You cannot protect yourself from sadness without also protecting yourself from happiness. I had a revelation this past week while at Training Camp and I feel so strongly about its importance that I have to share it with you all. You cannot protect yourself from sadness without also protecting yourself from happiness. Wow! where has that been all my life?
When you go through life altering heartbreak time and time again, without even knowing it you begin to close yourself off, shut yourself down, and put up walls in order to brace yourself for any impending doom that is sure to come. It’s normal, we naturally do this in order to protect ourselves so that we don’t end up hiding form the world under a sheet in our closets. So we go about our daily lives, meeting people and experiencing things with only half of our heart in it. Then after a while it gets to be like nothing really phases us. I learned this week that this has been my condition for the last several years. I have been looking and waiting for some big thing to come and shake me up because life had become dull and without feeling for me. I have been asking God to show me how to live with my eyes wide open and here it is. I need to let go of being afraid of the disappointments and hurts that life is bound to bring because that will only harden my heart to the beautiful things that should bring me joy.
Proverbs 4:23 says, “Above all else, guard your heart for it is the wellspring of life.” Our speaker, Rev. Dr. Rob Reimer, from this week’s training camp said that should be our very first priority, everything flows from the condition of your heart. The parable of the sower is not about the sower at all, it its about the soil. The farmer never changes, the only variable in the story is the soil. Don’t allow hardship to harden your heart or it will spoil the fruit!
How do we keep our hearts soft?
1. Be aware of it’s condition. If you don’t even know your heart is hardened, how can you make it soft again? Allow yourself to feel.
2. Deal with your offenses. Allow yourself to grieve your deepest disappointments, hurts and losses and then forgive yourself or the person who caused them.
3. Distance yourself from the hard things of the world (I do not mean difficult.) Those hard things could be people or habits. For me it’s a combination of the two. Rob explained that these are the lies we must overcome in order to heal the condition of our hearts.
The power of the lies is that whatever you agree with is what you give power to, so it stands to reason that if you agree with the truth, the truth will set you free, but if you agree with the lies, they will hold you prisoner. We have to identify the lies, expose them and replace them with truth.
Romans 12:2 says, ” Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is, His good, pleasing and perfect will.”
One of my assignments this week was to identify some of the lies that I have been agreeing with that have held me prisoner, hardened my heart and kept me from being truly happy with myself and those around me. Here they are:
1. I am a victim of my circumstances- I do not have to take any ownership for the bitterness in my heart or the anger I feel for certain people because they are the ones who hurt me and I am scarred forever because of it, therefor I am allowed to hate them forever.
2. I will always be anxious/stressed and impatient- It doesn’t matter how hard I try I will never change.
3. I will always fail at self control- No matter if I know it’s bad for me or not, I will always give into my desires and have to deal with the consequences; learning the hard way is simply my way of life.
I am not sharing these things with you so that you can comfort and console me for feeling these things, I am doing it to be an encouragement to you to bring the lies you have agreed with about yourself into the light so that you may replace them with truth and feel freedom. The truth is the most powerful thing there is; darkness can not dwell where truth is. I am so happy that I get to share my revelation with you all because it has changed me so much already. Thank you for reading this and supporting me.I will post another blog soon about what went down at training camp.
Love and Light to you all!
