Becoming Whole Sermon Week 8- How to be healed

Welcome

Good morning One Hope

Welcome/Glad you are joining us

My Name, one of pastors

Good to be with you.

We are in the middle of a series called becoming whole

looking at Biblical Transformation

Today we begin to bring it all together as we walk through redemptive pathway

These will be some of the most practical sermons in how we experience our transformation.

by way of introduction let me show you this image and ask.

Intro

[Image of Nails]

Imagine stepping on one of those.

It would cause a wound.

You would feel immediate pain.

You may feel angry at yourself for stepping on it, or perhaps whoever left it out like that

You might feel sadness that you were now injured from that.

What if you refused to acknowledge the obvious wound of that nail sticking out of your foot

and you continued to try to walk around on it

It would become worse

It would likely become infected

Perhaps others have tried to point it out to you

But you have refused to listen

Refuse to acknowledge it as you continue to limp

You have mustered up your strength to continue on

You will not let it defeat you

That would pretty foolish wouldn’t it?

If we could see this clearly about our physical wound, why can we not see this about our heart wounds? // spiritual wounds? emotional wounds?

God gives us physical realities to teach us about spiritual realities.

This is exactly what happens when we are wounded,

when we are sinned against

but it’s not by a nail that has been rusted

but by a person we have trusted

When we refuse to acknowledge or deal with the wounds of our heart, we cannot become whole.

we can’t walk as we were meant to walk, live as we were meant to live

Sermon

Today we are going to talk about true healing.

You cannot become whole without healing

Prop: You cannot experience wholeness without walking through the healing pathway.

Today we are going to walk through the healing path.

This is not just for big sins, for serious wounds

This is for the most tragic and the most temporary wounds

So learning how we can heal will affect every area of our lives for the rest of our lives

healing will result in a transformed life

We can either ignore our wounds and continue limping through life or

we can deal with them, feel them and heal them

Why would we go through this?

do you want to be well?

do you want to walk, to run as God intended you to do?

Sometimes we get so used to limping that we’ve forgotten the joy of running free.

Furthermore the reality is that if we don’t do this

Pain that is not transformed is transmitted

Bible

We will be in 1 John 1:5-7 today

You can go there in your Bibles.

Let’s Pray

150 days of prayer — home, health and revival

Pray

praying for healing

Psalm 147:3 ESV 3 He heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds.

Scriptures on Healing

A few weeks ago we did an overview of healing and repentance

and we looked at 1 John 1:5-7

[image of pathway]

This is basically what we covered

Here you can see the “redemptive pathway to transformation”

On the left we have the Repentant Pathway

On the Right the Healing Pathway.

Today we’ll be walking through the healing path and next week the repentant path

The goal is a transformative community where forgiveness, reconciliation and restoration are possible.

For this to happen both Healing and Repentance need to be active and understood.

Let’s look more closely at 1 John 1:5-7 as we examine the healing path.

Annotation

1 John 1:5–7 ESV5 This is the message we have heard from him and proclaim to you, that God is light, and in him is no darkness at all. 6 If we say we have fellowship with him while we walk in darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth. 7 But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin.

There is no darkness in him

This is last week. The enemy wants to convince you that there is darkness in the Lord, that is evil, ill intent, cruelty.

Fellowship — community / communion with God and each other.

There’s always a vertical and horizontal aspect

Walking in the light

This is being honest.

It’s confessing our sins yes, but also confessing our wounds

If we walk in the light

we have fellowship

with each other — this is true biblical community the hope of healing & repentance

the blood of Jesus cleanses us from ALL SIN

sin we’ve done and sin done against us.

The Healing Pathway

So what does it look like to actually heal from our wounds?

Let’s start at the beginning.

1. Wound occurs

1st thing is a wound is inflicted — a sin is done against someone

An injustice occurs — A hurt experienced — A debt is owed

This is the stepping on the nail, or worse being stuck with it intentionally.

Some wounds are intentional, many are not.

The enemy will want to assure us that all wounds are intentional and personal.

