Hope, Healing & Freedom Podcast: Episode 205
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 did what was said cause a stronger emotional reaction in you than was necessary? In both situations, the conversation triggered a wounded place, eliciting a strong reaction. The good news is that God has a way to heal those wounded places.
I’m Cindi Whitman, and on today’s Hope Healing and Freedom podcast, we’ll continue discussing the four ministry areas within Restoring the Foundations Ministry. In 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 Me to 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. Psalm 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 receive this wonderful healing. The RTF ministry will teach you how to receive the available healing.
Psalm 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, we will experience hurts and wounds, some so severe that our hearts will, in a sense, be broken or fractured. When that wounding happens, you are not doing anything wrong, and God is 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 that you will experience hurts and wounds.
This verse also shows that we cannot fear God’s name with a divided or fractured heart. Fearing God’s name means giving Him all the reverence and honor that are 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 cannot 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 to express your emotions too strongly in my home, 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 that when they did something good, my words would say “Nice Job,” but my emotions would not match the words.
Bottling up our emotions causes what we call emotional land mines. These are the unhealed hurts left there by a past event. 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 blowup, you may be on the receiving end of a stronger emotional response than the situation calls for. You probably are not the one who caused the hurt; you just happen to trigger it, and you get the explosion.
These unhealed hurts cause many problems in our lives. More studies are coming out all the time proving that unhealed emotional hurts affect the entire person. They affect the body by causing a variety of ailments, such as ulcers, migraines, and hives. They affect a person’s behaviors, causing them to pass their hurt on to others. They affect our minds and emotions, causing a surge of turbulence.
One of the most damaging effects of unhealed hurts is that they lead to the establishment of lies. When a person gets hurt, the hurt is like looking through glasses with 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 brokenhearted, 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 touch your heart uniquely.
Psalm 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.”
Psalm 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 heal your hurts. Jesus can. When we bring our hurts and wounds to Jesus and take the next step of giving Him our hurts, He comes 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.
Jesus knows each of us intimately, and He knows exactly how to heal our broken hearts. During a Soul Spirit Healing, Father God drove up to my husband, Lee, in a golf cart. A Golf Cart is not in the Bible, but He knew exactly the language to speak so that Lee could receive His healing. When Joseph was in prison for being falsely accused of coming on to Potipher’s wife, he was asked to interpret two dreams. One dream was from the King’s cupbearer and the other was from the King’s baker. God gave each of those men dreams in a language they would understand. The King’s cupbearer’s dream was about grapes because he was intimately familiar with them. It was in his language. The baker’s dream was about sheaves of wheat, which was something he was intimately familiar with. God will do the same thing with us. He will speak to us in ways we are intimately familiar with, bringing healing to our hearts. Thus, God knew that a golf cart would speak intimately to my husband’s heart.
We did ministry with a doctor who was, of course, very intelligent. When we got to the Soul Spirit Healing part of the RTF ministry session, he began to describe how his father always promised that one day they would build a tree house in their backyard. However, his father never made time to build the tree house. Jesus took this man to that memory. This man could hardly tell us what was going on in this memory through his tears. He described how Jesus came to him, and the two of them worked together to build a tree house. During his explanation, he said that he and Jesus had been sitting in the tree house for a long time. When we asked what they were talking about, he said they were not talking; they were just sitting in the tree house together, which, for him, was better than talking. The exciting part was seeing this man in church a few weeks later, and he excitedly told us that he and Jesus went back to the tree house and spent time together all the time.
As Jesus heals their broken hearts, we will often encourage them to ask Him what He wants them to know about that memory. One of the most common things He tells them is that the event was not their fault. When bad things happen to us, we tend to blame it on ourselves. Jesus is so good to set them free from the false responsibility for that event. It was not their fault. That is such a blessing to hear.
The powerful part of this Soul Spirit Healing process is that it brings healing to wounds that happened years ago, but it is also an amazing way to deal 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, we talked about in the last podcast, and 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 will definitely have many opportunities to deal with negative emotions and have your heart healed for the rest of your life.
PRAYER
Father God, thank You for sending Jesus to heal our broken hearts. You knew that in this sin-plagued world, we are going to get hurt and wounded, so You sent Jesus to heal our broken hearts. Thank You that Jesus is so intimate with us that He knows exactly how to bring His healing to our lives. Would You give us the grace and courage to bring our broken hearts to You so that You can bring Your amazing healing?
