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Insight
"Reflect on what I am saying,
for the Lord will give you insight into all this."
2 Timothy 2:7
(Dragonfly
Ministries
President, Mary Hamrick)
February 2006
"Freedom"
““The Spirit of the Sovereign LORD is on me, because the LORD has
anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to bind up
the brokenhearted, to proclaim freedom for the captives and release
from darkness for the prisoners”. Isaiah 61:1
I sit here
and plead, “Lord, please don’t tell me to write this story, it makes me
so vulnerable;” And His answer to me is, “It doesn’t make you
vulnerable, it makes you human.”
In recent Insight articles, I have shared how God is teaching me about
love – loving others with His love, not with the love I have learned
over the years. This is a course that I don’t think I’ll ever
complete because there are so many areas in life that need to be
corrected and re-taught. I’m 46 years old and He’s still
revealing dark places in my heart that He needs to free.
In response to Isaiah 61:1, Jesus answered, “I am the one the scripture
speaks of.” (Luke 4:20) Jesus says that He has come to set the
captive free – freedom from addictions, freedom from fear, freedom from
sin. He is talking about those things in our life that hold us
back from walking closer with Him, rather it be fear of being called
fanatics, busy-ness in the day to day duties, or anything we allow to
distract us from Him.
One of the steps in learning to love unconditionally is having a
forgiving heart. God has shown me over the past months how I have
been held captive by an unforgiving heart. God has revealed to me
people in my life who have hurt me, and whom I have refused to
forgive. He has shown me that , in some way, I feel that
harboring the hurt inside my heart makes me the better person because
I’m not “having to confront” the one that hurt me, I am just trying to
get over it myself. God has shown me that when hurts are deep,
they need to be confronted. In holding the hurt inside, I have
begun to build walls around myself to protect my heart from further
hurt. The wall has a new brick added each time a hurt comes that
I don’t deal with – and the wall isn’t keeping away just the hurter,
but it keeping away others who may want to touch my heart. And
the hurt that I feel pushes me to become distant with those who have
hurt me, and so they begin to hurt as well.
I asked, Lord, how in the world has unforgiveness grown in my
heart? His answer is found in Jeremiah 13:17. “But if you
do not listen, I will weep in secret because of your pride; my eyes
will weep bitterly, overflowing with tears, because the Lord’s flock
will be taken captive.” I didn’t listen to Him when He told me to
forgive; I held the hurts close to me rather than giving them to
Him. My pride and fear of rejection kept me from speaking of
these hurts to the one who had hurt me. He showed me that I have
a battlefield within my mind that is raging at all times. He
showed me that I need to learn to control my thought life. If I
had given these hurts to Him, or if I had addressed these hurts with
ther one who had hurt me, then I would have been able to release the
hurt. But what I chose to do was to allow my mind to churn and to
crank out stories and thoughts that were not true. The Bible
teaches us how to battle and control the thoughts. In Philippians 4:8, “whatsoever things are
true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just,
whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever
things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any
praise, think on these things.” There’s the
answer! Control your thoughts and your mind won’t be able to
generate stories that build walls.
God has shown me that my actions are unfair. His goal for my life
is that I develop the characteristics of Christ. He’s not
concerned about my comfort or my pride. He’s concerned about my
character. But I say, “Lord, I am the one that was hurt, why are
you showing me that I have sinned? Why don’t you deal with the
one who has hurt me?” His answer, “Trust me. Listen to
me. I want to heal all hurts.” My actions are unfair
because in shutting myself off from the one that has hurt me, I have
brought pain to them. And they don’t even know why I have shut
them out because I haven’t been expressing myself. I guess some
people have the blessing of being able to say when they are hurting; I
have not developed that character trait. Those who are close to
me will understand what I am saying. When I am hurt, I
withdraw. That isn’t the answer. It hurts my Christian
testimony and it hurts the person that I am withdrawing against.
The gracious Lord is walking me through this process of learning to
forgive, to open my heart to talk about hurts when it is appropriate,
and to tear down the walls that have been built up over the years so
that I can begin to love, and so that forgiveness will come easier and
without pain to anyone.
This process is a hard one. Anytime we open our hearts up to God
for Him to develop us and grow us into His likeness, we open ourselves
up for some hard life lessons. I have prayed for many years,
“Lord, teach me so that I may teach others”. I know that
God is giving me a close-up understanding of Isaiah 61:1, and
perhaps one day, He will allow me to teach about being free from all
chains that bind.
In Him,
Mary
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