I am the LORD, the God of all mankind. Is anything too hard for me? -Jeremiah 32:27 (NIV)
The prison you cannot touch
I come from a family that truly knows how to harbor resentment, make it flourish, and carry it for decades…even past the death of another person. Talk about nurturing poisonous pain!
As a child, I was raised by parents could never be wrong. And from that, I inferred that it must be me who was always wrong and at fault. You can imagine the stage that set for adulthood.
Going hand in hand with this thinking is the debilitating way of looking backward in regret, living and reliving the past, just torturing the soul in self-condemnation, self pity, and guilt.
These conditions create invisible prisons for the mind and soul that may as well be cages and shackles of iron to keep us contained.
God breaks you free
But there is nothing too hard for the Lord.
There is nothing the Great Physician can’t heal. No pain or wound too deep. No rift or schism He can’t bridge. No prison from which He cannot free you.
After 40 years, my eyes started to see that resentment, self-condemnation, and regret were all sin burdens paid for in full by Jesus on the cross. And that truth only gets clearer with each passing day.
Though my sins were like scarlet, He made them white as snow (Isaiah 1:18).
Get off the old cycle and on the new
For you make me glad by your deeds, LORD; I sing for joy at what your hands have done. -Psalm 92:4 (NIV)
If not for Him, I would continue the cycle with my son. The cycle of sin and pain stop where God begins, and He has His hands outstretched to lift us up out of our prisons and into the freedom of His love.
And now that we are free, fellow believer, let us honor the Lord in starting healing and loving cycles…cycles of light and growth and change. Can you see the morning sun rising on your life after the years and years of night?
Today’s soundtrack
MercyMe’s “Hurt and the Healer” tells how God’s glory meets our suffering:
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