L’Chaim!  To Life!  To Freedom!  Colossians 3.1

Since you have been raised to new life in Christ . . .

You turned around to see what was holding you back, what was weighing you down, and you discovered you have been dragging a heavy burden, perhaps unaware until now.  But when Christ offers you new life, he offers to take those burdens from you.  In trade, he wants to give you a new heart, healed from ways the world has hurt you.  When you picked up your rucksack, ready to be honest with yourself, what did you find inside?

>guilt over things that make you feel bad about yourself?  Your head and heart do not operate at full capacity because you are constantly hearing in your head, ‘yeah, well you failed there….’ ‘you’re never gonna do it right, you’ll never be good enough…’      

>failure to forgive, or maybe even specific bitternesses?        

>broken heart, maybe by past pain from people, events, or relationships from which you never healed?  Maybe things like child abuse, parental neglect, being the child of an alcoholic, an ugly divorce…      

>unmet expectations you placed in other people, like maybe your spouse, or your employer, or God?  It leaves you constantly feeling defensive, skeptical of others’ motives, perhaps a little self-centered, and not so free in giving or receiving love . . .

>Consumed with what might have been? or what should have been?

Or, was there something else … a death?  Abandonment? Sexual Abuse?                            

All of these things rob us of Living the Abundant Life in Christ.

We have stuffed things inside of us, buried hurts as life went along; some are emotional firebombs buried alive.  And then we wonder why we are not flourishing.  I believe it is the reason so many people are sick, physically sick.  Medical science has linked stress and sickness, but the unhealthy condition of our emotional/spiritual hearts, including sadness, can also lead to sickness, many times, phantom sicknesses, that doctors just can’t seem to diagnose or explain.

We bury our hurt, (stuffing a little more into the rucksacks we drag behind us, getting heavier all the time), sometimes because we just have to get on with life at the time, and somehow do not get back to ‘deal with it’.  But then something happens, and some one or some thing touches that spot, and like a land mine, it explodes!  And we have pieces of ourselves lying all over the place, and it is ugly.       

Grab a piece of scratch paper, and interview yourself.  Ask, ‘What have I buried?  What have I left unresolved?  What do I need God to set me free from?  What are the hurts that need healing?’  List them.

Your husband or wife walked out on you.  How did you feel?  Angry, crushed, rejected, lonely.  Then feel it, grieve it.  Give it to God, ask him to heal it—don’t bury it again!  God heals up the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds. Psalm 147.3. The Lord is good, and his mercy endures forever!  Psalm 106.1  His mercy is enough to cover anything that has hurt or wounded you. It is time to start to heal, and get free and really live life!  

Christine