Appreciate New Awareness

 

We all come to God as we are, battered and bruised by the circumstances of life. We’re weary, wounded, and sometimes very deeply sad. Some of us feel hopeless and powerless to do anything about our conditions, and it seems as though we’re drowning in a sea of darkness and despair. That sinking feeling in our guts can rob us of every ounce of joy. Because its sting is so painful, some of us choose to numb ourselves any way that we can. Blaming others is also a way of numbing our pain. It allows us to temporarily remove our focus from the root of the problem on to the person we blame, but this isn’t an effective strategy. Life is designed to teach us the lessons we desperately need to learn. Denying them only guarantees they will continue to cycle back around.

Appreciate awareness of the lesson
Life’s way of cycling back lessons about God’s love isn’t so that we will beat ourselves up with condemnation and blame. It’s not about making us feel bad about our mistakes. That isn’t God’s intention at all. Romans 8:1 declares that there is no condemnation for those of us who belong to our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. God’s way is not to condemn but to correct.

It is true that others will commit very hurtful and malicious deeds against us, and sometimes these are individuals we love the most. We expected them to have our backs, and instead, it feels like they stabbed us in the back. But blaming them will not heal the gapping wound in our hearts. We must appreciate the truth that there is always a lesson in our pain that extends wisdom for the future, brings us closer to God, and arms us with greater faith and love. To be cognizant of this reality is to allow our heartbreak to bring us into heightened awareness, and this will lead to greater spiritual growth in Christ.

Even though it feels like we’re in the muck and mire of darkness, we must gather the courage to allow the light of Christ to shine on us. Well, what does light do? Light exposes darkness. This means that whatever it is that has been hiding in our souls must be exposed. We’re not alone. God is with us, helping us to open our eyes to what HE desires us to see. This must be our continual prayer through any adversity or obstacle that we endure, that God will shine a light on the root of our pain, so we can acknowledge and confront it.

Romans 8:37(NLT) declares, “No, despite all these things, overwhelming victory is ours through Christ, who loved us.” We are more than conquerors through Jesus Christ! Conquerors conquer! This is what conquerors do, but we can’t conquer what we refuse to confront. We must appreciate the mercy, grace, and wisdom of God which allows us to come into greater awareness, and we must appreciate it to the extent that we allow HIM to guide us to it.

Appreciate the awareness of the problem
Do not allow the reality of the problem to escape your awareness. Don’t deny or neglect the possibility that some aspect of its root may be hiding somewhere in your heart. You must have the humility to at least consider this possibility. We end up in a place of woundedness and weariness because of an issue that existed, and although we may not have caused the thing that hurt us so badly, we are not bystanders either. We are not just the person with a front row seat of the account. We were in it. The thing that occurred happened to us. It impacted our lives profoundly. By this, we can be sure that we can learn from it.

The cause
All death, darkness, despair, and disappointment that any person experiences in life is caused by the devil and his demons. We should never be mistaken about this. To think any other way is to remain unaware and ignorant of satan’s devices, and God would not have us be ignorant in this way. In Hosea 4:6, God tells us that His people are destroyed because they lack knowledge. They are not knowledgeable about God’s Word and therefore they are not armed against satan’s devices.

The why
Heavenly Father warns us in 1Peter 5:8(NLT), “Stay alert! Watch out for your great enemy, the devil. He prowls around like a roaring lion, looking for someone to devour.” The question you and I must ask ourselves is “How are we to keep ourselves from being devoured?” The Lord tells us to first be watchful, to be aware of what is going on so that we’re able to ward off impending danger. He also warns us in Ephesians 6:11(NLT) to put on all His spiritual armor “so that you will be able to stand firm against all strategies of the devil.” Our Heavenly Father isn’t redundant and everything He tells us is necessary, beneficial, and desperately needed. Without God’s armor, we are exposed to enemy attacks. In other words, the enemy attacks our vulnerabilities and weaknesses; he attacks the places in our hearts and minds that have not been exposed to the love of God.

If we’ll look under the hood of 1Peter 5:8, we’ll recognize that the devil studies us to know where we’re the most vulnerable. Like a lion that studies its prey for just the right moment to attack, the enemy looks for an opening in our lives to come against our relationship with God, so that we will not have faith in Him. God warns us to be watchful about this, and to be watchful is to take the necessary measures to apply God’s spiritual armor. To avoid collateral damage, we need to close the opening, because the devil is a rogue and a thief. While we have our eyes on the front door, the enemy looks for the back door, and very often this is an opening that we are unaware of. A traumatic event can expose it, and our responsibility is to deal with it, and then close it up with the truth of God’s Word.

The ultimate goal of the devil’s attacks is to take us out, because Jesus Christ tells us in John 10:10 that the enemy is in the earth to steal, kill, and destroy. When issues arise and raw emotions come to the surface and cause us deep pain, it means that although a dart has pierced us, it has not killed us, and for this we must be incredibly thankful. God has a work for us to do, and through His grace, we are still alive to praise Him another day. Our work is the work of our souls. It is to begin the journey with Jesus Christ of exposing our weak places, administering God’s healing to those places, and then putting on more of Christ so that we are spiritually stronger.

Heavenly Father does not cause our hurtful situations, but He will allow them. He tells us in Romans 8:28 that He causes all things to work together for good for those who love Him and are called according to His purpose. He will take what the devil meant for bad and use it for our good, but we must place all our trust in Heavenly Father. We must pray without ceasing about our conditions and circumstances, and not look to substances, people, or anything else to do what only God can do. Psalm 147:3 tells us that He is the healer of broken hearts, and He desires that we are fully aware that He’s made space for us as His throne of grace, where we will find all the help that we need. ■

Scripture taken from the New King James Version. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved. 

Scripture quotations marked (NLT) are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Wheaton, Illinois 60189. All rights reserved. 

“Appreciate New Awareness”, written for Christian Encouragement and Inspiration© 2022. All rights reserved. All praise and honor to God through Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior.