By Neil Anderson
Galatians 5:1
It was for freedom that Christ set us free
How does God intend for you to resolve hurtful, controlling past experiences? In two ways which we shall consider today and tomorrow.
First, you have the privilege of evaluating your past experience in the light of who you are now, as opposed to who you were then. The intensity of the primary emotion was established by how you perceived the event at the time it happened. Remember: Your emotions are a product of how you perceived the event, not the event itself. As a Christian, you are not primarily a product of your past; you are primarily the product of the work of Christ on the cross. The flesh, which represents how you processed those events according to the world and without Christ, remains. But you are able to render it inoperative.
When a present event activates that primary emotion, many people believe what they feel instead of believing what is true. For example, people who have been verbally abused by their parents have a hard time believing they are unconditionally loved by Father God. Their primary emotions argue that they are unlovable to a parent figure. They believe what they feel and their walk is off course. Believing the truth and walking by faith is what sets us free.
Now that you are in Christ, you can look at those events from the perspective of who you are today. Christ is in your life right now desiring to set you free from your past. That is the gospel, the good news that Christ has come to set the captives free. Perceiving those events from the perspective of your new identity in Christ is what starts the process of healing those damaged emotions.
God’s good news about our identity is revealed in 2 Corinthians 5:17: “Therefore if any man is in Christ, he is a new creature; the old things passed away; behold, new things have come.” This is what you must believe first in order to be set free from your past.
Prayer: Loving Lord, thank You for making me a new creation in Christ. Help me walk away from anything in my past that is restricting my freedom.
God Is Always Right on Time
“When a present event activates that primary emotion, many people believe what they feel instead of believing what is true.”
I love the way you said that Neil. It’s in Him we live, and move, and have our being — not in our feelings. (Acts 17:28)
What you wrote encouraged and inspired me.
Excellent post!
>> “As a Christian, you are not primarily a product of your past; you are primarily the product of the work of Christ on the cross”
Amen and AMEN! I know the truth of that!
Being extremely abused, unloved and unwanted, for the first 22 years of my life, I was ‘a product of my past.’ I KNEW without any doubt that I was worthless and this affected every area of my life.
“But God!” – He changed my life completely 8th June 1958 (and continues to do so) and I became ‘the product of the work of Christ on the cross.’
While much of the past still haunted me, my amazing God gradually destroyed all the poison of those years and brought me to a place where I can literally THANK God for all that happened, and thank Him for the way He uses the experience of those events to reach out to others.
What a truly amazing God!
WOW!! That is powerful, thank you for sharing…I hope someone else reads your comment and is blessed by it.
Reblogged this on weepingintodancing and commented:
Dear Readers,
This post is worth a read. God wants us to resolve hurtful past experiences.