Lessons From a Lizard

​For the past week I have been chasing a lizard that has gotten into my house.  It looked pretty fat and healthy when I first saw it.  It was so fast that I was unable to capture it.  My intentions are good, I just want to throw it outside so that it can be someplace where it can eat and flourish.  My home is not the right setting for that.
Now a week later it is still too fast for me, but it appears to be slowing down, and worse yet it doesn’t look as fat and healthy.  Unfortunately if I don’t catch it soon and return it to the outdoors it will just die a quiet death behind a piece of furniture.
This morning as I sat down from another failed attempt at lizard catching it occurred to me how like the lizard I am at times. 

• I wander into places innocently, but those places are not places where I can be healthy and grow.
• I get stuck in those places at times, not seeing my way out.
• I have someone, my heavenly father who is trying to capture (my attention) and reveal to me my path to health and freedom.
• I run in the opposite direction, not understanding His intentions, or not believing that being captured is part of His will for my growth.

We use the term the lizard brain, or reptilian brain to identify behaviors such as our fight or flight responses.  It is instinctual and helps us to survive.  The lizard brain is thought to be part of our primitive nature. However as creatures who are designed by a loving God, god has released us for the impulsivity of our reptilian responses, and has given us a brain that can think beyond surviving to thriving.
My poor lizard doesn’t have this, otherwise it would have remembered the open door that it came through to enter the house.  This door stands open several hours a day to let the dog in and out.  It only feels fear of my approach but cannot save itself. 
When I start to feel like this lizard, that I can’t find my way out of something, that I can’t make something come out right, and the panic starts to rise in me, then I am operating in my lizard brain.  That is when I know that I have to tap into the higher executive functioning of my brain, the brain that God so lovingly crafted for me and let Him direct my steps and capture my heart and mind so that the solutions can become evident. 
I love Paul’s words in 1 Ephesians 1:17-19a: I keep asking that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the glorious Father, may give you the Spirit of wisdom and revelation, so that you may know him better. 18 I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance in his holy people, 19 and his incomparably great power for us who believe.
God is committed to giving us knowledge and wisdom to overcome if we will only stop running from him and operating like my lizard.  I hope to get him out before it is too late.  My prayer is that anyone who is stuck will allow the God who loves them to do the same.
Want to speak to me directly about places where you are finding yourself stuck? Contact me through this link https://page.co/v3kR  You can receive a 15 minute consultation for FREE.  That may be the first step towards a longer journey to your freedom.

---