Daily Devotional

When a New Year begins, we often look back to assess how we are doing in all areas of our life.  Often it is difficult to investigate the deeper recesses of our life and to be honest with how we really are.  In Philippians 3:13-14, the Apostle Paul talks about focusing not on the past but looking forward to what lies ahead.  He looked at his life to see if there was anything that might be keeping him from becoming the man God had saved him to be.  Paul allowed God’s love and grace to heal the deep wounds in his life.  He did not allow these areas of brokenness to hold him back but accepted God’s healing that came through Jesus Christ.

Often, we have become self-satisfied with our spiritual progress or lack of spiritual progress.  We might even say that our lives cannot be different this side of heaven.  As a result, we stay bound up with activities and ways of thinking that make us feel better momentarily.  We stay chained to those thought patterns and activities.  God wants us to experience healing in Jesus Christ who came to set us free.

In Luke 4:18, Jesus relates the words of Isaiah to Himself, “The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me, Because the Lord has anointed me To bring good news to the afflicted; He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, To proclaim liberty to captives And freedom to prisoners.”  (Isaiah 61:1)

It is easy to compare ourselves to how others are doing spiritually but all along covering our brokenness, so others do not see it.  We are medicating the deep wounds of life with activities or substances that make us feel better.  It becomes our coping mechanism.  Often, we feel it is not safe to share our woundedness for fear that others will reject/abandon us or be critical in some way.  In many cases we have retreated into our own private worlds where we feel safe.  We often are afraid to share due to shame or pride.  As a result, our Christianity is only surface deep, and we struggle to keep up the front before others.

It is important for us to see how much God loves us.  He desires for us to deal with our brokenness so that we might be free.  Free from the chains that keep us in shame and free to experience God in a real and life changing way.  Christ is inviting us to come to Him with our brokenness.  His love is not only demonstrated to us in salvation, but also as he relates to us each day.

We need to recognize those areas that need to change in our lives and to allow God’s power to bring healing.  We need to stop clinging to the methods of the past that have not brought change into our lives.  Those methods only make us feel better about our core wounds for a moment.  We need to allow Christ to do more than just fix us but to heal us from the inside out.

Prayer:  Lord, I want to be honest about myself.  There have been hurts and wounds in my life that are difficult for me to handle.  I need the healing that only Your love and grace can bring.  Thank you for being my Healer.  Amen