Lazarus emerged from his tomb at the voice of the Master, alive yet bound. Jesus turned to the people near him and said, “Unbind him, and let him go.” Too many of us are spiritual mummies; we’ve had a true conversion experience, but we live a life encumbered by the same things that entombed us in the first place. We need to discover how to remove the grave clothes that relegate us to a life of repression, and restrict us from reaching our full potential.
I have learned a lot about the process of unbinding the Lazaruses of the world through my own experience of getting free and living peacefully. One of the things I have learned over the years while helping people become free is that like me, most people are unconsciously ignorant; they have all the symptoms of a mummified life, but because they’ve never known freedom, they are unaware that there is a better way to live. I think the old adage is true here: if it looks like a duck, walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, it’s probably a duck! So let me lay out 15 symptoms of people who are alive but bound:
1. You always feel like something’s about to go wrong.
2. You live with a high level of anxiety most of the time.
3. It feels like your thoughts control you, you don’t control them.
4. You struggle with not trusting people.
5. All your relationships are superficial.
6. You secretly compete with people most of the time.
7. You wish you were somebody else.
8. You get your feelings hurt very easily.
9. You have a hard time sleeping.
10. When people compliment you, it doesn’t feel real.
11. You are easily intimidated by others and have very little confidence in yourself.
12. You have unhealthy attractions to anyone who shows you attention.
13. You struggle with depression, destructive and/or suicidal thoughts.
14. You are hyper-spiritual to the point of fantasy.
15. You often feel like God is mad at you.
This is not Webster’s exhaustive list of mummified symptoms. It’s just meant to get us thinking about our own life in a way that can move us from being unconsciously ignorant to being consciously informed. Furthermore, the fact that we have struggled with one or more of these symptoms in a few seasons of our lives doesn’t mean we are bound. We would be hard pressed to find any human being who has never dealt with these unhealthy symptoms at some point in their life. On the other hand, if any of these or other destructive symptoms are commonplace for us, then it would greatly benefit each person to embrace the process of unbinding that’s laid out in the rest of this book. Let’s take a look at the first step of finding freedom.
IT TAKES ONE TO WOUND ONE
An old wise king once said, “Faithful are the wounds of a friend, but deceitful are the kisses of an enemy,” (Proverbs 27:6). The truth is that sometimes we have to hurt people to help them! But the apostle Paul put this proverb in context when he said, “Speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in all aspects into Him who is the head, even Christ,” (Ephesians 4:15). There is a big difference between “Speaking the truth in love” and “Loving to speak the truth.” Some people love to speak the truth – I mean these people are faultfinders; eager to point out the flaws in others. They are like movie critics, critiquing the lives of everyone – spiritual cops handing out tickets for the transgressions of others. Some of us have been so devastated by the self-righteous, hyper-spiritual, self-proclaimed super Christians, that we cringe at the very thought of giving anyone access to our souls. Yet the fact is that we need others to unbind us; it’s almost impossible to get free by ourselves.
Excerpt from the book Forging Champions
