You and I have at least one thing in common: we’ve both suffered damage as a result of living in a broken world. And what we do with that damage determines the kind of life we’re going to live.
We all have pain within.
Most people deny, ignore, try to forget, suppress, or otherwise minimize that pain, but that doesn’t make it go away. Instead, it festers, coming out later as addiction, anger, arrogance, depression, disease, dysfunction, marital infidelity, sin, political activism that doesn’t help anybody, and so on.
This denial is a form of dishonesty. We lie to ourselves and pretend we’re okay when we’re not.
Some people have even converted this dishonesty into a Christian teaching. We’re supposed to forget the past, ignore what happened, and pretend it didn’t.
In the process, we circumvent the deep work God wants to do in our lives, and replace it with try-hard Christianity which tells us to ignore the pain and work hard to make God happy.
But we can take our pain directly to Jesus. We can look at what happened, find those painful lies—the harmful messages that play in our heads and feel true (even if we know they aren’t), and ask Jesus, “What do You want me to know?”
When Jesus speaks His truth into our lives, the lie—and with it the pain—evaporates. We’re left with peace and the grace to live a better life.
Be encouraged!
Dwight
