Be careful about the lies you believe from your childhood or even adult life traumas.

When I was in the 8th grade, life's circumstances and choices by others found me abruptly pulled out of school on a Friday and enrolled in a new school on a Monday, while I went from living with my mom to living with my dad.

At that time in shop class, I had just mounted a hunk of beautiful wood to be turned on a lathe. I never got to turn that piece of wood and harbored that disappointment for years and believed a lie in my mind, "I missed my only chance in life to turn wood into something beautiful." Unbeknownst to me, I had developed a victim mentality.

The longing to turn wood was buried deep in me while I did a lot of other woodworking over the years. However, about 5 years ago more traumatic experiences happened in my life and God provided some helpful, needed, and hard counseling which resulted in me casting off that lie and others I had adopted as a teenager. There was nothing keeping me from turning wood but my defeatist and victim attitude. I let the desire to turn wood loose and prayed, "Lord, would you provide a lathe I could afford, so I can turn some wood?" He did!

Turning wood has become therapeutic and a metaphor of life for me: God as the Master Craftsman can take the brokenness and flaws in our lives and make something beautiful for His glory when we yield to His tooling. Thanks be to God!

What lies will you cast off in 2024 to become all that God is creating you to be?

"For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them. (Ephesians 2:8-10)

Have a blessed New Year as you look to God for the healing He can bring from the lies we so easily believe. Please ask Him to set you free this year and thrive. You are His workmanship by grace through faith!

Would you prayerfully share in the comments any lies you have exposed and cast off to thrive under His workmanship in your life? Your testimony can encourage me and others. Thank you!

Sincerely, Mark R. Worden