Tag Archives: Healing

Surrendered Intercession

“‘Oh, that Ishmael may live before you!’ Abraham cried to God.” (Genesis 17:18) This cry has always moved my heart. I have always felt a deep connection with Ishmael; we are him. That cry from the heart of a loving father is God’s cry for you and me. This is intercessory prayer. In My Utmost for His Highest, Oswald Chambers wrote, “You cannot truly intercede through prayer if you do not believe in the reality of redemption.” We must believe that God is mighty enough and lovely enough to make things right and that God desires to make it so. Intercession then is locating a person or a situation into the lap of dear God, confident that God will make things right.

I was 24 years old, a freshly minted American resident when my six-month-old baby went into anaphylactic reaction. Out of my belly came the cry, “God, what’s going on? He’s yours; please heal him!” I had given him peanut butter, and apparently, his body did not like it. I watched all the swelling go down within a few minutes as I cried to God in dance. I never considered calling 911, not because I have something against it! In the moment, I simply did not think of it; I knew prayer and God’s reliability.

Another time in a conversation with a friend, she said, “I get migraines,” welcoming my prayer. I prayed immediately. A few days later, she called to say that she had not had pain since our prayer together. Her migraines are still gone. I can go on and on sharing situations in which God has intervened because of intercession. I keep a journal of people and things I bring before God daily. God is reliable.

Intercession is becoming love; it is becoming the heart of God for humanity. It is asking God to redeem, to make right according to his perfect love. We do not tell God what to do, but we allow the heart of God to flow through us for our friends, families, society, and even enemies. Enemies don’t stay enemies in prayer.

It’s 2021; we see enemies everywhere – strange ideologies, racism, bigotry and such in the world and in the church. We are wary of each other and perhaps weary of God. God is not answering fast enough for you, or maybe he allowed things you did not want. There’s a sense in which we wonder, “why pray, when God will do whatever he wants anyway?” But remember how Paul encouraged the Galatians: “Let us not became weary, [in interceding prayer] for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up.” (Galatians 6:9) We must believe God is mighty enough to save and lovely enough to want to save.

Surrender is the key to intercession. Without it, love cannot and will not flow. We cannot avoid surrender. Revival will not happen without it. The transformation we desire in the lives of those we bring before God will not happen unless we raise our flags in surrender. Healing will only come to our earth – your flesh, mine, and the world – when we are free of our preconceived ideas of how reality should be, and we yield to God.

Did God say, “If my people who are called by my name will get smarter in their arguments, independence, possessions, and politics, I will hear from heaven and answer; I will forgive their sins and heal their land”? There is so much to make the heart weary. The earth and people groan for the return of God. We cry revival with our lips, but our hearts are not humbled; we have not repented of our arrogance. God appeared to Solomon when he consecrated the temple. He said, “When I shut up the heavens so that there is no rain or command locusts to devour the land or send a plague among my people,[you have to admit it has felt like this for the world] if my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and I will forgive their sin and will heal their land.” (2 Chronicles 7:13-14, NIV)

Physical, emotional, spiritual, and societal healing all begins and ends in surrendered intercession. When you pray for me, and I pray for you, we manifest God’s love. We are family connected through the explosive love of God who created all things. Your healing is intertwined with mine and mine to yours. Let us pray for Ishmael. “Oh, that Ishmael may live before you!”

Featured image courtesy Henrique Jacob on Unsplash.

A Trauma Survivor’s Advice for Surviving a Global Crisis

Our Wesleyan tradition holds a rich heritage of understanding the way the whole of our created being functions. We share a long history of encouraging one another to health and wholeness in every way, just as our God designed. We believe that we are responsible for the well-being of not just our souls, but our bodies and our minds as well, in line with the command to love the Lord our God with all that we are. Sometimes that becomes difficult in times of hardship, adversity, and trauma.

As a survivor of both extended childhood trauma as well as intense crisis situations as an adult, including my time working as a crisis responder for a domestic violence agency, I have learned some things about the effect trauma has on my brain. In the years of healing I have engaged, I have learned some key truths about trauma and times of crisis. These have helped me during this year of incredible global turmoil and an astounding level of transition and crisis in my own personal life. I’m hopeful that the things I have learned on this journey can help others to care for themselves and others well in these challenging times. Here’s my best counsel for surviving times of crisis:

Now is not the time to make large decisions.

When you are going through a traumatic situation, your survival depends on being able to make the kind of in-the-moment decisions that ensure your short-term survival or well-being. Sometimes this is a necessary sacrifice to make, but sometimes our choices are not as limited as they seem when our survival-focused brain gets involved in the decision process. While your brain is focused on the crisis at hand, it is blind to other details that are critical to consider when making large decisions. Emotions also tend to become difficult to manage during times like these, and emotions can alter and even drive your decision-making process in ways that are less than ideal. Survival situations can make it very tempting to choose options that solve short-term problems but create much larger, long-term issues.

