Are you broken?

 Hello, I'm Tammy Toney Butler with Reflective Hour.

Welcome today. I started Reflective Hour at the prompting of the Holy Spirit, and it truly is His hour, His time, however much time that is to get His truth across, and if I've done that, then I've done my job because I don't want you to see me. I only want you to see Him, His loving grace, His healing, miracle-working power that can work in and through you if you only surrender, trust, and obey as I had to do, and I know that's not easy.

So, Holy Spirit, I ask You to come and guide Your program and direct my steps. Help me to speak Your Truth because You are Spirit and Truth.

Let this be about you, a mirror that reflects back to the Creator, the one who sets us all free if we stretch out our hands for healing. If we trust, we obey.

Let's start by the reading of the Word. We're going to look at Romans. We're looking at Romans 8, 9 through 17.

Are you broken? Let's reflect on His truth.

What does He say about your brokenness?

And I'm reading from the King James Version. Again, Romans 8, 9 through 17.

But ye are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit, if so be that the Spirit of God dwell in you. Now if any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of his. And if Christ be in you, the body is dead because of sin; but the spirit is life because of  righteousness.

But if the spirit of him that raised up Jesus from the dead dwell in you, he that raised up Christ from the dead shall also quicken your mortal bodies by his spirit that dwelleth in you.

Therefore, brethren, we are debtors, not to the flesh, to live after the flesh.  For if you live after the flesh, ye shall die: but if ye through the Spirit do mortify the deeds of the body, ye shall live. For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God.

For you have not received the spirit of bondage again to fear; but ye have received the Spirit of adoption, whereby we cry, Abba, Father. The Spirit itself beareth witness with our spirit, that we are the children of God: and if children, then heirs; heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Christ; if so be that we suffer with him, that we may be also glorified together.

I had to pick up my cross and follow God.

Let's reflect back on my healing so you can see the true, truth of His redemptive, healing power, and how  He can work in and through your life. And I am that living,  breathing example; Even now I'm just going to surrender to Him and let Him speak to you. But I can tell you that I had to come to the end of myself to find myself.

And it was in my brokenness that He was there and so strong, and let's look at a few passages, and I want you to see Him today.

So, recently I was asked by one of the thrivers I work with, about,  John 11, 1 through 44, when, this individual asked me the question of: Why did Jesus cry before raising Lazarus? If he knew he was about to raise him up, why cry over him? When we looked at it, many times in scripture, we look at where it says Jesus wept. That was it. Jesus wept. It's one of the shortest, you know, scriptures in the Bible. And John 11:35, Luke 19:41, Hebrews 5, 7 through 9, talks about how Jesus wept.

He is a compassionate, merciful, merciful God. Jesus was the son of God. He came in the flesh. He came as a man so that He would have compassion and empathy and know what we go through; what we struggle with. So many times on your healing journey, you're told you can't feel, you can't have emotions that if you have faith, that's it. You're never going to suffer again. You're, you're good. You're going to have all, you know, roses and, an easy path if you walk by faith and not by sight. That's certainly not been the case in my life. I've needed the faith cultivated through adversity, trauma, struggle, and many different negative circumstances in my life.

I had to hold onto that faith to get me through. And when we look at,  this and and how I responded to this wonderful,  individual who asked me this question is, we, we know that, that Jesus, we, we know He felt emotions. We know that his heart was just ever-present and, there and it still is for his children.

And He does not like it when His Children are not taken care of, when they suffer at the hands of individuals, when the rich put themselves before the poor when we don't take care of the widows and the orphans, when we don't honor the great commandments, when we don't put God first when we don't love our neighbor as ourselves, and that is what he is showing us, is that we need to have compassion. We need to have mercy. Instead of asking folks and, judging them and, looking at them,  those that are struggling with addiction or,  struggling with maybe,  mental health issues and even judging the homeless, well, they must have done something, to be that way.

Instead, if we look through the lens of what happened to them and how we can wrap our arms around them and show them compassion and help them come back from the darkness to find the light, that's what we have to do as followers, as Christ followers, as the living, breathing example of the word, as the temples of Christ.

Our body is the temple. I mean, as it says, he's the head, and we're like the arms and the legs and so we all have to just work together for the good of all those that seek the kingdom. We know that Jesus, flipped the tables in righteous anger and then He went on to heal people. We know that  He did that. He did raise Lazarus from the dead.  He got caught up when He saw the grief of Mary and the others. He had empathy with that situation; He could put himself in their shoes.

How can we minister to others? How can we bring them back from the darkness into the light if we never dwelled in the dark? If we've never struggled with addiction if we've never struggled with shame, guilt, fear, regret, self-loathing.

I've struggled with all those things, and Christ set me free. I was so dirty, so caught in the mire, so feeling like,  I couldn't even reach out to Christ. I couldn't reach out to God. I couldn't go to the church because I felt like I was too dirty or too,  you know, full of my own,  self-righteousness, loathing, so many things.

And I realized that was just not true, that He accepts us. He accepted the woman at the well; He accepted the woman with the issue of blood, the man with the withered hand. He never judged these people before He healed them. He just asked, do you want to be healed? Do you want to be whole?

