are.

The acceptance of who she was prepared Mary to receive the promise of what was to comeeven when it appeared absolutely ridiculous. A virgin giving birth? Who had ever heard of such a thing?

Our second struggle is to believe the stunning promises He whispers to our hearts.

You will conceive and give birth to a son, and you will name him Jesus. He will be very great and will be called the Son of the Most High. The Lord God will give him the throne of his ancestor David. And he will reign over Israel forever; his Kingdom will never end! (Luke 1:31-33).