I have had a very rough history with self-harm. It all started when I was a sophomore in high school. I needed an escape. I needed a release. I needed to feel something. So, I took a razor blade to my wrist and I saw red. Blood began to flood the open wound. In that moment, it felt good. Over the next few months, I would do it every single day. I felt like I finally had a way out of the darkness, out of the mire. Little did I know that this would lead me down a path of destruction and despair.

Isn’t that how an addiction always starts? It starts off feeling so good and satisfying; but over time it begins to take over your life.  It became an idol in my life and I didn’t recognize that idolization till the summer of 2016. I noticed that it had control over me and I was unwilling to give it up. Self-harm had become my friend.

To break that addiction, I needed to cry out to the Lord. I needed to be brutally honest with God while still trusting in His goodness. I needed to trust that He would break the chains of self-harm. I needed to cling to the promise of God’s goodness. So, I did.

I began to realize that it was getting worse; but I rested in the fact that it may get worse before it gets better but that doesn’t mean that God is absent. He is just at war with what is enslaving me. The beginning of July was spent harming myself everyday but on July 17, 2016, I knew that it needed to be the very last day. So, I began to make incentives for myself and I would reward myself when I reached a certain point.

It was extremely hard at first, because the bonds of slavery were on so tight. I came to the conclusion that I have to put sin to death by the spirit. I had to put self-harm to death by the power of Jesus Christ.

God is a deeper, ultimate relief. He is what will relieve you from your sorrows. I unfortunately learned that the hard way. It took me three and a half years to break the chains that self-harm had on me and you can break the chains too.

Once you put sin to death by the spirit, expect new life to come forth. Cutting, masturbation, alcoholism, pornography, sex, anxiety, comparison, self-loathing, and working out can’t atone, can’t soothe, can’t satisfy the wrath of a holy God, and can’t make a pure plea for God’s rescue.

Romans 5:10 states that our sin makes us enemies to God. Cutting myself, made me an enemy to God. I had been cutting myself for two years after I found the Lord and during that time cutting made me an enemy to God. But fortunately, I was still forgiven. My forgiveness cost God his only son, who is of far greater value than the entire world’s supply of silver and gold. We take such costly forgiveness for granted. We don’t see our sin being so great. We don’t feel its weight as we should.

I don’t deserve God’s forgiveness for mutilating my body. I don’t at all. But, he gives it to me anyway and he breaks the chains of enslavement while he is doing it. If you are saying to yourself, “God forgives me but I can’t forgive myself”… you may be bowing down to an idol.

Think to yourself, “what am I enslaved to? what is holding me back from being the person God created me to be?”

In my life, that was self-harm. I was so incredibly ashamed of how I would stand in my bathroom and take a razor blade to my arms and legs; but shame is a result of sin’s effects and sin contaminates everything that it touches. Sin vandalizes shalom. It wrecks everything. It wrecks your mind. It wrecks your body. It wrecks your soul. But, guess what?

God’s plan of redemption is much greater than your sin. The end is already written. He will wipe away every last trace of sin’s vandalism and re-create shalom. God rules over chaos and recreates. It is the wiping away of something old and the dawning of something new.

God will wipe away the tears and break the chains of your enslavement. He will replace that with something incredible. Don’t believe me? He broke the chains of my addiction to self-harm and with that he healed me of depression.

So, stand in confidence that you are a new creation. You are not bound to anything anymore. Your redemption is as clear as the resurrection. You are free in the name of Jesus Christ himself and I am living testament to that.