When you believe you can’t recover
For the inward thought and the heart of a man are deep. Psalm 64:6
This guy I dated owned a vintage BMW that was so vintage it sometimes forgot how to run. I was very naïve in those days and didn’t realize that he was super insecure and that his car was a status symbol. One afternoon, after he had helped my mom with some projects, he couldn’t start his car. What happened next was a meltdown of volcanic proportions. He cursed his car. He cursed his parents because they had been poor and unable to provide him with functioning status symbols, and he cursed God. His whole world fell apart because his status symbol had let him down.
Fast forward many years later. Sam was working the night shift at the hospital so I was in bed alone, thinking unhappy thoughts about my father who was an abusive alcoholic. The Lord gave me a little nudge and said, “You are bitter towards your father.” I sat straight up and snarled back, “He ruined my life and You let him do it.” My head might have spun around like the girl in the movie Exorcist. I’m joking. It did not really spin around.
For those of you who follow this ministry you know that my emphasis is on the heart as a storage unit for what we believe about life and about important people. What we believe is established in early childhood and is based upon our parents and life experiences. Once established, this heart-level belief system, for better or worse, guides how we interpret reality.
Guard your heart above all else, for it determines the course of your life. Proverbs 4:23 (NLT)
A wise and mature Christian once told me that you don’t know what is in your bucket until someone kicks it over. This is an excellent metaphor for the heart. We do not know what is in our hearts until something happens that causes it to overflow. Or, in the case of my former boyfriend, erupt. He believed that his life was ruined because his parents had been poor and unable to provide what he longed for. Let something go wrong, some image-making status symbol not perform up to his expectations and he would fall apart. He was trapped in the belief that his life was ruined because of poverty.
I was also trapped. I believed that my father had ruined my life and that there was no recovery. And that is the point of this article.
When we believe that some person or circumstance has ruined our lives, we become stuck. Our hearts will not let us move beyond that belief unless we instruct it to do so. I refuse to remain stuck in the mud of the “I can’t recover” belief. I know that you don’t want to stay stuck either. Let’s take what we believe within the hidden recesses of our hearts to the Lord, so that we can begin to recover.
Let’s pray.
Lord God, Creator of all, please show me if I believe that I cannot recover from something that happened in my past. Forgive me for blaming You for what the fall has done. Unpin me from my past and move me forward into the present moment. I break the vows I made to never forget that I cannot recover. All things are possible with You Lord and I can recover. My past is not my God. You are my God. I break the assignment of any evil spirits attached to my vow and I send them to the feet of Jesus for judgment. Angels, take them there now. Heart, listen to me. You will no longer believe that I cannot recover. You will allow the Lord to heal my history. You will allow Him to come close to me and prove that recovery is mine. In Jesus’ name. Amen.
