Healing My Wounds

My previous blog post focussed on why I ran away from what I believed the Lord was calling me to. I said that I found that I was trapped in, and imprisoned by, toxic attitudes of self- rejection, self- pity, and fear. I had taken these self -destructive attitudes on as a result of mental and emotional wounds that I received because I stuttered. The people in my social group (especially the children) mocked me, and treated me with derision and scorn. This moved me to a place where I embraced deep shame. Taken together this effectively immobilised me and ‘took me out’. I could therefore not experience the ‘fullness of life’ that Jesus came to lead me into.

As I mentioned, I had made a commitment to the Lord at the age of nineteen and through the years God had worked in my life to bring about significant healing and wholeness. However, I was still not free from the effects of my childhood trauma; which had left me with a festering, cancerous wound at the core of my being. This wound prevented me firstly, from functioning freely; and secondly, coming to recognise and embrace my True Self that my True Father had created me to be. It hindered me from discovering the image of God that was imprinted within me when my True Father loved me into being. Jonah went through a three day period in the belly of the great fish that transformed him. I now want to look in more detail at the five year ‘Jonah Experience’ that I went through that transformed me. 

When I had my first heart attack some six plus years ago what I experienced was that my True Father was waiting for me to return to Him; in the same way that the father was waiting for his son to come home in the story that Jesus told which is known as “the story of the prodigal son”. The intimacy of relationship that we previously had was restored. It was I who had chosen to flee into the spiritual desert I found myself in for twenty long years. My Father was patiently waiting for my return. Being restored to intimate relationship with my Father was a significant healing experience in itself. It filled a deep void within my soul.

 Yet the toxic wound was still there deep within me. Major surgery needed to be undertaken to cut it out. At just the right time I read a book called ‘Wild at Heart’, written by John Eldredge. He contended that, as Scripture tells us, we have an enemy called Satan (whose name means ‘adversary’); whose mission it is to wound us and ‘take us out’. Whereas Jesus is the Good Shepherd who cares for and protects his sheep; Jesus spoke of Satan as being a robber whose purpose it is to steal, kill and destroy them. In contrast the purpose of Jesus is to give life in all its fullness (John 10:10). Eldredge said that through his own experiences and those of many other people he came to recognize that Satan influenced a person’s own father to wound them in a significant way. This ‘Father Wound’ was inflicted at the exact point where the True Self of that person was. This was where their God-given giftedness flowed from. It prevented them from discovering and living out of their True Self and exercising their giftedness. This precluded them from fully being and manifesting the ‘image of God’ that they were created to be.  This understanding opened my eyes to see the reality of my life, and my woundedness, in a new way.

Eldredge stressed the fact that we are engaged in spiritual warfare. We have to literally fight for our freedom. We read in Ephesians 6:12: “Our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.”

 Many people, including Christians do not take this seriously; and neither did I. It made me realise that in order to find both healing and freedom I would need to fight for it. However, I could not do it in my own strength; I needed the power of God to do it for me. Jesus defeated Satan by what he accomplished on the Cross. I needed to be ‘in Christ’ and be set free by the same power that raised Jesus from death. It could only be done ‘in the name of Jesus’. The name of Jesus carried the power and authority of Jesus.

A catalyst in this process of finding healing and freedom was having a momentous dream. I woke up in the middle of the night after this dream and had a strong sense that it was saying something important to me. I therefore prayed and asked the Lord what this dream meant. Two words came into my mind: “Unholy Alliance”. It took a long time (many weeks) of praying and listening to come to an understanding of what this dream meant. For sake of brevity I will only say here that through this I came to see that Satan is the ultimate crooked salesman. His stock- in- trade is lies, deceit and illusion. As soon as we buy a lie that he sells us we enter into an Unholy Alliance with him. Through this alliance he has a spiritual hold over us. We become bound to him in a mystical way and this brings us into bondage. We become bound with a rope or chain, which restricts our freedom; and he then also has power over us. The more lies and deceit we buy the more in bondage we become. We can even end up being locked behind closed doors, in prison. Eventually this can become a dark dungeon; with little, or no light. Finding freedom at this later stage is difficult indeed.

Nothing is impossible for Our Lord however. There are many marvellous stories of people being set free from extreme states of bondage. Satan, the dark master over the dead, has great power; but it is nothing in comparison with the awesome power of the Living God (See 1Kings Ch 18).

The end result of all this was that I discovered that I was in a state of spiritual bondage; bound and gagged, and in prison. The bondage I was in restricted my freedom to access my True Self. It also severely curtailed my ability to verbally express who I am. I needed to be set free. We will look at how this took place; and continues to take place; in my next post.

Questions for reflection:

·         How do you respond to what I have written above?

·         Are you in spiritual bondage?

·         Do you want the Lord to set you free?