As I was lying in bed last night thinking and praying about what to write about this morning, the Holy Spirit ministered this to me:
Don’t beat up on yourself.
When a relationship has ended, one of the first things we do is to try to answer those questions in our heads- Why did s/he leave me? -Because I am fat? Because I am too ugly? ….Those questions can go on for months, even years.
The more questions we ask, the more likely it is that we are going to try to answer them based on knowledge. In my own personal experience, I thought that it was because I was not good enough, too dark, too clingy…my reasons went on and on. I even thought that it might have been because I seemed to have a lot of ‘baggage’ that the other person wasn’t willing to handle. My thoughts became my motivation for becoming an independent, hard-hearted, diva. But where was I getting these thoughts… where do we get these thoughts from?
As I am writing, I am getting this revelation. When Adam and Eve had eaten the fruit of the tree of knowledge, they became aware of their nakedness. Here is how that story went down:
8 Then the man and his wife heard the sound of the Lord God as he was walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and they hid from the Lord God among the trees of the garden. 9 But the Lord God called to the man, “Where are you?”
10 He answered, “I heard you in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; so I hid.”
11 And he said, “Who told you that you were naked? (Gen 3:8-11)
Adam and Eve were fine just up until they met the serpent. He began to put thoughts into their heads, ask them questions and then give them answers. In fact, it wasn’t until they had engaged with the serpent that they began to question themselves about their identity. This is why God asked them what He did- “who told you that you were naked?” Nakedness had become a flaw to them, and God did not tell them that it was a flaw. So in other words what God was asking was “who told you that you were flawed?”
It’s the same question that we need to ask ourselves when we start to travel on the road of condemnation. There’s a voice in each of our heads that is quick to give us negative reasons about ourselves, especially when we are broken. But somewhere, very deep in ourselves, the Holy Spirit is trying to ask “who told you that you weren’t pretty? That you weren’t good enough?” Sometimes, it’s not even the person that was in the relationship with you that told you those things. But you have convinced yourself that they were the ones that told you.
Here’s the truth- the longer you deliberate on what you think the reason was for them doing what they did- the longer you are likely to beat up on yourself. Your reasons can become so grounded in you that they become your truth. But the real truth is that there is a spirit of condemnation that needs to be silenced.
If you have already created a list of reasons in your own mind as to why the relationship ended, I challenge you to ask yourself- “who told you that these were your flaws?”
As I was thinking yesterday on some things, the Holy Spirit ministered to me that God did not create us with flaws. Our redeemed man is also flawless. But being on this sinful earth, which has always been corrupt, we begin to nurture flaws, based on our comparisons with other people, based on our fears, based on what the enemy tells us. But how does God see you? Does He see you as ‘fat”? or “ugly”? If He did, it would be a great disrespect to his Person, because everything He created was “good”.
I think that I have digressed from my talk, but that needed to be said I guess. The point is that when you keep condemning yourself for what has happened, when you keep blaming yourself for what someone else did, you are preventing yourself from moving on. If you have come to believe that you were flawed in some way, you might even think that you shouldn’t get into another relationship because you are not good enough. Or because you don’t want the next person to see these ‘made up flaws’ that you might have. But it is not God’s plan for you to stay in that stuck position.
So work on seeing the best in you. Everyday, when you are tempted to see yourself in a negative light, “put on your positive light”. If you did make mistakes in your past relationships, don’t let that be your light. Acknowledge that you made some mistakes. Maybe you were a bit clingy, maybe you were a bit nagging. But acknowledge also that you are wiser now, and that you are growing into the perfected image of Christ.
There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit. (Romans 8:1)
