In this episode, I share more about how this truth has played out in my own life — and the steps you can take to make it real in yours.
God Always Makes a Way
👉🏻 When I look back on my childhood, it doesn’t make sense from a human perspective that I am who I am today.
There were simply too many things working against me.
⛪ Firstly, my parents weren’t Christians.
We didn’t attend church–not even at Christmas or Easter. They didn’t teach us anything about God.
As I got older, I attended youth group and Sunday services with a friend from a Christian home.
In my junior and senior years of high school, I witnessed God revealing His true self to two of my friends—and then entering into a full relationship with Him.
God was trying to reveal Himself to me as well, but I couldn’t follow in their footsteps. Partly because….
💔 Secondly, I had a highly abusive childhood.
My father’s abuse was the main cause of my suffering.
He went out of his way to be cruel to me.
And as a little girl, you desperately want to be loved by your daddy.
But after years of pain, cruelty, and really deep wounds, you begin to lose hope that things will ever change.
Friend, we naturally carry these wounds into our relationship with God. And how we initially see God.
It’s human nature to view our Heavenly Father through the lens of our earthly father.
So while our hearts desperately long for God’s love, our wounds can prevent us from being open to Him.
Thus, my heart wasn’t quite ready. And neither was my mind as….
🗺️ Lastly, I grew up in a geographical region where God’s true character wasn’t really at the center of the Church.
Unfortunately, there was more of a focus on service, performance, and appearances.
The Church should’ve provided clarity about who God truly is, who Jesus is, how much God loved me just the way I am, etc.
God and Jesus weren’t ignored, but there was also a lot missing.
Combining that with being deeply wounded, I ended up rejecting God’s loving invitation instead of accepting it.
This meant that after high school graduation, I went out into the world broken.
I made a lot of major mistakes and sinful decisions along the way.
💗 Yet God kept pursuing me. He never gave up on me.
And God made a way. In my early 20s, with God using one of those Christian friends from my childhood, I said “yes” to His invitation.
He began the process of healing my wounds; teaching me how to set healthy boundaries; and be more confident in my identity as His daughter.
But when it came to biblical teaching, I soon ran into an issue.
God directed me to attend a church down the road. I had a natural hunger to learn more about Him, the Bible, and to get answers to the questions I had as a Christian in general and as a female in particular.
Yet I soon realized that my church couldn’t provide what I was seeking.
Deep teaching on God and His character wasn’t prevalent.
And my situation looked bleak and hopeless.
I was married at the time, and my ex-husband (who didn’t have any interest in God or church) and I had moved to that location due to his job. We couldn’t just move.
🎧 Yet, once again, God made a way.
This was somewhere around 2003/2004. A time when churches were starting to put their sermons online as podcasts.
And through the same Christian friend God had used in my life recently, He connected me with a church podcast from across the country that provided what I needed.
I learned major biblical truths
I gained clarity and insights into who God truly is
I began to understand the Bible in a way that spoke truth and wisdom into my life
I was equipped with cultural context of the time to help me understand what I was reading in the Bible
Those sermons/podcast episodes were the foundation of my relationship with God and who I am today. They had a major impact that continues to pay dividends even now, 20 years later.
God provided a way forward that I didn’t even know existed–until suddenly I did.
He made a way in the desolate wilderness I felt trapped in geographically and spiritually.
God Promises to Make a New Way
In Isaiah 43:19 (NLT) God says, “For I am about to do something new. See, I have already begun! Do you not see it? I will make a pathway through the wilderness. I will create rivers in the dry wasteland.”
🛣️ Friend, notice the language here. It uses the word “pathway.” Meaning, a way for you to get from where you are to where you long (and need) to be.
Attached to the word “pathway,” are the words “through the wilderness.” In the region where the Bible takes place, the wilderness is often dry and barren land. Think of the desert. That’s why the following sentence says “I will create rivers in the dry wasteland.”
This wilderness/dry wasteland can be a physical place…but it can also be an inner state. One where you feel weighed down, wrung out, and like things are just hopeless and never going to change. That you’re never going to find the oasis.
But notice that sentence again. It says: “I will create rivers in the dry wasteland.”
God isn’t saying, “I’m asking you to pick yourself up, dust yourself off (which is probably futile out in the desert anyway), and keep moving forward when you’ve got nothing left so that you can maybe find the oasis…that place brimming with love, and acceptance, and genuine biblical teaching to help grow our relationship.”
🌴 Instead, God’s saying, “I’ll bring the oasis to you.”
He will create rivers in the day wasteland. And He’s not even promising one river, right? It says “rivers” as in more than one.
Now let’s go back to the beginning of the verse for a moment. Verse 19 begins with God saying, “For I am about to do something new. See, I have already begun! Do you not see it?”
Friend, God knows you need something new. Something different than what you’ve had before. And not only does He know exactly what that is, He loves you so much that He promises to go before you to prepare it.
All He’s asking is that you notice what He’s prepared for you. The pathway to the oasis that He’s created for you in the middle of your emotional and spiritual desert.
What is that oasis? Maybe it’s right here, within Relate Escape.