Heart of Flesh: Inner Healing Part III

26 I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. ~ Ezekiel 36:26 (NIV)

For the past few weeks I’ve been delving into the subject of inner healing. I’ve covered the basics: 1) You were made for joy and 2) Get to the roots.

There can be all sorts of roots. Fear based roots. Inferiority based roots. Anger based roots. Guilt based roots. There are many others as well, I’m sure. But, here is an interesting truth I discovered. As various hurts and issues enter our lives, there are a few basic ways of dealing with them.

* We become a victim, live in constant pain, and are ineffective

* We build walls to protect ourselves and allow ourselves to function

* We learn to properly mourn and turn our hurts over to God

Now, I don’t have much to say about becoming a victim because I don’t really understand that process. It’s too foreign to me. I’m a fighter. But, boy am I good at putting up a wall.

I doubt anyone (except maybe my husband) would describe me as “hard-hearted.” In general, I’m pleasant and even warm by nature. But I’ve done it. I’ve built those walls of protection in my heart. Those very walls, those stony places, allow me to stay upbeat and warm and fun-loving, because I’m safe behind them.

I’ve even justified to myself that they aren’t walls of unforgiveness. I don’t wish harm on anyone. I don’t hold a grudge. I simply don’t trust certain people. Especially authority figures. Especially male authority figures (now don’t blame my sweet laidback dad, this goes back to other controlling men in my life.)

I like my walls. They keep me safe. Even with those people I’m so sweet and warm to, there are parts of myself that I hide. I can give love and encouragement, not be easily offended, etc…but do I let you in? Do I give you the power to wound me? Not often.

Yes, this year I’ve discovered that I have hard, stony places in my heart. So what am I supposed to do about it? Wear my heart on my sleeve? Learn to be a victim? No, I don’t think so. But this question has caused me to take a new look at a scripture from the beatitudes that I’ve never been able to wrap my mind around, “Blessed are they that mourn…” Why on earth would God bless me for mourning? I'm tough. I'm a fighter. I can take care of myself. I have my emotions under control.

When we don’t harden our hearts and protect ourselves, we allow ourselves to mourn the hurts in our lives. And what happens when we mourn? The answer is right there in the same verse, “…for they shall be comforted.” By mourning and turning to God, we allow ourselves to receive comfort and healing. We let others see the hard times we’re going through so that they can pray for us, love on us, and minister to us as well.

This has probably been the most important lesson I’ve learned in 2010. So as we enter 2011, my top New Year’s Resolution is to live with a heart of flesh.

What about you? What has God shown you in 2010? What are your goals for 2011? Do you need to learn to soften your heart?

Get to the Roots - Inner Healing Part II

Have you ever noticed any recurring patterns in your life? Here are some examples. Every boss I’ve ever had was out to get me. Every friend betrays me. Every teacher belittles me. Every church rejects me.

Here’s a hint. In the real world, words like “always,” “every,” and “never” almost never apply. These are classic tricks of the enemy of our soul. He loves to lie to us and blow things out of proportion. He loves to get us trapped in self-defeating cycles. For example, the girlfriend who is just waiting for this latest guy to let her down, and therefore keeps creating the circumstances in which he’ll have no choice but to let her down.

Usually, these sort of self-fulling prophecies (note big professional psychology term) originate in lies that Satan told us at some vulnerable time in our lives. Imagine them like tinted glasses that color and distort everything we see. Or better yet, imagine it like a unruly bush growing out of your heart and blocking you from properly seeing the world.

So what do we do? Well, usually we get out the pruning shears. We might seek to cut them down to size with common sense, encouragement from friends, and determination. As Christians, we might trim back these lies with the word of God, with prayer, or with wise counsel. But wouldn’t it be so much better if we could get the root of these lies instead of constantly pruning and trying to maintain some sort of normalcy, never able to let down our guard?

Of course, you might ask, why shouldn’t the word of God be enough? The reason is surprisingly simple. Words are the language of the mind, but pictures are the language of the heart. We wash our mind through the water of the word. So knowing the word and renewing our minds is always an essential step in overcoming any problem. For some people this seems to take care of all of their issues. But for many others, somehow those words fail to reach all the way to the feeling places in their hearts. At some time in their lives, usually during their childhood, they believed a lie from the devil deep in their heart that opposes the word of God in their head. There is a disconnect. So while they try to do right, something just feels terribly wrong.

