Becoming Well With Liz Tafadzwa

Hello BW Community,

I’m so glad to be back and i think it is important i propose to you that a new blog post will come out every other Monday instead of every Monday for the rest of 2023. That means you can expect two in-depth blog posts from me in a month for the rest of this year. Next year we will have a different schedule. 

My first couple of posts have been exhaustive and deep, and i did it that way to give you a preview of how i hope to serve my audience and what i desire for you to receive. In addition this blog in some ways runs parallel to my own life, so as i teach, I’m also doing the work i lovingly ask you to do as well. We all must be active participants in our wellness journey. No one is exempt, okay? My desire will always be to see you heal, get freed, discover your purpose, and live authentically. However, it would be irresponsible of me to not lay the right foundation. Matthew 7:24-27 says “ 24 “Anyone who listens to my teaching and follows it is wise, like a person who builds a house on solid rock. 25 Though the rain comes in torrents and the floodwaters rise and the winds beat against that house, it won’t collapse because it is built on bedrock. 26 But anyone who hears my teaching and doesn’t obey it is foolish, like a person who builds a house on sand. 27 When the rains and floods come and the winds beat against that house, it will collapse with a mighty crash.” What these verses tell us is that it is not so much about what storms have come and will come against you, but more about the strength of your foundation. One thing we are guaranteed in this life are seasonal storms (John 16:33) and storms for many of us will wound us, but God never intended for storms to break you to the point of death, but rather to wash away what’s not necessary so that you are left with the necessary raw materials to build a solid house. Storms are meant to strengthen you, build your endurance, and purify you not harden you.

“Storms are meant to strengthen, purify and build your endurance not harden you”

So what is that the foundation and why is it important to have that foundation? I’m glad you asked. That foundation is Jesus and it is important you have that foundation because without it the inevitable storms of life will take you out. I don’t necessarily mean physical death, but emotional death, relational death, financial death, mental death, etc. On our own, we are not strong enough to bear those storms alone. The storm of the death of a loved one, unexpected terminal illness diagnosis, break up with the person you thought you would spend the rest of your life with, unexpected loss of a job, bankruptcy, betrayal, rejection, unexplainable delays, and a series of closed doors, evictions, business failure, a child who rejects God later in life and runs to the world to numb the pain of life, childhood trauma, divorce, friendship breakup, loneliness due to rapid success, abandonment due to life tragedies, down syndrome child, life-altering accident of your spouse, etc. All these storms are not events that anyone plans for, but God may allow them to happen because he knows what that storm will develop in us when we come out on the other side.

We joke a lot on social media about calling God to not be put on his list of his strongest soldiers. I laugh when i see those TikTok clips because they are relatable yet even within that humor no one is exempt from the storms of life. It helps us cope but does not necessarily excuse us as i would hope people will come to terms with. I have also realized that storms often come at a time when we least expect them and also when it’s the least convenient time for us. You are already physically burnt out, financially stained, relationally isolated, spiritually lukewarm or dry, or mentally depleted. It almost feels like, “God don’t you see that I’m already going through it?” I still don’t have an answer to why he often does it that way for many of us and perhaps as i continue with my walk with God i will get an understanding as to why and the same for you, but what i do know is that God is intentional Father. It may feel like the wrong time to lose your parent, but he knew that was the right time for that to happen and he would give you the strength and grace to go through that storm. I personally went through two storms this past summer and they happened one week apart when i was already depleted holistically yet he knew that was the right time for those storms to happen in my life. I am still processing them, yet i know had Jesus not been my foundation and i had no Godly community around me, i probably would not be in school right now and doing something potentially destructive to cope with such drastic and rapid painful changes.

