We often fear that facing our past will cause us more suffering.
We imagine that we will experience all that pain all over again. We are already
tormented from the damage done to us by other people, even if they did it
unknowingly or could not help how they acted because of pain in their life. The
truth, however, is that facing the past frees us to face the future. We
encounter God in the midst of the memories, and He reveals His truth to us. This
always trumps Satan’s lies, which otherwise keep us in bondage to him our whole
life.
We also fear facing the current problems in our life. We
want to ignore them or pretend that they do not really exist, so we do not have
to deal with them. Have we made faulty decisions? Hung around with the wrong
crowd? Is someone perpetrating his or her evil on us? Again, God’s faith,
resident within us, gives us the power to deal with these issues as they arise.
A young, Jewish boy faced the mighty Philistine with these astute words, “The
battle is the Lord’s” (1
Samuel 17:47).
It is God’s anointing and power working in and through us
that result in our victories in this world. When we see the mighty hand of God
evident in our life on our behalf, this gives us glorious joy beyond words (1 Peter 1:8). Even when
we are personally violated, God brings glorious freedom to Believers through
forgiveness, empathy and second chances. We learn to trust God to turn around
even the most negative issue for our good (Romans 8:28).
As we seek God’s deliverance from the issues, we learn that
His grace sufficiently empowers us in our weakest moments, even if He chooses
not to deliver us from the problem itself (2 Corinthians 12:9-10). We can glory in our
imperfections and weakness, because that is when God’s power is manifested in
and through us. We find our joy in His love rather than in our circumstances.
Human joy depends on life’s situations, but God’s joy is our strength
regardless of the circumstances.
We are happy just because of His presence in our life. We
choose our emotions and our responses to them because Christ lives in us with
all the power of the triune Godhead. We persevere in prayer and accept God’s
answer, even if He says, “No” or “Wait.” We can also follow God’s Spirit in
responding to the problems in other people’s lives. We do not have to rescue or
enable anyone. We can help them, but only when the Holy Spirit tells us to do
so.
Prayer:
Father God, remind us that Satan uses our thoughts as His
battleground against Your Spirit. He attempts to persuade us to curse you and
die (Job 2:9). As we
surrender every thought to Christ and walk in obedience to Your Spirit’s
direction, we live a positive, productive life regardless of our circumstances (2 Corinthians 10:5). We shine
with Your love and live as a testimony of Your mercy and grace in our life.
Thought for the Day:
Walk in the Spirit, and you will not fulfill the lusts of
the flesh. – Galatians 5:16, 25