If you must make a big decision during this season, here are some tools for overcoming the shortfalls in your brain’s crisis response:

1. Take your time.

Give every large decision 24 hours at minimum to consider and pray about your decision. You need time to hear from God at the very least. It is harder to hear the more noise there is in your life, and crisis is loud. The bigger the decision, the longer you should deliberate about your choices. Besides, that gives God time to act! You wouldn’t believe how many problems He solves without our intervention.

Physiologically speaking, time gives your emotions time to calm down and gives those immediate-release adrenaline-related chemicals time to dissipate in your brain, leaving your thinking much clearer. You’ll be much better able to look at your situation objectively and see more of your options when you are calmer. Reactions are rarely helpful; responses are needed. The difference between a reaction and a response is time.

2. Take a nap.

You cannot think clearly if you are hungry, tired, or stressed. Sometimes you can’t do anything about being stressed, so while you are observing suggestion number one above, take the time to give your body some good rest, good nutrition, drink some water, and take some time to release some stress before approaching your big decision. Nutrition, hydration, and rest will make all the difference in the world in your brain function, so it is going to drastically change your ability to make a sound decision.

3. Take a poll.

Involve as many people who are wise and trustworthy in your decision as you can. They can see things that you cannot. During a crisis, your brain will be hyper-focused on certain details, leaving you blind to others. Finding a broadened external viewpoint can be immensely helpful in making a sound decision, but you can’t achieve one on your own from inside your situation. You need other people for that. Besides, they may have access to or knowledge of solutions that you don’t. You can make up for the flaws in other people’s opinions by choosing a wider variety of people from several areas of your life to include in your decision. Just remember that ultimately, your decision is yours to make, and your inner circle should be supportive and loving, not controlling and manipulative.

Now is not the time for a New Year’s Resolution.

Hear me here. We are coming up on the end of the year, and January is closing in. I, for one, will be glad to see an end to 2020, but global apocalypse rarely observes the Gregorian calendar, such as it is.

Perhaps the most traumatizing part about being in a crisis situation is when you don’t know how long it will last.

Aside from the impending new year, how many of us have shamed ourselves for gaining the dreaded “Covid 20?” We have abused ourselves for everything from gaining a few pounds to being less productive at work and school. What’s worse is taking a fearful half-glance at the relapse and overdose rates for those struggling with addiction and the suicide rates for those struggling with severe mental illness.

The truth about the brain in trauma is that it will adopt any type of mechanism that is readily available in order to help you survive and cope with what is happening. A lot of these, we call “negative” coping mechanisms (think substance abuse, promiscuity, gambling, risk-taking, cutting, etc, but also things like shopping, overeating, biting your nails, and other behaviors we use to make ourselves feel better when under stress). Some of these so-called “negative” coping mechanisms should never be engaged: I would never recommend that someone indulge a drug addiction in order to get through a crisis situation. Someone who relapses while in a crisis situation deserves support, treatment and love; relapse is very understandable, but obviously it would cause more damage than any good it could possibly do.

However, some of these less-than-ideal coping mechanisms don’t cause much damage. If biting your nails can help you get through a terrible year, then don’t beat yourself up for munching away. Bite your nails shamelessly if it helps. You can break that habit later when your situation and anxiety level are manageable. If you gained your Covid 20, love every inch of your fluffy self. You can hit the gym later when your energy isn’t devoted to getting through this. The same is true for all of you who, like me, were afraid to say that they actually lost weight during this pandemic due to stress and other factors! Regular exercise and nutrition are important, and they help during times of high stress. We have to remember, though, that gaining (or losing!) a few pounds is not something to beat yourself up about. Be as healthy as possible and love yourself while you are weak. Make space for yourself to be okay with being imperfect.

Now is the time to play.

You heard me right! In the midst of a crisis situation, the pattern we tend to follow is to pile all the work onto our shoulders and carry it as far as we can humanly go. We all have to pull from our reserves of strength from time to time and do what has to be done. Humanity’s history is full of people achieving the seemingly impossible in the face of great adversity. This is something we highly value as noble, and rightly so. However, we need to remember that trauma is caused by high levels of stress over extended periods of time.

In order to counteract and reduce the trauma your brain is taking in seasons of crisis, you actively need leisure. Leisure pursuits (hobbies and things we do to relax) allow our bodies to come out of that stressed state and begin to relieve those stress-related hormones, replacing them with the hormones that come from laughter, deep breathing, loving relationships, and relaxing or positively-stimulating pursuits. Leisure time will make your work time much more productive and will allow you to help your mental health through this crisis season.

The Lord Who Heals You: Jehovah Rophe

This spring as the Coronavirus pandemic gained momentum, my husband and I got ready to start a construction project at our house. We found a contractor, met with him a couple of times to talk about the plan – we even had masking tape lines on the floor where a new wall would go. Supplies were scheduled to arrive on a Friday and work would begin on that Saturday. And then, the stay-at-home order went out. I started having second thoughts about the timeline. Was it a good idea to start a construction project in the middle of a pandemic? Would we or the contractor get sick? Would we be able to buy the supplies we needed throughout the project?

