Episode 944: Steps in God's Healing Process

Morning, church. You've asked me all morning if I was nervous and I said no, but now I am. So I'll just say God loves you and you're dismissed. I wanted to do a little little little health quiz this morning and it's going to be audience participation. So how many of you have had broken bones? Raise your hand. Go ahead, raise your hand. If you've had broken bones, a whole lot of you have had broken bones. So how about stitches like five stitches? If you've had 15 stitches or more, would you come up here and shout, no, don't do that. Don't do that. Anybody ever been shot or stabbed? Anybody ever been shot or I'm hanging out with the wrong people. Seriously, you know, those are wounds and we all have wounds, but I think the emotional wounds that we have are the most painful. I think we all have memories. Maybe even from childhood of resentments or regrets or fears of abandonment or rejection, abuse, compulsion, pain of ridicule or a thousand more. If you're over five, you've got accumulated some of these. They come from everywhere. They come from the workplace. They come from the school yard. They come from churches. They come from friends. They come from families. I remember children are kind of mean sometimes. Do you remember that? Children are kind of mean. I was 40 before I got over the kids in the school yard calling me the earmin. My ears were this big when I was born and when the wind blew, I got whiplash. It was terrible. It was terrible. It was terrible. The old sticks and stones saying is a lie. Emotional wounds are the worst. Words hurt. And sometimes we bury those hurts down deep. And that's kind of what I want to talk about today. I said, "Dumb wounds come from everywhere. They come from enemies. They come from co-workers and wounds lead to brokenness and resentment." We deal with resentment a lot at celebrate recovery. Most of the time I think the deepest wounds we have come from family members. Those we care about the most, the come from parents. They come from partners. They come from exes and brothers and sisters. I think these hurt us the worst. I know this from 35 years in recovery. We all have wounds that need healing. I would say it would be great if you all came to celebrate recovery and got healed from all those wounds. But boring that. I'll say this about celebrate. I've never seen anyone go through that program that didn't tell me their life was changed dramatically. So you just got invited. Here's what I know. God wants to heal your wounds. The Bible says this in Psalms 147, "God heals the broken hearted and he bandages their wounds." How does he do that? How does God heal your wounds? We're going to look at that process today. We're going to look at the life of Christ and how he healed many, many people, but not just physically. He healed them emotionally. As you study, you begin to see certain patterns emerge. These steps don't always come in the same order necessarily, but you see the same elements. Today, I want to identify some elements of how God can set you free from the burdens of your past and heal you from your resentments, regrets, your shame, your insecurities. And this is all pretty much right out of celebrate recovery. The first step, I say, was always the same. And it's the first point in your outline. We must step out of denial and admit our hurts. I think this is the hardest step looking in the mirror at ourself, taking an honest appraisal of ourselves. I don't want to look at me so much. I would much rather tell you what's wrong with you than tell you what's wrong with me. It's so much easier. Some of us lie to ourselves. Did you know that? We lie to ourselves. You've all heard the lie. Time heals all wounds. Time heals nothing. Ask the cancer patient if time healed their cancer. If time heals all wounds, you could go sit in the doctor's office and get well and never see the doctor. Time heals nothing. Psalm 393, David says, "So I kept very quiet. I didn't even say anything good, but I became even more upset. I became very angry inside and as I thought about it, my anger burned." He's thinking about hidden wounds. He's thinking about how this person or that person hurt him and he didn't like it. None of us like to be hurt. The more he held it inside the anger he got. And I think that happens to a lot of people. People respond to hurts in different ways. Some people clam up. They just take it all in and they stuff it all down until they explode. No wounds always faster if you don't bring them out into God's light. Some people try to forget their wounds. They repress it. They push them down. Some people try to ignore it or minimize it. It didn't hurt. That was no big deal. And yet they die inside. Some people try to escape their pain. They go from relationship to relationship. Thinking that will fill the emptiness of their heart. They fill their minds with television or food or hobbies or sports or prescription drugs. Some even illegal drugs. Anything not to have to feel the pain of past hurts. Workaholics do this. I