Emotional Baggage: Four Steps to Healing
Emotional Baggage.4 • Sermon • Submitted
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The light of the body is the eye: if therefore thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light.
But if thine eye be evil, thy whole body shall be full of darkness. If therefore the light that is in thee be darkness, how great is that darkness!
Allegory:
Eye = your perspective - the way you see things
Light = truth, Spirit of God
Darkness = lies, falsehood, The Enemy
Body = mind
My translation:
If your perspective is good, your whole mind is filled with truth. But when your perspective is bad, your whole mind is filled with falsehoods. And if the truth you think you have is actually false, how great that falsehood is!
How can the eye be bad:
eye born defective - abuse and dysfunction, sin from birth
trauma hurt it, life hurts, pain, circumstance and abuse
This lesson is for those who life has hurt you, not those horrifically abused sexually, emotionally or physically. Those situations cannot be dealt within a few simple sessions like I am doing.
I am talking to the most of us who grew up in homes with parents that did there best but were not perfect.
How do you stop the generational curse?
Maybe a better question would be, “How do I start a generational blessing!”
God does not punish you for what your parents did...
BUT he does punish you for the things you learned from your parents that you have not dealt with.
Why? He made a way of escape for you!
First step to healing is forgivness.
If you can’t take this first step, you will not be healed!
Anger must be dealt with or it will turn to bitterness.
Bitterness is a cancer that WILL destroy you.
Not as though I had already attained, either were already perfect: but I follow after, if that I may apprehend that for which also I am apprehended of Christ Jesus.
Brethren, I count not myself to have apprehended: but this one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those things which are before,
I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus.
Four Steps on the Road to Recovery and Healing
I don’t mean to say that I have already achieved these things or that I have already reached perfection. But I press on to possess that perfection for which Christ Jesus first possessed me.
No, dear brothers and sisters, I have not achieved it, but I focus on this one thing: Forgetting the past and looking forward to what lies ahead,
I press on to reach the end of the race and receive the heavenly prize for which God, through Christ Jesus, is calling us.
Paul had a lot of baggage
This is what he did overcome and fulfill God’s purpose in his life.
Begins after forgivness.
Recognize how dysfunctional (sinful) you are.
When you read a AA book, or any kind of 12 step program, they tell you that there are 6 ways that addicted individuals ovoid dealing with their addictions.
I find that it does not matter the addiction, hurt or scenario, people respond the same way - avoiding a real look at who and what they are!
If they are addicted to drugs or
They are living is dysfunction and sin, it’s the same!
Minimizing - recognize the problem but NOT the severity
Yes, I drink to much but I’m not an alcoholic!
Blaming - recognize the problem but blame the circumstance to someone else
Yes I drink to much but if you where married to her/him you would too!
Excusing - alibis for behavior
I am so stressed out that if I didn’t drink like I do I would never sleep at night.
Generalizing - recognize problem but no plan to deal with it
Ya, I know I have a drinking problem, I’m going to stop drinking!
Really? How? When?
Dodging - change subject
Attacking - angry and irritable when issue is brought up
Teaching people not to even bring it up - fear your response
You have to admit how dysfunctional you are, which opens the door to how healing.
This is the first thing Paul did!
He recognized his baggage!
How many times did he make the statement that he was “the chief of all sinners”?
He had no false allusions of himself.
BUT
Neither was he content to stay there or use his dysfunction as an excuse!
Forget the past and take personal responsibility for your behavior
Paul took personal responsibility for who and what he was!
Stop using your pain, dysfunction, past as an excuse for who and what you are?
FORGET THE PAST!
TAKE PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY
Most common form of denial for people today especially Millennials
Blaming parents
Blame parents for every bad thing that has happened to them.
There is an expiration date on the mess you inherit from your parents
When you become an adult, it is your problems to deal with!
Take responsibility for your actions
There is a generation that curseth their father, And doth not bless their mother.
There is a generation that are pure in their own eyes, And yet is not washed from their filthiness.
There is a generation, O how lofty are their eyes! And their eyelids are lifted up.
Parents are human!
They did BOTH good and bad
If all you can see is the wrong your parents did, something is wrong with you!
Wrong with your eye, perspective!
It is time to forget the past, take responsibility for the present so that you can have a good future!
Don’t mean you erase the past and forget it
It means you forgive, give up the right to punish
Recognize
Take responsibility
What Paul ment was that he was not going to allow his past to justify his dysfunction!
3. Move on with your life
Break the cycle
Forgive (choice not a feeling)
Take personal responsibility for your life - surrender the right to punish
This is what Paul did
Pressed forward - greek meaning to move forward with resolve, not looking back
Paul was intentionally moving forward!
What did Paul have to forget?
Killing christians
Killing Stephen
He threw the first stone!
This is why he held the coats
He had to forget the past in order to fulfil God’s plan
4. Focus on God’s Goal for your life!
God has things for you to do!
For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them.
workmenship = Greek word poe-eema, poem (works of art)
We are God’s works of art, God’s masterpiece!
There are specific good works that God planned for you before you were born!
Our Calling
Categories of Calling
Spiritual callings
Family callings
Husband/wife
Parent
Provider (occupational)
Personal callings
All these callings comprise the “Good works” that God has called me to do!
None of these callings should be contradictory to the other
Work in harmony with the others!
If I am not the proper husband, I will not be the proper pastor!
Likewise, ye husbands, dwell with them according to knowledge, giving honour unto the wife, as unto the weaker vessel, and as being heirs together of the grace of life; that your prayers be not hindered.
Fulfilling my callings is my goal in life!
God’s goal for me!
I have to press on!
I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.
I want to be all that God called me to be!