Are You Living a Healed Life?

By Michael Griego on September 22, 2023 • ( 0 )

Are you a different person than you were years ago? Have you cleaned up or moved away from a dark past? Are you fully recovered? Are you living a healed life? ◊

We all know people who have survived dark, sordid, and damaging past lives and today are healthy and productive, essentially recovered.

Actually, people like you and me.

At various levels, we all have come out of past unhealthy experiences and practices that make us cringe in remembrance or stir up sadness and regret. Perhaps we had a “Come to Jesus” moment to take a new direction in life, or we simply grew up and matured out of youthful foolishness, or we really had to work our way through recovery like an addict coming off drugs or alcohol.

Dangers of Partial Healing
I suspect that many may still only partially delete or shield the past and carry remnants of deep woundings.

If we are honest with ourselves and each other, we are all to some degree good posers living in clever disguise shielding long-standing pains and wounds that diminish the peace, freedom and full joy meant for one of God’s creation.

If not dealt with, the wounds of our past have serious implications.

We may believe that we’re less than we could be as a result of a false view of deserved penalties for our own short-comings and sin. Or we force a perpetual cover-up of our past problems and guilt with a deceptively cheery “It’s all good!” or a pious “God’s in control!”

Either way, one can be left living in a subtle, destructive, and misleading cycle of insecurity, self-condemnation and/or false, shallow optimism.

But God is Like a Good Father
While there is God’s Holy Spirit that uplifts and strengths us, there is a spiritual opposition that moves to derail, destroy, and cut us down:

Be alert and of sober mind. Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour. (1 Peter 5:8)

Lest one not believe in the devil, Jesus teaches directly on this topic in his Parable of the Wheat and the Weeds in Matthew 13:24-30, 34-43 (see BV post: Christian Wheat and Weeds). Jesus speaks of an enemy who sows weeds among the wheat, and in his explanation He identifies the enemy as “the evil one…the devil.”

Christian wisdom boldly confronts the devil, the enemy, all dark and evil spiritual forces, with an understanding that we can endure a spiritual attack, fight back and overcome it:

“No temptation has overtaken you except what is common to mankind. And God is faithful; he will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear. But when you are tempted, he will also provide a way out so that you can endure it.” (1 Corinthians 10:13)

Now you may be thinking that since you’ve failed a past temptation, then God must not be faithful, or that you may be a special kind of failure.

Think again.

Jesus/God showed us this through prayer (see Lord’s Prayer, Matthew 6:13). And James instructs us to resist the devil:

Submit yourselves, then, to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. Come near to God and he will come near to you. Wash your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded. (James 4:7-8)

Yes, God knows our plight, calls us to Himself, and loves us nonetheless. Our job is to break any destructive psychological agreements we may have with the enemy with a prayer like this:

“Lord, I break the agreement in my mind that I am not worthy, or that I am a hopeless failure in Your eyes. Forgive me for believing these lies. I know I am loved and forgiven by You just as I am.”

When we pray like this, we come out of hiding and into the light of truth and healing.

But understand that all is not so simple and easy. God does not so easily teach and develop us. He is like a Good Father with patience and lessons for his children for the hard road of life. And He calls us to purposeful and humble growth at times beyond our capacity to understand. Just as Jesus named Peter as “a Rock” before his great failure on the night of Jesus’ arrest (see Matthew 16:13-20), God sees us as the finished product while we are barely learning the lessons or even comprehending the dangerous arena in which we’re operating.

God’s spiritual healing moves us through an ever growing understanding of the depths and mystery of His love, ways and means. No, God doesn’t necessarily knock us upside the head when we step out of line, but in our own distorted sense of holy fairness we think God is on His throne waiting to whack us or anyone else when we sin, think bad thoughts, or veer off track.

He loves us more than that. And I’m learning that God doesn’t work the way we think He should.

Asking God Different Questions
Like Abram called out from Ur of the Chaldeans to a land he’s never seen, Jacob called to Mesopotamia, or Moses called from Egypt, despite our past we can move boldly into the fearful unknown when guided and initiated by our wise God and His good plans for us.

However, we are often asking God for the wrong things:

“God, can you please heal me and make my life better?
“God, please help me get a job?”
“Lord, why did you let this happen to me? Why now?”
“God, can you please fix my marriage?”

To enter healed into a new journey and initiation with God, it requires a new set of questions:

“Lord, what are you trying to teach me here?”
“God, what issues in my heart are you trying to show me through this?”
“God, what is it you want me to let go of?”
“Lord, what is it you want me to do?”

Yes, our emotional, psychological, and spiritual wounds are a source of shame and a great cover-up from which we construct a false self. When we surrender our will to Him and His desire, God is faithful and just to forgive us, though not necessarily without further trials.

He even may thwart us to save us.

I too have experienced God’s guiding hand blessing my surrender and thwarting my false self. In hindsight, like Peter and then Paul, I see my greatest growth through struggles. Dropping the figurative mask and fig leaf by facing one’s fears through surrender and repentance is refreshing and cathartic.

It’s living a healed life.

Are you living a healed life in full freedom and authenticity with God?
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“Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me. Do not cast me from your presence or take your Holy Spirit from me. Restore to me the joy of your salvation and grant me a willing spirit, to sustain me. – Psalm 51:10-12