used to be one. We work so hard so when we lay our head down on the pillow at night we go right to sleep. And don't have to deal with the pain that just won't go away. There is an answer. It starts with admitting the hurt. Then you have to start getting honest. You have to be honest with yourself and admit the hurt but you also have to be honest with God. I know God already knows but sometimes it's hard to be honest with God. Third, you have to be honest. And I think this is the hard one with someone else. Someone you trust. It is essential to your healing. I did this very thing this week and I want to tell you I already feel better. James 516 says, "This confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. You want healing in your life. God tells you how to get it right there in James." Notice it doesn't say confess your sins to a priest. That's okay but that's not what it says. It doesn't say confess your sins to a pastor. It doesn't say confess your sins to a therapist. That's okay but it's not what it says. It says to each other. Revealing your feelings is the beginning of your healing. Whenever someone comes up to me and says, "Pastor, I've just got to get this off my chest. I've never told anyone this." When they say that phrase, "I get all excited inside because I know that they're fixing to be released from some pain of the past." It doesn't matter what they're going to say. Really that's irrelevant. What they're about to say is going to release it. What they're about to do is experience freedom maybe for the first time. It's like opening a closet and letting the boogey man out and everyone else knows and they're not carrying it on their own anymore. It's not their burden to carry. When you confess and bring that hurt into God's magnificent light, it loses its power over you. One of my best friends he's dead now told me a secret that he had carried for almost 70 years that he was raped when he was a child. He told me one night that secret he had never told it to anyone, not his children, not his wives, not his friends. He had held that secret for almost 70 years. At the minute he told it to me, he was set free. It lost its power over him when he brought it into God's light. Three weeks later, never having told anyone this terrible secret, he stood on a stage and told everyone because it no longer had power over him. Yeah, sharing is the first step in healing and I get very excited about that. Did you know that you're as sick as your secrets? That thing you're embarrassed by, that thing that you resent, you need to tell someone about it, somebody you trust. That's the first step. I must admit my wounds, here's the second. We must forgive our offenders. That's the second one in your outline. I must forgive those who have hurt me. Those people who have wounded me, I've got to let them go. You can't get well as long as you have resentment in your heart. For your sake, you also have to let go of the right to get even. Let me explain this another way. You have a certain amount of emotional energy. Let's say X amount. You've got to decide whether you're going to use that emotional energy to get well or get even. You don't have the energy to do both. You have to decide, do I want to get help? Do I want to get well? Do I want to get happy? Do I want to get whole? Or do I want to get even? I highly recommend that you focus on the get well. Because having helped thousands of people through this step, I can tell you that even if you could get even it would not take away your pain. Even if you get to get even with that person of those people who have hurt you, it would not take away your pain. There's only one way to take away your pain that's forgiveness, offering forgiveness, asking for forgiveness. Forgiveness is the only way to become emotionally healthy. It's just no other way. You don't forgive them because they deserve it. You say they don't deserve it. Well, of course they don't deserve it. Did you deserve God's forgiveness? No, we don't. Forgiveness has nothing to do with fairness for being deserve. It's just offered. You forgive for your own sake because you have to let it go. You've got to let them off the hook. And how do you do that? You do that by forgiveness. They don't deserve to be forgiven. Neither did you. Nobody deserves forgiveness. But you do it because you want to get on with your life. You want to be set free from the past. Romans 12, 17 through 19 says, "Don't repay evil." Anyone evil for evil. Never avenge yourselves. I will repay," says the Lord. He says, "Don't do it. You leave that to me." It's not your responsibility to give it even. God says, "You let me handle it. You don't avenge yourselves." I think we've all thought of the sweetness of revenge at some time or another, but revenge is never sweet. Jesus Christ certainly understands our emotional wounds, those wounds that we have deep inside. He understands our woundedness. Did you ever see the movie, The Passion? How was Jesus wounded? He was wounded in every way. He was wounded in his head as they stuffed a crown of