Really, my core concern wasn’t whether we could start, but whether we’d be able to finish. The only thing worse than a construction project is a half-done, stalled construction project.

Any half-done project is frustrating. It’s messy, unusable, a constant reminder that there’s more work waiting. Usually, you can’t see a half-done, stalled project with any satisfaction. Instead, it’s a reminder that there’s more work to do – every time you walk past it. We put construction on hold.

Thinking about the construction dilemma makes me acknowledge that what I won’t tolerate in my home, I often tolerate in myself. I am not a finished project. I am still being formed in the image of Christ. My wounds are still being healed. My relationship with God has a lot of room to grow and deepen. All of that is okay. Those things will be “under construction” until I am done with my earthly life.

The problem is that – at times – I let those projects stall. There have been times I settle for them when they’re stalled out, half-way done, no new progress made for stretches at a time. That’s the problem.

But we love and serve a God who finishes projects. God completes what he starts. God doesn’t just want to save us – to rescue us and then leave us as we were. God wants to bring us into the safety of communion with him and then begin the work of restoration – of healing. We love and serve Jehovah Rophe – the God who heals.

The Lord is Healer

Early in the biblical story, God introduces himself to his people as healer. In Exodus, God refers to himself as Jehovah Rophe – The Lord Who Heals You. Some of the names of God were given to him by people as they had significant experiences with the Almighty. Like Hagar who called God Jehovah Roi – The God Who Sees Me. But in this case, God doesn’t wait for someone to notice through experience; instead, God announces it.

Look with me at Exodus 15:22-26:

Then Moses led Israel from the Red Sea and they went into the Desert of Shur. For three days they traveled in the desert without finding water.When they came to Marah, they could not drink its water because it was bitter. (That is why the place is called Marah.) So the people grumbled against Moses, saying, “What are we to drink?”

Then Moses cried out to the Lord, and the Lord showed him a piece of wood. He threw it into the water, and the water became fit to drink.

There the Lord issued a ruling and instruction for them and put them to the test. He said, “If you listen carefully to the Lord your God and do what is right in his eyes, if you pay attention to his commands and keep all his decrees, I will not bring on you any of the diseases I brought on the Egyptians, for I am the Lord, who heals you.”

A few days before this event at Marah, God orchestrated a mass exodus of his people out of slavery – out from under Egyptian control – and into freedom. They were free – but in many ways, they were still dragging their broken chains with them. They bore damage done by generations of enslavement. They had been mistreated, abused, threatened, their babies killed, their lives and dignity stolen. They were officially free – but not yet in a way to live the abundant life that God promised them. They needed a God who heals.

If you read those early moments of their exodus, you know that healing didn’t happen overnight for them. This event at Marah was the first of many events orchestrated by God to heal. Look at the passage again. Do you notice the signs that God’s people needed healing? They panicked when faced with adversity; their resilience was tapped out from repeated trauma. We can’t underestimate their suffering here, from our well-hydrated, air-conditioned, padded seats. This was a tough spot: three days walking in the desert without water means significant suffering. In their group are babies and children, elderly people, thirsty animals. And then, to their suffering, they add disappointment: the water they do find is undrinkable.

Their response to the situation shows that they need not only water, but the deep, inner freedom of healing. They panicked, fight or flight kicking in: “What are we going to drink?” And they grumbled not to Moses but against him; under pressure, this traumatized group of people turned on Moses.

Moses is dealing with the same situation. He is thirsty too; and he is responsible for leading this group. But Moses does something helpful: he cries out to the Lord. Healing had already begun in this leader. God had been working Moses’ healing during his time in Midian. He knows to bring his problems to God. Sometimes, people grumble when they need a God who heals; but people cry out to God when they’ve begun the process of healing.

Moses cries out and God responds. God tells Moses to throw a piece of wood into the water; instantly, the water is turned from bitter to sweet. On the surface, this is a practical move to provide desperately needed water. In another way, it was like a parable acted out: God’s kind and gentle way of saying, “Hey, Israelites, do you see yourselves a little in this bitter water? Here’s good news – I am a God who heals things. Would you like to be healed?”

God could have just yelled, “Stop being bitter!” Instead, God patiently introduces himself to this people as The God Who Heals. God heals the diseased water as a demonstration of his goodness and his healing power. Then God asks: “Will you let me heal you?”

If you read the rest of Exodus, you’ll see that the people didn’t initially get God’s deeper purpose in this miracle. They were distracted by their thirst and the water; they moved onto the next thing. Once the crisis was over, they forgot to circle back and confront their own bitterness. They continued in survival mode.

Is it tempting to stand back and admire God who heals, but to neglect allowing God to begin the healing process in you? It’s one thing to know that God can heal; it’s another thing to experience God as the One who heals you. Knowing about God only gets you so far. You and I need to experience God – not just once but many times.

God didn’t want the Israelites to be a half-way done, stalled construction project. God doesn’t want to leave you half-done and stalled out, either.

