Living in the Freedom of the Spirit - Week #8

We're on chapter 9 which finishes up the section on the emotions. Chapter 9 is an exciting chapter about living with our emotions.

The author deals here with the ongoing life in the Spirit as it relates to our human emotions. I have come to believe that our emotions, when healed and in right alignment with truth, can be wonderful boosters to our faith and motivators to righteousness. Most of us live in the place of either being pulled here and there by how we feel or we have succeeded in stifling our emotions so as to not be jerked around by them. The problem with stifling them is that we aren't living as true humans are meant to live: alive in all areas of our soul.

Please read early in the chapter what Tom Marshall has to say about Jesus' identification with us in all areas and how this is God's way of dealing with sinful and broken humanity - the incarnation. When by faith we are united with Him, His righteousness is mine, and all of my brokenness and sin is rolled onto Him. It's an amazing exchange that takes place.

I walk this out in my flesh by faith which means I incrementally take back what has been lost through sin (both my own and others' sin against me) through worship and developing the discipline of listening to God and obeying anything that I believe He's saying to me. This impacts the emotions by virtue of the fact that in the process of listening to the Living Word, He will call on me to take steps of obedience that will bring my emotions into alignment with His truth. This will both awaken deadened emotions and tame uncontrolled emotions. He alone knows how to best bring me into wholeness; that's again why the work of the Holy Spirit is absolutely imperative in this ministry of healing. No one knows me like He does and no one knows how to bring me into fullness of life!

As we grow and mature in obedience to God, we find that we are in that delightful place of living with our "spirit out front, as it were" so that we increasingly experience what's happening around us through our spirit grid rather than the soulish grid. The spirit is gaining its rightful place as the "integrating factor" in our personhood. The spirit, which is alive to God and aligned to His truth, becomes the ruling part of us as God originally intended and the soul takes its rightful place in alignment with the spirit.

The more this is the case, the more we understand what's really happening around us, and our emotional responses to the spiritual perceptions are now trustworthy, and we can live fully alive in our emotions and they actually help us to take action.

The beauty of this too is that because our spirit is "out front" now, what others encounter when they meet us is the life of Jesus coming through our personality, rather than meeting our soul life which isn't evil but it is not life-giving in itself. It's the spirit that gives life; the flesh profits nothing in terms of giving spiritual life to others. People encounter life when they encounter a person living in the freedom of the Spirit.

So the spirit of the person becomes the part of us that's out front, and like Tom Marshall says, we begin, at least in some measure like Jesus, to discern the true condition of others around us and experience the appropriate emotional responses triggered by spiritual perception (see pages 88-92).

This is a life-long maturing process so we won't reach absolute perfection in this before heaven, but it's great to be growing little by little. The Holy Spirit, on the basis of the Cross, is continually bringing His own into this - He's so good at this!

Lord, thank You for Your awesome work on Calvary and Your Spirit who takes the things of Jesus and makes them vitally real to us today!!! How can we thank you enough? You are worthy to be loved and adored now and eternally by all peoples!

For next week read chapter 10, The Freedom of the Will. Note Marshall's analogy using the parts of a car in his explanation of the functions of the mind, will, and emotions. What part of the car does he compare the mind to?...the emotions?...and the will? Have a wonderful week because of the Lord very real presence with you!

Living in the Freedom of the Spirit - Week #7

Blessed Thanksgiving to you all!

I simply want to greet you and say how thankful I am (not just on a formal holiday) for the Lord of my life and for His people, without whom I would be so lost!

Because we're taking more time to finish out the chapters on the emotions, this posting will be simply a quote from chapter 8 that I want to repeat from last week's posting for you to consider carefully...it means a lot to me because in my little experience of ministering to others in these areas, I have fear and trembling to do this if it weren't for the growing confidence I have in the work of the cross and the Holy Spirit in each person's life. If I weren't convinced that God wants to heal human emotions and can be trusted to know how to handle each person with dignity and care and that I don't have to get it all right in praying for another, I wouldn't dare step into these waters. Tom Marshall expresses it well:

"What makes gospel healing unique (and distinguishes it from all human psychotherapies) is that a real, living , supernatural Savior and Healer enters the picture. Often, with only an inkling of the suppressed pain and hurt that some people are holding at bay, I would be genuinely fearful of encouraging them to open up, if it were not for one thing - Jesus really is there."

And so His very real presence is what makes us dare to face emotional pain and hurt and then to become "wounded healers" for others. He is with us right now - praise His name!