thorns on his head. He was wounded in his hands and feet when they nailed him to the cross. He was wounded in his side when they stuck a spear in his side. He was wounded on his back when they gave him lashes. But the deepest wounds of Christ were not physical. They were hidden wounds. They were emotional wounds. They were wounds of betrayal, wounds of rejection. They were wounds of taking the sin of the world unto himself. If you've ever experienced any of these wounds, Jesus says, "I understand. I experienced them myself. I know what it's like to be rejected. I know what it's like to be humiliated. I know what it's like to be mistreated. I know what it's like." Fill in the blank. He understands when you hurt. God is a God who always understands because he's been there. He experienced everything. You have experienced it. He says, "Let me help you heal." So what do you do? I suggest you do what Christ did. He says on the cross, "Father, forgive them, forgive them, for they know not what they're doing." Father, forgive them. Why in the world would I forgive the people who have hurt me? First, I think it's because we have been forgiven by God. Second, unforgiveness just doesn't work. You're only hurting yourself with resentment. I've said many times. Some of you are allowing people from your past to continue to hurt you and your present through your memories of them. People can't hurt you unless you allow them to continue to hurt you. Your past is your past. It needs to be over, but if you continue to hold on to it, guess what? Then you continue to hold the resentment and they continue to hurt you. They continue to have power over you. Resentment poisons everyone around you whether you like it or not. It never hurts the person you resentful against. You're seething and they've gone on with their life. They've forgotten about it. They're not even paying attention to you. They've blown it off, but it makes you miserable. And it makes everyone around you miserable. Did you know that resentment can be passed on generationally? Some of you had a bitter dad and he was angry and he was hurt and he was full of bitterness and it's fued out on you and your brothers and sisters and your family and you became a bitter person. You'll pass that on to your kids if you don't break that pattern of generational bitterness. You have to say, I'm going to break that chain right now. We'll not allow my past or my parents past to influence my kids or my grandkids. Why? Because whatever you resent, you eventually become to resemble. What I resent, I eventually resemble. We always move towards those things that we focus on. What you hate most and others, what you see and others, you go, man, I don't like that in them. You're usually in you too. You say, I'm never going to be like my mother. Oh yeah, the more you focus on, I don't want to be like that, the more you become like that. It's like I'm never going to eat those cookies, but the more I look at those cookies, the more I think about those cookies, the more I say I'm not going to eat them till I do. The way you get released from your past is not by saying I'm not going to remember it anymore. No, no, that doesn't work. The only way you can forget something is by refocusing on something else. When you don't like a TV channel, you don't sit there going, I'll watch it anyway. You just change the channel. Now we have how many channel? A million? I don't know. There's plenty to watch. Nobody's forcing you to focus on remembering the past over and over. I believe that happiness is a choice, that you're as happy as you choose to be. I've been all over the world and I've seen people in far worse circumstances than any of us, and they were happy. Why? I think because happiness is a choice, you're as happy as you choose to be, but you've got to let resentment go. You've got to break the chain of bondage and resentment. First, we reveal our hurt. We admit our hurts. Second, we forgive our offenders, those who have hurt us. Third, in your outline, we replace old lies with God's truth. I replace old lies, those tapes that play in my mind. You all have tapes that play in your mind that play over and over like a hamster running around on the cage. And sometimes it's hard to stop them, and they just keep playing. Here's what I know, God teaches you the truth. God's Word is the truth. If you want to be healed from the memories of your past, you have to replace the old lies that people have said about you with God's truth. And God's truth in your mind and in your heart, Romans 12, 2, says, "Be transformed by the renewing of your mind. The way you think determines the way you feel which determines the way you act. And how do you change the way you think?" The Bible says to be renewed by the spirit of your mind, be transformed by the renewing of your mind. But how do you do that? First, you ask God to heal those painful memories with prayer. I think you need to get very specific with prayer. You need to say, "God, I need you to heal these memories that I have." Even those all the way back to