God has the power to change the very essence of something. How long had that water been bitter? Long enough for the locals to name the spot Marah – which means bitter. That’s how deep the bitterness ran.

How long had the Israelites tasted bitter suffering? For generations. As long as they could remember. But the God who heals can turn what is into what can be. How long have you been bitter, or sad, or angry, or shamed? Do you have ways of thinking and responding that are so deep you don’t even recognize them as broken? What has become your normal?

Maybe you’ve been angry or sad or hurt or sick for a long time – maybe for as long as you can remember. God’s not put off by that. The God who heals can change the very essence of who we are. Just like God changed water from bitter – so diseased that people dying of thirst couldn’t drink it – to sweet – a life-giving joy to experience.

The water was healed much more quickly than the Israelites were; it takes time to earn trust. So God began a process of healing with the Israelites – a 40-year process. The Israelites didn’t have a lot of patience for the process; do any of us? Do you expect an instant of salvation to resolve what can take the process of sanctification a lifetime? Sometimes if we get frustrated with the process, we opt out.

Let Yourself Be Healed

Sometimes healing happens suddenly. I know of physical healing that’s happened in a moment. You may know someone God has instantaneously healed of emotional wounds. But other times, healing happens in the slow lane. That was certainly the Israelites story. God healed them in stages.

You won’t just see this in the Old Testament, you can see it in the New Testament as well. Think about the disciples’ three-year-long journey with Jesus. There’s an interesting account of healing found in Mark 8:22-26:

They came to Bethsaida. Some peoplebrought a blind man to him and begged him to touch him. He took the blind man by the hand and led him out of the village; and when he had put saliva on his eyes and laid his hands on him, he asked him, “Can you see anything?” And the manlooked up and said, “I can see people, but they look like trees, walking.” Then Jesuslaid his hands on his eyes again; and he looked intently and his sight was restored, and he saw everything clearly. Then he sent him away to his home, saying, “Do not even go into the village.”

Jesus heals this man, but in a way that is unique from every healing story in the Gospels. For some reason, Jesus doesn’t heal him instantly like he did all the others. It’s certainly not because he couldn’t. Jesus healed people left and right. It’s not because the man lacked faith for full healing: Jesus raised the dead man Lazarus back to life, and dead people don’t have any faith.

I don’t know why Jesus took two turns at healing this guy, but I’m glad he did. It gives me hope. For me, healing has come in stages. I don’t think I’m alone. So this story gives my story context – a way of understanding why something can take so long. What can we learn about the healing journey?

I love these stories of Jesus interacting with people one-on-one. They are each unique and personal. The blind man’s friends want him to be healed; they must have heard about or seen Jesus heal people. So they bring the man to Jesus and beg for healing for their friend.

Jesus offers his hand to the man and leads him to a quiet spot where they can speak privately. Then – Jesus spits on the man’s eyes, touches him, and asks, “do you see anything?”

Each of us might handle being in the blind man’s shoes differently; I think I would have felt some performance pressure to be a success story. Everyone else had been healed instantly. Why wasn’t I? But the way Jesus asks the question, “Do you see anything?” sets up the man to answer honestly. “Well…I see what must be people, but they kind of look like trees…”

From this brave man’s example, I learn to be honest about where I am in my healing journey: honest with myself, with God, and with others. We all have areas that are works in progress. We all see more than we used to, but not everything clearly yet. Can we admit that?

Sometimes in faith communities there’s an expectation that because we go to church or believe in Christ that we are done – healed – good to go. We struggle to make room for the process of healing.

This man honestly reported exactly what he was experiencing. Jesus didn’t blame him, question his faith or intelligence, yell at him, or get frustrated and quit. Instead, the man’s honesty led to more healing. This man didn’t settle for half-a-healing. Jesus stood right there – present, kind, patient, through the whole process. Not an eye roll. Not a sign of irritation or frustration.

And the man didn’t walk away, either. He could have said, “well, people looking like trees is better than nothing,” and settled for that. He could have decided he wasn’t up for being smeared with saliva again. Instead, he spoke honestly with Jesus, and waited while the healing continued. Jesus did all the work. All the man had to do was stay present. And just like God transformed the water from bitter to sweet, God transformed a blind man into someone who could see clearly. Polar opposites: bitter to sweet, blind to 20/20 vision. Jehovah Rophe: The Lord Who Heals You.

At times, I have settled for half-a-healing; I have settled for being healed enough to hold it together in public – but falling apart inside. I have settled for seeing through a fog, when I could have been seeing clearly. Does that sound like you?

Why do we do this? Because sometimes, healing hurts. Ask anyone who has gone through cancer treatments. The God Who Heals does the work; but we have to submit to it, and it’s hard. If you get into a hard part, you may think you must be doing it wrong. But if it’s hard – you are probably doing it right. Healing requires us to name our baggage, wounds, hurt, or trauma, and allow God to work there – in a place that’s sometimes quite painful, that we’d rather ignore or hide or protect.

