Balancing Act

Over the past week I have been thinking a lot about my faith, mainly due to the fact I have decided to thoroughly examine myself through the Keys to Freedom course and workbook I’m going through with my church group (a course designed to give you the tools to heal life’s wounds). I thought I should put this time in lockdown to good use by starting to clear out my spiritual closet, yes there has been a lot of stuff removed since I became a Christian, but there are still things in there buried way back – some stuff I didn’t even know was there. The only way I could possibly tackle some of this stuff is by allowing God to show me where to begin, through quiet time spent alone with Him. If you’re reading this and wondering what that looks like, well for me it’s like when your partner subtly reminds you that you have some chores around the house to be getting on with. I tend to ignore the first couple of reminders, but with loving persistence (mostly!), I eventually do it. This is what God does, he will bring something up for me again and again, until it’s virtually impossible to ignore it.

Once something had been identified for me, it was important that I trusted God enough to let him in and go there with me, whether that was abuse, trauma, brokenness or anything else I was hanging on to. If I didn’t, the enemy would tell me that this is just who I am, that I would never break free from any of it. Before allowing God in to my life, I firmly believed this to be true and acted like it was too. It would have been very easy for me to use the victim card, but I believed I deserved more than that.

I remember before I became a Christian, the best way to describe my life B4 Christ is by sharing a vision I had a few days ago. I was a tightrope walker, I was a pretty poor one as I would be swaying from side to side, very unsteady. Eventually, somewhere between the middle and end of the rope, I would fall about 100ft to the floor with an almighty bang, and everything was ruined. This was basically my life, always getting so far and then falling with a catastrophic bang. This happened in my job, my relationships, and even church at the beginning. I got to a point where I just accepted that this was going to happen, that God didn’t care enough about me to stop me from falling. Fast forward a couple of years and I see myself as that same tightrope walker, still with the balance of a baby giraffe, but one thing had changed in the scene. There was a huge safety net just a few feet under the rope, to me this represents God. Yes I’m still going to fall, I’m going to make a lot of mistakes but He is my safety net now. It is a lot less of a strain walking across a tightrope knowing I’m only going to fall a few feet and get back up, rather that the 100ft bang I had been accustomed to. Knowing that in my relationship with God I have that security in place, I actually feel like I want to go to places in my closet I’ve never been, so I can be set free from it.

God will never give you more than you can handle, so why don’t you try this week to allow God into your deepest hurts, your darkest secrets, and your greatest pains. I’m sure He will show you what burden He would like to remove from your life, your job is to put one foot in front of the other and start walking over that tightrope, trusting Him.

God Bless.

Tommy