Whether be it healing, freedom, or purpose, these wonderful gifts can only be fully accessed when we are in a relationship with God. But, the only way to have a relationship with God is to first accept Jesus to be your Lord and savior if you haven’t accepted him yet and secondly get to know who Jesus is. He is the one who made it possible for you and i to have direct and unlimited access to God.  I would have loved to tell you that popular free social media therapy and self-love accounts and self-help books are enough to heal, i would love to say once you cut off that person or remove yourself from the environment that kept you bound it is enough to be truly free. I would love to also tell you that if you just follow these 5 steps, you will immediately know why you were created and you can immediately hit the ground running, but my text in the Bible does not give me that liberty

 Romans 11:36 says “For everything comes from him and exists by his power and is intended for his glory. All glory to him forever” This tells me that everything and i mean absolutely everything truly comes from God, not a person, place, or thing. We often get in trouble when we mistake the tools God uses to be the source yet they are simply just that, channels. Everything, you being alive right now, the health you have, the job you are in, the school you are at, the spouse you are married to, the growth of that business, or any good thing you can think of comes from God and exist because he allows it. The same thing is true for the bad things he allowed and will allow to happen in your life. That means if he doesn’t want you with someone, he has the power to close the channel for you to meet that person or continue your journey of life with them. If he wants someone alive, he can save them from the most tragic and deadly accident. He is that powerful and most importantly he does all of this because of the glory that is derived from it. Everything good or bad God will ever allow in your life, always remember that it’s for God’s glory, not yours. This will keep you humble in the milk and honey seasons and hopeful in the wilderness seasons. It’s not about you, it’s not about me. It will never be about us and i know it hurts most of our ears because we are living in a world that is increasingly becoming self-centered and self-absorbed. It is always about God’s glory.

God wants to heal you for his glory. He wants to free you for his glory. He wants to reveal his purpose for your life for his glory. In a society where many people are aggressively interested in self-glorification, magnifying self, and minimizing the power and grace of God, we have limited what God desires to do in our lives. We can’t compete with God for glory that’s due only to him. I can sense someone saying but i also put in the work to be well, find freedom and make room for purpose, why is it wrong to also honor myself? That is a valid question.  You are allowed to recognize and celebrate the work you put in to be well, but if those thoughts are not married with God’s grace you will easily get onto a slippery slope. Yes, i will always push you to do inner work because God won’t do all the work for you, but it’s his grace that enabled you to realize that you needed to get healed. Other people’s eyes were opened to the level of their dysfunction at age 60 and the consequences were not beyond redemption, but they were expansive. He opened your eyes to your sickness at age 20, that’s his grace and you must acknowledge it because he could have left you in that state until it was too late(on your death bed). Others got freed from addiction after 30+ years, but you were able to find freedom from a similar struggle in 5 years. That’s not only your discipline but also God’s grace and favor in your life. He enabled you with supernatural strength but you don’t see it that way because you are stuck on you being the hero or main character of your own story. God could have left you in that relationship that he knew would cause a potentially lifelong scar and opened your eyes to the person’s motives or emotional state before a covenant commitment. That’s not you being woke, but God’s love and grace that protected you. This is what i mean by God being the source.

“We can’t compete with God for glory that’s due only to him”

Everything ultimately comes from him, exists because of his power, and he does it to get the most amount of glory because he rightfully deserves it. You are not God and i am not God. God is God and we are not. Recognizing that God is the starting point can only happen when you have a relationship with Jesus. Not an awareness of him, but a relationship with him. I can be aware of the guy across from me because we are in the same class, but i don’t have a relationship with him because i don’t know him, and neither do i talk to him about anything beyond surface-level pleasantries or in-class activities. If i want to get to know him or vice versa i have to spend time with him outside class, ask questions, and observe him. That is the only way i can get to know him and hopefully understand what shaped him to be the person he was. Another interesting phenomenon is that when you spend lots of time with someone, you end up copying some of their dominant habits. When you spend time with Jesus and get to observe his life and seek answers from him through the Bible you will begin to see how he related with God and begin emulating his habits. You will begin to see how he handled storms because he was not exempt from them when he lived on this earth. He never crumbled in a storm and that is what makes him so fascinating to study because he modeled for us how God would want us to not just respond to storms, but also how to live our lives

“Jesus and Jesus alone should be the ultimate model for the kind of life God wants us to live”

His calling was different from yours, but his habits, mindset, patterns, principles, and methods are so universal that God knew anyone could apply them and be successful in becoming all God created them to be. 

