How One Encounter with God Can Restore Your Heart

While many people claim to believe in Jesus and have gained a personal relationship with Him, not all of them can attest to having a personal encounter with Him.

(This is a guest post that has been originally published in Imperishable Beauty!)

Yup.  That was me.

God was basically a part of my life, all my life.  I dedicated my life to the Lord probably at the young age of 12 (maybe younger).  Went to church.  Prayed.  Sang the songs.  Did the dance.

Wasn't until I had completely hit rock bottom in my heart that I had nowhere else to look but "up".  And it's crazy just how quick that encounter with God will come once you actively start to seek it!

It wrecked me.  And changed me for the rest of my life.

In this featured post, I share how my heart was completely transformed after having a personal encounter with God Himself!

I used to identify myself as being the Tinman from the Wizard of Oz. I even went as far as having his photo as my profile picture on Facebook and everything! This self-proclaimed nickname was because I believed that I no longer had a heart. I had just gone through the biggest breakup of my life and there was nothing left for me to feel.  I was going through the stages of grief and at that time, I was in total denial of what had just happened to me.

As far as I knew, we were still madly in love, destined to be married, and the breakup was only a small bump on the road, meaning nothing too serious. To me, we were going to get through it– instead, it ended horribly and I didn’t know how to feel about it at all. I embraced having this “heartless” attitude for an entire year after the breakup. I had given myself permission to be as hurtful and selfish towards anyone I wanted to, without any reservation or conviction.

Even though I had cried out to God after that breakup, His love felt so far from me.

God’s love was something that I had been looking for in the form of my ex’s love. If we got back together, I believed it would be because God had allowed it to happen; He would allow me to feel what I perceived as “love” again. But, it never happened. As a result, I became the Tinman: very self-destructive and cold. I no longer cared about what people thought about me nor what they had to say. I was determined to live out my twenties with no regrets: I traveled to different cities each weekend to party with friends, I drank excessively, and I flirted with any guy I wanted.

Whenever a guy expressed interest in me, I would morph into my persona and push them far away. I figured if I could show them that I wasn’t worth having feelings for, then I wouldn’t waste my time developing feelings for them. This way of living slowly began to backfire on me. Before I knew it, I was not only placing these heartless walls up for potential boyfriends, but I was also doing it towards my friends and family. I no longer cared about what was going on in their lives on account that I no longer cared about what was going on in mine. It left me isolated and alone.

Since I never chose to deal with my hurt, I had allowed it become my identity. It completely consumed me to the point where all I could do was hurt others. Something had to change.

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