None of us are completed projects. That’s not the problem. The problem is when you begin to tolerate a constant state of disruptive “good enough.” If you let the healing process stall out and come to a standstill. If you know deep down you’re still only seeing shadows but you don’t want to admit it.

Today, do you know God as Jehovah Rophe – The Lord Who Heals You?

Where are you on your healing journey?

Everyone in this world needs healing of some kind. I’m not surprised when you tell me you have baggage. I trust that you will not be surprised when I’m honest about ways in which God is still healing me.

God doesn’t ever just heal us for our own sake, but also for the sake of others. Who are the others in your life who will be impacted when you allow God to work healing in your life? Your children, your spouse, your friends, your co-workers, your neighbors? In the hard moments, if you are tempted to walk away half-done, make a list of their names. What difference will it make in their lives when you patiently stick with the process?

It is not self-centered to choose to search for healing. It’s so that you can come out on the other side more whole and healthy. It’s as if God is throwing pieces of wood into the water, saying, “Come on! Taste the water now. I can do this for you, too.”

Where are you on your healing journey? Is the construction in process; has it come to a standstill? Have you settled for blurry, good-enough vision? Do you hear God’s patient invitation to stick with it? Wherever you are, consider some of these next steps:

Ask for help. You might not even know how to frame the question or issue. “Will you help me?” might be all you can say. That’s a perfectly fine place to start.
Reach out. Maybe you know right away what needs healing and you’re ready to engage with God. Reach out to someone and let them walk with you – a pastor, a small group leader, a district confidant, a spiritual director, a trusted friend.
Tell your story to someone. Sometimes our healing lies in bringing things to the surface that we’ve ignored until we’ve almost forgotten. Tell your story to someone and notice what still hurts. That might be an area God wants to bring wholeness and restoration.
Seek out professional help. Spiritual healing does not happen apart from emotional healing. God uses professional therapists, counselors, addiction specialists and many others to heal.

What is your next step? God is so patient with us. Will you be patient and let God change the essence of your life? God remains Jehovah Rophe: The Lord Who Heals You. God can take your life from:

bitter to sweet

sadness to joy

fear to trust

So how does the water taste to you today? What is it that’s blurry? What can you see?

Maxie Dunnam ~ A Brand New Year: How to Leave Your Stuff Behind

Do you ever wonder how to leave your stuff behind? Loren Eiseley was one of my favorite writers, a distinguished anthropologist and essayist with the eye of an artist and the soul of a poet. He saw beyond the surface and had that rare double gift which enabled him to enter deeply into an experience and then share that experience with us. In one of his poignant vignettes from boyhood, he shares a moment of time that bears timeless truth.

Eiseley was 16, and one day he leaned out the second-story window of his high school and saw an old junk dealer riding in a cart filled with castoff clothing, discarded furniture, and an assortment of broken-down metal objects. A broken-down horse was pulling the cart. As the decrepit figures passed below him, Eiseley had a sudden sense of what time means in its passing. He wrote: “‘It’s all going,’ I thought with a desperation of the young confronting history. No one can hold it… we’re riding into the dark. When my eye fell upon that junk dealer passing by, I thought instantly, ‘save him, immortalize this unseizeable moment, for the junk man is the symbol of all that is going or gone.’”

After that, Eiseley said he could never regard time without a deep sense of wonder. He sought to receive every moment as a kind of gift that was only his. It’s an image to consider as we begin this new year. Let’s look at our scripture lesson, found in Genesis 45:1-28, which you can read here.

Tucked away in this story of Joseph’s sojourn into Egypt is a verse packed with far more meaning than appears on the surface. It is a word that carries a whole wagon-load of goods for reflection. It teaches us an eternal truth that we do well to consider as we move into the New Year. It is helpful in practicing how to leave your stuff behind.

Rehearse the story. Sold into slavery by his brothers, Joseph found favor with the Pharaoh and became one of the trusted officials in Pharaoh’s court. A strange irony of fate (the providence of God, of course) brought Joseph and the brothers who had betrayed him together again. A famine ravaged the land of Canaan, the people were without food, and they came to Egypt to buy food from the Pharaoh. They soon learned that the person with whom they dealt was the brother they sold into slavery, so the tables were turned. Here they were, asking food from the person they cast away.

When it came to Pharaoh’s attention that Joseph’s brothers came, it pleased him. He instructed Joseph to bring the whole family from Canaan, promising to give them the goods of all the land of Egypt. It is at this point we find the power-packed verse. Do this, said Pharaoh: “take some carts from Egypt for your children and your wives, and get your father and come. Never mind about your belongings, because the best of all of Egypt will be yours.” I like the way the King James’ version translates that. “Regard not your stuff, for the best of all the land of Egypt will be yours.”

Regard not your stuff.

