Let Us Not Be a Prisoner to Our Past

“Never be a prisoner to your past, it is just a lesson not a life sentence.”

I recently read this sentence and it seemed to speak volumes to me. So often we become prisoners to our past mistakes or hurts and we never really become what God created us to be because we will not accept and forgive our past failures or the past failures of those who have hurt us.

Recently when I was in prayer for a situation my husband and I are going through the Lord impressed upon my heart that we all are a product of our past either for the good or for the bad depending on whether or not we have dealt with the things in our past that has hurt or offended us. Whether we want to admit it or not we all have done or had things done to us that have hurt us and still affect us today. We build walls around our heart and our emotions, walls that we put there because we feel we need to protect ourselves from being hurt again. We live in fear, fear of being hurt again. Yet fear is not from the Lord. It actually is from Satan who uses it to control us and keep us from becoming who we were made to be according God’s plan for our lives.

As I prayed many people came to my mind. Myself first, then those family members and friends who I have seen go through destructive behavior because they felt they could not deal with the pain from past hurts. I saw the drug addict who wants to bury their pain beneath the drugs they feel helps them deal with all the pain buried deep within their soul. I saw the insecure, sometimes angry, hateful person who buries their pain beneath a facade of aggression. I saw the depressed who feel they have nothing to live for, who give up on life to the point they want to take their own life. I saw the broken hearts and broken relationships of so many hurting who don’t know how to get past the hurt and pain that grips their hearts and minds.

As I continued to pray the Lord began to impress more and more upon my heart that I needed to be praying not just for the bondage of pain we are in to be broken but for the person affected by the bondage of hurt and pain to come to a place where they can face their past with the hurt and pain they have endured. So often we just put a band aid on our pain and never really deal it. God spoke to my heart that the healing cannot take place until our past is faced and dealt with through the help of our Lord.

I can honestly say I, as so many others, walk through that same pain and hurt. I build walls to guard my heart. One of the hardest things in life is opening up to a person who has wounded your heart, soul, and spirit. Sometimes we don’t have the opportunity to open up to them, maybe they are not around anymore or maybe it is just not safe to be near them. So many times it is the fear being hurt that holds us back from opening up our hearts again. Either way we have to be willing to open up and expose our pain for our healing to take place.

So how do we face all the hurt and pain that has brought us to where we are now? I don’t have an easy simple answer but one thing I do know whatever we face we will never face it alone. The Lord has promised to be with us if we will just invite Him into whatever we are facing. He is our healer and I believe the first thing we need to do is be willing to give our hurt to the Lord. Easier said than done I know and I realize it is a process, one we have to work through little by little. Sometimes we need to take baby steps, one day at a time. One faith step after another until without realizing it we have walked through that dark tunnel of pain and hurt until one day we step out on the other side into the glorious light of peace and forgiveness, forgiveness for ourselves first and forgiveness for those who have caused us so much pain and hurt.

Am I there yet? I can honestly say no. I am a work in progress. Yet I have found that if I stay grounded in the Lord through prayer and the study of His word which washes me and allows me to see myself and others more clearly each step gets a little easier. It is by the grace of God that I am here today. Through Him I can find peace. I don’t walk this road alone and neither do any of you. We and others are not perfect but we have a perfect Savior, one who was willing to sacrifice everything, including His life for all of us. His love is a love like no other. He loves us no matter what we do or say therefore we can always trust Him. His love is a love we can depend upon no matter what we are facing in our lives. He will never leave or forsake us. He will bring us healing if we will trust Him and follow His lead. We have to believe this deep within our hearts, minds and spirits. We have to cling to it in the darkness of hurts and pain.

So I encourage you today with this, trust the Lord and lean on Him. I also encourage you to pray for each other and for all those who are hurting. Let us pray for the healing of past hurts and pain to take place, then the bondage of fear and despair we find ourselves in will be broken in our own lives and in the lives of all those we love.

Jeanette

2 Timothy 1:7 For God hath not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind.

John 14:18 I will not leave you comfortless: I will come to you.

Psalm 147:3 He healeth the broken in heart, and bindeth up their wounds.

Proverbs 3:5-6 Trust in the Lord with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding. In all thy ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct thy paths.

Revelation 21:5 And He that sat upon the throne said, Behold, I make all things new. And he said unto me, Write: for these words are true and faithful.