Freedom from Prison

We as women desperately need profound healing and cleansing from all that the Enemy has done to try to ruin us. I say “try” because my special lady, if you are reading this and have an ache and a desire to grow in the love of Jesus, you are not destroyed! You are not doomed to failure, to second class, to a life of hurt and pain, to insignificance, to…you fill in the blanks. Please, please remember that Satan is the father of all lies and has come “only to steal and kill and destroy” (John 8 and 10).

Each of us has an unhealed hurt, unresolved issue, or unmet need. Most of those hurts, issues, and needs were seared deep into us by a bad relationship with a parent, a boyfriend, a girlfriend, a teacher, a coach…you get the picture. The problem is that some of these hurts, issues and needs are buried so far down in our lives that we have no idea they even exist. The first couple of weeks in study I encouraged you to get alone with God and to implore Him to reveal to you hurts, issues and needs that have been lying to you for years. What we have to realize is that these are the things that have shaped our self-image, our personalities, our interactions, our relationships. If you are struggling to get to the bottom of what your particular unhealed hurt, unresolved issue, or unmet need is, start here: Journal Who you think God is and how He sees and interacts with you. Your words will reveal the lies you have believed about yourself, which ultimately affect how you view God. And most times the way we view God stems from the sort of relationship we had with our parents or some other adult as a child, teen, young adult.

Some of you will begin to see that you have deep pain associated with an occurrence in your childhood. For others of you, like me, it came as a college student or young adult. The time frame is irrelevant. What is so crucial is that we have believed lies that were communicated through a faulty relationship that have shaped who we are today. We are held in a prison of hurt. God never dreamed that for us. In fact, His plans for us are “to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future”(Jeremiah 29:11). He so desperately wants us to live an “abundant life” (John 10). Do you see how Satan has so distorted that life for you? Do you see now that the wounds that you nurse were not from God, but from the Devil who is only seeking to devour you? Get angry my friend. Get really angry because the Enemy wants you down for the count. You have something amazing to offer the world…and he knows it and is after you. Get pissed (I am so sorry to use that language, but if more women got “pissed” about what Satan has done to us, we would revolutionize the world and future generations…that is who we are in this for…our sisters, daughters, friends…). Get pissed.

So, do some personal inventory. We as women tend to one of two extremes in order to protect and to hide from the pain we have experienced. We either become Domineering or Desolate (Captivating).

Domineering Women: They control, refuse to be vulnerable, and if they don’t feel secure, “kill their longings for intimacy”. They are perfectionists and “Can-Do, Get-It-Done” kinds of women. They “dominate and control because they fear their vulnerability. That self-protective way of relating to others has nothing to do with real loving, and nothing to do with deeply trusting God. It is their gut-level response to a dangerous world”. (Captivating)

Desolate Women: They are “needy and far too vulnerable”. They are “ruled by the aching abyss within them…consumed by a hunger for relationship.” However, they tend to “hide their true selves…certain that if others really knew them, they wouldn’t like them…and they can’t risk the loss of a relationship.” (Captivating)

Both of these types of women indulge and hide in order to feed and quiet the cravings for intimacy. We self-medicate, which we know is sin. We turn to sex, drugs, alcohol, porn, shopping, performing, competing. We do whatever has to be done to take care of ourselves…because, we have bought into the lies. As a result, we are bombarded with shame and embarrassment, and crawl further into our caves of indulgence or protection. Get angry.

Listen, my precious friend, if you do not face the truth of where your unhealed hurt, unresolved issue, or unmet need originates from, you can never find healing. We fill the whiteboard of our lives with all of our failures and carry it around with us. The moment we self-medicate again, we take out our Dry-Erase marker and add to the list. Meanwhile, Satan stands back and laughs at us…lying to us that we will never get it right. We shouldn’t even try. We are labeled by him. All the while, God is lovingly pursuing us…arms wide open, whispering that He loves us, He wants us, He will heal us. He only asks us to lay our whiteboards down at His cross. He paid for those sins…we don’t have to carry them anymore. His love and forgiveness and grace erases and then cleans off the whiteboard…you see only white again…no markings (1 John 1:9, Hebrews 10:22). He wants you to carry around your clean whiteboard…that is what you have to offer others. No more shame. No more baggage. No more. You are worth Jesus Christ to God the Father. If a diamond is worth $10,000, then if you put a diamond on a scale, you would have to put the money on the other side to balance it out. When you were on the scale, God put Jesus on the other side. You are worth and of the same value as He is to God.

Leave your baggage with Him…He never meant for you to handle it. Bask in His unconditional love, unbelievable acceptance, incredible worth, and everlasting security. They are yours.

The above was taken from John and Stasi Eldredge’s book Captivating.