jacintanest: “ Christianity often tells us that our lives should be about building bridges, not walls. But that doesn’t seem to stop us from placing brick after brick upon one another when we feel hurt, betrayed or our ego has been a little bruised....

jacintanest:

Christianity often tells us that our lives should be about building bridges, not walls. But that doesn’t seem to stop us from placing brick after brick upon one another when we feel hurt, betrayed or our ego has been a little bruised. We leap from offence to defence and automatically believe in the value of preservation and protection over openness and forgiveness. We pile our restraints and our disappointments on top of one another; building mountains out of our disagreements and turning our backs on one another. We maintain positions of defence, rather than positions of grace. We shut out the very hands that were made to help, and push away the very hearts that were sent to love. We segregate, separate and slowly disintegrate internally as Satan celebrates his ability to remove us from everything God has worked so hard to build. Stubbornness consumes our once sweet spirit, and we somehow begin to believe that allowing offence and self-righteousness to dictate our steps is what is wise and beneficial. When it comes to the building of walls, many hands make light work - but when the sun goes down and the building ceases, we find ourselves alone within the walls we have built, with no one to lean on but our own self-destructive attitude and behavioural pattern, and we wonder where we went wrong.. God doesn’t encourage us to build walls - Satan does. When wolves hunt, they do not go straight in for the kill; they watch, wait and prey on the easy target; the animal that appears most weak and easily separated, and then they work to remove them from the pack for an easy take down. This is how Satan works also; He is a wolf, a thief who comes to steal and destroy. But a wall can only be built if we choose to extend upward instead of extending outward. Building bridges instead of walls when we feel entrapped by circumstance without a way out, forges a new pathway of growth and hope, and invites others along on the journey of recovery with us. Our human instinct is to run and hide; but Jesus is calling us out from the depths of our offences and into the realms of freedom, healing and truth. He is calling us to be brave. So stop building up, and start building out.

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