There’s all sorts of meaning in that. One translation renders it, “leave your stuff behind.” Now some of us who have moved a good bit, like Methodist preachers, know what that means. We moved from Mississippi to California years ago. Moving across the continent made it even more difficult to decide what stuff we were going to take and what stuff we were going to leave behind. Moving is expensive. My wife, Jerry, collects rocks, and she had bushels of them. She knew better than to get into a discussion about taking those rocks from Mississippi to California. Do you know how heavy rocks are? So Jerry did a very cunning thing. She packed her choice rocks into kitchen canisters and cake tins and brought them along. The movers were mystified, I’m sure, as they handled those cake tins and canisters, and I learned of it long after I had paid the bill!

“Regard not your stuff,” said Pharaoh, “leave your stuff behind…for the good of all the land of Egypt is yours.”

By the time most of us get to be adults, we have accumulated a great deal of stuff – all kinds of stuff.

We’ve learned so many wrong things, stored up so much misinformation, learned to respond in so many destructive ways. We’ve adopted all the biting, snarling, snippy styles of relating, become secretive and cynical. We carry a lot of stuff around, and it burdens us down. It’s hard learning how to leave your stuff behind. We get all glued up in our limited world of habit.

So this word of Pharaoh to Joseph’s brothers is a good word for us, particularly as we begin this new year: leave your stuff behind. What is some of the stuff you need to leave behind as you begin the new year? What can you drop off your weary, bending back to make your trek into the New Year a bit easier and far more meaningful?

Leave behind self-pity.

Self-pity is a burden most of us are unwilling to drop off. Someone hurts our feelings and we carry our hurt with us forever. We’re treated unfairly and we never forget it. Something happens in our family and it seems to us like we’re being put down: someone else is receiving special treatment, so we get a kind of complex. We suffer physically and we get the idea that the whole universe is out to persecute us – such an easy snare to fall into! As long as we carry this burden of self-pity, we can blame our failures on someone or something else.

To go through life with the burden of self-pity is to go through life hampered. It is to stumble along at an uneasy, faltering pace, so we need to leave the bundle of self-pity behind us. We need to stride into the future, not with self-pity, but with self-affirmation. And when we rehearse the gospel, we know that we can do that because the whole of Scripture, especially the Gospels, is an affirming, not a destructive word.

Jesus said that not even a sparrow fell to the ground without the Father taking note. Then he added, “you are of more value than sparrows.” And how extravagant is this? “The very hairs on your head are numbered.” Each of us is a unique, unrepeatable miracle of God, and there is a place in God’s heart that only I can fill…that only you can fill.

“For thee were we made, oh God,” said Augustine, “and our hearts are restless until they rest in thee.” No wonder he said that; the psalmist himself had captured it long before – “You have made us a little lower than the angels, a little less than God, and crowned us with glory and honor.”

We don’t need to go into the New Year with self-pity because God is on our side. To let go of self-pity is to begin practicing how to leave your stuff behind. God created us. And God is going to be with us.

Leave behind illegitimate responsibility.

The next bundle of stuff we need to leave behind is illegitimate responsibility. I’m talking about the responsibilities which we rigidly claim for ourselves, but which don’t legitimately belong to us.

Our journey will be more meaningful if we can determine that there are certain responsibilities that are ours; these we will accept and give our resources to. There are other responsibilities which we simply have to leave with others and with God. Parents, there is a limitation to the responsibility we can take for our children. We must do all we can to nurture our children to live productive, helpful, meaningful, Christian lives. But beyond a certain time and place of nurturing, we must commit them wholly to God, and leave with them and with God the responsibility for guiding themselves.

This is conditioned by a special word to young parents. A Chicago suburbanite put on a last spurt of speed to catch his train but missed it. A bystander remarked, “if you’d run a little faster you would have made it.” “No,” the suburbanite replied, “it wasn’t a case of running faster, but of starting sooner.” Young parents, you can’t begin too soon to relate a child to God – to demonstrate clearly to your children your own commitment and values. We can’t depend wholly upon the church to instill within our children a love of God’s Word. That won’t do it; of course the church has a responsibility, but parents are primarily responsible. When we have been faithful in our parenting, we can leave our inordinate feelings of responsibility for our children behind.

There are responsibilities that we can and must assume – but many of us are weighed down by responsibilities that don’t belong to us. We must leave them behind.

Leave behind cancelled sin.

There’s a lot of stuff we ought to leave behind, along with self-pity and illegitimate responsibility. What stuff do you still need to leave behind? We can’t name them all, but let me mention one other bundle that we need to cast off as we stride into this New Year: the bundle of cancelled sin. The phrase comes from Charles Wesley’s hymn, “Oh For A Thousand Tongues To Sing.” He claims that this is the work of Christ.

He breaks the power of canceled sin,

He sets the prisoner free;

his blood can make the foulest clean;

His blood availed for me.

Scores of people who beat a steady stream to my study door for counseling are burdened down by cancelled sin. Somewhere in the past, they did things, got involved in situations, and were caught in relationships about which they feel morbid guilt. They carry this around as an inside burden which no one knows about. But like a malignancy, it grows and spreads until it poisons the person and brings a sickness like death.

The heart of the gospel is that God through Christ forgives our sins, and our sins are cancelled by God’s grace. But obviously, this fact and experience are not enough. Cancelled sin still has power – destructive power in our lives.

