Bound Up & Restricted
Do you have clothing in your spiritual closet
that has you bound up and restricted?
If you watched the Pirates of the Caribbean, you are familiar with the scene where the maids are tightening the corset of Elizabeth Swann, played by Kiera Knightly, and then later faints because the corset was so tight she could not breathe. It is hard for us to imagine in the 21st century that barely a hundred years ago, we women were so fashion-conscious that we subjected ourselves to what amounted to torture by fashion.
This x-ray from 1908 shows how the corset narrowed the lower ribcage, making it difficult to breathe, and displaced internal organs by forcing them downward, causing ailments like enlarged livers, spleens, stomach problems, and the inability to eat more than a few spoonfuls of food at one sitting.
And, as if not being able to eat or breathe wasn’t enough, along came the ‘hoop’ dresses that weighed us down with metal sewn into our skirts.
This got me to thinking about how Satan continually tries to restrict us, while making it look fashionable or popular. His whole purpose - laid out in the Tanakh as steal, kill, and destroy - is meant to hamper, or stop, our spiritual breathing, keep us confined in a garment of his making, that he can draw tighter and tighter, until we faint and die. In Bereshit, YHVH Elohim breathed into us the breath of life and the enemy of YHVH uses every mechanism he can to stop it.
So, what do you have in your spiritual closet that has you bound, restricted, and drawn up so that you can’t breathe, can’t move, displaces vital parts of your being, all while making you think that that is how you are supposed to interact with others and society as a whole? And, what do you have in your spiritual closet that has you weighed down like the metal framework of the hoop dress, pulling your shoulders down, causing you to be a spiritual Quasi Modo, humpbacked and stooped over?
In Luqas 13, this type of weight is categorized as demonic. Now he was teaching in one of the synagogues on Shabbat. And behold, there was a woman who had had a disabling spirit for eighteen years. She was bent over and could not fully straighten herself. When Yeshua saw her, he called her over and said to her, “Woman, you are freed from your disability.” And he laid his hands on her, and immediately she was made straight, and she glorified Elohim.
It’s time to clean out the closet, and get rid of the old ways of thinking, and the things that are religiously fashionable, but are contrary to YHVH. It’s time to let go of the spiritual corset and the weight of a demonic framework, and send it back where it came from. It’s time to get rid of what’s keeping you bound, gasping for breath, and destroying you from the inside out.
