Are You Maintaining Your Healing?

It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then,

and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery.

(Galatians 5:1)

One of my pet peeves is taking the time to clean up and have someone come behind me and make a mess shortly after. A mother can really identify with this. You work hard, you keep focused and you get the job done, feeling accomplished. A few hours or days later, you go back to the area you cleaned, only to see a mess. You can feel the irritation coming on as you go through the cleaning process again, only to have someone come behind you and make yet another mess. If not taken care of immediately, the irritation will build into full anger and explosion. We can also see this in the workplace or a church when we are in positions of  management. Sometimes we find situations that become a mess and we have to go in and clean it up. If those who are working in the area do not help maintain the situation that was fixed, the mess will return, sometimes worse than before. Pretty soon after going in and cleaning up the same messes over and over, the manager will become understandably frustrated.

In order not to become over frustrated, we must not try to continuously clean up everyone’s messes. Yes, it’s true when we are parents, employers or leaders and it is part of our responsibility to see that things run smoothly, fix problems when necessary and clean up messes when a mess presents itself to us. But we also must maintain a healthy balance as well. This means we must teach others how to do these things and hold them to it through guidance. If we don’t, they will come to rely on us to clean up all of their messes, becoming dependent on us. Sometimes, this means we must allow them to suffer the consequences of their actions in order to learn from their repeated mistakes.

Another area we see this happen is in the healing process both in the physical and the spiritual. If not maintained, we can become sick again.  In order to remain healed spiritually, we must maintain our healing which means surrendering situations and unhealthy emotions to the Lord, praying daily (sometimes several times a day), reading the Bible daily and applying the Word of God to our situations and daily life.

Maintaining our spiritual healing takes time and work. We need to maintain ourselves so we do not end up back into slavery to our old idolatries and ways. When we begin to see the negative weeds pop up within us such as jealousy, anger, pride, fear, lying, depression, anxiety, etc we must pull them out immediately before they grow and choke out the good things within us. We do not want to lose the healing that we (and Christ) worked so hard to achieve within ourselves. We must quickly surrender to the Lord the negative thoughts and emotions before they consume us.

After having to go behind others to clean up their messes, sometimes repeatedly, we get a good look at how frustrated God must get with us. He takes the time to pick us up, clean us off and work with us to bring healing and restoration to our lives. He makes every effort to teach us what we are to do to continue on with the healing so we can become stronger in Him only to watch us fall repeatedly back into the same old ways. I’m sure He gets frustrated having to rescue us a multitude of times, going behind us and cleaning up our messes. On the flip side, He may get frustrated at going in and cleaning up messes in situations and lives only to have us go behind Him and make messes doing what we think needs to be done after He’s cleaned things up. Either way, it’s pretty frustrating.

Today, lets make a conscious effort to apply what God has taught us. Let’s clean up after ourselves and maintain our healing instead of slacking off and falling back into the same old ways. If you haven’t been maintaining your healing and are slowly falling back into your old ways, take time today to seek God, repent and ask Him to help you to get back on track. Then stand up, brush yourself off, and put forth every effort to clean up and maintain your healing. Soon you will be back on the road to good spiritual health!

“Lord, today I ask for forgiveness for not maintaining my healing and falling off track. Help me to be more conscious of the things I have to do to spiritually heal and give me the strength to do it. Lord, I know You are the only One who knows me inside and out and knows what’s good for me. Help me to listen to You on a daily basis by taking time to be with You. Thank you Lord for the time You give to me no matter when I call on You. Thank You for always being there. In Jesus name…Amen.”