Living in the Freedom of the Spirit - Week #6

Hello, dear ones...before we jump into chapters 7 & 8, take a moment and ponder this statement by the author and its implications for you personally. You may get no further than this in reading this blog, and if not, that's just fine:

...the love of God is not like human love at all. It is not human love enlarged or magnified many times. The difference is qualitative, not merely quantitative...The love of God is absolutely unconditioned and totally unconditional. It cannot be merited, earned, altered or lost - it just is...

This fundamental truth is what the God-Man lived and died and now intercedes to make real to us humans, and the ministry of healing prayer is not first of all to make life pleasant for us or for others around us but to heal the heart so that it can receive this truth and thereby become like Him in love. As evangelical believers we understand the need for forgiveness and repentance of our personal sin, but sometimes we don't realize the need of cleansing and healing of personal emotional suffering in order to readily receive this unconditional and unchanging divine love.

The more I receive of this divine love (and it's taking me a lifetime), the more I realize how offensive it is to my flesh because it is so unlike human love and sympathy which I can manipulate. By the careful and skillful work of the Holy Spirit, I still find myself slipping into wanting to prove myself worthy in one way or another. And the fact that I may have caught a glimpse of this love at one time in my life doesn't mean I don't need to be seeing this over and over and over again in order for my heart to not be offended by life and its ongoing difficulties.

Now to the reading for this week. I'm going to just put down some bedrock truths that Tom Marshall gives in chapters 7 & 8. Thank you to those who made comments this week - I find myself challenged by those.

Chapter 7 "Healing for Inner Hurt"

• God's answer to human need is always two-fold - the work of the cross and the work of the Holy Spirit.
• Marshall expounds by saying that Jesus suffered in every way (spiritual, emotional, physical) to the uttermost, and because of that He is able to save to the uttermost, touching all areas of human sin and frailty and woundedness through His own suffering. This is why meditating on Isaiah 53 and the story of His crucifixion is important for our healing. But the work of the Holy Spirit is just as important or else the work of the cross means nothing to us personally as humans in need. He is the Spirit of adoption, which in Jewish understanding was the entrance of the son into maturity and adulthood. So without this Helper and Comforter at work in us, we cannot come into genuine adulthood in Christ.

Chapter 8: The Process of Inner Healing

• …for the Holy Spirit to heal our feelings he must gain access to them; we have to open up the hurt areas to His ministry…you can only deal with a feeling when you are feeling it.

The author gives an experience out of his life about this, but I want to testify that this has been true with me as well. Though raised by outstanding parents, they weren’t perfect, and over the years the Holy Spirit has surfaced a few experiences out of my childhood that were wounding. My parents themselves asked me forgiveness many years ago for a particular situation, but at the time I responded in an academic way and said I forgave them; it wasn’t until about a year ago or so that the Holy Spirit quickened this to me afresh but this time He helped me feel the emotion of the child I was at the time and I was able then to forgive and get release and healing at the gut level.

• ...we cannot open up the emotions by an act of the will….Memory is one of the most potent means of opening up the areas of hurt feelings (Psa. 42:4)…But we need to allow the Holy Spirit to do the reminding. Only He knows which memories are significant – and they may not be the ones that we would think are important.

Marshall goes on to talk about blockages to our healing, such as wrong attitudes, bitterness and unforgiveness, grief and sorrow, and just plain unwillingness to face up to unpleasant truths about our immaturity and behavior that someone has addressed. Without dealing with these realities, we can’t hope to receive the healing work of the cross and Spirit of those sins against us that cripple us emotionally.

• Forgiveness if often a pre-requisite to healing, but forgiveness itself will not heal us…The hurt has to be handed over to Christ.
• What makes gospel healing unique (and distinguishes it from all human psychotherapies) is that a real, living, supernatural Savior and Healer enters the picture. Often, with only an inkling of the suppressed pain and hurt that some people are holding at bay, I would be genuinely fearful of encouraging them to open up, if it were not for one thing – JESUS REALLY IS THERE!...(because of this)…the hurt we never thought we could get over, can go – permanently!
• Because emotional hurt many times results in immaturity, the healing of the hurt involves a process of growth. In strict terms, you cannot be healed of immaturity or delivered from it: you can only grow out of it.

Just as the little child must go through certain stages of development physically and intellectually in order to become an adult, so he or she must do the same emotionally; so if a particular stage of emotional development got skipped over because of something that shut him down in his formative years, then the Holy Spirit needs to pinpoint that and heal it so that emotional maturity can take place.