The immediate response:

Anger — Sadness — both at the same time.

Our Natural Response

But we do not just have wounded hearts, but sinful hearts

and this is not often how we respond.

Rather what we do is either:

lash out immediately in anger

withdraw and dissociate from the hurt

suppress the feelings

We may laugh it off, invalidating our emotions

We may ignore it

we may immediately try to numb it through addictions

When we don’t deal with the wound it can become infected

Think about nail in your foot

it may spread

it will cause a limp.

it becomes an unresolved wound / unfinished business

rather than experiencing redemption, we settle in to our new reality.

We may limp for days, months, years even decades.

The Biblical Pattern

The Bible gives us a pattern in how to deal with our anger.

We said last week that these are the good and right experiences to have at sin and injustice.

But it is what we do with that anger in particular that is so important.

In Eph 4:26-27 we saw that Paul implores to

‘be angry but to not sin in our anger’

and to process our anger lest we give an open door to the enemy of of our souls.

Paul is actually quoting Psalm 4:4-5 which gives us a pattern for how to process our emotions.

Psalm 4:4–5 ESV4 Be angry, and do not sin; ponder in your own hearts on your beds, and be silent. Selah

ponder = reflect in our inner self

be silent — why?

listen to God this reminds me of Psalm 46:10 “Be still and know that I am God”

our own thoughts are not always trustworthy especially in our wounded ness

This is engaging with God

It is bringing it to him.

Psalm 4:4–5 ESV 5 Offer right sacrifices, and put your trust in the Lord.

Offer right sacrifices = worship with a right heart

Key: trust in the lord.

This is what forgiveness ultimately is = a trusting in the Lord.

This is how a spiritually healthy person deals with their wounds and their anger.

This is what can be possible for us as we walk through the healing pathway and begin to become whole,

as we experience the transformative power of healing

but because we don’t naturally do this, or know how to do this our wounds and emotions are unresolved.

Emotional Triggers

But God has given us indicators that we have unresolved wounds, and we all do.

Do you know how?

It’s our emotions

Again God gives us emotions as indicator lights on our dashboard that something is off in our souls

We need to pay attention to our emotions (Psalm 4:4) — reflect in our hearts.

Specifically it is our emotional triggers.

Emotional triggers are emotional responses that are disproportionate to the experience at hand.

We all have them.

Example: The Pointing Finger

What are your emotional triggers?

What triggers you?

What sets you off?

angers you? enrages you? annoys you?

what is it that shuts you down?

causes you to delve into depression?

to dissociate from your circumstances?

This is called Reactivity — we become reactive to certain experiences.

until this is pointed out to us we think they are normal.

It’s part of the reason why we need community

People that we trust that will tell us the truth.

Proverbs 27:6 ESV

6 Faithful are the wounds of a friend; profuse are the kisses of an enemy.

Proverbs 20:5 CSB

5 Counsel in a person’s heart is deep water; but a person of understanding draws it out.

Some good questions to ask each other:

What’s underneath?

What’s between?

What’s underneath that statement? that tone? that body language?

Usually you can sense this.

What’s between us?

The lie we believe is that we can somehow ignore our pain, disregard our wounds.

But human beings don’t work that way.

As we said week 2 we are a Story Shaped people.

who we are today is the conglomeration of our past experiences, personalities and perceptions of ourselves and the world.

In his monumental work The Body Keeps Score, Bessel Van Der Kolk demonstrates that our physical bodies and brains remember the past.

our hurts don’t just disappear they get stored away in the closets of our souls.

Eventually we run out of storage space and things start to overflow out

we have emotional outbursts that we have no idea where they came from.

Our tempers flare unexpectedly

Or conversely we are shut down and delve into a depression and we don’t know why.

In some cases we get so used to limping that we’ve forgotten the joy of running free,

of living free from the burden and weight of our wounds.

This leads to our first real step of healing.

