Hope, Healing & Freedom Podcast: Episode 61
TRANSCRIPT
Have you ever been in a conversation with someone and their emotional reaction to what was being said was more than the situation called for? Have you been in a similar conversation and what was being said caused a stronger emotional reaction in you than what was necessary? What is happening in both of these situations is that the conversation triggered a wounded place causing a strong reaction. The good news is that God has a way for those wounded places to be healed.
I’m Cindi Whitman and in today’s Hope Healing and Freedom podcast we are going to continue talking about the four ministry areas in Restoring the Foundations Ministry. On the previous podcasts my husband Lee talked about the first two ministry areas, The Sins of the Father and Resulting Curses and Ungodly Beliefs. If you missed either of those messages, I encourage you to go back and listen to them. Today I want to talk about getting your heart healed because this is one of my favorite parts of RTF Ministry.
Today’s verse is Luke 4:18 “The Spirit of the Lord is upon Me, because He has anointed Me
to preach the gospel to the poor; He has sent Meto heal the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed;”
The pain of the past hurts rules many lives. It simmers, it stifles, and sometimes it shuts a person down completely. The good news is that God heals these hurts. He is waiting and ready to touch our deepest pain if we will let Him. In a sense, His healing is another divine exchange in which we offer Him our hurts and He offers us His healing. Psalms 147:3 says, “He heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds.” Brokenhearted refers to the wounds in the innermost portion of ourselves. Sadly, most believers do not know how to go about receiving this wonderful healing. RTF ministry will teach you how to get the healing that is available.
Psalms 86:11 says, “Unite my heart to fear your name.” This verse tells us a couple of important things about hurts. David asks God to unite his heart. That means that his heart must have been broken or fractured. God wants us to know that in this life you will experience hurts and wounds, some so severe that your heart will in a sense be broken or fractured. When that wounding happens, you are not doing anything wrong, and God has not punishing you. Being wounded or hurt is part of life on this sin plagued planet. 1 Peter 4:12 says “Beloved, do not think it strange concerning the fiery trial which is to try you, as though some strange thing happened to you;” It is a loving God warning you that a normal part of living this life is you will experience hurts and wounds.
This verse also points to the fact that we cannot fear Gods name with a divided or fractured heart. Fearing God’s name means to give Him all of the reverence and honor that is due Him. When our hearts are broken, this verse says we are not able to revere and honor God as He is due. Worship is part of us showing God the reverence and honor due Him. When we are wounded and unhealed, we are not able to worship with our whole hearts. So, getting our hearts healed is important to a healthy walk with God.
Did anyone teach you how to deal with negative emotions growing up? I know for me growing up if you were too happy you made too much noise and that was a problem, and if you were angry or upset you were not allowed to express those feelings either. It was not safe in my home to express your emotions too strongly in either direction. So, I learned to bottle up my emotions and not be too happy or too sad. I was basically flatlined emotionally. That was both good and bad for my kids. The good part was that if something bad happened I would not freak out and overreact. The bad part was when they did something good, my words would say “Nice Job” but my emotions would not go along with the words.
Bottling up our emotions causes what we call emotional land mines. These are those undealt with hurts put there by an event in the past. You have no doubt experienced this with someone in your life. You say or do something that triggers one of these emotional land mines and they blow up at you. If it is not a full-blown blow up, you receive a reaction with way more emotion than the situation calls for. You probably are not the one who caused the hurt, but you just happen to trigger the hurt and you get the explosion.
These unhealed hurts cause many problems in our life. More studies are coming out all the time proving that unhealed emotional hurts affect the entire person. They affect the physical body by causing a variety of ailments such as ulcers, migraines, hives to name a few. They affect a person’s behaviors causing them to pass their hurt on to others. They affect our minds and emotions causing a rash of turbulent emotions.
One of the most damaging results of unhealed hurts is they cause lies to be established. When a person gets hurt, that hurt then is like looking through glasses that have gunk on them. Everything you look at is distorted by the gunk on your lenses making it very easy to start believing something that is not true.
Unhealed hurts make us vulnerable to the enemy. Demons have a way of keeping the hurts unhealed so that they can use the wound to keep us feeling vulnerable and living in hopelessness.
The good news is that Jesus came to heal the broken hearted. In Luke 4:18 Jesus said “He (Father God) has sent me to heal the brokenhearted.” Then in Luke 4:21 Jesus said, “Today this Scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.” In other words, this scripture is about me. This is what I came to do. Luke 4:18 is Jesus’ mission statement while he was here in this world. Knowing that part of His mission is to heal the broken hearted, we can approach Him with our hurts and wounds with great confidence knowing that He loves to bring His special healing to our broken and fractured hearts. The way he brings His healing to our hearts is so unique and intimate. He knows you so well that He knows how to uniquely touch your heart.
Psalms 142 tells us how to deal with negative emotions in a healthy way.
I cry out to the Lord;
I plead for the Lord’s mercy.
2 I pour out my complaints before him
and tell him all my troubles.
3 When I am overwhelmed,
you alone know the way I should turn.
Wherever I go,
my enemies have set traps for me.
4 I look for someone to come and help me,
but no one gives me a passing thought!
No one will help me;
no one cares a bit what happens to me.
5 Then I pray to you, O Lord.
I say, “You are my place of refuge.
You are all I really want in life.
6 Hear my cry,
for I am very low.
Rescue me from my persecutors,
for they are too strong for me.
7 Bring me out of prison
so I can thank you.
The godly will crowd around me,
for you are good to me.”
Psalms 142 is really a permission statement from God to be real with Him. David said I pour out my complaints before him and tell him all my troubles. Sometimes we like to tell our spouse or a close friend about the hurts and struggles we are having. We call it venting. Venting feels better for a time, but your spouse or close friend cannot bring healing to your hurts. Jesus can. When we bring our hurts and wounds to Jesus, and then go the next step of giving Him our hurts, He come into that wounded place and brings His healing. And we have permission in this passage to bring Jesus “ALL” our troubles. You don’t need to hold back because Jesus already knows how you are feeling.
The powerful part of this Soul Spirit Healing process is that it brings healing to wounds that happened years in the past, but it also is an amazing way of dealing with negative emotions that are going on today. Let’s say you have something happen today that causes you to experience a lot of anxiety. You can get alone with Jesus and pour out your complaint to Him, telling Him about the anxiety you are feeling right now. Give Him that anxiety and invite Him to come and bring His healing to that wounded place.
When you know how to deal with Ungodly Beliefs that we talked about in the last podcast, and when you know how to get your heart healed you will find that these two parts of RTF Ministry will become a lifestyle. You will discover more Ungodly Beliefs probably for the rest of your life. And you definitely will have many opportunities to deal with negative emotions and get your heart healed for the rest of your life.