Let Your Guard Dogs Go

When you’re having a pity party where is your focus? On yourself. What if you looked instead at what God has done for you? 

When life knocks us down it is natural to go into survival mode, to focus on getting through the situation. Fight or flight takes action. 

But I want to talk about what happens when you are ready to stand back up. When the trial period is over, and you stand up, do you continue in your pity party? Or do you thank the Lord for all He has done and walk in His loving power? 

I’ll tell you what, I’ve spent a very long time, wallowing in my pity party. 

I dealt with the wreckage of my life by turning to the Lord for strength, healing and mercy. And He was faithful to give me all that I needed and more. So now, I’ve chosen to stand back up, to want new growth where death was planted. Yet even though I stood up, I haven’t given up my ‘poor me’ perspective. 

What a discredit to the Lord that is! What a poor testimony that is. 

I’ve struggled to believe that God is for me, really for me. Like, He wants to bless me and provide for me and comfort me. But why? Because my focus has continued to remain on myself, in that broken area of my life despite that I know He has healed me. I haven’t turned survival mode off even though the hurt is gone and I’ve been healed. God has been revealing to me over the last year that I am healed and whole. The broken pieces have been restored yet because of my own self pity I’m remaining unconvinced of this reality. However, the Lord is continuing to remind me that He simply wants to bless me more than I could think, ask, or imagine. He wants that for ALL areas of my life and your life including the restored ones. 

We have to get out of our own way though. We have to trust the Lord even with the vulnerable areas of our lives if we want to have new growth there. 

We know with the favor of the Lord over us, we are fully protected. He meets our every need and we stand in His promises, nothing can harm us. Now picture yourself standing fully protected, with the favor of the Lord on your front porch. What an awesome place to be? Yet your pity party hasn’t left you and you remain guarded in that one area of your life. Here, you have chained a huge guard dog despite the fact God has protected you by giving you a house of comfort, an amazing community, and every provision you could ever need. You have chained up a guard dog “just in case” because of your own fleshly insecurity that says somehow, even under the protection of God, you will be attacked. So whenever someone comes to see you, no matter how nice, the dog is there to bark at them. To see if they can withstand the barking and be sniffed out as a non-threat. Yet in doing so, the dog has alarmed the nice visitor and you may or may not even get a chance to build a new or renewed relationship with them. By having this guard dog, you are minimizing your chance to show the Father’s love to that other person. You are minimizing your own opportunity to build or rebuild that relationship. You are minimizing the amount of time you could be spending getting to know that someone for yourself. You are ultimately rejecting your own opportunity to have renewed life. 

You have to let your guard dogs go and be open to new relationships, perspectives and experiences. You have to fully entrust it to the Lord. You have to stop putting up a guarded front if you ever want to find healthiness and happiness in that area of life. You have to stop fearing that if you enter that relationship it will be marked by the same pain of the past. You have to stop believing that something bad will happen everytime you find yourself walking into these situations again.

What does the guard dog in your life “protect” and ultimately reject you from experiencing? 

GOD WANTS YOU TO HAVE JOY. GOD WANTS YOU TO BE HAPPY. GOD WANTS YOU TO BE HEALTHY. GOD WANTS YOU TO BE PROSPEROUS IN EVERY ASPECT OF YOUR LIFE. 

HE IS FOR YOU, ALL OF YOU, ENTRUST HIM WITH THOSE SCARY PLACES, WHO BETTER IS THERE THAN HE TO TAKE CARE OF THEM FOR YOU? LET YOUR GUARD DOGS GO AND FIND FREEDOM IN EXPERIENCING THE GOOD LIFE GOD HAS FOR YOU.