Holding it in has no benefit for us, unless it’s your tummy 🙂
Emotionally, mentally & spiritually holding things in ends up costing us dearly.
We feel lonelier, ostracized, isolated and unheard. We begin to buy the lie that we are not to speak up, because we have nothing of value to say.
If it matters enough to us to hold on to it, it is worth speaking up about….for we don’t store long term the emotional things we don’t care about.
And as I have said before, if it matters to us, it matters to God.
God wants us to come running to Him just like our kids do when they have good news, or had a hard day because they failed a test, missed that puck or ball, got teased or aren’t feeling well.
I have struggled in this area, because I have felt that some of the stuff that bothers me wasn’t important enough on the big scale of world issues to bring to God.
This week, I completed a bible study where the following quotes rose up to smack me squarely in the noggin:
Our wounds, our shame, our struggles are sacred ground to Him and become precious offerings and to place upon the altar before our King….
God calls you to intimacy from right where you are….
Our failures allow God the opportunity to shine His unfailing lower, love and Presence through our brokenness.
Chapter 6, Stronghold: The Secrets Beyond the Wall, Beth Kinder
God WANTS all of us.
We can come as we ARE.
And we can come as we AREN’T.
Probably like you, I know what I lack, and am not good at, because I live with myself 24/7.
I tend to forget that God too lives with me 24/7.
He already knows what’s within me… all my thoughts, hopes & dreams, hurts & wounds.
So why do I, and some of you, want to keep it all in?
Because I (you) have believed the lie that we are not His beloved.
We have listened to the Liar for way too long, and kept way too much hidden away at great cost to our relationship with God, which ends up overflowing onto & affecting our relationships with others.
And as we have carried these secrets as burdens and lied to ourselves that we are not important to God, we have become bound by what we have not said, instead of freed by letting it out with what we do say.
As each night watch begins, get up and cry out in prayer. Pour your heart out face-to-face with the Master.
Lamentations 2:19 (MSG)
The Bible is filled with the prayers of those who poured their hearts out like water before God….
we too are invited to come & lay all we are out in His Presence.
The good, the bad,
the beautiful, the sad,
The delights, the griefs,
the gifts & the thieves.
All we are is always welcome in our Father’s house.
All we have to do is come, and be ourselves.
The truth is? He knows anyways. and chooses to love us despite our weaknesses & lack
The Truth will set us free, as He leads us to become more truthful about what we think He doesn’t want to see.
All of us is welcome to come as we are(n’t).
We don’t need to be more than we are, for He is more than enough for all we lack & need.
He has taken the first step, and made a way through Jesus to rebuild, clean & redeem us.
We need to just take the necessary step towards Him, open our hearts and let our prayers pour out in a constant stream of conversation with Him.
KARLA LEES 