Yours and Mine
No one likes to face pain. When I have lived through suffering, my natural instinct is to move on and try to forget it. But God has other plans. What may be my natural instinct is not His. He never wastes my hurt or what I have faced in my life, and He does not want me to just bury it. He wants me to use it for His glory. How He longs to use the pain I've experienced—the things that I regret—the highs and the lows—the fears and the failures—the very things I want to hide from—to help others! He wants my life open and exposed so others might find freedom from their own pain, and I might discover healing for mine.
Ouch! Open and exposed is a very hard place to be! I want to build a wall to protect myself from my own pain. But building a wall doesn't protect me. It imprisons my heart. It imprisons my spirit. It imprisons healing of not only my own wounds, but those of others. My wall turns my heart into a heart of stone because, in closing myself off, I have shut out the Holy Spirit. However, when I allow that wall of false protection to tumble down, the Lord turns my pain into victory not only for myself, but for others. “I'll give you a new heart, “the Lord promises, “and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh” (Ezekiel 36:26).
A heart that yields completely to the Holy Spirit is a heart of tender “spiritual flesh”. It is a heart that is malleable, vulnerable, and not afraid of the pain that often accompanies healing. It is heart that is ready to face the hurt of the past or the present head-on, and allow the Holy Spirit to do whatever is necessary. Willing to deal with whatever must be dealt with, this heart trusts that the Lord who has exposed the pain is capable of healing all that has caused it.
"Now the Lord is the Spirit,” Paul imparts, “and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom” (2 Corinthians 3:17). The Holy Spirit will liberate me from any wall that I erect, but I must be willing. Do I wear a mask so someone else will not see what I am going through? Once, on a day when my heart was broken, a friend asked if I was alright? And I answered, “I'm fine”. Perhaps God had sent my friend to help me at my point of need, and I held the wall firmly in place. Perhaps I had missed the very healing God wished to impart. I know that the Lord does not wish me to expose my pain to just anyone, but He does want me sensitive enough to the Holy Spirit to know when He has sent someone that I can trust. He longs for me to know when I have the freedom to open up my heart.
On the other hand, perhaps the Holy Spirit wants to use me in the life of someone who is deeply hurt by either something in their past or something that has them bound in the present. Do I hold the wall in place, and not share my own pain and experience because I am afraid of my own vulnerability? If I do, there is no freedom because the Holy Spirit is held out by my wall. I have denied not only my own healing, but possible healing for someone else.
Christ sets me free from the “old covenant veil” I hold in place so others do not have to see my vulnerability and the pain in my life. My mind and heart do not have to be dull and hard. I do not need a mask to hide joy that
has faded because I don't want others to know. Where the Holy Spirit is, I have the liberty, the freedom, the
vulnerability, the trust, the faith, and the purpose to lay my heart before others so that there may be healing for
those the Lord has entrusted to me. And healing for me.
(Devotional copied from Edgewood Devotionals)