We shouldn’t live according to our feelings, right? Well, no, not when they oppose God’s word. And yet, wouldn’t it be so much better if we could get down deep into that feeling level and teach our hearts to feel as God would want them to feel? Wouldn’t life become such a joy? Remember my last post? You were made for joy. You were made to live in the ecstasy of God’s presence. You were made to live freely and lightly in the flow of the Holy Spirit.

Now comes the hard part. In order to learn to live freely and lightly in that flow of the Holy spirit—in order to live life with clear vision unclouded by lies—you must dig out the roots of those lies.

How do you do that? Well, this answer is simple on paper but harder in reality. You have to ask God to reveal those lies and replace them with his truth. Because these lies are rooted in pictures and emotions, sometimes that means reentering a hard time in your life and really picturing it in your mind and allowing yourself to feel those emotions again. In that place, you ask God, what lie did the enemy tell me? What truth do you want me to know? And in that place, God can give you a new picture, new feelings, a new perspective. Often at a time of trauma or abuse, we think God isn’t there. We cling to fear or unbelief. We harden our hearts. We cling to unforgiveness. We believe we are worthless or somehow to blame. We make inner vows to ourselves.

While each of these reactions is exquisitely human, at the core, each is rooted in sin. As I mentioned a few weeks ago (click here for part 1 of this series), sin is our human attempt to relieve pain and return ourselves to joy in our own strength. No wonder God is so merciful when we sin. He understands our sin is rooted in pain. He loves us, and yet he longs for us to be free of it. Over time, these deep internal sins can begin to manifest in all sorts of troublesome behaviors, and the self-defeating cycles we long to escape.

It can be hard to get to these roots. It is painful and can even be dangerous if we get in over our heads. While it is most certainly possible to deal with these issues with only God as our counselor, a trained Christian counselor can take you so much farther and offer a sort of safety net to help return you to joy if you discover something truly traumatic.

But here’s the beauty to which I can personally attest, getting to the root creates real change from the inside out. Suddenly those areas of your life that seemed weighty, difficult, downright impossible, can become free and light. As God speaks his truth deep into your heart giving you new pictures and emotions, your brain actually begins to rewire. It’s not unusual after a significant counseling session to feel sluggish and sleepy (and a bit worthless) for several days while your brain “reboots,” not at all unlike when your computer freezes up while it works through something difficult.

Then one day, you’ll look at the world with clear eyes, and suddenly it will all make sense. Like when you get a new pair of contacts or glasses and say, “Oh, so this is what the world is supposed to look like. I’m actually supposed to see leaves on the trees and not just swaying blobs of green.”

Does it hurt to pull out the roots? Yes, the process can be painful, but it is the most worthwhile process you can ever undergo. Get to the roots in your life.

For more info visit Christian inner-healing resources like http://theophostic.com/ , http://www.cwgministries.org/2-How-to-Be-Emotionally-Free.htm , http://www.christianinnerhealing.org/ , and http://www.elijahhouse.org/ , http://lifemodel.org/. If you feel like you would benefit from a trained counselor, study the issues first so that you can make a wise informed choice. I recommend counseling with a strong Christian trained in both prayer ministry and psychology.

Have you had any experience with Christian inner healing, prayer counseling, or bondage breaking ministries? What have you found that brings about true change in your life? Are there any self-defeating cycles that you long to escape?

You Were Made for Joy - Inner Healing Part I

Hi friends. Some of you may have read this post already on my group Inkwell Inspirations blog, but I think it's an important topic, so I hope you don't mind me sharing it again here.

Let’s start with true confessions. I’ve been in marriage counseling since summer. This is my fifth round of marriage counseling in seventeen years. And don’t worry, I’m not going to whine at you. I only mention it because sometimes people get the impression that everyone else has it all together, and they are the only ones with problems. Trust me, I have problems. My cross-cultural marriage topping the list.

