Friday Fight 21 - Relieving or Releasing?

Every Friday, when I wake and pray, God places something on my heart to help me fight darkness beginning in our minds. Today is FF21.

Are there things in your life you keep hidden from others? We all do at times; doing this can hurt not only ourselves but also others. Let me offer this analogy: most have a room or closet in your home that stays filled with items from the past (junk). Since we don't want to face it, we close the door and ignore the mess, trying to pretend it isn't there. Some rent a storage shed to keep it elsewhere, but it's just a temporary fix; you will still have to deal with the junk eventually. Isn't this the same as some of the painful baggage we all carry around?

Many keep quiet about our past problems by shutting the door, but barring the entry only covers the pain; it does not remove it. It's not just closing a door; it's drinking, smoking, shopping, gambling, etc., to mask the pain and keep us from having to deal with the things we don't want to face. God wants to heal us but pushing our struggles to the back of your mind is only a temporary band-aid when we should be confronting them and asking God for healing.

Relieving or Releasing?
Suppose you ended a relationship, and instead of relying on God for healing, you pack your schedule with anyone willing to fill it. People become the void filler and not God. We use people to avoid facing our pain. Not going to God with our pain will always cost us significantly more; we suffer physically and spiritually.

How do we fight? Ask yourself this question, "What pain am I trying to relieve rather than going to God to release?" Instead of self-medicating to dull our pain, we need to pray and surrender it to God. It can be difficult, and masking the pain appears to be fun, but we don't want to numb what we feel; we want to ask God to restore and heal. There is nothing fun about addiction. We create personal stumbling blocks when depending on anything but God to ease our pain. We enable darkness to form a weapon against us, and sadly we choose the weapon. God can only work in and through our lives when we surrender our pain to Him. Let's let Him!

Isaiah 57:14

Pastor Shannon
New Life Church

Photo Credit: Abigail Tarburton (Thank you for the beautiful picture!)