If we click on reels on social media, we will find many influencers who possess knowledge we don't. This is enticing.
As we listen to counselors and psychologists explain personality types, we may feel a jolt of recognition. This is what I've been through! And here is why! And I never understood what was happening to me even as I was being gaslighted and victimized! By golly, I have been wronged!
In this way, a two minute listen on social media can bring past injuries to mind, re-igniting them into present pain.
I have walked with Jesus over a lifetime of prayer, and yet I'm not immune to this phenomenon of a short reel from a self-proclaimed source of wisdom disturbing my peace.
The enemy wants us to indulge self-pity and to be so bound by past injustices that we are unable to participate in present freedom.
As Christians we are blessed as we persevere, run to the Lord with every injury, and trust Him to act on our behalf. God rights past wrongs as we cry out to Him, not always in the ways we would like, but in His own way, which allows space for Him to love and redeem the very ones who have sinned against us. It isn't that God sacrifices our welfare on the altar of someone else's salvation; our Lord does not forget us. But He does expect us to love as we've been loved and forgive as we've been forgiven (Ephesians 4:32).
This morning I was sitting, immobilized, after hearing a reel that described with uncanny accuracy some trials I went through a long time ago. The Lord delivered me, but now, with clarity that may or may not be accurate, I had been given labels to characterize the precise sort of injustices I'd suffered.
But then the thought came that, as a believer, I don't have to count the injustices that have been dealt me; I am assured that even if I forget, the Lord will not (Isaiah 49:15). Righting wrongs is not our work, but God's (Romans 12:19). As children of God we are safe to entrust past wrongs into His hands and to count deliverances instead of injuries.
It isn't wrong to be cautious in wisdom based on past experience. But to rehearse wrongs and feel pain that is no longer in the present is fruitless. We sometimes are in danger of becoming upset, not because we are being hurt now, but because we were once hurt. In this way, past injury can rob present joy.
One of God's fortes is to cause those who once disdained us to recognize the error of their ways (Revelation 3:9). Like Joseph, we may be generous even with those who once caused us harm, because the weapons to hurt us have been taken from their hands (Genesis 50:20). We can be merciful to them as God has been merciful to us.
Prayer: Lord, help us not to allow reminders of past suffering to rob us of present peace. Help us to look at the past through your lens, counting the ways You've delivered us rather than the ways we were injured. Help us to extend to others the grace You have given us. In Jesus' name we pray, amen.
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See, I am doing a new thing!
Now it springs up; do you not perceive it?
I am making a way in the wilderness
and streams in the wasteland.
Isaiah 43:19
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