As of this past June, I was just exhausted. Usually I can focus on God and keep my spirits up, but for some reason my marriage felt so heavy and weighty and miserable, I just couldn’t anymore. Worse than that, for about nine months preceding June, this heaviness had been infiltrating other parts of my life as well: effecting my ministry, my friendships, my parenting, and even my health. I just wanted to runaway into my world of words and hide.

When I reached my very lowest, a woman from church approached me and offered me free counseling. If it had been anyone else I probably would have said, “Forget it. It’s too late. I give up.” But this woman, Juliette, is someone I greatly respect. She and her husband run a Christian inner healing ministry called “Breakthrough to Joy.” More than that, she is currently finishing up her Masters degree in counseling, although she’s probably well into her fifties. This says to me that she takes her calling seriously. And since I certainly needed some joy in my life, I agreed to meet with her.

Immediately I saw a difference between this style of counseling and my previous four rounds and began to feel a glimmer of hope. She spent our first few hours together helping me to focus on God and get back to a point of joy. Yes, she uses other inner healing and secular counseling techniques, but that attention to joy was something truly special.

“Joy is a relational experience that is the basis for spiritual experience, human bonding, healthy identity growth and good health generally. Joy is the feeling many experience as ‘falling in love’ with their baby, their grandchild, their first love, a puppy and a face that just lights up to see us. Joy is our normal state as biological beings.” http://lifemodel.org/

We were made for joy. Did you know that? I was made for joy, and you were made for joy. The original design for mankind was to dwell in God’s presence. Think back to the Garden of Eden when Adam walked with God. What is God’s kingdom like? The Bible says righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost.

Jesus himself said: "I have spoken all these things to you for one reason, that my joy may be in you and that your own joy may be abundant."

Here is a quote from a reformed minister named Lewis Smedes: "The first thing I want to tell you is that you and I were made for joy. Joy is our birthright. We were created for it. And when we lost it, Jesus came to bring it back again. From start to finish, Jesus is all about joy."

Here’s one from Pope John Paul II: "God made us for joy. God is joy, and the joy of living reflects the original joy that God felt in creating us."

And a great quote from an online ministry that seems to have some sort of Hebrew bent. The author offers hundreds of scriptures on joy. "It has been said that the essential element of the universe is Joy. Based upon the Biblical record contained herein, and certain glimpses into the Heart of YHWH I've been blessed to receive, I confess there is much evidence to support this notion." http://www.yhwh.com/Thoughts/thought_11.htm

This idea that you were made for joy seems to transcend denominational barriers. Our brains were wired for joy from the creation of mankind. Therefore, we are always seeking joy. Always seeking to return to the essential ecstasy of God’s presence.

Unfortunately, few people actually understand how to do this. So where do we search for our joy instead? In a variety of sinful behaviors, be they external obvious sins or quiet inner sins. Think about it, why do people take drugs, overeat, have illicit sex, gossip, gamble, etc… Usually because it brings them some fleeting sense of pleasure. And these are the easy sins to deal with, because everyone can see them.

Sadly, sin tends to separate us from God, the very source of true joy. Yet, is it the sin itself that pulls us away from God, or our reaction to the sin? Once we are born again, our spirit is clean before God, the price has been paid. I think the primary reason sin separates us from God is the way we react to it. Maybe we hide out of guilt or inferiority. Maybe we feel afraid of God. Maybe we just like our sin and harden our hearts to God’s voice.

Suddenly those external sins don’t seem so problematic. It is the sins in our hearts that truly separate us from God. Another great minister, Paul Yonggi Cho, once said that the four great sins are fear, guilt, anger, and inferiority. These are the deep sins that can truly separate us from God. When faced with sin, rather than run from God, what we need to do is press into his presence and seek his counsel to help us overcome these sins through his strength. We need to replace these four great sins with the faith, hope, love, and identity that can only be found in Christ.

So here comes the hard part of the lesson. In order to breakthrough to the joy we were created for, we need to dig out these deep rooted sins from our hearts, going all the way to the source—lies the enemy planted during vulnerable times in our lives. And this is neither fun nor joyful in the process. In fact, it’s downright painful. Yet for true change, for true breakthrough, it has to happen.

I’ll be back to talk about digging out the roots. In the mean time, mediate on this simple statement:

You were made for joy!

What does joy mean to you? How do you find joy? What is holding you back from joy?