Have you ever stood in the shower and watched the water level start rising around your feet?
It doesn’t take long to realized that something is blocking the flow of water.
Yesterday, as I stood ankle deep in a stagnant pool, I lifted the drain cover to reveal a mass of hair clogging the passageway. ( insert gag reflex)
As much as I dread digging into the scum encased tangles of who knows what kind of hair , if I want the water to start moving again, I have to get rid of the blockage.
Webster’s defines BLOCKAGE as something that makes movement or flow difficult or impossible.
As I lie in bed last night with another type of blockage- the one that prevents you from being able to breathe through your nostrils, I gave up on sleep and started reading a book assigned to me for the new business coaching program I will be starting in May.
Julie Ann Cairns , author of The Abundance Code, shares how she had to do the work to uncover the limiting codes/or beliefs she had installed that were keeping her STUCK in replays of old patterns.
Just as a computer programmer wires in codes that dictate that way the software runs, our minds have mental programming that has been wired in from every thought and experience since childhood.
She sites a quote from another book, The Power of Your Subconscious Mind by Joseph Murphy..
” Every outer experience- good and bad- can be seen as a natural consequence of deeply held subconscious beliefs.”
And sometimes these beliefs limit us..
I’m not talking about FAITH here. I’m talking about the limiting beliefs that keep us from WALKING IN FAITH; the underlying subconscious coding that blocks us from living the life of ABUNDANCE and FREEDOM that Christ died to give us.
Yes, He is the way the truth and the life, but sometimes the flow of His spirit moving in us gets blocked by our old mental patterns and no matter how hard we try to walk in the way of wellness he modeled for us, we stay stagnant like the filmy water around my ankles this morning.
I was studying Matthew 17 a few months ago when I was struggling with feeling STUCK. You can read more about that HERE.
As I was thinking about blockages I was reminded of this passage again.
It tells us about a time when the disciples saw a task in front of them that seemed too big for them to tackle.
So they did nothing.
A father tried to come to them, desperate for someone to help his son who was having uncontrollable seizures. When the man recognized their inability to help he did not give up. He ran and found Jesus.
But instead of Jesus just jumping in and doing the work he had called the disciples to step into, he dealt with the issue that was blocking them from walking out their purpose.
He identifies why they were STUCK and at a loss for what to do.
Why they are INEFFECTIVE.
Like he always does, he sees deeper to the root of the problem…
He calls them stubborn. I don’t think stubborn is always a bad thing. It depends on what we are being stubborn about, but Jesus clarifies by using the words ” faithless” and ” perverse.”
Their dogged determination to not do the work of taking intentional steps of adjusting the attitudes of their minds and hearts was getting in the way of having clarity of purpose and being able to join God in the work of being able to come alongside this man and offer help.
The message translation says,” What a generation! No sense of God! No focus to your lives!”
But wait… that’s not fair. We are crying out for God to reveal himself to us. To give us clarity of purpose. We want that almost as desperately as the father of the boy who was being seized….
Scripture indicates that the disciples did try and “cast out ” whatever was seizing the boy and causing him harm.
They later asked Jesus ,”Why couldn’t we throw it out?”
His answer….“Because you’re not yet taking God seriously,”
“The simple truth is that if you had a mere kernel of faith, a poppy seed, say,
you would tell this mountain, ‘Move!’ and it would move.
Just like the disciples…
We can become so fixed on our own limitations that we are unable to SEE and BELIEVE the limitless possibilities before us.
Our limiting beliefs often block the flow of the Spirit’s ability to MOVE in and through us.
The thing that hinders us from bringing healing to others is often our own state of unwellness.
If we don’t do the work to take intentional steps to maintain our own health how can we help others who find themselves seized or lying injured on the sidewalk?
Jesus steps in and models for the disciples how to “order the afflicting demons out.”
From that moment on the boy was well.
Maybe if the disciples had started with ordering their own demons out they would have been free to help the boy and his father.
What are some of the “demons” that create BLOCKAGES in our lives?
Here are a few of mine..
doubt, insecurity, disbelief, fear
and limiting beliefs like..
- I do not have enough time or resources.
- Their results are dependent on my performance and abilities
- My worth is determined by what I can do for them
- There is someone else that can do this better.
- It’s either/or… their health or my health.. their needs or my longings..
- Self care is selfish.
- I am called to deny myself and take up my cross
Is that last one making you pause? ( Read more about that subject HERE in this post by Kirsten Kroeker– Deny yourself and then what? Good stuff!)
So, how do we know if we have a blockage?
Julie Ann Carnes states, ” one of the biggest indicators of misalignment is frustration.”
“If your subconscious beliefs align with your conscious desires, then the attainment of your desires just flows naturally- unconsciously. It feels easy.”
“When your beliefs are not in alignment, then nothing is easy.”
So the next time you are getting frustrated, feeling blocked, or there is a lack of flow, you might need to do some detective work, pull up the drain cover, and reach inward to discover what is tangled below the surface.
If you want to know what is blocking you from Moving Forward in Life and keeping you feeling frustrated here are a few things you can do to start moving again.
Take an enneagram test and start studying your core fears and weaknesses.
Here is a free one at Your Enneagram Coach.
Sign up for my weekly Newsletter (below) to get a FREE Enneagram Journaling Exercise to uncover what holds you back and what drives you forward.
Jump on a FREE DISCOVERY BREAKTHROUGH CALL with me today.
https://bookyourfreecalltoday.as.me/
Don’t let your limiting beliefs block you from MOVING forward!