All of this may seem overwhelming, and it should because we can’t do this – that brings us back to chapter 7 and the need to know in a profound way that only the work of the cross and the Holy Spirit is sufficient for this. My role is to say, “Here I am, Lord…I’m willing for You to do what only You can do. I am Yours!” Then watch how He maneuvers to do His good work in you!

The Lord bless you...here’s the plan – let’s read chapter 9 which is the final chapter about the emotions, but let’s take two weeks before we go on to the next section, and I’d encourage you to reread chapters 7 & 8 along with 9 and take the time necessary to not only let these truths sink in but to pray over them with the Lord. Enjoy the Lord and others during the Thanksgiving holiday!

P.S. to Living in the Freedom (Week #5)

Just a quick question for any of you to respond to, if you want:

Related to chapter 7, Healing for Inner Hurt, the author stresses that genuine healing only comes through the cross of Christ and the work of the Holy Spirit. Do you believe this is true, and if so, why?

Blessings on you all!

Living in the Freedom of the Spirit - Week #5

This week we read chapters 5 and 6 which follow up on the general chapter on human emotions or feelings. I'm going to take each chapter separately and essentially cite some highlights from them that will pretty well speak for themselves:

Chapter 5: Where Did We Go Wrong?
In speaking of what to do with our emotions ("very powerful but unreliable motivators of behavior"), Marshall says: "...neither ignoring nor suppressing emotions ever really succeeds. All that happens is that they are driven underground where they work just as powerfully as before, while we work out different reasons to justify our actions or attitudes."

He goes on to make an important observation: "When we turn to Scriptures...we discover that the emotions are unreliable not because God made them to be so, but because something happened to them. It is part of the problem that entered with the Fall."

(For those of you who have this book in hand, look carefully at the two diagrams that he gives showing Adam before the fall then fallen humanity. They are very helpful...)

Since the whole of human nature was affected by the fall, it's not only the emotions that are not reliable but all areas of the human soul. As it relates to the emotions, the author says that the results were: perversion (we're attracted to sin and obedience but have negative feelings toward a perfect and loving God), and disintegration (the human spirit cut off from God causing the whole being to fall into disarray since the human spirit in union with God is meant to be the commanding part of the person).

Quoting Tom Marshall: "The result is anarchy. Every part of human nature now strives for rule, or at least for autonomy. With some people it is the intellect that dominates...there are those whose lives are ruled by their emotions...Then there are people dominated by a very strong will...Lacking an integrating principle, fallen humanity is always under severe tension, in many cases coming apart at the seams...The result is unbearable inner strife."

Chapter 6: Emotional Hurt
In this chapter the author begins by pointing out how important it is for us as children to respond to our environment emotionally, and while not all unpleasant emotional experiences are damaging, if a particular trauma or stress is more than we can cope with at the time, critical hurt or damage can take place and affect us long-term. This can show up in our adult life sometimes in strong emotional reactions to situations that don't merit that degree of response.

Evidences of emotional hurt:

• Great difficulties in the area of personal relationships
• Very poor self-image or self-hatred (which we sometimes confuse as being Scriptural self-denial) - this can be expressed in various ways, such as extreme shyness, judgmentalism of others, a drive to prove oneself...
• Pessimistic outlook on life
• Severe attacks of spiritual doubt and a loss of assurance of salvation

Sources of inner hurt: in general, emotional wounds can be caused "by traumatic emotional experiences that are beyond our capacity to handle at the time" of its occurence (i.e., bereavement, marriage breakdown, job failure, childhood deficits, loss of health or reputation, et.)

When trauma happens in childhood, it is usually critical because of how vulnerable the human personality is in the formative years. Some people carry within themselves a general sense of "unconditional badness" and worthlessness as a result of early deprivations in life.

Parents are often the primary source of woundedness, and it's not always because of what they have done wrong but may be because of what they have NOT done. Every child is born with two fundamental needs: the need for love and the need for worth/significance..."love needs to be experienced; and for it to be experienced, love has to be expressed towards us...Parents need to express their love for their children - and do it often - both in words and actions."

"...in very broad terms, the child looks to mother to meet his love needs, but looks to father to meet his need for significance." Frank Lake, in his book Clinical Theology, says that the child needs the gracious smile of the mother (unconditional love) and the affirming voice of the father (affirming the goodness of the child's identity as son or daughter).

Tom Marshall gives a good warning about the difference there is among people, saying that not all children respond the same way to similar circumstances, so what might do deep psychological damage to one may not have the same effect on another. This is why it's so important to trust the Holy Spirit to do the work and not automatically assume that everyone is affected in the same way.

