I remember years ago when my daughter was a toddler she came into the living room holding a box of building blocks. The box so tightly gripped by her little hands, like she’d found the greatest of all treasures, she was beaming. My husband asked her if she would like to open the box and build something with the blocks. She quickly dumped the contents of the box on the carpet. When my husband started to pick up the blocks to build something, she said, “No, they need to stay in a pile.” Perplexed my husband looked at her. My daughter didn’t seem to understand that the blocks were meant for a loftier purpose than to lie in a pile on the ground. I think many times, we too don’t realize what Jesus is trying to build something amazing out of our lives seemingly mismatched pile of troubles. Many of us have had very difficult events take place in our lives. And through that, we have allowed these events to start to define our thinking. We decide that we will never be more than a child of a rage filled alcoholic, or no more than one who suffered at the hands of abuse, or someone who will never overcome to afflictions of verbal pain that we were placed under. But when we start to allow this mindset to grow within us, we are depriving our lives of the involvement of Jesus Christ. When we do this, we are shutting out the very involvement that will help us to build a beautiful life out of the pains we’ve suffered. Christ isn’t interested in our living with a pile of broken spirits and dreams, instead He wants to build a beautiful life for you. When my husband was able to realize that my daughter could not understand why he wanted to use the blocks to build a building with, he slowed down and asked her if she wanted to make something beautiful out of the pile on the floor. She answered that she did. He then very gingerly started to pick up the blocks one by one and build a tower. With each block that would leave the pile and be added on to the building, my daughter’s eyes would widen. She was so excited that such a large structure was in front of her. As the height of the building grew so did her cheers for her daddy. “Higher daddy, higher!” I believe that the more we start to release the pains of our past and present situations into the capable, trustworthy hands of Jesus Christ, we too will find that we become amazed by what Christ is trying to build with them. Isaiah 61:1 tells us that the Lord Jesus Christ has come to heal the brokenhearted. He came to proclaim that instead of our living captive to our pains that we are instead set free in Him. Freedom is a beautiful word with an amazing meaning behind it, but until we are willing to take hold of the fact that the reigns of our pain don’t have to dictate how we see this life, we aren’t really going to live in the freedom that Christ is seeking to give us. Until my daughter was willing to let go of her need to have the blocks in a scrambled pile and instead trust her dad to build something with it, the blocks remained nothing but a pile upon the floor. We too can often make this mistake. We hold so tightly to the pains of our past/present life that we don’t ever see what Christ was trying to make out of them. Allowing yourself permission to think differently than what your emotions dictate to you is one of the most amazing steps to recovering from the chains that pain can hold over us. Tomorrow, we will begin to talk over what is it like to start walking out of the power of the pains in our lives. For now, many blessings upon you. Until tomorrow, Pastor Daniella.