my childhood, I need you to heal these memories. They hurt so bad, Lord, I need relief. Those memories of rejection, we've all felt that rejection in life, haven't we? The memories of sin, the memories of resentment, those memories of guilt and shame, the memories of abuse and of hateful words, "God, I need you to heal my memories and take away their power over me." You know, you can talk to God about anything. Your prayer can be raw and real and honest, and nothing you say to God will surprise Him. I think God loves honest prayers from His children. God loves to have conversations with you. He wants you to express your needs and desires. Then second, you need to fill your mind with God's Word. The more of God's Word you put in your mind, the more those memories are pushed out. It's like a replacement. placement strategy. You replace the bad with the good things of God's word. Let me ask you, do you all believe everything you see on TV? I knew you were smarter than that. You believe everything you hear on the radio or believe everything you see at the movies. Do you believe every Google search will lead you to some ultimate truth? How many of you believe that everything God says to you is true? Then I'll ask you and I'll ask for myself too. Why do we spend more time listening and watching this stuff that we don't believe than something we do? I know some of us will go home this afternoon and we'll watch four or five hours of TV but we won't spend five minutes in God's word. The Bible is the truth. The Bible is soul food for your soul. And the more you feel your mind with it, the more you will get well. You begin to believe what God says about you, not what people have said about your whole life. You start believing what others have said and you start believing what God says and what does God say about you? That's a whole different sermon but I'm going to give you some pieces. God says you are lovable. God says you're valuable. God says you're forgivable. God says you're capable. God says I accept you. That's what God says about you. So who are you going to believe? What your parents or your boyfriend or your ex said about you? The lies they have told you about you or you're going to believe what God says about you. That God says you are valuable. God says you are usable. God says you're acceptable and you're capable. God has all these great things to say about you but yet we don't believe him. Who are you going to believe? God or the world? The world or the world? Am I going to believe God or gossip? It's really your choice. You have to replace the old lies that have been told to you your whole life with God's truth. Psychologists have told us for years that yourself esteem comes from what you think the most important in your life thinks about you. The way you see yourself to a large degree comes from what you think the person that's most important in your life thinks about you. And here's what I'll say church I recommend that you make Jesus Christ the most important person in your life because he says you are lovable and you're valuable and you're beautiful and you're capable and you're acceptable and most of all you are usable. God wants to use each person in this room to make a difference in this world. You need to believe what God says about you and forget the lies the world has told you. I admit my hurts I reveal my hurts I own my hurts I forgive my offenders I let them go I replace old lies with God's truth in the fourth step. And I think this one's just as important as all the others. How do you know when you're being healed? How do you know when that process of healing is started? You want to let God to use you to help others with the things you've been ashamed of. You know that healing is taking place when you come to the next step number four on your outline you reach out to help others. We get well as we help others helping others is the antidote to your pain. You redeem your pain God will never waste a hurt unless we make him. You use your experiences to help others you let God bring good out of bad and only God can do that. God meant for us to help each other. The Bible says this in 2 Corinthians 1 it says God comforts us every time we have trouble so that when others have trouble we can comfort them with the same comfort God gave us. The Bible goes on in Galatians 6 to say if a person is trapped in some pain you who are spiritual should restore them gently. Notice it doesn't say you who are perfect if it was you who were perfect no one would ever be restored. I think being spiritual just means we're headed in the right direction with our God and Savior Jesus Christ. It goes on to say but watch yourself or you may also be tempted carry each other's burdens and in this way you will fill the law of Christ. What is the law of Christ? Love your neighbor as yourself. How do you love your neighbor as yourself when you use your pain to help others when you carry each other's burdens we weren't meant to live this life alone. We need each other. We should be desperate for each other just as we're