Melissa's Story

Scripture Reading: Psalm 18

Today's Treasure: "He reached down from on high and took hold of me; he drew me out of deep waters. He rescued me from my powerful enemy, from my foes, who were too strong for me. They confronted me in the day of my disaster, but the Lord was my support. He brought me into a spacious place; he rescued me because he delighted in me," (Ps. 18:16-19).

I'm going to allow my daughter, Melissa, to share her story with you through an excerpt from a paper she wrote for one of her college classes. She is one of the gutsiest young women I've ever met, willing to let herself look weak so that God's strength can be revealed and the father of lies can be defeated.

"It was homecoming, the biggest event of the year for a high-school girl. I was getting ready for the football game. This particular year I was up for homecoming queen, and my dad was there to escort me down the football field. The four other girls and I were anxiously awaiting the life-or-death call.

I had on a Georgiou suit for the occasion and a very expensive dress for the dance. I had an appointment with a makeup artist and manicurist before the dance. I had spent tons of money at a tanning salon hoping that the tanning beds could make me look better. I was the size that I wanted to be due to the fact that I had not eaten in months. I was everything that Hollywood was telling me that I had to be. I was deathly skinny, popular, and completely miserable.

The morning after the event was over, I woke up to the smell of warm blueberry muffins. I walked downstairs only to the see the norm. My mom was sitting in the dining room doing her "quiet time." Her quiet time was the time she spent alone with God each day. Without catching her attention, I watched her. She was in her old, faded pink robe. Her hair was a mess, and she did not have on a hint of makeup, but she looked so beautiful.

I had watched her do her quiet time for seventeen years, but it had never caught my attention like this. There was something about her that day that was absolutely brilliant. Her face was radiant. I saw her sitting there in her chair and knew that she was truly satisfied. I wanted what she had. She was confident about who she was, even without makeup on. I envied her. I wanted to have whatever it was that fulfilled her.

I tiptoed up the stairs and dug around in my desk drawers. Finally, I found my own dusty Bible I had shoved in the drawer every Sunday after church. As I cracked open the Bible, I felt immediate renewal. I felt that I had some kind of energy deep inside my soul. I flipped through the pages and read words that I did not understand. But I knew they meant something powerful. I could feel the power. I remember staring at a verse that told me who I was in Christ. It said my body was not my own and that my body was a temple of the Holy Spirit. I found that my identity was in Christ, Himself. That was refreshing to me, because I hated myself.

I looked up from the pages of the Bible to the walls that surrounded me. I felt instant oppression. The walls were covered with magazine cutouts of Elizabeth Hurley and Kate Moss. They were filled with overlapping pictures of women who resembled skeletons. I had tacked these on my walls to remind myself that I was forbidden to eat and that I was fat. I would not pass the pictures without a deep feeling of worthlessness and shame.

A few minutes later I heard my mom walking up the stairs. She said, "Melissa, where are you? What are you doing?" The tears streamed down my face. She wrapped me in her arms and read me the words of King David in Psalms. The words gently soothed my ears and my heart. One by one, my mom and I ripped off the magazine pictures. I bitterly threw away the trash and walked away in agony. I spent the rest of the day trying to differentiate between who the world wanted me to be and who God wanted me to be. I sat at the computer and typed out Scripture and printed it out. I replaced the bare walls with God's Word."

When Melissa pulled down the pictures of the bone-thin models and replaced them with Scripture, she was unknowingly performing a vivid demonstration of 2 Corinthians 10:5: "We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ." She tore down their pretension of perfection and the arguments they raised against the truth of God's Word.

Those magazine pictures said something to Melissa contrary to what God says about her. When she tore them down and replaced them with the knowledge of God, she demonstrated in physical terms what we're to do in spiritual terms: take our thoughts captive and make them obedient to Christ. If she had stopped with the physical demonstration, little would have changed. Instead, she began to practice spiritually what she had done physically. She started allowing God's Word to expose the lies she had believed, and she began writing down and believing what He said about her instead. The change didn't come overnight. Change in habitual thinking rarely does. But God used the process of time to do far more than instant healing would have accomplished. She learned to trust Him, love Him, and depend on Him.

Lord, summon us to our children's sides and enable us to assist them in their fight against the powerful foe. Greater are You, Lord, who are in us than he who is in the world! You have equipped us with divine weapons for the demolishing of strongholds. Satan cannot wage a battle against believers that we cannot win. Break the bonds on the wrists of our children then turn their faces upward, that when Your mighty anointing falls forth from heaven, they will be baptized by power and consumed by holy fire. Do not ease Your hand until You have made each one a threat to Satan's purpose. Heap upon Satan's own head a double portion of what he tried to heap on theirs. Raise up an army, O God. In the mighty name of Jesus, Amen.

Look up, children, for your redemption draweth nigh.

Adapted from Feathers From My Nest, by Beth Moore, pages 154-167. Nashville: Broadman & Holman, 2001. Used by permission

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