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One of those paradoxes in life is that the best healer of emotional wounds is God. However, those same emotional hurts are also the very things that keep us from approaching God for healing. Someone who has been abused and rejected will be afraid of further rejection. A person who has been deeply shamed will experience an even greater sense of shame just thinking about approaching God.
The cure for this is the slow process of coming to terms with Who God really is. Most of our fear of approaching Him comes from the underlying belief that He will hurt us in some way. When we begin to discover that "a bruised reed He will not break" then we are able to trust Him, even just a tiny bit, with our deepest wounds and find healing from them.
Thursday, January 8, 2009
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You know, maybe it's hard to approach and trust HIm for this because we can't see Him (except through spirit-led imagination in reading Gospel accounts in Scripture) and we can't touch Him. And, it seems that a lot of healing can take place through those physical means-- we just aren't naturally used to seeing and touching spirit to Spirit.
ReplyDeleteAnd quite often, it appears as if He does reject us - unanswered prayer, no manifestation of needs met, etc.
ReplyDeleteIn some ways, I think when we have suffered a lot of rejection, it is natural to perceive the difficulties that God allows in our lives to be rejection. "After all," the thinking goes, "If He really loved me, He would stop this struggle I am going through."
ReplyDeletePart of our maturing as believers is when we are able to let God be who He says He is in spite of the circumstances around us. Boy is that difficult when He seems so distant and the pain is so close.
yep!
ReplyDeleteThen how does it become real to us? How do we actually experience God and His healing when the most foundational of our experiences are of rejection and detachment and distance, and the bulk of our experiences with God are words that are rarely backed up by something we can sink our teeth into? When it's not a matter of the circumstances around us but something far, far deeper?
ReplyDeleteI think a key point to remember is that God wants to have a relationship with us more than we do with Him. This whole creation/salvation thing was His idea in the first place.
ReplyDeleteWhen we are able to believe, even a little bit, that He wants us and that He is love, just as His word says. Then, we can pray to Him something like: "God. I want to know you but I am incredibly afraid. So, even though I resist You at every turn, please work in me to be able to experience You - Your love and Your presence."
Then, I think there are things we can do to seek the presence of God, but the most critical thing is to allow Him to work in us so that we can be healed and open to His presence. For me, that process has taken years to accomplish - it seems He is rarely in as big a rush as we are.
It also seems to me that there is a work that God chooses to do in us in the desert - apart from Him. This, especially, can feel like a time of rejection when it is really a time of drawing near.
You may find it worthwhile ot read my book on Rejection. I'll even offer a money-back guarantee. :-) www.periecopublishing.com