Because there were battles in our past that we didn’t know how to fight, and no one was there to step in and fight for us, the losses both small and great have had a cumulative effect.
But we don’t go back in our stories to stay there, stuck in some moment of our personal history. We go back in order to see it, understand what happened, exchange it, and receive healing for brokenness and then move forward.
It’s critical to find out what is in the way of receiving love and then offering love because most men are stuck; they carry the past into the present as pieces of a wounded and unsettled heart.
Paul Young wrote in his book The Shack,
“Pain has a way of clipping our wings and keeping us from being able to fly . . . and if [it is] left unresolved for very long, you can almost forget that you were ever created to fly in the first place.”
What is it that a man reaches for to cope and find comfort? Maybe the better question is, what reaches for a man when he is hurting, angry, or overwhelmed?
In order to be free, a man must take inventory of the “packages” that have accumulated in the secrecy of his heart.
What are they?
How do the lies they contain shape so much of how a man thinks and what he does?
The question is never whether there are such packages; the question is only: how many are there and what are their results?
Wounding has made broken pieces of heart the universal experience in every life story. All those wounding moments and broken pieces get carried forward by a boy who is trying his best to become a man and it won’t work.
Take some time to grab a journal and walk with Jesus back into your personal history, into your pain. Hold Jesus’s hand as you search out the wounding packages with Him.
In your Time alone with God, ask Him:
Father, when did I receive the deepest wounds in my heart?
Holy Spirit, what messages (true or untrue) do they contain?
Jesus, I know that right here and now I can exchange them for healing through You. Show me how.
