Remember the children’s Bible song, “Joshua fought the battle of Jericho, and the walls came tumbling down”? God’s mighty power can not only destroy the actual walls around a city, it can also tear down the emotional walls we build around our hearts.
When life hurts us, it’s easy to put walls, rationalizing that God allows them so we can protect ourselves. But self-protection is not the same as God-protection. Self-protection keeps the emphasis on us—on self. The walls we build after we are hurt are not always God’s spiritual protection for our hearts.
Of course barriers we build up in our lives are not necessarily always bad. Sometimes, indeed, these are healthy boundaries for our own healing and protection. In the first six chapters of Nehemiah, the text focuses on building a wall back up to fortify a city. Like Nehemiah did, we may be called at times to build walls in our lives. Whether we are tearing down walls or building them up, may we ask God to guide us so that we can be emotionally and spiritually healthy. For if a wall of protection isn’t ordained by God himself, it won’t be to his benefit—or our own.
Esther Fleece is the author of No More Faking Fine: Ending the Pretending (Zondervan). You can find Esther at www.EstherFleece.com and on Twitter at @EstherFleece.