How then is the power of cancelled sin actually broken? How do we leave this burden behind? There is one key: confession and inner healing. I believe that under most circumstances, not only confession to God but confession to another is essential for healing and release from the power of cancelled sin.

This is the reason James admonishes us to confess our sins to one another and pray for one another. Once we confess to a minister or to an intimate friend or group, we don’t carry the burden alone. The poisonous guilt that was bottled up inside is now released. The cleansing and freedom that comes is wing-giving. Forgiveness and acceptance are confirmed in our lives and the fear of others knowing who and what we are is taken away.

A medical analogy works well here. When an infection appears somewhere on the body, antibiotics are given. If these do not destroy the infection, usually the infection is localized and has to be lanced. The surgeon uses the scalpel and opens the boil in order that all the poison can be drained. Confession is something like the surgeon’s scalpel. When we honestly open our lives in confession, all the poisonous guilt that we have bottled up within has a chance to flow out. Confession becomes the cleansing process by which the self is freed from the power of cancelled sin.

Now there are two requisites for redemptive confession – one, you must trust the person or the group to whom you confess; and two, your confession must not be destructive to another person. We cannot disregard the health and wholeness of another in order to seek our own release.

The big point is that the burden of erased wrongdoing is too great for us to carry into the New Year. You can leave that stuff behind, because God forgives. God loves you and accepts you. And if you’ve not experienced the release from cancelled sin, if the burden of it is still with you, you may need to find a person whom you love and trust with whom you can share. Open your life to them, and allow the poison to flow out in your honest confession. Remember the promise of John’s gospel: “if we confess our sin, he is faithful and just to forgive our sins and to cleanse us of all unrighteousness.”

I want to invite you now to use your imagination. Picture yourself with a big trash bag. Move through every room of your life; select the stuff you need to leave behind. I’m talking about self-pity and illegitimate responsibility.

Put it into the trash bag.

What cancelled sin still has power over you, what hidden hatred, what frustrating fear, what devastating doubt, what powerful prejudice?

Put it in the trash bag. Do it. Act it out in your imagination.

Put it into the trash bag.

Is there an unresolved relationship with a husband or wife, a parent or a child, a neighbor? Is there a jealousy you’ve never brought out into the open?

Put it into the bag.

It could be any number of things. You know what weighs you down, and what stuff you don’t need to take into the New Year.

Put it into the bag. Be specific in identifying and visualizing all the stuff in your mind to put into that bag.

Now stay with me in your imagination. Get in your mind the picture with which we began – the junk man with his cart filled with cast-off clothing, discarded furniture, all sorts of abandoned useless things. Do you see it in your mind? He’s passing by.

In your imagination now, throw your trash bag onto the junk wagon and let it be taken away.

Have you done it? In your imagination, just cast it onto the junk wagon to be taken away. Be silent now and enjoy the relief and release of getting rid of that burden. Keep the image of the trash man in your mind for a moment, taking all your trash away. Now substitute for the image of the junk man, Christ himself.

Do you see him? Jesus. Listen. Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.

Leave your stuff behind – all your junk. Leave it.

You are forgiven. Your failure and weakness are accepted. Your past is buried in the sea of God’s loving forgetfulness.

Go into the New Year with Christ, and go joyfully.

Michelle Bauer ~ Healed with Compassion

One Sabbath, when Jesus went to eat in the house of a prominent Pharisee, he was being carefully watched. There in front of him was a man suffering from abnormal swelling of his body. Jesus asked the Pharisees and experts in the law, “Is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath or not?” But they remained silent. So taking hold of the man, he healed him and sent him on his way.

Then he asked them, “If one of you has a child or an ox that falls into a well on the Sabbath day, will you not immediately pull it out?” And they had nothing to say.

When he noticed how the guests picked the places of honor at the table, he told them this parable:“When someone invites you to a wedding feast, do not take the place of honor, for a person more distinguished than you may have been invited.If so, the host who invited both of you will come and say to you, ‘Give this person your seat.’ Then, humiliated, you will have to take the least important place.But when you are invited, take the lowest place, so that when your host comes, he will say to you, ‘Friend, move up to a better place.’ Then you will be honored in the presence of all the other guests.For all those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.”

Then Jesus said to his host, “When you give a luncheon or dinner, do not invite your friends, your brothers or sisters, your relatives, or your rich neighbors; if you do, they may invite you back and so you will be repaid.But when you give a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind,and you will be blessed. Although they cannot repay you, you will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous.” – Luke 14:1-14

Jesus celebrated the Sabbath by accepting a dinner invitation. How will you observe the Sabbath – a day of rest – this week? Do you rest on Sundays? What is your plan for finding time to rest this week?

In this account, Jesus wasn’t approached by someone asking to be healed. He noticed someone with an obvious medical condition and healed him on the spot. Take a moment to imagine the scene. How do you feel about Jesus as he steps outside of himself and the drama that seemed to follow him and focuses his attention on this ill person? If Jesus ignored a group and focused on you, what would you hope that Jesus would see about your vulnerabilities?

