You are in the emotional mess you’re in because of choices you’ve made because of beliefs held sometimes deep with your heart. You may have chosen to put up a wall which blocks you from receiving love because you’ve been hurt and your heart believes that putting up a wall will keep your heart safe from being hurt again. The reality is that it doesn’t work. Your wall doesn’t keep you from getting hurt it only keeps you from freely receiving love as God intended. It’s only through receiving the love of God in your heart can be in that safe place that God intended it to be in.
“Behold, I have graven thee upon the palms of my hands thy walls are continually before me.”
Isaiah 49:16, KJV
When we build such walls, we choose to hinder our ability to freely receive love, and the single greatest need that we have (the need to be loved) will not be met (at least in the capacity God intended), and out of that lack of our greatest need being fulfilled, all sorts of emotional and life problems will arise. Almost all addictions, for example, are rooted in our need to be loved not being fulfilled. Our capacity to receive love is hindered by these walls which we have constructed which were meant to protect our heart, but actually cause all sorts of other problems. I have often said that if Satan can keep our God-given needs from being met God’s way, we become vulnerable to seeking out alternate ways to meet those needs. Sin for that matter, is usually just a vain attempt to manage our emotional pain and lack of fulfillment. Why do we lash out at somebody when they say the wrong thing? We are making them pay for what somebody else did to us years ago as a child. When we fail to love others, we have fallen into sin, because Jesus commanded us to love one another. However, if our own need to be loved isn’t being met, because of the walls we have constructed in our hearts, it will be difficult to love others because we really can’t freely give something we aren’t receiving ourselves.
Do you want to live the life that God intended for you to walk in? Do you want to freely love others as Jesus commanded? Then you’ll need to work on those walls in your heart, which are hindering your own need for love from being fulfilled. A heart that is not regularly receiving and fully aware of the love of God, is a heart that will not be emotionally healthy, and therefore that person will be prone to struggle with sin as a vain attempt to meet their God-given need to receive and experience His love.
Here’s where the problem lies, we often can’t just let down our walls because whether or not we realize it, we believe that our wall is doing something for us (protecting us from getting hurt), and until that belief that our wall is protecting us, it will be difficult to just let it go. This is why so many people cannot let go of their anger is because what they don’t realize is that their anger is doing something for them. The key to letting our walls down, is finding out what they are doing for us, and getting truth on them. Until we debunk the lies which cause us to hold on to our walls, we may find it very difficult to truly let go and experience the freedom that God intended.
