Christian Living

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People in general are so good at putting up walls of protection. Over time and because we’ve had a lot of practice, we become professional in building protective walls around ourselves. The more you do a thing, the more proficient you become at it. Husbands and wives, family members, and Church family build such walls around themselves because they want to avoid emotional hurt and pain. These well erected walls around us also serves as a hindrance to our relationship and true intimacy with God. In this word, I want to talk about these walls of protection, why they’re there and especially in the relationship between husbands and wives.

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WALLS OF ISOLATION:
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Being rejected by your spouse is intense emotional pain of the worst kind. When we feel the slightest bit of hurtful rejection from our husbands or wives, we get busy and throw up a wall of protection against them. We think it will shield us from anymore hurt. It’s through the pain of rejection that we learn to withdraw from others and isolate ourselves. But withdrawing from your mate, or from other family and friends or church family to hide behind protective walls won’t keep you from ever being hurt again. Plus, if you can learn to withdraw, you can also learn to come out of hiding and reach out to those close to you in love and acceptance.

Neither men nor women were created to be alone without a mate unless God Himself requires that you remain single for His purposes. Otherwise, we weren’t created to be isolated from the contact of other people. In Genesis 2:18, God said, “It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make a help meet (someone fit, companion) for him.” Then, when God had finished His work of creation, He surveyed it all and said in Genesis 1:31, “And God saw every thing that He had made, and behold, it was VERY good...” Prior to this, He had said that what He had created was ‘good’ but after man was created, He said, now it was all ‘very good.’

Man was created to have freedom and to have dominion over his circumstances, etc. Mankind was not created to be in bondage to hurts and wounds of the soul that becomes so painful you hide yourself behind self-made walls for protection. Many people in marriage relationship, other family and church family relationships tend to think that as long as you can stay behind that wall of protection, the people who have hurt you before won’t be able to get to you again.

By hiding out, protecting yourself, somehow you have the notion that you’re free. It’s just the very opposite. What you’ve done is to allow yourself to become a prisoner of satan’s making and its design is diabolical and meant to destroy you. “The thief (satan) comes but for to steal, kill and to destroy...” (John 10:10). Satan’s plan is to create fear, distrust, strife, contention and division between you and your spouse, or others close to you. How can you husbands and wives live in peace and harmony, loving as Jesus gave commandment, when one or both are hiding yourselves behind protective walls? You can’t and satan knows this all to well.

The truth is that all the strife, the contention and division makes you both miserable. The fear of rejection will keep you hiding out in isolation instead of reaching out to those you need the most. The same thing is true of our relationship with our heavenly Father. Walls are hard; thus they become “hardness around the heart” because of fear and unbelief. You may be one of those people who think that because your parents rejected you as a child, abused you, or abandoned you, that surely God will only treat you the same way. The devil is a liar! The truth is, God is the One who loves you when nobody else will, “For God so loved the world (you) that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever would believe in Him should not perish but have everlasting life” (John 3:16). God is the one who can heal your wounded and bruised soul when no one else can “But He was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon Him” (Isaiah 53:5).

When others abandon you and nobody else seems to want you, God says, I want you. I accept you and I’ll never leave you nor forsake you. “To the praise of the glory of His grace, wherein He has made us accepted (acceptable) in the beloved (Jesus)” (Eph.1:6). The truth of God’s Word to us makes the devil a liar just as Jesus said he was and is. “You are of your father the devil, and the lust of your father you will do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and abode not in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaks a lie, he speaks of his own (its his nature); for he is a liar and the father of it (lies)” (John 8:44).

If we will set out minds and hearts to follow the truth, Jesus promised in John 8:32, “You shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.” The truth, if you will hear it and believe it, it will bring you out of those rabbit holes of hiding. The truth will set you free from the fear of rejection and help you tear down those walls of protection you’ve been hiding behind.

Plain As Day Ministries

Shirley Williams
2-10-03

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