A Word of Caution About God Transformation + Daily Obedience

Everything must be by the Spirit, in submission to Christ's authority, otherwise, we will swing the opposite way walking the flesh never fully being free from the desires and passions of the flesh. 

Lean in and submit no longer to the heavy yoke of slavery!

Transcript

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Welcome back to the High Level Wife Podcast. I'm Chelsea Holm, your host, and I want to bring a warning and a caution to you today. As you are a woman who is submitted to the inner work, who probably has come out of the self-help of figuring it out and gathering more information, right? As someone who has moved from awareness to surrender, there is this warning I want to give you of moving back into hurtful patterns that are still covering the same root problem. Let me explain, okay? Because it's always better when I give a little bit deeper explanation. Okay, so as a wife, for many years, and just as a woman in general, whether daughter or wife or friend, I learned to navigate by silencing myself, by ignoring my pain, by stuffing everything down. And honestly, in challenging situations, I was the one that would always bring humor into it to lighten it for everyone else. And then I would go cry by myself because the burden was so heavy. And I did that for a while until I just stopped crying altogether because I completely was ignoring any of my own pain. Right. And so then once I started walking with the Lord in submission to the inner work of not becoming this better version of myself. No, no, no, no. Okay. Not that. You know, I hate that if you listen to me long enough. Um, but taking off everything that I had put on myself and had allowed the world to put on me and the enemy to put on me over all the years, and actually take all of that off to get to the deepest version, the original, right, of how God made me, of how he knit me, right? The talents that he put in me, the personality that he gave me, the the inner workings of what makes me me, because God made me that way, right? Fully me by his design. Okay. So part of that process was learning to be expressive again, learning how to say the things rather than shoving the things down and ignoring them and not dealing with any of the emotions at all, right? And then I had I was in a pattern of I'd stuff everything down until I couldn't, and it would explode all over, and then I would have the emotional intimacy that I wanted, but it was a dysfunctional process. Okay, so the flip side of this, so this is what I'm talking about of this warning, this caution of the good thing that God does in us, going to the far extreme, the other way, and still masking similar fears. So this could look like for me from going from not being expressive out of fear of how I would be received, right? Of learning certain patterns, um, the Lord freeing me of that, but then taking it to the extreme of now I am unfiltered and expressive no matter what, right? So both are walking in the flesh, both are walking in my own understanding, right? Both are demanding my own way, whether it's demanding how I'm perceived or it's demanding that people hear me and hear me fully, neither one are submitted to the spirit, neither one are surrendered with the right heart posture to God. And so I throw this caution out here because as the Lord transforms you, right? As the Lord does the work in you, as he brings healing, as he he restores you to wholeness, as he does these things, we can tend in our human understanding to swing really far the opposite way and completely neglect the fact that there's actually a fear under all of it that we have continued not to address. So it could look like you were always silenced, so now you everyone must listen to everything that you have to say, right? Neither are submitted to the Holy Spirit, both are walking in the flesh in agreement with your own understanding and how you are perceived, right? Your experience. It's all through your perspective and your experience, and you're putting that on others or hiding that from others, right? But it all masks that underlying fear of people or whatever that fear may be for you, right? Mine, in my case, of not being expressive was my fear of well, I had come into agreement with the enemy that you know I needed to tone myself down because people wouldn't would reject the fullness of me, right? I needed to guard myself because people couldn't handle the depth of vulnerability that I bring because it makes people uncomfortable, right? Like I needed to um write, like those were the agreements that I had come, uh I had I had come into agreement with those things. Um, and the Lord did a work in me and freed me from those, and and I had and I learned how to practice being expressive, right? Which started with recognizing my nervous system starting to kick off, right? The first indicator signs that my my I was moving into a stress response, which my response would have was always to like like fun and you know, or not say anything at all rather than saying the wrong thing and being rejected or or whatever, or and um, you know, so it was understanding that and walking through the practice, right? Because there are moments where God brings his transformation and releases us from things, and there are also times where he asks for our obedience to walk in practice of things, right? And both can be used in our transformation and healing, okay? But we have to be cautious of am I walking in the spirit or am I walking in the flesh? And so I bring this morning this caution to you that if you've been somebody who was silenced and was not able to express yourself, be careful because on the other side of transformation that God brings, it can look like making people listen to everything you have to say. And this is also walking in the flesh because there's still the underlying fear of not being fully known or of being abandoned. Because once you silenced yourself or were silenced, and because you know you would someone would abandon you if they knew the full story. To now they will abandon you if they don't get the full story, right? They need to know all the details. And so just be cautious in anything and everything that we do, whether whether we eat or drink or whatsoever we do, as uh as it says in Corinthians 1031, right? 1 Corinthians 10 31. Um, I know this because we said this every summer, every meal at summer camp, where we now send our kids to Christian camp, uh Hillsboro, Indiana. It's it's one of my favorite memories. And so I just I love that we get to send our kids now. Anyway, so whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God. First Corinthians 10, 31. And so we need to understand that as we're working through stuff, right, in partnership with the Holy Spirit, using the tools he gives us, um working with the coaches or the mentors or whatever it is that he brings into our lives, that we need to understand that there's always the thing under the thing that's actually the thing, and we have to be fully submitted to the spirit, to walk in the spirit and by the spirit in every single thing, in every thought, in every action, and in every word that we say, and to understand that our flesh, if we're feeding our flesh, it can look like feeding our flesh by needing to move in these new patterns, but those can also be extremely dysfunctional if we haven't actually gotten to the thing under the thing that's actually the thing. And so hopefully this is landing with you. Hopefully, this is making sense to you. And it's it's it's it's putting you in this position of, oh, okay, like the the thing that I want you to walk away from this from is everything has to be submitted to the spirit, that we don't get transformation, then, and then all of a sudden everything is just rainbows and butterflies. Like there is transformation, big moments that God can only do. And then there is many transformational moments that God commands us to be obedient to the process, to the practice, to the submission, the daily dying of self and taking up our cross, submitted to Jesus as master, as Lord and master. And it's not our own understanding, right? Our own understanding will lead us astray. We have to trust in the Lord with all our heart, soul, strength, and mind and lean not on our own understanding in all of our ways, including in our work and pattern recognition and disruption. We have to acknowledge Him and He will make our path straight. So I will leave you with that. I will leave you with this warning and this challenge to really sit back and ask the Spirit Am I out of line here? Am I walking in the Spirit or am I walking in my flesh? Am I walking with spiritual eyes, or am I only focusing on what I can see and what I can understand? And let the Holy Spirit explore the corners of your heart, expose the darkness that has been hidden to really get to the underlying thing so that you truly can walk in the freedom and not return to the burden, the yoke of slavery, which is just the pendulum swinging all the way the other way. All right, I will see you on the next episode.