Time to Stop Running

A couple of years ago, an unexpected event gave me the opportunity to look at a specific area of my life: my sexuality and the choices I had made as a young woman. After the initial event subsided, I was able to recognize it as an opportunity because it was painful. A little too painful. The event had triggered me. According to the dictionary, a trigger is an act or event that serves as a stimulus and initiates or precipitates a reaction, or series of reactions.

When we are triggered we do not respond, we react.

The Lord had provided me with a warning sign that there was an area of my life that I was running from. I was unable to effectively deal with the current event as it unfolded because no matter how hard I tried to be present, I couldn’t be. I had been triggered.

Is this what is happening in the church as we explore this ultra-sensitive, traditionally-unspoken-area called sexuality? Are we engaging out of unexplored, perhaps unconfessed, brokenness that is driving us to reaction?

It strikes me that all the education, discussion, debate, or reading we do on any subject will be largely ineffective if we do not engage in the process of removing the log from our own eye. We cannot have God-honouring conversations if we are not coming from a place of humility. That is true of any subject. But because sexuality is an area that the church has traditionally shied away from, are we particularly reactive because of a sort of ‘cumulative running-away effect?’ Have we spent far too much energy both personally, and as a church, running from a very important area of our experience?

God has designed us so beautifully. Our reactions can be an indication of where He wants to take us. If it’s painful, then maybe that’s an indication that He wants to meet you in your brokenness.

If it’s painful, then maybe it’s time to stop running.