Chandler mom, Erin Carr Jordan, fast-food playgrounds

If you came over from Encouragement for Today, welcome!

Today I shared a time when God led me out of an unhealthy playground. It was the playground of my mind. A place where I fed the thoughts that kept me trapped in unforgiveness or feelings of anger or revenge.

I rarely resolved anything in that playground, but it made me feel better temporarily. I could make that person pay. I could tell them the words that they needed to hear. I could show them my merits, and make them understand my point of view.

Harmless, right?

 Except I wasn’t a child anymore. God was growing me into a woman of faith. A strong woman who recognized the possibilities instead of camping out in the impossible. A woman who reached for compassion instead of retaliation.

In The Unburdened Heart, I share that God calls us to take up His poured-out gifts. One of those is to grow up and leave the playground of our mind.

Will it be easy? No way. Especially in the beginning.

But one day you walk by it — that playground, those thoughts, the energy you once devoted to playing in that unhealthy place — and you see it for what it is, and you take God by the hand and dance by it, leaving it behind you so you can live fully in today.

When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me. 1 Corinthians 13:11 (NIV)

Want to read the first chapter of The Unburdened Heart free? I’d love to share that gift with you today.

Listen to Suzie Eller with radio personality Susie Larson on Faith Radio on Laying Hold of Forgiveness. Discover what it means to forgive so you can live free.

Today, Suzie is giving away one copy of The Unburdened Heart away to one woman who comments on this blog. Do you need prayer? Share that need. Are you on a forgiving journey? Tell us what God is showing you. Has God asked you to leave the “playground” for something greater? Where  is He leading you?