Welcome to Kendra Graham’s Online Bible Study! This is a place where we can come together and share in our journey towards Scriptural truths and spiritual maturity. We pray this will be a safe, respectful, resourceful place to come and discuss God’s Word…to discover What it says…What it means…and What it means to you!
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Kendra Graham notes from : Matthew 10:27
“What I tell you in the darkness, speak in the light; and what you hear whispered in your ear, proclaim upon the housetops.”
THE FACTS: What I tell you in the dark, speak in the light; what you hear whispered in your ear, proclaim.
THE LESSONS: “When you are in the dark, listen, and God will give you a very precious message for someone else, once you are back in the light.”– Oswald Chambers.
The dark is a hard place to be. There was a time in my life where I felt that everything I touched fell apart. Mistakes, shame, and guilt stuck to me and the load was overwhelming. I felt abandoned and alone. I was fighting God, shaking my fists at God, screaming out in my soul that the pain was too deep, too hard, too much. This went on for years…. until I stopped. My heart hurt beyond repair, mostly by my own doing. I was shattered, stained, and now silent with nothing else to say at the feet of Jesus…. the dark is a hard place to be.
In the dark, Jesus so tenderly took my worn out soul, and began to breath life into me once again. In the dark, through the power of God’s Word, He began to whisper to me. God began to show me what it is that He sees when He sees me. The truths of who God is and what is real more than what I feel. There in the dark, is where those Sunday School stories that I learned in my head for so long, began to be inscribed upon my heart. Inscribing upon the heart hurts…. but it is purposeful hurt. God began to transform my heart of stone into a heart of flesh, and I would love to say that I was all for the process… but that process was and is painful.
I remember vividly, day after day I would beg God to get me out of that dark hard place…. I would say, “If You really love me, You will deliver me!” Then…. one day came…. when in that dark place, I stopped asking for deliverance because there, in the dark, of all places, the Light shone more radiantly, more personally than I had ever known. My scars and stains didn’t change…. but funny thing is when that Light shines, right in the middle of it, I was able to see what beauty God can make…. the beauty of stained glass…. the testimony of a faithful God in the midst of my mess.
The faithfulness of God was taught to me in the dark. This blog, the Bible study I teach at the Cove, the churches I visit and speak in are all resultant from that difficult time.
Recently I journeyed to Wichita, Kansas to speak. I spoke on the women with issues in Mark 5:25-34. This woman lived a life for 12 years in the dark of solitude and isolation; yet, she knew that if she reached for Jesus, just the tip of His garment, she would be healed. Oh to persevere among a crowd determined to beat her back… yet she reached… letting go of everything else, and holding tight to the hem of Jesus’s garment. This woman was healed. The crowd stopped — the entire world stopped for that moment so that Jesus could stoop down, brush away her tears and hear her ENTIRE story. Jesus whispering to her in her darkness among the crowd, “Go in peace and be healed.” One sheep in a crowd of sheep willing to not just “bump” into the Shepherd, but to touch Him, to really touch Him.
That message proclaimed because I understood the pain of that woman, because that same message to the woman with issues, was whispered by God to me in my darkness… it is forged on my heart. That day, in Kansas while proclaiming in the light what God had done, another hurting woman fought through the crowd, weeping at the altar, reaching for the hem, straining to hear Jesus speak to her in her darkness…. and she heard the sweetest whisper of love from her Faithful and True God…. she was stained, it’s true, but His Light shined through and in that Light she became, and we all become, beautiful stained glass windows to Him.
Pay attention when God puts you in the dark, darkness is the time to listen. In the dark even the smallest spark of Light will not be missed and will become a precious personal message often for someone else. Lessons learned in the dark are meant to be proclaimed in the light! #Proclaim #beautyfromashes #stainedglass #loved
APPLY IT: Are you in a period of darkness in your life? Struggling to hear God? Maybe struggling to get away from God? Will you today, tune your ear to hear the whisper of God’s Word to you? Will you reach out today? What message has God inscribed on your heart in the dark that you can share in the light with each of us? Oh that we would be bold to share the faithfulness and love of God… will we keep it to ourselves or shout it from the rooftops?
LIVE IT OUT: LORD, calm my heart, close my mouth, open my ears, write on my heart that which You want to teach me. Teach me to sing in the dark… if this is where I must be.
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What Scripture are you studying now? What have you learned? How has the Lord spoke to you? Share with us in the comments section.
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To see more of Kendra’s Bible Studies, click here.