For some of us, we can’t relate to God because we don’t him personally and he feels far-fetched and even mystical, hence why we can’t fathom God being all i have just explained. Perhaps you are even wrestling with the thoughts of does he really deserve that amount of glory you are saying he RIGHTFULLY deserves. You are wondering what right does he actually have to be wanting that much glory.  I once heard a person say God is narcissistic because he demands so much attention and glory yet all he does is just demand things out of people and not pour back into people. It broke my heart to hear that, not because of what that person said, but for the person themself. I had compassion for them for how much the enemy had blinded them. They misunderstood who God is because they didn’t know him and they didn’t know because they never tried getting to know him. As i said before, you get to know a person over time by spending time with them and talking to them. As you allow them to share who they are and they allow you to freely share who you are, the relationship becomes stronger over time. If the relationship survives inevitable storms, it will usually come out stronger.

“Storms have a way of birthing vulnerability among people who come out on the other side together”

This is one of the reasons how many people shift from lukewarm to completely being on fire for God or people who give their life to Jesus and never look back. They went through a prolonged and painful storm and what remained standing was God and all the things they thought were solid had their back disappeared. Because God proved loyal and even anchored you in the storm you come out with an intensity of knowing if it had not been God i wouldn’t be here. It saddens me to see a lot of Christians and unfortunately, a lot of believers who have been on their faith walk a long time guilt trip people who realized they needed God when life got hard. We shame them for only wanting God for what he can do for them. While i get that a lot of people tend to want God when things get hard, most people don’t get the memo once. They often need multiple stormy moments to eventually realize God is really who they need in and out of storms. If they eventually found Jesus, is it loving to continue shaming them? That was their story and just because that was not your story it does not make them any less deserving of God’s grace and love. It is not always God’s ideal choice of showing you that he is all you need before he can give you more of what you need and desire, but he often uses that method because he knows that is the only way most of us will realize God is indeed the only one who must be center of our lives. He loves you so much that he is willing to see you experience pain for a little while but knows that pain will eventually ignite you to be who he made you to be. Yes, i said that. Pain is a tool that often ignites purpose in most people.

“Pain is a tool that often ignited purpose in most people”

Most ministries are birthed out of that person’s most painful experience. Why? Because you are often the most effective at helping people who are being tormented by what tormented you. You have compassion for them. You are keen to them, you have a unique understanding and patience for them. You see what others tend to overlook. You see parts of you in them. Dave Ramsey started his incredibly successful career as a financial advisor, financial author, and influencer radio personality after he filed for bankruptcy. His intensity and passion that is clear in his voice when he speaks is evident that this is someone speaking from a place of lived pain. He desires to help people recover or avoid what broke him. John Baker the founder of Celebrate Recovery, a program now used by over 4 million people was birthed out his freedom from alcoholism. That program is used globally to help people find freedom from alcohol addiction using biblical steps. Sarah Jakes birthed Woman Evolve, a movement for women that has gone global that was birthed out of a painful story of her falling pregnant at age 13 and feeling like her life was over. These highly influential people couldn’t have fulfilled God’s purpose for their lives had they not allowed God to use their pain for good.

I can tell you from experience that when you eventually come around and resolve in your heart and mind that God knows best, he loves you, and does everything he does even if it’s painful for your good and is for you it will become easier to make him the center of your life. Yes center, not extra of your life. The center, the main guy, the one who has the first, intermediate, and last say for everything you do. You will realize that all God wants for you is to allow him to love you because until you let him love you nothing will really work the way he desires for it to work in your life. Love heals, love liberates, love empowers, love corrects, love protects, love is available, love makes room, love is enduring, love softens, love breaks down walls, love clarifies, love activates, love ushers authenticity. God is love himself so when you don’t have a relationship with him, you can’t get to know how much he loves you. When you don’t know how much he loves you, you can’t allow him to love you and when you haven’t received his unconditional love, you by default make it a life quest to find the love that he only can give.

How many things have you done simply because you wanted to be loved? How many girls do you see online put unrealistic demands on a man to love them in a way that only God has the capacity to love them, how many people expect their friends to be there for them 24/7 when only God can be omnipresent, many of us were wounded because we imagined our parents to be our perfect heroes who never made mistakes and when they did make mistakes we struggled to accept their humanity because we desired for them to meet our every need perfectly. If you don’t let God love you, you indirectly expect people to treat and love you the way God does 24/7 and that is an unfair and unrealistic expectation to put on anyone including you because none of us are perfect and we were born into this world already sinful. Accepting God’s love will help you fill that void he ONLY can feel so that people’s love for you will feel enough because that void has already been taken care of.