Step 1: Confession and Expression of the Hurt

Confession

To confess the hurt is to first acknowledge the hurt

This is “walking in the light” (1 John 1:7)

We have to acknowledge the wound if we are ever to tend to it

This can be the hardest part for at least two reasons:

1. We don’t want to feel weak

We don’t want to admit that something that seemed so trivial or happened

or so long ago could still be affecting us,

could still have power over us.

But until we tell the truth about our story we can never be free of it.

2. we simply don’t want to feel pain of thinking about it

We’ve been avoiding it for years precisely because we don’t want to feel the pain.

Confession of the wound is the first step

We have to say “this happened and it hurt me and it is still affecting me”

But then we move to expression of the hurt:

Grieving is the expression of the hurt.

Grieving is the expression of the hurt.

This one is equally hard.

Nobody wants to feel pain.

Especially when we live in a culture where we want to avoid pain at all costs.

We have multi-billion dollar industries aimed at precisely this: pain avoidance.

This leads to all kinds of addictions.

But we were made to grieve sin, it is the godly response

Because God himself grieves sin and it’s effects

To grieve our story is to honor our story.

To grieve our story is to feel the pain, to sit in the pain.

it is through this grieving process that we become lighter

we feel less heavy, though a scar may remain.

I’m convinced it’s why God gave us tears.

Like is there an evolutionary reason for tears?

Something literally leaves our body.

It’s literally like the pain can leave drop by drop as we grieve our pain.

Don’t you usually feel good after a good cry?

Most of you men are like, I don’t cry.

I get it. Look I thought I cried easily, but it turns out I don’t

I think i’m more detached from my pain than I want to admit.

But every so often a good cry comes, usually when i’m totally overwhelmed.

Man it feels good when it happens, at least afterwards.

Sometimes we just need a good cry.

But transformative grieving comes through a process the Bible calls lamenting.

Lamenting

To lament is to grieve with God

It’s to invite God into our story, into our pain.

Many of us don’t know how to grieve let alone how to lament.

But many of the psalms are psalms of lament

there’s a whole book of the bible called lamentations.

The truth is God is with you in your pain.

God does care. “There is no darkness in Him”

Listen to this verse:

Psalm 56:8 NLT 8 You keep track of all my sorrows. You have collected all my tears in your bottle. You have recorded each one in your book.

that’s an amazing statement

We believe the lies of the enemy

That God doesn’t care, but he does

And he longs to be our true comfort

God doesn’t first eliminate our pain, he enters into it.

It is God’s presence in our pain that transforms us.

Personal Story: I struggled with depression for a long time. It was through the counseling process, through telling the truth about my story, and grieving the pain that I began to be healed. Seeing that God met me in the depth of my pain was transformative. He didn’t just take away the pain, but he sat there with me as long as it would take.

It’s what Paul talks about in 2 Cor 1:3-4

2 Corinthians 1:3–4 CSB3 Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and the God of all comfort. 4 He comforts (come) us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any kind of affliction, through the comfort we ourselves receive from God.

God the Father is a god of comfort, healing and tender care.

When we experience God’s comfort in our pain it is transformative

and will eventually allow us to comfort others in their pain

it’s the beauty of the gospel pattern

the multiplication of ministry

In the book of Job, one of the most well known stories of suffering in the Bible I find his ultimate response to God compelling.

After 41 chapters of suffering, argument with his friends about sin and repentance

God shows up and reveals Himself to Job.

Here’s jobs response:

Job 42:5–6 ESV5 I had heard of you by the hearing of the ear, but now my eye sees you; 6 therefore I despise myself, and repent (am comforted) in dust and ashes.”

ESV footnote: i am comforted

Job experienced God’s goodness and greatness in the midst of his pain and confusion

He finally saw God as who God was.

And he was ‘comforted’

Friends we need to grieve the sin done against us.

We need to lament with God

This is part of the healing path

it doesn’t go around the pain, but through the pain.

When we do that we can now move towards true forgiveness

Step 2: Forgiving & Cleansing

Once we properly identify the wound, we acknowledge and grieve the pain before God and perhaps with others.

We can be ready to move towards forgiveness.

