Most of us have quite a trail of heart-wrenching moments, hardship, rough spots, downright painful experiences in our wake. Inviting Christ has our Lord and Savior does not erase our past. His blood covers our sins and we are forgiven, but the chains of our lives before Him usually tie us until we do something about it.

We carry our (emotional) baggage (our wounds, our guilt, our pain) around and doing so slows down our walk with Christ.

So can we leave behind the unnecessary baggage we haul around? YES

How?

Confess out loud what happened to you.

This is about voicing the truth. You cannot get rid of something you don’t know you have or something you deny. You need to face the truth and say it aloud. Words have power and hearing yourself speaking the truth of your past is like standing up to your enemy

You have been abused? Say it.

You have been cursed, mistreated, belittled, ignored, neglected, and/or degraded? Say it.

Confess out loud where the blame belongs

You are not to blame for what they did to you. You did not ask or beg for it, you did not deserve to suffer contrarily to what they want you to believe.

Lay the responsibility of each party where it belongs:

• They are responsible for what they did to you. Hurting you has been their choice. Their behaviors, their hatred,  the injustice you suffered at their hands belong to them.
• You are responsible for believing their lies, for letting it linger long enough to damage you. The lies you believe (you are not enough, you are good for nothing, you are stupid, you are worthless, you deserved it, you are faulty, you are evil, etc.) come between God and you and there is no room for lies in your relationship with God.

Confess the truth of who you are in Christ.

You are God Almighty’s beloved child. You are precious. You are chosen; He chose you. You are holy. You are made in his image and his Spirit is in you. He made you the way He wanted you for His plan. He loves you, He wants to give you the best and He wants you to receive it as the gift it is … something for good, something for his glory, something perfect in design.

God is love. There is no darkness in God; He is all light and all love and all truth: 100%.

Pray  God:

• for the forgiveness of your sins. You have hauled around your pain perhaps because you have known nothing else, because suffering is familiar, because you believed “them” rather than God. Choosing anything else but God is a sin in His eyes. Ask him to forgive you.
  [God’s compassion is great, He wants you in a right standing with Him and the way to do it is to repent and ask for His forgiveness.]
• for his help to forgive those who hurt you and for the forgiveness of their sins. Bless them. By refusing to forgive them, you only tighten the chains of your suffering. God commanded you to love your enemy. Forgiving them releases the hold they have on you and the hold your pain has on your life.
• so He sets  you free from the chains you are in,  be it your pain, the lies, the curses, the soul ties or anything else.

When you stand in the truth in front of God, when you choose to trust His words to you and to obey Him (behave according to His will), miracles happen.