What drives your decisions? What influences what you wear? How you speak? Who you hang out with? What you get involved in? Most of the things we do are subconscious paths for us to find love that must received first from God, not humans. Of course, babies must first receive hopefully unconditional love from their parents because they cannot understand God’s love yet, but at some point, they must be introduced to God’s love so they have a holistic view of true love. God will send people in your lifetime who will love you well, but their love will never come close to his love for you and he knows until you understand and receive his love, your life will always feel unbalanced. Men may seek love through respect because that’s how God made them and women may seek love through holistic security because that’s how he wired us, but regardless of your sex, God designed us to first receive his love for us so that we can then learn to love ourselves first and then others. I don’t know about you but i want to learn to love myself the way God loves me so that i can love others the way God loves them, but i can’t do any of those when my frame of reference is wrong. TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube couple channels cant be my reference point because none of those platforms and the people curating on those platforms authored love. So why do we settle for less than the best? Why do we settle for watered versions of love? Many of us go to bed crying ourselves to sleep because no one has ever bought us something, posted us on our birthday, etc and we concluded that we are not loved or loveable. Your pain is recognized and valid, but i don’t want you to allow a perverted version of love to continue tormenting you when true love is waiting for you to discover it so you can be freed to be loved and love

When you truly receive God’s love, everything you do begins happening from a place of love, not inadequacy, resentment, envy, jealousy, attention-seeking, etc. God said to do everything in love. Why? Because whenever you do anything from a place of biblical love, it is often from a pure place and positions you to be blessed by God, because he can’t bless something that contradicts his word. Friend, Jesus is God’s love for you personified. He sacrificed his only Son so that all your sins could be completely cleared even the ones you haven’t yet committed so that he could be restored in friendship and relationship with you. He wasn’t bored. He wanted you. That’s how much he loves you. Tell me someone who would be willing to physically allow the person they loved a lot so they can be with you. No rational person will do that because the sacrifice is very big yet God decided to do it just for you. Accepting Jesus into your life if you haven’t already done so and if you getting to know who Jesus is more by reading the Bible( start with Matthew, Mark, Luke, John& Romans) will lay the right foundation for you to be who God made you to be. It will empower you to model after the habits he exemplified and principles he lived by so that you can be successful in fulfilling your purpose.

God doesn’t need you to copy that influencer, worship that person who sounds a certain way or try to be like that person you admire. On judgement day he won’t say why went you more like your Dad? Why are you more like your Mum? Why weren’t you more like your brother/ sister? He won’t say why are you more like Beyonce? Myles Munroe? Or Nelson Mandela? He made you to be and he only expects and will only put a demand on what he gave you. When the storms of life come, if Jesus is your foundation, you will survive the storms and come out on the other side purified, pruned, and wiser for your purpose. If another thing is your foundation, loved one this is the time to be honest with yourself and begin making changes slowly. TikTok is a useful tool but a bad foundation. Youtube is a well of knowledge, but a bad foundation. Instagram is a dope app to be a part of, but it is a bad foundation. Twitter/X keeps you up to date but it is a bad foundation. Your spouse/partner is a gift from God for many people, but they are not a consistent capable foundation. Friends are important and God’s tool to fight discouragement, and cope with storms, but they can’t be the sole foundation. Jesus is the only one who is capable of being a solid, unchanging, and permanent foundation worthy of building your life(house) so that when the storms of life come as you become all God created you to be, you will withstand the rain torrents and overwhelming winds.

Digest this one BW community. Give the Bible another chance, even if it means trying a different and simpler version( NLT, NIV, Message, Living Translation) or using commentaries online to help you understand the hard parts of the Bible. There is no shame in that. The Bible is the best gift after Jesus that God gave you and I would love for you to give it a chance and see what it can do for you and what it will unlock for you.

Don’t forget to share, comment down below, and subscribe to the Blog so that you won’t miss new uploads as this is my last blog post before my long social media sabbatical. We will meet here every other Monday till the end of 2023.

Remember you are wanted, you matter, and are loved deeply. I will see you on the next one.