Diamond in the Rough 3-23-06

Good morning, Lord Jesus. You are My Lord and Savior, My Healer and Deliverer, My God, My King, and My Best Friend. You are the One who sees my heart and loves me anyway. ... "He's a diamond in the rough." Those words have always stuck with me. I had grown up on a cotton farm and then in little oil towns around west Texas and eastern New Mexico. I had worked my summers in middle school, high school, and college mostly hauling hay and driving tractors. I even filled in a couple of weeks as a roughneck on an oil rig until the reality of losing a finger or a toe from hauling drill pipe up and out of a greasy derrick really sank in and I went back to hauling hay. But now I was being considered for position as a trial lawyer in a Dallas law firm where I had worked part of my summer through law school as a law clerk. The lawyer who was pulling for me to be on the list of new hires from the graduating class passed along the summary of how I was seen by the hiring committee -- "a diamond in the rough." It felt good and it hurt at the same time. They were willing to see my potential but not fooled by my present and my past. That's how You are, Lord. With Your Father's heart, You see me as You created me to be. You see me in the fullness of the potential of my purpose and destiny, along with all the gifting, calling, and anointing You have given me and imparted to me by Your grace. But at the same time, You are not fooled by my present and my past. You see the diamond, but You also see the rough. You see my true self that needs to be nurtured and healed as You call forth my true identity and destiny, but You also see the false self that I have created and I have allowed others to create out of my own hurts and wounds, pride and insecurities, that needs to broken off in order to reveal the diamond hidden beneath the rough. When You called me to the ministry of inner healing -- healing from the inside out -- You began to remind me of those words and that image from long ago. You began to give me Your Father's heart to see Your sons and daughters as You see them, like a diamond in the rough. You taught me how to confront the "rough" and call the sin for the sin that it was in order to lead a person to confession and repentance in submitting every area of their life to the Lordship of Jesus Christ. You taught me how to help them acknowledge the pain and the shame that was still buried in the hurts and wounds of their past, from the things they had done and the things done to them. You taught me how to help them let Your Holy Spirit release it all to You -- step by step and layer by layer, liking pealing the layers of an onion with patience and faith, persistence and truth. You taught me how to speak life to the dry bones in the power of Your name and call forth their God-given purpose and passion to see and be who You created them to be. You began to teach me how to listen to You and speak Your heart to them, as You called forth the diamond and broke off the rough, through inner healing. And You began to teach me how to take the authority You had given me as Your disciple and Your ambassador over all the power of the enemy of our souls who seeks to keep us bound up in the idolatries and addictions of the bondage of self in our flesh. You were teaching me how to bind up the broken-hearted and set the captives free, as You proclaimed through my prayers the coming of the kingdom of God and the year of the Lord's favor in each person's life (Isaiah 61; Luke 4). Much of it You taught me as You used others to minister this kind of life and healing to me, as You gave me the courage and humility to set aside my pride and fear to receive the ministry of the healing love of God through those You had anointing to be Your healing hands and living words to me, as instruments of Your grace. You reminded me how when You saw the woman at the well, You went much more deeply than the surface (John 4:1-42). You looked into her past and confronted her shame and her need for love and acceptance. You could have just ministered a miracle, but You ministered inner healing as You exposed her past, so she could release it to You. In her healing, her eyes were opened to see You as her Messiah; and in her joy, she hurried off to tell everyone she knew about the love of the One "who told me everything I have ever done!" (verse 4:29) "Many Samaritans in the city believed in Him because of the woman's testimony" (verse 4:39). And You reminded me how the friends of the paralyzed man pressed through the crowds and every barrier to bring him to you for healing (Mark 2:1-12). You could have simply worked the miracle as said, "Rise and walk." But instead You looked beneath the surface of the problem to the root of the issue, ministering inner healing from the inside out. You spoke to the sins of his past as well as to the manifestation of that sin in his body; and he was healed. You expressed Your authority divine insight and revelation knowledge to not only work miracles, but also to expose the root and the source of all that keeps Your people from experiencing the healing and freedom of Your will. " 'But so that you many know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins' -- He said to the paralytic -- 'I say to you, stand up, take up your mat and go to your home' " (verse 2:10-11). Thank You for the ministry of Your healing love. Thank You for the ministry of inner healing and deliverance. In the same way that You have ministered Your healing and deliverance to me, now You have given me the heart and the joy to minister Your healing love to others by the power and authority of Your Spirit living through me. In the same way we are healed and comforted by You, so You send us to be Your heart and hands of healing and comfort to others (2 Corinthians 1:3-4). There is still much to receive and there is still much to give. Freely have I received, now freely am I to give (Matthew 10:8). Lord, thank You for letting others see the diamond in the rough in me, so now I can minister that same Father's heart of Your healing love to others. In Jesus' name I pray, Amen. Be encouraged this day! In the Love of Jesus, Tommy Hays Friends, this morning's devotional become a little more involved than I expected to express much of my calling and ministry. If you would like to know more about these biblical, spiritual principles for personal transformation through inner healing and deliverance, you might consider ordering my dvd's from a healing prayer weekend called "Preparing the Way of the Lord." You can send a note or order it from the resources page of our web site: http://www.messiah-ministries.org To subscribe/unsubscribe, please send a note to me at Messiah Ministries MessiahMin@aol.com -- "Preparing the Way of the Lord." Address: 2800 Tates Creek Rd; Lexington, Kentucky 40502.On the Web: http://www.messiah-ministries.orgCome to The Fountain the 3rd Friday night of every month at 7 pm for our citywide gathering for prayer and worship in the chapel. Daily archives: http://morningbymorning.injesus.com