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Writer's pictureHannah Kuhn

A hidden meaning in a Hebrew word

Forget the former things... I am doing a new thing.

Perhaps one of the biggest misconceptions about Christianity is that once you give your life to Jesus, you never have problems, you never get sad, you never feel left out, and you never struggle with the things secular society does.


Jesus doesn't make life easy, He makes life possible. C.S. Lewis once said, "Life with God is not immunity from difficulties but peace in difficulties." The Bible says I am a masterpiece (Ephesians 2:10), the Hebrew word 'segullah' (found in Exodus 19:5 and Deuteronomy 7:6) meaning God's most prized possession. But honestly, I don't feel like a prized possession all the time.


I recently finished my thickest journal yet, and it took just over a year to fill. Since starting this journal, I've lost a lot (including the friend who gave me this journal), and have felt like God really put me through the fire. Lost in the fire was my church, a community, a family, friends, familiarity, joy, peace, even my health.


God essentially stripped me raw of nearly everything I knew and was familiar with to show me that at my core, if God is all that I have, then I have all that I need.


When God started, one-by-one, taking everything I knew away, I didn't feel angry; I felt heavy and broken. I'll never forget the last Sunday I spent at my previous church. I felt panic walking in, unwanted in the sanctuary and I couldn't stop myself from crying throughout the entire sermon.


My lungs felt like they could drop to my stomach, and my legs and feet felt like they were a thousand pounds. As I somehow sat through the sermon, feeling the weight and pain of all the people who passively and directly made me feel unwanted, I felt the Lord's whisper, "you don't belong here anymore, Hannah."


When the Lord tells you that you don't belong somewhere, it's very different from when humans do. Human beings can be cruel, but the Lord always wants what's best. I felt peace in His nudge, even though I felt depleted thinking about what I would lose. While I knew I would have to start over, I responded "lead me where" and felt Him say "I will not forsake you."


For the next four months, I visited a different church every Sunday until I felt clarity in the one I now attend. Amidst those four months, God continued to take other familiarities away, and while at the time I felt like He was punishing me, I see how God was refining.


He was taking away the things that, while I was determined to be loyal and push through despite how tough they were, He knew they were doing more damage than good.


I basically disappeared for five months to reset, heal, grow closer to God, and re-remember who I am, and what I'm worth. It was the closest I felt to God in my life.


My days routinely started early with God, included hour-long walks after work (no matter how cold) to talk more with God, and ended early with journaling or an uplifting video to make sure I got enough sleep.


I learned how to unapologetically say "no" to what I knew wouldn't be good for me, and prioritize the things that I knew would make me the healthiest and best version of myself.


Luke 5:16 says that Jesus often "withdrew to lonely places to pray" and so did I. Jesus was about to walk through the hardest thing anyone has and will ever do, so if He needed the Father's wisdom and strength to do what He did, I knew I certainly needed it too.


Today, I still go to this place almost everyday to talk to God and ask for His wisdom and strength.


Looking back, it was the hardest and darkest season of my life (add on top of that it was winter), but it taught me that being a prize possession sometimes means being put through the fire if it's the only way to be refined into the best version of who you're meant to be. Think about it, pearls and diamonds are both created after undergoing an incredible amount of pressure.


But God didn't put me through the fire, He took me through the fire. To put means to place and leave, but to take means to go with, and just like He told me in that beautifully painful sanctuary, He never left me and He never forsook me.


Today, things are still changing, but I know if I wasn't a prize possession of the King, then things wouldn't be changing the way they are. There are a lot of verses, especially from Paul, about joy in trials and strength through weaknesses, but my favorite verse I clung to in this season was Isaiah 43:18, "Forget the former things; do not dwell on the past. See, I am doing a new thing."



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