You know, and,  that's what we, we have to, to believe that we can be first and I have been, and you can be too, so there's hope. And then we have to lay certain things at the foot of the cross. And we have to forgive ourselves. We have to believe we are emotional beings, but we can't let emotions guide us.

We have to walk by faith. Remember,  Peter and, and when he was walking on,  water, to Jesus and he focused on the water and the waves and the storm, and he took his eyes off, of Jesus, off of Christ, off of his faith. And we can't do that. We can't focus on the storm or our circumstances. We have to focus on faith, on Jesus, on the H healer. We can't focus on how dirty we feel, how full of shame, guilt, fear, regret, self-loathing,  our sin per se. We have to focus on the Healer. And when we fix our eyes on Christ, we ask Him to forgive us of all of our sins. We repent of them, and we believe that He is the son of God, that He was raised up after He died on the cross, and that He nailed the shame, the guilt, the fear, the regret, all those things to the cross at Calvary.

So we don't have to carry that victim. We don't have to carry those things. We can be set free. We can walk on a path of righteousness for His name's sake, and when we trust Him enough to surrender, and we trust Him enough to let Him in, to be the author and finisher of our faith, to be our Redeemer, to be our Healer, when we let Him in and say, Holy Spirit, come live inside of me, change my heart, change my mind, help me to have the heart of Christ, the mind of Christ, and change me.

That doesn't mean we won't have trials and tribulations. That doesn't mean we won't have grief. We won't have adversity. When you want to follow Christ, and you pray those prayers, watch out because a storm will come, but we need faith to get us through the storms. We live in an evil world. We live in a world where we are in the last of last days, and the Messiah is coming.

We have to repent. We have to turn. We have to realize that we will face judgment. He is a God of mercy, but He is a God of judgment, and He's not going to stand by while His Children are being slaughtered, raped, abused, while Christians are being persecuted all around the world. So, we have to reflect on his goodness.

His wanting to heal, His ability to heal. He lifted off of me the weight of trauma: the shame, the guilt, the fear, the regret, the self-loathing. He let me know it was okay to cry. It was okay to have anger. It was okay to look out and express anything to him. I come to Him all the time, and I ask Him to help me.

He is my best friend, and he can be yours too. And that's what he wants to be. He wants us to be needy. He wants us to provide like he provided the manna in the wilderness. He wants us to seek him for everything. He doesn't want us to make things idols in our life. For the longest time, I made food an idol in my life. I made men an idol in my life. I made possessions. I made a career. I thought that if I, you know,  made all the money no one could ever hurt me again and that I could somehow move past the darkness into the light. But then I realized no food filled me up. Nothing I purchased filled me up. I still had this empty void. And I realized that for the first time, the only thing that set me free and healed me was Christ. And when I prayed that prayer and laid everything at the cross and laid even my little girl, my victim, that all those horrible things happened to, I submitted and surrendered to Christ, and He came in and came into my life to help me.

His light has transformed me. And you can be too, and you can sleep through the night, and you don't need Ambien or a bottle of wine to wash it down. You don't need those things. You call out to Him. And,  you know, I wrote,  kind of before Christ,  and the Holy Spirit filled me up. I would cry. I would scream. I would get angry. I would even get quiet, and I would kind of... Go into myself an introvert, and now the only difference is I cry with Jesus. I scream out to Jesus; Jesus, Jesus, Jesus. I get comfort from Jesus. I even have righteous anger from Jesus and the best part now I get still with Jesus. I was sitting this morning by the lake, and I was reflecting, and I was just My mind was quiet.

Can you guys believe that? A quiet mind? I know you guys will know what I'm talking about, those of us who struggled with the "icky," and it was quiet, my mind. I didn't have a thousand negative thoughts. I heard birds chirping. I heard a rooster. Life was going on all around me, and I was no longer dead. I was alive.

I was the walking dead. I was a zombie before Christ set me free. I was alive. I was on top of the world. I had achieved everything, you know, in the career pathway. I was a published author and all that stuff, but I was so dead. I just left everything and picked up my cross and followed him, and I am so full of joy and peace and in a place of total surrender. And just for the first time I have hope and am in charge of my life. That's what Reflective Hour is about. It's so you can see him.  He can be a mirror that you reflect,  that He reflects out onto you, that you can be transformed just by watching this and feeling His goodness in His presence and knowing that He loves you, that you're never too dirty to seek Him.

You're never too dirty to come to Him and cry out. And if you don't know words, because often trauma has no words, that's okay. I didn't know anything at first. I'd just sit on the floor, and I would just sit there quietly, and He knew. And I say, Lord Jesus, Holy Spirit, just come. I don't even know. I don't know how to love you.

I don't know how to; I'm not a Biblical scholar. I don't know how to do all that. I'm trying to process the scriptures. For the longest times, the Bible was a trigger for me, and I couldn't even remember scripture. Because I used to recite scripture, hold my Bible, and be huddled in the bathroom. And I knew when I went out that boogeyman that monster was going to be there, and it was going to be everything I had to do not to surrender to him, not to submit to the darkness, not to be broken. I refused to be broken. I refused to partner with the darkness. I knew I was a child of the light. I knew I had a purpose. I knew I was fearfully, beautifully, and wonderfully made the daughter of the king.