desperate for the love of God. Here's the question. Do you want to get healed? Do you want to get freed? Do you want to be happy? Do you want to be whole? The Bible says anyone who belongs to Christ is a new person, a new creation. But I want to tell you so often I see that we invite Christ into our lives Lord Jesus I invite you into my life but I leave you in the forer. You need to invite Christ into every room in the house of your heart God I invite you Jesus I invite you into the bedroom of my heart where I have many painful memories. I invite you into the kitchen of my heart into the dining room of my heart where there are many painful memories in that dining room. I invite you into the garage of my heart Lord I invite you into the garage where there's many painful memories. You're not going to get well if you leave God in the forer. You don't need to just say Jesus come into my life you need to say Jesus come into every area of my life and fill me with your love and peace. That's how you get well. You reach out to God you ask Him to heal those hidden wounds then you ask Christ to bring good out of evil and Jesus will do just that. One of the things I love about celebrate recovery is it's forward looking it says yeah that was my past and my past was ugly but that will not be my future. I don't care what you've done who you've done it with how long you've done it it doesn't matter where you've been it matters where you're going. This should be our future I will let God use my pain to help others. I know that the Lord has a mission for every person in this room a use for every person in this room I have challenged you to make yourself usable to God. To say God here I am pick me use me. I will promise you this God will use you and he will use you up. Before I finish I'm going to do a little commercial for celebrate recovery. Those of you who support celebrate recovery financially thank you you allow us to do many things and I've never done that before but I want to thank you for your support. We've been doing celebrate recovery for 25 years this month and in 25 years we have baptized over 2500 people. I say yeah God for that. What a blessing God has allowed me to be a part of that. The band is going to come up in a minute and play an invitation song. I want to leave you with a song I'm going to read it to you if I sing it to you they'll never let me preach again. I think over my whole career will be over so I'm going to read it to you I think it's important. It's called the river and it goes like this. It doesn't matter who you are. It doesn't matter where you've been. It doesn't matter what the scar. It doesn't matter what the sin. Somewhere along the way there is healing for your life today. How far you've gone he looks beyond when you were hurt he looks beyond who stole your song. He looks beyond what made it worse he looks beyond where others failed to reach out to you and say there's healing for your life today. There's a river that flows from the fountain of God and it heals. everything along the way. I have tasted and I have known that for every broken heart there is healing in Jesus' name. I know this from personal experience I've seen it in a thousand lives but today is your day. Maybe you need healing from something today. Maybe you want to come and share it with a pastor in a moment. I'll ask you to stand before the band plays. If you don't mind, yeah, y'all, stand up. It's okay. It's okay. I'm going to ask the ministers to come down in a minute and stand and if you need someone to pray for you, if you just want to kneel and pray and ask God for some healing in your heart, maybe healing that you've needed for a long, long time. I encourage you to do that. Before they play the song of invitation, let me make sure that you know that you know that you know as Mark would say and it's the gospel. God created us to be with him. God wants more than anything to be in a relationship with you. Oh, our sins separated us from God. Our sins created this great chasm between us and God. Perfect God can't look on sin. Sins can't be removed by good deeds. How would you ever know if you've done enough good deeds to get to heaven? I don't think I could live like that. That's what the world says. You just do enough good stuff and you'll get there. That's not true. Paying the price for sin, Jesus died and rose again. On the cross, He said, it is finished. He means there are all your sins for forgiven. Everyone who trusts in Him, one thing, trusting in Christ, gives you eternal life. Life with Jesus starts now and lasts forever. You don't have to clean up your life before you come to Him. He says, come to me and we'll clean up your life together. If you haven't accepted Christ, would you make that decision today? Come take them a hand of a minister and let us pray for you. Let's pray, Father. Oh, what a wonderful merciful God you are and we love you. Thank you for loving us enough to heal our deepest wounds. Lord, stir in our hearts today a need for more of you, a need for more of you than Jesus' name. Amen.