We spent the last two weeks unpacking forgiveness,

so I would encourage you to go back and listen if you missed them.

We said that forgiveness was a gracious release of a genuine debt owed.

To forgive means to call sin sin, which is actually a loving thing to do

and to give over your right for justice to God as he says in Romans 12:19 “don’t avenge yourselves, Vengeance is mine…I will repay”

forgiving is trusting God with justice.

He will right every wrong one day, this is trusting God with Justice

Psalm 4:5 “trust the Lord”

Justice will come in one of two places:

Eternally on the cross

Eternally in hell

All true forgiveness goes through the cross,

because cross is where justice is paid for all sin

where forgiveness is offered for sin.

forgiveness is ultimately removing the nail from your heart and seeing that it is the same nail that held Jesus to the cross

Forgiveness declares that the cross was sufficient for all sin, yours and and your offender.

Forgiving then is what really allows the wound to be healed.

It acknowledges it, grieves it and forgives it

It is recognizing the nail, feeling the pain, and removing it.

Jesus died for all sin

He absorbs the cost of of all sin and makes forgiveness possible.

Jesus absorbs the sin, pain and shame

it is by “his wounds that we healed” (Isa 53:3) and made whole

when we forgive we are

giving your story to God

we are trusting him with it, all of it.

Cleansing from the sin/of the wound

now that the nail has been removed through forgiving

the wound can be cleansed and dressed and begin to heal.

1 John 1:7 ESV 7 But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin.

Jesus washes away the stain of sin on our souls

We are made clean again.

We can begin to heal

We can begin to become whole again

He cleanses us and covers us

He covers our shame with his righteousness

We have been clothed in Christ

We have been given a new identity

our shame, the sin done against us no longer defines us.

Galatians 3:27–28 ESV27 For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ. 28 There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.

Our identity is in Christ.

Healing is a process

healing is a process, takes time

just like physically

It may take years, and there maybe scars.

But even Jesus bears the scars of the crucifixion — for all eternity

Healing is a process and it takes time

You made need to go through the process again and again,

But you will get better

What’s then?

Healing then opens the door to restored relationships.

reconciliation is made possible.

Though it may not always happen.

sin may have lasting consequences

as we said last week forgiving doesn’t necessarily mean trusting someone again

it doesn’t mean you don’t call the cops

it doesn’t mean there are consequences.

Because true repentance needs to also happen, which we’ll cover next week.

Application

To experience transformation is to

not just know the healing path, but to walk it.

It is in the experience of God’s comfort in lamenting, his presence with you in your pain and the act of forgiving someone that transforms us

The question before you is:

Will you walk the healing pathway and experience your transformation?

Only you can decide to do this

but we do this in community.

But Jesus led the way.

he went through the cross, not around it

there’s only one path to redemption resurrection power, and Jesus showed us that path

it was not around the pain, it was through the pain

death comes before resurrection.

and can lead you through it as well TOGETHER

Hebrews 12:1–3 ESV1 Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, 2 looking to Jesus, the founder (author) and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross

JESUS IS OUR PATH TO HEALING

Let’s Pray

Isaiah 57:14–21 ESV

14 And it shall be said, “Build up, build up, prepare the way, remove every obstruction from my people’s way.” 15 For thus says the One who is high and lifted up, who inhabits eternity, whose name is Holy: “I dwell in the high and holy place, and also with him who is of a contrite and lowly spirit, to revive the spirit of the lowly, and to revive the heart of the contrite.

16 For I will not contend forever, nor will I always be angry; for the spirit would grow faint before me, and the breath of life that I made. 17 Because of the iniquity of his unjust gain I was angry, I struck him; I hid my face and was angry, but he went on backsliding in the way of his own heart.

18 I have seen his ways, but I will heal him; I will lead him and restore comfort to him and his mourners, 19 creating the fruit of the lips. Peace, peace, to the far and to the near,” says the Lord, “and I will heal him.

20 But the wicked are like the tossing sea; for it cannot be quiet, and its waters toss up mire and dirt. 21 There is no peace,” says my God, “for the wicked.”