HEALING EMOTIONAL WOUNDS
FREEDOM FROM THE SLAVERY OF SEXUAL SIN
October 21, 2013LOVE AND RESPECT THE KEY TO A HEALTHY FAMILY
October 30, 2013Family Series:
GCC Sunday message
Healthy families are the key to bringing up healthy kids. Health kids will perform better in school, will become healthy citizens and will in turn raise healthy families.
A church with healthy families is the key to changing our communities.
A major key to spiritual health is to deal with the past and to let the light of Jesus shade on our dark past to bring healing.
I. How do emotional wounds come?
1. Words.
The words we speak to our kids matter a lot. The words we speak to our spouses matter a lot, the words we speak to staff or our colleagues at work matter a lot. Positive ones bring health and negative ones bring wounds.
Proverbs 18:21
Death and life are in the power of the tongue,
And those who love it will eat its fruit.[1]
2. Negative actions done to us
a. Childhood abuse
b. Abusive marriage (physical, abusive words,)
c. Promiscuious husband or wife
1Samuel 1: 2 And he had two wives: the name of one was Hannah, and the name of the other Peninnah. Peninnah had children, but Hannah had no children. 6 And her rival also provoked her severely, to make her miserable, because the Lord had closed her womb. 7 So it was, year by year, when she went up to the house of the Lord, that she provoked her; therefore she wept and did not eat.
3. Loss of a loved one or loss of things.
Ruth 2: 20 But she said to them, “Do not call me Naomi; call me Mara, for the Almighty has dealt very bitterly with me. 21 I went out full, and the Lord has brought me home again empty. Why do you call me Naomi, since the Lordhas testified against me, and the Almighty has afflicted me?”
4. Disappointments in life or personal failure
5. Un-answered prayer
II. How do we see there are wounds
1. Out busts of anger, irritability
2. Mistrusting all people.
3. Social withdraw
4. Compulsive behavior ( obesity, or totally refusing food that people become malnutrition)
5. Escapism. ( alcoholism, drug addiction)
6. Low self esteem
7. Giving up on life and going into other extremes (e.g. prostitutes are usually people who were molested when they were young)
III. What happens when we do not deal with them?
Un attended to wounds grow septic.
Time will not necessarily heal emotional wounds.
Wounds that we got as children can come out when we are adults. They can affect our inter-personal relationships. Many people cannot hold on to jobs because they are not emotionally healthy. Many people cannot have a healthy marriage because they have a damaged past.
Emotional wounds/hurts can lead to:
Ø Irrational revengeful behavior ( the recent case in Masaka)
Ø Depression
Ø Sicknesses: ulcers, insomnia, pressure etc.
Ø Mental sicknesses
Ø Aggressive, dictatorial tendencies in some leaders
Ø “Hurting people, hurt others”
Ø Demonic oppression
Ø Family break-ups
IV. HOW DO WE DEAL WITH EMOTIONAL WOUNDS
1. Open up and express your feelings verbally to another person and if the time is right to the person who hurt you. (the way you say it matters if it happens to be your spouse). Do not live in denial.
James 5:16, “Confess your faults one to another, and pray one for another, that ye may be healed. The effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much.”
2. Prayer: Openly share your feelings, your hurts, and your anger to God.
Opening up provides a spiritual and an emotional release that leads to your healing.
Ps. 13
How long, O Lord? Will You forget me forever?
How long will You hide Your face from me?
2 How long shall I take counsel in my soul,
Having sorrow in my heart daily?
How long will my enemy be exalted over me?
Ps 42:9
I will say to God my Rock,
“Why have You forgotten me?
Why do I go mourning because of the oppression of the enemy?”
10 As with a breaking of my bones,
My enemies reproach me,
While they say to me all day long,
“Where is your God?”
11 Why are you cast down, O my soul?
And why are you disquieted within me?
Hope in God;
For I shall yet praise Him,
The help of my countenance and my God.
3. Forgiving the person who hurt you.
Mark 11:25-26
25 “And whenever you stand praying, if you have anything against anyone, forgive him, that your Father in heaven may also forgive you your trespasses. 26 But if you do not forgive, neither will your Father in heaven forgive your trespasses.”
Lewis Smedes, “when you forgive someone you release a person from bondage, and that person is yourself.” An unforgiving heart is a hard heart, and we will not be spiritually effective leaders with such a resistance to grace and forgiveness. Fryling, Robert A.
Ø Unforgiveness hurts us more than the person we fail to forgive.
Ø Unforgiveness is a deadly poison that separates us from God’s forgiveness in our own lives and gives us over to tormenting spirits.
Ø Unforgiveness will hinder or block the healing power of the Holy Spirit.
Ø Unforgiveness will put us into the hands of tormenting spirits.
4. Believe, Accept and Receive God’s healing for you.
Isaiah 53:4, “Surely he hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows: yet we did esteem him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted.”
Psalms 147:3, “He healeth the broken in heart, and bindeth up their wounds.”
1 Peter 5:7, “Casting all your care upon him; for he careth for you.”
Luke 4:18, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor; he hath sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised.”
Matthew 11:28-30, “Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. 29 Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.”
5. Seek Counseling & Deliverance
V. GOD USES OUR HURTS FOR HIS GOOD.
Joseph’s hurts became a solution to a whole nation.
Hannah’s pain was turned into her dedicating the child Samuel to God, who later on lead Israel.
Naomi’s pain led her to become the grand mother of Jesse who later became the great grand father of Jesus.
