This was made alive again to me today as I was thinking back on my life and reminiscing over issues God has highlighted to me in the past. I accepted Jesus as a teenager, and as soon as I accepted Him, God in His grace began to work in areas of my life. However, at the time I did not have the maturity to realize it was God highlighting areas He wanted to free me from, so I covered those feelings with different things. I have to admit though that even now, some 24 years later, I still can fail to recognize when God is highlighting an area in my life and hence, I'll cover those emotions up with something else.
I think some folks have the mindset that once you accept Christ, you are void of ever dealing with any issues. That's simply not true. The great fact of the matter though is this, we have freedom. We absolutely have freedom the moment we accept Christ into our heart. In that moment, we are completely free from any hurt, any deep wound, any rejection, any addiction, any anger, any bitterness, any envy, any food issue, ANY THING, we are free from it. The Bible says that "He whom the Son sets free is free indeed." So there it is, you are free at salvation. However, it's entirely up to us to decide how much freedom we want to live in. How do we decide? By our actions. Discipline is freedom.
Having said that, the scripture in Hebrews comes into play once again in talking about this area of our freedom. As we grow in our faith, often without even realizing it's happening, God begins to search our heart. We fail to forget that when we read God's Word, and when we hear it at Church or in an encouraging conversation with a friend, that the Word that is being spoken is literally activating in my life. And it says the Word "judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart." So all of a sudden, I may begin to feel like I'm battling something, and perhaps I don't even know what it is. Of course, it may be some type of attack from the enemy and I need to absolutely remind him that he lives under my feet and he has no room to mess with me. But in an other instance, it very well could be God trying to highlight an area in my heart as that Word has been searching my heart out and now God wants me to become aware of it. And as I become aware of the issue, I then can call it out for what it is, release it to God, allow His healing touch to wash over the area and move on toward the destiny He has called me to!
But what happens so many times is that rather than stop and ask God to reveal what these random and possibly out of the blue emotions are, we stuff the emotions with whatever our "go to comfort" is. For me, it's food. For you it may be something entirely different. It could be alcohol, drug use, cigarettes, toxic relationships, excessive spending, and the list really can go on and on. But regardless, when faced with un-explained emotion, we can subconsciously and quickly turn to a self destructive behavior. When we do that, we forfeit the freedom that we gained at salvation and we take ourselves one step backwards from the victory that was already ours.
The great thing about Hebrews 4:12 also is this; that we can literally take our Sword and attack a certain area of defeat or lack or trouble that we need to. For instance, if we are battling a health problem we can get ourselves a list of healing scriptures and speak those suckers out loud and watch God take that Sword of the Spirit and begin to bring healing as it slices through the walls of sickness. If anxiety and depression are trying to plague you, grab a list of encouraging scriptures that releases you from being bound by anything mentally taxing. If you are struggling in your finances, bust out a little Luke 6:38 on the scene and remind yourself that as you give, God gives right back to you. And the hope for those of us that have fallen into a self-destructive pattern in the past is that God absolutely can pick us right up out of the pit we may have fallen into. Micah 7:8 says, "though I have fallen, I WILL RISE!" That's right devil, you might have taken my emotional issue and sidetracked me with it for a minute, but you better be on alert because I have my SWORD and I'm slicin' and dicin' anything that's not of God and tries to get in my way of maintaining my freedom!
Goodness gracious I dunno about you but that sure encourages the heck outta me! So what I'm training myself to do, and maybe you'll do the same, is when you feel anxious or emotional or angry or just upset and you can't quite explain the reason for it, take some time to sit with God. Ask Him if there is something in your heart that He is highlighting, something that can hinder your absolute freedom, and He absolutely will walk You through whatever He brings to your attention. He has had to heal me of abuse, rejection, anger, bitterness, fear, gosh the list can go on for days. But He has never failed to heal me when He has highlighted the issue. So rather than fail to listen and go on an eating bender, I now have to stop and say, "ok Lord, what's up here." The ultimate objective is that we would live a life of freedom and purpose and destiny. So anytime God shows us something in our lives it's always for our good, to keep us marching on this sweet road of victory that He so lovingly paved the way for us thousands of years ago.
Rest assured dear one, that "He who began a good work in us will carry it onto completion." Our name is written down in glory, we have a forever home waiting for us. That's something worth holding onto our freedom for! So get your Sword out folks, it's ready to do some war.
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