It’s time! God says it’s time up for ignoring that elephant in the room! It’s that thing you don’t like to talk about because it makes you uncomfortable. We usually ignore the painful feelings and emotions that come up every time we think about relationships, situations, and experiences we regret. The “what if” scenarios you play in your mind can be exhausting, but the truth is that we don’t get to redo our past, no matter how much we wish we could. It is what it is, and the best that we can do is learn the lessons our missteps and mishaps have taught us. In order to do this, we need to confront those uncomfortable feelings and emotions, so that we can remove the fear, get past the pain, and gain greater spiritual strength and faith.
If we pull back a few layers on many of the painful situations we’ve experienced in our lives, we’ll probably find that some form of fear was at the root of them. It may sound strange, but for many of us, fear is comfortable sometimes. Whether it’s insecurity, phobias, shame, guilt, self-condemnation, regret, bitterness or resentment, we allow these things room because they are familiar. They almost feel like a blanket, wrapping us in validation for being stuck and not moving higher in faith. We’ve learned these behaviors and responses, and if we desire to go higher in Christ and have the more than abundant life that he made available, we must walk through the process of unlearning them.
Hebrews 4:15(NLT) tells us, “This High Priest of ours understands our weaknesses, for he faced all of the same testings we do, yet he did not sin.” Our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, is our High Priest. He’s the one we should go to for help. He understands all the things we go through during our sojourn on earth, because he endured all the temptations that we experience ourselves, and he wants to help us. In Matthew 11:28-30(NLT), he extends us an invitation. He said, “28 Come to me, all of you who are weary and carry heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. 29 Take my yoke upon you. Let me teach you, because I am humble and gentle at heart, and you will find rest for your souls. 30 For my yoke is easy to bear, and the burden I give you is light."
When we accept the invitation from Jesus in Matthew 11:28-30, we must understand that a process of healing begins. It’s not something we can skip over. If we try to do this, we’ll keep repeating the same mistakes. Jesus tells us to take his yoke. A yoke is an instrument that is fastened on the necks of farm animals to guide and steer them through the work of plowing through a field or carrying a heavy load. Well, we can look at life as a field, and it can be very rough to plow. Our fears and shame are the heavy load we sometimes carry. We were never meant to do all this alone. Jesus Christ wants us to put on his yoke and allow him to teach us. This is usually the part we try to skip over.
Because we have not confronted it head on, some of us carry pain and insecurity into our significant relationships. These heavies continue to operate in the background, undermining our happiness and causing us to move away from the grace, patience, and kindness that we should be demonstrating. As believers in Christ and children of the Most High God, we must humble ourselves to learn from Jesus Christ. Our refusal to address some internal issues sends a message that we don’t want to learn and don’t want those places within to be touched. The reality is that the love of Christ needs to come into that pain and discomfort so it can be flooded with his light.
Fear is not a natural state for human beings. 2Timothy 1:7(NLT) tells us, “For God has not given us a spirit of fear and timidity, but of power, love, and self-discipline.” God has given us the gift of His Holy Spirit, and he lives within every born-again believer. Fear, and all its cousins like insecurity, doubt, worry, anxiety, and many other of its forms—these divert our attention elsewhere so that we continue to be a slave to them, but this isn’t what God wants. He wants us to live free so that we move through life with faith in Him.
We must lean on the indwelling Holy Spirit. Jesus Christ tells us in John 16:13 that the Spirit will lead and guide us to all truth. As Proverbs 3:5-6 teaches, we must trust in God with all our hearts. This means that even the parts of our hearts that have fear must learn to trust God. We can’t lean on our own understanding, because our own understanding will work against our faith. God tells us to seek His Will in all that we do. His Will is the foundation upon which our healing and deliverance rests. It is believing in God until the end, through the storm, through the heartache and the troubles, that our faith in the Father is made strong.
1Peter 1:7(NLT) tells us, “These trials will show that your faith is genuine. It is being tested as fire tests and purifies gold—though your faith is far more precious than mere gold. So when your faith remains strong through many trials, it will bring you much praise and glory and honor on the day when Jesus Christ is revealed to the whole world.” Many of us are doing wonderful things for the Kingdom. We minister, love and serve others, and tithe, but even so, our faith cannot remain at the same level continually. We need to grow in Christ so that we can receive all that God has in store. Don’t try to skip over the pain and discomfort of what life is revealing to you. Hebrews 4:16 tells us that we can come boldly before God and ask for His grace and mercy in our times of need. Place your hands in the hands of Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit and be determined to walk through it with the confidence that you’ll come out of it shining like pure gold. ■
Scripture quotations marked (NLT) are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Wheaton, Illinois 60189. All rights reserved.
“Walking through It, Not Over It”, written for Springfield Fellowship © 2024. All rights reserved. All praise and honor to God through Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior.
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