pass the guards

Passing through admission is hard, but still harder can be the passing of the guards.

Guarding us from our healing are the obstacles of accusation and guilt.

Accusation and guilt will come at us with a fury, accusing us of causing the pain to ourselves. If we’re not careful, it will bring us into agreement with the enemy that we deserve the pain we now find ourselves experiencing. You know the voice, either in your mind or the one from the mouth of a messenger, usually someone you love and trust.

Accusation tells you it’s your fault, guilt makes you feel like it is. There are a couple of things that will help us bypass these two hurdles.

One, search our own hearts. Make sure that for any part of the situation that we may have been to blame we “own” and ask forgiveness, whether it be to a person we’ve offended or to the Lord. Sometimes, the enemy can do us a favor through accusation. If we are humble enough to look at ourselves through God’s eyes (not the enemy’s), we may find the part we played in our pain and can be forgiven for it and grace can be applied. (That obviously is not the plan of the enemy of our souls. He wants nothing more than us to give up.)

The second thing is to fall upon the grace of God and ask for His help, wisdom and healing. Whenever we find ourselves failing, hurting or in sin, what the enemy wants to do is to drive us further from God, but if we allow accusations and guilt to drive us to God, we will find soon enough the old guards running away, because we only become stronger in the grace of God. This is why Paul could say “I glory in my weaknesses…God’s strength is perfected in weakness.” It wasn’t that he was glad to be weak, but he knew that when he “owned” his weakness, God’s strength could be revealed through him.

Even when we’ve been a source of our own pain, God promises not to “stick our noses” in it, but to help us in spite of our struggles. James tells us, “If any of you lacks wisdom, he should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to him.” (Italics mine.) God is not going to beat us up, because we’re wounded, whether or not we’ve had a part to play in it.

Grace says that all our shortcomings and failures have been reconciled in the Cross, so guilt and accusation cannot keep us from experiencing the healing God wants for our lives. Let us push past the guards and refuse to allow accusation and guilt to control us into living in the pain.