“What God wants is that we would weep with people when things are being broken in their lives. Often we can understand and identify because we have been through it.”
“When these strokes fester into wounds, they paralyze capacities to function in the receptivity of grace and truth. A person who is easily angered in his motions is most likely a very wounded person. His wounds probably are very deep, and he does not know how to regulate his responses. This brings feelings of guilt and defeat. These issues must be resolved by the grace and love of Christ.” Pastor Carl Stevens
Sometimes a counselor will ask his client, “Have you made a commitment?” Corrective betterment goes this way, “ I (the counselor) am going to make a commitment to you (the client). “Why is this more good? To answer that question, we must only realize; a commitment remains a mere legalistic self-binding unless all double-mindedness at a soul’s core has been made whole. For this reason, true commitment looms an impossibility for our damaged friend; odds are. Nevertheless they may readily agree to fleshly vows.
The point is; has the unconditional, unrelenting, wooing, and winning initiation of God, His love in motion, dramatically demonstrated it’s supreme desire to reach you individually and intimately yet? Have you seen His advance toward little-you as free, uncoexed, unmanipulated, and obeying no law or duty? Healing, binding up and repairing exist His only goal toward unifying your soul. Have you seen the purity of this love leaping toward you with grace?
Has the wounding breach been bound up? Has your deepest searching of “what am I all about?” been drawn into discussion as your soul’s lover reveals aggressive suitor-ship your way? Has He asked you to share your heart with Him? Has His gentleness spawned a love in return?
If not, He is not finished yet. Have you dropped tears at His compassionate approach, as forgiveness pours forth from His wings, identifying with your suffering? He longs to see your countenance, to hear your voice. He looks beyond your fault only to see your need, addressing you outside of your religious piety; He pines to touch the “real” in you.
Damaged persons come for counseling; no, they are not healthy. How can we tell? First, they can’t really digest our counsel though they may desperately appear to be trying. Damaged people have been living in soul-strength and have abandoned or never known their true innards. We sense they are not getting it.
Two, if they are Christians, they live abstract to the Holy Spirit’s fellowship; their wounds have separated them from God. So, our prayerful Holy Spirit led initiation meets a brick wall, whether comfort, teaching, guidance, encouragement, or conviction. Ever experience this? Their god is an agnostic one and they say,”we cannot tell”or “we know that.” Three, they may appear to have their own healing program in motion, of which they give back all the pertinent verses and sayings. They may have resorted to self-counseling, a fair show, but fleshly.
These live on a superficial moral plain, cannot get above to the spiritual. Psychology has been their band-aide, self help their guide, the letter of Scripture, their mode. They have changed their location, their church, their spouse, their house or whatever. They have not been made clean, washed, scrubbed with fuller’s soap, had a soul catharsis. They have kept the vineyard of relatives and friends; their own vineyard they have not kept.
O, how God would dote on you now! Make you feel special, His one and only. O, how He loves you, grace is poured out in His lips. His chariot is paved with love and He calls you to come up on the mountain to enjoy Him. “Come away, my love.” Many waters cannot quench His love, it is stronger than death. Yes, death.
You have died a thousand deaths. You have been battered and bruised and your miserable comforters have ignored it. Not so with Jesus; He remembers, He remembers your frame is but dust. He ministers to you on your bed of languishing. He appears a nursemaid, as Paul did to the Thessalonians. He aims to nurture you back to health.
Veneer, personality, masks, facade, hypocrisy, phony-baloney, defense—that you? “O, I’m not that bad.” you think. How long, my dear friend, will your guilt keep you aloof, your poor self image, your fear? Your wound stinketh, your infection spreads, and your covering is too narrow. Is there a balm in Gilead? Yes. Surrender, please surrender, your journey is too great. Take a cup of cold water and eat the bread of loves’ advancement. Let another carry you, you have fallen in the desert. Let your footsteps disappear! He will hold you.
Be First to Comment