Category Archives: “Getting Healed”

Overcoming the World’s System of Success

In our society we encounter this enemy on a regular basis any time we allow the world system to define “success” for us instead of God. Success can be measured in many ways, for instance some measure their success according to their Productivity:  “Try harder!” You need to measure up. Are you getting everything done? “Be Number One.” “Just Do It!” But winning the Rat Race simply makes you the fastest Rat.

Now, we do get to enjoy some great prizes: The unrelenting pressure of competition, the endless demand for busy-ness, learning to live with vindictive peer pressure, and knowing that our success is so often in the hands of those who can ruin our reputation or business with a casual remark on social media.

On the other end of the spectrum, some measure their success by how much they have rejected a previous view of success. They think by embracing the opposite of Productivity, say, Victimology or Entitlement, they have somehow escaped the excesses of the previous generation. But a new kind of excess is created, that of economic fantasy, a separation from the reality of how God created this world to work in this age.

Either way it is all the World System, no matter how it is expressed. If we want to overcome the World System, we start by going to God Himself to define success for us now, as individuals, without rejecting God’s control over the age we are living in.

Exposing Our Enemies

The first step in overcoming our enemies is to learn to expose, or uncover them. Many Christians find this one of the hardest aspects of the healing process because it takes a level of self-objectivity that we’re not used to embracing on our own. Neither do most of us have those around us that we can trust to provide that objectivity. We can proceed with confidence, however, realizing that He who has begun this work in us IS trustworthy and objective, sometimes relentlessly so. You have already agreed with Him that you want your enemies brought into the light so they can be dealt with.

Remember also that as we learn to depend on His life within us, He will tune our spiritual and soulical senses in order to be able to distinguish between the various kinds of enemies we face. Each of our enemies requires a somewhat different approach, so we want to be especially sensitive to His leading in this. In all these areas, recognize and SUBMIT to the sovereignty and total control of God, constantly reminding yourself that He loves you, accepts you and values you NOW!

 

Getting Healed Challenges Us To Give Up Our Ties To Our History

Getting healed challenges us to give to God our past, our present, and our future, abdicating all of our rights to control what He does in, to and through us.

When we let God do what He wants, He does whatever is needed—in us and in others—whether it is evangelism, healing, deliverance, revelation, etc.

We don’t even need to know about it.

Getting healed challenges us to be willing to go into any battle, with Him.

When He was on this earth, Jesus overcame both the world and the devil.

Then why are we still struggling with them?

Because it is through the battle that we become overcomers.

Settle it, then, that part of the healing process will be a struggle and warfare, so that we can learn to depend on Jesus for training, strategy, strength, and leadership.

Getting Healed Challenges Us To Vulnerability Toward God And Toward Others

As whole persons we are willing to be wounded and rejected, even in the same way, by the same person, if God so desires. Many of us have been taught that our main goals in life are to protect ourselves from being hurt and to keep from making mistakes. But this is not God’s way. Jesus was the ultimate example of being willing to be wounded because the Father asked Him to, and since He “learned” obedience, He also made mistakes as part of the process. Remember, He was in all ways tempted as we are, including being tempted to discouragement and self-blame because of failures during the learning process. But as we learn to depend on God for His life, we become “tender hearted yet thick skinned,” remembering that the church was never meant to be a sanctuary from the world.

Getting Healed Challenges Us to Freedom

Getting healed challenges us to freedom, which entails responsibility to grow up in our soul and body into sons and joint-heirs. We can no longer get away with letting our mind think what it wants, letting our emotions dictate our actions, or making decisions based on our own assessment—this is where God’s discipline comes in. His ways are not soulical, and as we learn to walk by the spirit, by His freedom, we will also learn the discipline and responsibility that comes with it. We learn to walk in wholeness (“I am a spirit, I have a soul, I live in a body”) in total dependence on Christ.

Getting Healed Challenges Us to Become Needy and Out of Control

The more healed we get, the more we recognize and experience our need for God. The more dependent we become, the less control our soul (mind, will and emotions) has over its environment. As we are healed, we become less and less under the influence of our own thoughts, decisions, and emotions. This will at times feel and look like being out of control, though we are actually coming under the greatest spiritual discipline, the strictest control of our spirit. This too will bring separation from both the world system and other believers that haven’t experienced this freedom.

Reminder: YOU are not wounded!

We are spending a good deal of time on the process and details of getting healed because it is important to God as well as to us. It is imperative, however, that we not form a new identity of being a “Wounded Person,” even a “Wounded Person Getting Healed.” Who you truly are, in your spirit, is NOT wounded, and doesn’t need healing. Your true identity is as a spirit being, whole, complete, perfect and entire NOW. Keep things in perspective; though we give this learning process the time and attention it deserves, we don’t give it ALL of our time and attention.

Conclusion: Overcoming Hindrances

Overcoming the hindrances to getting healed is a process that can be learned. As in all other aspects of the relationship between our soul and our spirit, there is a dichotomy of activity. We don’t get healed, or even learn to get healed, out of our own strength, but we join God on His terms in the teaching and healing He is doing in our lives. We recognize what He’s doing, asking for ways to join Him, willingly making mistakes as we learn. Success will not depend on how we feel, think or act, so don’t count on it feeling good (or bad), being easy (or hard), or making sense (or no sense). The results of learning to get healed are worth the effort, though, as we’ll soon see.