Hi, I’m Jenna Winston with Heartscaping Ministries. I want to share a thought with you and challenge you a little bit. Are you making your choices through fear or through the love of the Father? I didn’t even know that was a thing. For me, I learned this the hard way. A lot of you might not know me yet, but a lot of people do know my story. I’m someone who was radically changed from drugs and a lot of psychiatric issues. Jesus came in and changed my whole world. Now I have a ministry bringing other people into freedom and I love it.
One of the things that Jesus did for me that became a staple in my life as I make my choices was this. Because of the addiction that I dealt with, a year or two after I had been clean I hurt my shoulder really badly and I had been prescribed a narcotic. I was so afraid to take it. To me, it was the difference between life and death. It was absolutely the difference between life and death. I associated taking one pill with ending up back in the gutter and back on the streets. The idea that I had had two years of growth didn’t even cross my mind. I would not take the medication.
My housemate, Holly, says to me, “The amount of physical pain that you are willing to endure to not take a pain pill is unhealthy in itself.” And I was like, “No, you don’t understand. Like you don’t understand.” I just went down this rabbit hole of fear. “You don’t understand. As soon as I take one, then I’m going to want more. And then this and that.” And I just honestly was offended with her because I felt like she didn’t get what I was trying to say. So then I’m laying there crying. I’m swelled out to here, torn rotator cuff, and I’m lying in my bed crying, “Jesus just heal me. Jesus just come heal me, body heal in Jesus’ name.”
I’m kind of hurt because I feel like, why wouldn’t Jesus just come instantly heal me and take my pain away so that I don’t have to take pills, right? I need Him to save me. So I’d have to take pills. And all of a sudden, Jesus gently says to me, “Satan owned your sobriety, Jen.” And I said, “What?” He’s like, “You’re not clean because you trust me. You’re clean out of sheer fear of what will happen if you’re not.” That hit me like a ton of bricks and whenever choices are made in fear, then that means that it’s a partnership with the enemy, which means the cycles. And up to that point, I’d never been free from the battlefield of the mind. Every part of not taking something in the fight was in my own will and it was from fear. And so I’d never gotten free from the battlefield that was constantly trying to take me down that road.
Anyways, I was like, “Jesus, are You actually asking me to take this medication?” He said, “I’m asking you to trust Me even in this.” And I was like, “But You don’t understand, Jesus.” Like I’m arguing with Him. “Jesus, You don’t understand. If I take one and then something happens and my mind’s altered and I’m going to want more.” And He’s like, “I’m asking you to trust Me, even in this.”
Do you know that that actually led to my freedom from addiction and the battlefield of the mind? As soon as my choices became His and through His love and trusting Him and relying on His strength, I was set free from the cycles that just kept beating up my mind. And so it became a staple in every part of my life. When big choices come up, I’m always asking myself, “Okay, am I making this choice out of the fear of what will happen if I don’t, or the fear of what will happen if I do, or am I making this choice because this is what the Father wants? This is what Jesus wants because of His love. It’s what He has for me.”
And I realize that’s a pretty intense way to learn it. But for me, it brought tremendous freedom because any choice that I make with Him, for Him, not rooted in fear, is going to blossom and grow and have fruit. And it stops the inner monologue attacks that just take us down the rabbit hole of fear. You know, fear is a real thing. And so breaking partnerships with that everywhere. So I challenge you, ask yourself, are you making choices out of sheer fear? Are you controlling a situation or your money or all of these things, a fear of lack, fear of this, fear of that. You know, there are all kinds of reasons, but when your choices are made out of fear, you never get completely free.
So I want to pray with you guys about this today. Jesus, I ask right now that there would be such a supernatural awareness and the ability to decipher and figure out if choices are being made through fear or partnered with You. And I just pray, Lord, that their ability to see that would be instantaneous, and they’d be able to catch it in the moment and be like, “Actually Lord, what are You saying? Lord, I’m scared to death, so it makes me want to do this, but Jesus, what are You saying? Okay, Lord, you’re asking me to trust You in this. Even that scares me, but I’m going to say yes.” Lord, I just pray that that internal dialogue with You gently switches everything from fear over to completely trusting you. In Jesus’ name, amen.