The Rules of Engagement for Overcoming Your Past: Breaking Free From Guilt, Rejection, Abuse, and Betrayal
By Cindy Trimm
4.5/5
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About this ebook
We all have things in our past that can derail our futures if we don’t learn how to overcome them. Strongholds and emotional attachments we allow in our lives—passed down to us from the culture, our education, and even our families—that can keep us going in circles. In her powerful style, Cindy Trimm identifies the spiritual setbacks we experience and provides practical biblically based techniques and strategies for securing your breakthrough.
There is a spiritual war going on for your future. The Rules of Engagement for Overcoming Your Past is a manual to help you effectively wage every battle. Using the authority you have been given by God, you can break free from…
· Guilt
· Rejection
· Abuse
· Betrayal
· Isolation, and more!
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The Rules of Engagement for Overcoming Your Past - Cindy Trimm
Notes
INTRODUCTION
Remember ye not the former things, neither consider the things of old. Behold, I will do a new thing; now it shall spring forth; shall ye not know it? I will even make a way in the wilderness, and rivers in the desert.
—ISAIAH 43:18–19, KJV
IBELIEVE WE ARE in a time of great transition that is bringing incredible shifts and changes. As I was praying near the beginning of the year, I sensed that the Lord would be ushering in and bringing forth the new. But if we are to fully embrace the new, it is imperative that we first walk out of the old. Indeed, we must overcome the past if we are ever to move forward.
This is not a simple process. If it was easy to gain victory over past mistakes, abuse, betrayal, trauma, or the like, everyone would do it. But overcoming the past requires intentional effort. It requires key strategies and techniques that must be implemented through prayer, and it requires diligence to persevere through the emotional discomfort change brings. That is why I have written The Rules of Engagement for Overcoming Your Past—to give you tools that will help you break free from the old ways of thinking, believing, and acting that are keeping you chained to the past. The past
is an interesting concept. It is used to indicate the totality of events that occurred before a given point in time. The term is derived from the linear way in which human beings experience time, and it is accessed through memory and recollection. There are aspects of the past that we remember with great joy, and these memories give us strength and momentum to prosper and move forward in life. But there are also aspects of the past that serve to weigh us down and prevent us from progressing, thus strongly contending with our success in both the present and future.
"If we are to fully embrace the new, it is imperative that we walk out of the old.
"
It is the latter aspect of the past that requires skillful dealing in order for you to be propelled into a bright, prosperous, productive, holistically successful future. This will occur through prayer and the leading of the Holy Spirit, who will give you directives tailored to address the specific challenges and situations you face.
When discussing leaving the old and embracing the new, Isaiah 43:19 is often quoted: Behold, I will do a new thing; now it shall spring forth; shall ye not know it? I will even make a way in the wilderness, and rivers in the desert
(KJV). I believe it is important to note that before this divine pronouncement of the new
is a directive to remember ye not the former things, neither consider the things of old
(v. 18, KJV).
Given that the past is accessed through memory and recollection, it is interesting that this verse tells us to remember not
the former things in order to rid ourselves of them. In other words, if we choose to obey this divine instruction and stop ruminating on the past, it can be detached from us and, as a result, lose its ability to impact us in the present or future.
To forget the old and move confidently into the new we must address strongholds—those influences that diametrically oppose the kingdom of God—and the demonic spirits that seek to keep us bound and ineffective. In The Rules of Engagement for Overcoming Your Past you will find a robust and practical approach to address and overcome these adverse spiritual influences. It will show you how to embrace change and alter the patterns that have yielded the same unwanted results again and again.
Michael Miles, author of Thirty Days to Change Your Life, once wrote, The present is always fresh. There is always a new choice to make, and you are always creating your life again. No matter what has happened in the past—whatever habits you have developed, however deeply ingrained are your patterns of behavior—there is always scope for you to choose a new response.
¹
Each of us is given the opportunity to change, and it should not be missed or taken for granted. God wants to do a new thing in your life, and that begins with releasing the past. Choosing to overcome the past is a destiny-altering decision. For those who are willing to release the pain of guilt or shame, abuse or abandonment, betrayal or rejection, transformation awaits.
CHAPTER 1
ARE YOU READY FOR THE CHALLENGE?
If the Son therefore shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed.
—JOHN 8:36, KJV
WHEN JONI EARECKSON TADA was seventeen years old, a diving accident left her paralyzed from the shoulders down. Lying in a hospital bed in the summer of 1967, she was desperately trying to make ends meet, desperately trying to turn [her] right side down emotions, right side up.
¹
She writes:
In my pain and despair, I had begged many of my friends to assist me in suicide. That seems to be a common topic these days and many disabled people that I know even in the nineties have a tough time finding life worth living. I sought to find a final escape, a final solution, through assisted suicide, begging my friends to slit my wrists, dump pills down my throat, anything to end my misery. The source of my depression is understandable. I could not face the prospect of sitting down for the rest of my life without use of my hands, without use of my legs. All my hopes seem dashed. My faith was shipwrecked. . . . I was numb emotionally, desperately alone, and so very, very frightened.²
Angry and unsure of her future, Joni was full of questions: Why did God allow this to happen? How could this be part of His plan for her life?
Most of the questions I asked, in the early days of my paralysis, were questions voiced out of a clenched fist, an emotional release, an outburst of anger. I don’t know how sincere my questions really were. I was just angry. But after many months those clench fists questions became questions of a searching heart. I sincerely and honestly wanted to find answers. . . . I needed a friend who would help me sort through my emotions, who would help bring me out of the social isolation, who would help me deal with the anger. A friend who would point me somewhere, anywhere, in God’s Word to help me find answers.³
We may not all be able to relate to the turmoil caused by the news of complete paralysis, but most of us know how it feels to struggle for answers to life’s painful events. Who among us has not felt the pain of losing something or someone? Who among us has not grieved that loss and wished life could go back to the way it was—when we felt normal
and in control of what was happening in and around us? Like Joni, we wrestle with frustration, anger, and despair. We want to serve God, but we find ourselves spiritually paralyzed and emotionally handicapped, unable to break free from the things that bind us to our pain and imprison our joy and peace.
In Romans chapter 7 we find the apostle Paul bemoaning his struggle for freedom from psychological and spiritual torment. He longs to do what is right but finds his life misaligned with the will of God again and again. He describes his frustrated state as a third party observer would. He is in agony as sin relentlessly summons and seduces his fallen nature and he responds like a puppet to the tugs of an invisible puppeteer. At last he makes a profound declaration followed by a soul-searching question, categorically stating:
I have discovered this principle of life—that when I want to do what is right, I inevitably do what is wrong. I love God’s law with all my heart. But there is another power within me that is at war with my mind. This power makes me a slave to the sin that is still within me. Oh, what a