I couldn't put it into words back then, but I knew it deep in my spirit, and He was there with me, and I couldn't see it. But without Christ in my life, I would have been dead. I would have reached for something else. Other than him, he stopped me, and I did not go down that addiction pathway of opioids and those things, but I had, you know, I used sex.

I was addicted to it. I was addicted to so many things, and He set me free from it. I sinned; I made horrible choices. I hurt people; words came out of my mouth that I can never, ever take back. And it was only through me tethering into Him through Him being in me, working through me that I was set free of that. And He put me on a pathway to help others.

And I hope that one word of this sinks in and that you experience His love, His joy as I do, His kindness, His redemptive healing power. Stretch out your hand. He wants to heal you. Ask Him, ask Him, ask Him to help you. Ask Him to be your Lord and Savior. Confess with your mouth that He is the Son of God. That He was fully man, fully God. That He came to earth to set us all free. To bear our stripes, to deliver us from our sins, to bear our pain. He doesn't promise that you won't breathe, that you won't have pain you have to grieve to heal. You have to cry. You have to get angry. You have to submit.

I grieved so much that I actually,  when I was trying to process the fact that my mother opened me up to so much victimization and that because she chose things that were easy for her based on survival because she just couldn't deal with things, then that opened me up to be victimized. I don't fault her. I forgave her. She was a victim, too. It was a repetitive cycle of generational trauma. But I realized that He came to set me free from all of that, to erase all of that darkness, and to heal me in His transformative life. When I let go of some of those things and I forgave her, then I didn't need some of the other things to cope.

But it was hard when I grieved the loss of a childhood because I didn't have I didn't have it what they portrayed on TV, even the pictures of Jesus. And you see the little kids gathering around, and you feel like you're too dirty to be gathered around Him. That there's no way He could see you, no way you could reach out, but He does see you.

You're never too dirty. You're still his child. Sure. I had dirt on me. I'd Murk and mire and sin. And sin separates us from Him, and He helped me to shed those things —spirits of gluttony, spirits of rebellion, spirits of pride. I had to get through and get rid of so many things, and he helped me pray it off of me and brought wise counselors into my life to help me.

I grieved so much that I went blind in my left eye. I had to have surgery,  a macular hole repair. And Christ healed me. He healed my vision. I should never have come back from that, but I did. And I even had a slight separation in the right eye, which would have possibly given me another,  macular hole, and that would not have been good because that's my good eye. And, miraculously it sealed itself off. And I've been healed from that.

He's there. Call out, trust. Believe that you've been healed. If you're currently suffering from a cancer diagnosis, of something in the doctors have given you a report, someone has said something to you. You refuse to believe it. You refuse to take it in. You say Christ I know you. I know you because you're in my heart. I've been saved. I'm  I'm a daughter, a son of the king. I let the Holy Spirit guide me, and I rebuke that. I come against it, and I know that Your stripes have healed me. Calvary has healed me, and I refuse to believe anything different.

I have been healed of addiction. I have been healed of cancer. I have been healed of insomnia, healed of depression, healed in the name of Jesus. And I profess and call you out to be healed in the name and the power of Christ; you submitted to Him, and he's got you just like He had me.

We're closing today. I believe that's the word he had to give you. I never want to be on here so long that you see me and not Him. I believe I've spoken His truth as He's given it to me and reflected it back to you, like a mirror to your soul, so that you can look deep and internal. Don't be afraid. Don't be afraid to come to him. He already knows what you did. You knew what I did. You're never too dirty. Seek Him out. Seek His truth.

You can follow my blog. It's on Reflective Spaces Ministry. That's our non-profit healing ministry. You can follow that there. You can follow my YouTube channel for Reflective Hour. Because when you follow me, You don't follow me. You follow Him. So, this is all His. Let's see where He takes it. 

Thank you. Thank you, Holy Spirit. Thank you for giving me the courage to come on here, to be weak, raw, vulnerable, and open.

Because that's what it takes to be whole and healed, I had to come to the end of myself to find it. Many of you are at the end of yourself. You will find yourself. I did. You will be set free. Trust me. Walk with me. Walk with Him. Follow Reflective Hour. Share it with your family, friends, and those you love.

Let's journey together. Let's bring about the true gospel, the true church. Let's bring it back. Not with pomp, not with circumstance. I'm coming to you as someone who sold it all to follow Christ. I don't have a salary yet through the ministry or anything like that. He hasn't wanted me to have it yet. I am coming to you from a shed, which is my office, and we live in a 576 -576-square-foot tiny house on the lake. Everything we had, we sold to follow Him.

He is everything, and I realize he's the bread of life. He's the Wellspring of Living Water. He's the Sustainer, the Redeemer. That's all we need. Follow Him. Follow the cross.

Holy Spirit, bring them your peace that surpasses all understanding, and You end this.
Let this be a beacon of light in the dark. Let people reach out to You, find You, and find hope. Holy Spirit, have Your way in their lives.

Thank you for following Reflective Hour with Tammy Toney-Butler.