Our inner healing often takes a season, just like physical healing. God, in his great mercy, only goes as fast as we can handle. Certainly our unwillingness or wrong motivations can slow it down, but if we’re willing and our motivations are right, is there anything we can do to speed it up? Is there something we can do to fast-track our inner healing as much as possible?

It turns out there is, and it’s illustrated best by buffalo and cattle. This analogy may seem way off-topic, but hang with me and I’ll bring it home.

When a herd of cattle on the plain see a thunderstorm coming, they run away from it. They are naturally afraid of it, and they quite logically run the other way.

Buffalo, on the other way, run toward the storm. They don’t fear the thunderstorm any less cattle do, but they’re just smarter about how to deal with it. They run directly through it. Since they are running the opposite direction the storm is moving, they minimize their time in the storm. Pretty smart, huh? They exit the storm as quickly as possible and get to the freshly watered, tender grass and clear weather on the other side.

The cattle, meanwhile, can’t outrun the storm. And by running away from it (that is, the same direction it’s moving), they actually maximize their time in the storm. The storm passes them by very slowly. They spend a lot more time it in, and get a lot more wet, cold, and uncomfortable than the buffalo.

What about us? John Sandford, the founder of Elijah House, which is one of the key ministries that taught the Church how to do inner healing, said, “We must embrace the fireball of pain.”

What?!? Sounds pretty crazy, doesn’t it? But it’s a buffalo strategy. God doesn’t need us to re-live the pain and re-traumatize us all over again, but we need to get in touch with it so God can open it up enough to heal it. He’s the great physician, and any surgeon has to open the wound in order to heal it.

When we embrace the pain, when we trust him enough to go there, we fast-track our healing. Be a buffalo.

I can testify that embracing the pain, letting God open me up like a Christmas turkey, really hurt. But it was over really fast, and I made progress in one or two sessions that could’ve otherwise taken years. And this was for big-deal stuff, life-wrenching stuff, like a marriage falling apart. I feel so much better now than before being healed. The freedom I gained was so worth it!

Does this resonate? Can you think of a time where you either embraced the pain or in vain ran from it? Which worked better for you? Are you still running? Share your story in the comments or shoot us an email. And please give this a share if you think it would help someone else. You can click on the Facebook button below (or the other social media buttons) to share really easy and fast.