So what is it that happens when a personal has been hurt emotionally? Simply put, emotional growth stops. "We may grow up physically, intellectually, socially and even spiritually but certain parts of our emotional development are held back in a state of immaturity."

I want to say in closing this particular posting that all of us have sinned and all of us have been sinned against. No parents nor authority figures ever do it all right, which means that all of us have not only sinned but been sinned against early in life. So we shouldn't be surprised that we need the healing grace of God along with His saving grace. For many years I didn't acknowledge this because I didn't want to dishonor my godly and wonderful parents, even though they themselves openly acknowledged where they had sinned against me and asked my forgiveness. I now understand that I honor them more by facing where they failed me, forgiving them, receiving healing and blessing them for the wonderful persons they were and the good things they did for me.

For next week let's read chapters 7 and 8; although chapter 7 is only 2 pages long, it is absolutely core to all of this so please read it carefully and more than once, if possible. Let its truth soak in deeply, because without it, there is no hope of genuine healing. Blessings on you this week!

Living in the Freedom of the Spirit - Week #4

The Lord bless you! He is with you right now...you might want to pause a moment to be in awe over this reality.

This week I'm going to slow the pace down with this book in spite of the fact that I've laid out a particular schedule for getting through it, so please bear with me, ok?

I'm concerned that in the pressure to meet the deadline each week, we may not really get from the Lord what He wants to say in these chapters. The mad pace of life can swallow us up, and as people of the times we live in, we tend toward thinking that the more correct information we can get on a certain topic, the better we'll be.

Of course, we need to know truth. If I didn't believe this, I wouldn't be doing this book club. However, when the Scripture speaks of "knowing," it's a deeper knowing than mere gathering and retaining of information. It's an intimate knowing of Truth. In my personal devotional life right now, I'm spending time in the Psalms and the Gospel of John. I just read this morning the much-quoted words of Jesus in chapter 8, "...and you shall know the truth and the truth shall set you free."

If Jesus is Truth (see John 14:6), then knowing truth is knowing a Person, and it is in that intimate knowing of Him that I am made free. And because knowing a person is a never-ending experience, the implication is that I will need to be moving from one degree of freedom to another all my life.

My experience in life has taught me that knowing a person takes a lot more work than knowing information about the person. It takes time and is messy and interferes with getting things done. Our drivenness as a culture to get things done can be a huge obstacle to really knowing Jesus.

So this week, rather than continue to plunge into the next two chapters (5 and 6) as scheduled, I want to encourage you to go back to chapter 3 on The Renewed Mind and take the time to consider carefully the author's words about "retaining a renewed mind" and ask the Holy Spirit to help you govern "what is going to occupy your mind." He is in you to empower you for this but it will require that you be intentional about reprogramming the way you think about God and others and yourself.

In the rush of life, it's easier to keep piling on the knowledge and information without digesting it and obeying it. But if we move too quickly through the chapters on the emotions without taking seriously the need for getting free from mental strongholds and walking in that freedom, then our emotions won't be helped; the mind must be cleansed and healed and delivered and brought into alignment with God before the emotions will align correctly.

Last week Nonie made a comment on the reading in which she shared a practical way that has helped her in the process of renewing her mind, and that is the practicing of the presence of the Lord through contemplative worship; in other words, taking the time to get before the Lord without an agenda and without doing a Bible study in that time (that's for another time) to practice the reality that He is with me and to simply adore Him and listen to Him. Like any other discipline that we want to develop, this will usually require more time devoted to the practice at first until it becomes an easy thing to do throughout the day. Sitting down and listening to worship music can be one way of beginning this, and if thoughts begin to arise that are self-accusing or judgmental of others, it's important not to stuff those down but to write them out and then ask the Holy Spirit to replace the negative thoughts with His truth from the Word of God.

In his wonderful book Setting Love in Order, Mario Bergner (a healed homosexual) tells of a primary way in which the process of his full healing took place, and that was through practicing the reality of God's presence with him. In the early stages of his healing process, all he heard from the Lord when he was quiet with Him was, "Mario, I love you." After some time of this, Mario wanted to hear something more than that and asked God why He kept repeating that so much; and the Lord answered something to the effect, "Because you still don't believe Me."

Being made free through knowing Truth is costly and messy and will interfere with cherished and good things, but there is grace for this, and I'm praying that we will all keep moving to greater degrees of freedom, no matter how much we have already experienced.

The Lord bless you this week, and next week we'll take up chapters 5 and 6.