The healing power of God to transform us and build us up in His love is an amazing gift. The Father’s healing work is available all throughout our life, leading us into deeper truth and changing us from the inside out. But If experiencing heart healing is such a wonderful gift and blessing, why do so many people avoid it in their lives?
1. The Invasion of Pride
The work of pride takes on various forms, but its biggest work is to keep us from the humble posture we need. It can be easy to hide behind anything to avoid vulnerability or letting anyone see that we have flaws.
Why not just stop playing the games and get real about your life? Wouldn’t that make things so much easier?
The reality is that if you, like so many others, have spent lots of time and energy building fortresses around your heart, God and other people don’t have the ability to interact with the real you. Our pride elevates some kind of poser, an imposter or false self that wears a badge of success; as though you have no sin, weakness or areas to grow in.
Yet the healing process will not override your pride. God will deal with any issue in your life. If you keep a humble heart, you will have everything you need to process transformation with Him. But pride will cause the heavens to resist you.
Yes, God says he “resists the proud.” You can blame the devil all you want, but pride keeps us from admitting our need and receiving the transformation available.
The good news is that genuine humility opens up the heavens with a tidal wave of grace, God’s ability to work on your heart and empower your journey.
Everyone around you can know that you need heart healing, but until you realize it, nothing will change. That stubborn pride will always keep you from being able to see what you need to see. You can defend and stomp your feet all you want, but the healing is available when you are ready to lower the pride.
2. The Tolerance of Inauthentic Living
Over time, we can tolerate very shallow living in our relationships. Look at our conversations. Do we get past the weather, the latest news headlines and our latest purchases to have meaningful and authentic conversations? Are we able to express more than just our perceived successes and be honest about our struggles?
Do you have people that you are able to be 100 percent yourself around?
We must realize that the most anointed you are is when you are yourself. And who you authentically are can have struggles, battles and issues of the heart that you are working through. Modern Christianity has often elevated the appearance of success at all costs. We lost the beauty of authentic exchange to settle for the shallow end of life.
But we wonder why we don’t see dynamic fruit when we have no entered the depth of what is available?
When God looks for the humble heart, He is seeking to build people who are authentic in their journey, those who recognize their need and invite others to join the journey with them.
Over and over, we are drawn to those who are real, yet we are still tempted to remain in our closed-down shelters. Satan lies to you that people will be repelled by your authenticity. If they are, it’s only because they want to remain in hiding.
Years ago, I had a conversation with a business man who was very successful financially but was deeply broken in his life. In a moment of heartfelt exchange, I took the opportunity to be real about my own struggles and what God has been working on in my life. I used it as a chance to go deeper in relationship.
Instead, he immediately shut down, changed the subject and pretended we never talked about any of this. I was deeply hurt and felt humiliated. I drove away beating myself up for sharing, debating as to whether or not it was worth it.
But in that moment, I made the decision that living authentic was always the better way to live. Instead of giving into shame or humiliation, I celebrated that vulnerable moment. Whether people accept it or not, I refuse to tolerate a life that is shallow and dominated by meaningless pursuits.
3. Denial
Many people like to live in that river I call “De-Nile.” It’s the river of not wanting to deal with our issues and our struggles. We push things down for so long we can’t even recognize them.
Denial has many ways it can keep us from the heart healing that is needed, but the biggest tactic is shoving down and suppressing pain, heartache and brokenness.
We rationalize this habit. We usually don’t leave our denial until a crisis arises or we hit rock bottom that we realize we need a deeper work in our hearts. Personally, I didn’t change my posture until the pain in my life got so intense, I knew I needed to stop the games.
4. We See Weakness as Failure
Many believe that showing need, brokenness or weakness means you are a failure. You’re unsuccessful. Many Christians even believe that if we admit to struggle, we empower the devil or give the enemy more room to destroy.
Yet in reality, we don’t realize there is a precious experience available for those that live with a vulnerable heart.
The current pull today is success and achievement, at the sacrifice of living emotionally and relationally healthy. It’s easy to ignore the issues of the heart while pursuing a sense of belonging and value through what we achieve. At the end of the day, we develop a definition of success that is actually not God’s.
So we end up taking our weak and broken areas and hiding them as much as possible. Yet we miss out on the jewels available when we stop hating on our weak areas and allow God to touch them. Our lives impact people at a deeper level, and we actually gain massive strength.
Many of you need to make room for weakness and stop living like you have it all together. You haven’t arrived, and that is OK. You are in process, and it’s a beautiful journey, especially if we authentically embrace it. You learn a reliance in your weakness that cannot be taught in those places where you appear strong.
You become an authentic business person. You become an authentic parent. You become an authentic friend instead of giving people advice you don’t really even follow yourself. You drop the facade in your life and instead just share where God is helping you and teaching you. You haven’t arrived, but you’re on an incredible journey.
5. Fear of Vulnerability
I do a lot of teaching on fear because it has become a driving force in people’s perspectives and decisions. Fear leads us to create fabrications of what we want people to see about our lives. We don’t want to look bad. We fear rejection, abandonment, we fear looking bad or simply fear looking stupid.
Yet at the end of the day, God will use you in some of those areas you see as foolish and weak, to astonish the wise.
When you live vulnerably, fear has so much less of an influence because you are not playing games and wasting so much energy with relational presentations. You get to be free from the heart.
A lot of believers are going through deep pain and challenges. Yet they imprison themselves by shoving down the pain and not expressing their journey to other trusted people. We still have a great deal of fear that is keeping us plastic and inauthentic.
But it’s OK, because at some point, we all hit a place in our journey–breaking points where our hearts need a new level of experience. We finally say “OK, God. Now I submit myself to change … to healing.”
Some people still don’t. They remain hardened and can even shut down. I’m praying that as you’re reading this heaven will get the attention of your heart. Today, you can let down the guard and allow God to do a deeper healing work.
Father God, I pray right now in the name of Jesus that we would all humble ourselves, face our fears and allow You to do a healing work in our hearts. I cast down the pride, stubbornness and facades that keep me from the work You want to do in my life. I let go of self-reliance and the cover-ups I wear. I recognize that I am weak and allow You to meet me in every area of my heart.
Thank You that You love me, every part of me. Not just the strong areas, but every area. Your love and grace make all this possible. {eoa}
Mark DeJesus has served as an experienced communicator since the 1990s. As a teacher, author, coach and radio host, Mark is deeply passionate about awakening hearts and equipping people towards transformational living. His message involves getting to the core hindrances that contribute to the breakdown of our relationships, our health and our day-to-day peace. He is well-versed on struggles that originate within our thoughts. Through his own personal transformation, Mark is experienced in helping people overcome and live fruitful lives. He is the author of five books and hundreds of teachings. He hosts a weekly radio podcast show called “Transformed You” and blogs at markdejesus.com. His writings have been featured on sites like charismamag.com.
This article originally appeared at markdejesus.com.
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