In what ways were the Pharisees failing at feeling and showing compassion? What distracted the Pharisees from the suffering of others? Who is it easy for you to show compassion to? Who do you find it difficult to have compassion for?

To be humble is to have a right view of self. What makes humility difficult? What are you learning about humility from this passage? How do you see humility in Jesus? How are humility and compassion linked together?

What do you do for others that you expect to be repaid for? Think about a time when you served someone who was incapable of repaying you. What was that experience like? What did you learn from that experience?

What aspects of interacting with broke people or ill people do you find challenging? Jesus invites us to love the person in front of us. If you are ready, ask God to help you notice someone in your life who needs your compassion.

Think about a time when you needed compassion. Who did you receive it from? What did they do or say that expressed their compassion?

In what ways do you need compassion today? Ask the Holy Spirit to give you a sense of God’s compassionate heart.

Interview: Mary DeMuth Talks “We Too” with Carrie Carter

Author and church planter Mary DeMuth has been featured on CNN and in The Washington Post.

Note from the Editor: Wesleyan Accent writer Carrie Carter recently interviewed author and church leader Mary DeMuth about her new book on sexual abuse and the church, We Too: How the Church Can Respond Redemptively to the Sexual Abuse Crisis. DeMuth’s tradition is not alone as American Protestant church life has been rocked by the faith community’s own #metoo moment, #churchtoo. From megachurches to historic denominations, the ripple effect of revelation has been far-reaching. Wesleyan Accent extends gratitude to clergy spouse Carrie Carter for shining the spotlight on this new resource.

Warning: This interview includes references to sexual abuse that some may find a trigger of traumatic response.

I grew up in a faith community where abuse was not spoken of, where sex was a taboo topic in any context. So as one can imagine, my understanding of sexual abuse was quite simplistic well into adulthood. How could a man or woman of God do such horrific things? I confess that it was easy to feel smug when scandal rocked the Roman Catholic Church, because somehow I felt like Protestants were different.

They’re not. At all. How arrogant of me to think so.

It took a little longer for the corner of that rug to be lifted, but all that filth is the same. Sexual abuse is a darkness that has pervaded the Church for centuries. No branch of faith is above another when it comes to the pervasiveness of sin. The flames of sexual abuse have scarred people I love. People who trusted and were burned.

For this reason I jumped at the chance to review We Too: How the Church Can Respond Redemptively to the Sexual Abuse Crisis. We Too is now available for purchase, and it was written to help those in ministry leadership to understand the far-reaching effects of sexual abuse and how to support to those on the healing journey. It was truly an honor to interact with Mary and to hear her thoughts on a topic so vital for our ministry leaders right now.

CARRIE CARTER: For those who might not be familiar with you, tell us a little bit about your story.

MARY DEMUTH: I am a sexual abuse survivor. When I was five years old, neighborhood teens repeatedly raped me over the course of my kindergarten year. My father was a predatory man as well. And I found myself during a lot of my childhood being approached by predators. I spent a lot of time running away from those who wanted to steal from me. I met Jesus when I was fifteen through the ministry of Young Life. I have been on a decades-long healing journey since then.

CC: Was We Too: How the Church Can Respond Redemptively to the Sexual Abuse Crisis written as a response to the recent issues that have been exposed to light in the evangelical world, or was it a work that was already in process?

MD: In some ways it’s been in process for decades. I have been speaking about this issue a very long time, but it has finally gotten teeth because of the evangelical scandals of late. I am grateful that Harvest House Publishers took a huge risk in publishing this book.

CC: Was there anything during the research and writing of We Too that you didn’t already know? If so, what impact did this new knowledge have on you?

MD: I’ve been seeped in this for decades. But I was particularly surprised at the numbers outside the United States. In other cultures, the numbers are significantly higher percentages of women and children being exploited. Consider this: “Some 35% of women globally have experienced some form of sexual violence, though because of the nature of secrets, this number is most likely underreported. For some countries, the statistics are even more shocking: 57% of Bangladesh women, 77% of Cambodian women, 79% of Indian women, and 87% of Vietnamese women and 99% of Egyptian women have experienced some form of sexual harassment. Remember, harassment is not the same as sexual violence. Harassment involves innuendo, inappropriate comments, and unwanted sexual solicitation. 120 million girls globally have experienced forced sex. 750 million girls will be married before their eighteenth birthday.[1]” (Excerpt)

CC: What was the most difficult section of We Too to write? What made it difficult for you?

MD: Recounting the first story in the book where I was abused by a doctor, and then telling the story at the end of the book of when I returned to the scene of the crimes [that occurred] when I was a five year old. There are so many fears in making those stories public, and the shame still looms.

“We all know someone affected by sexual abuse. Sadly, the secular media has shown more compassion than the church toward sexual abuse survivors. There is a holy reckoning unfolding before us in the church. People are fed up with secrecy, covering up, and the sheer proliferation of abuse—both inside and outside the church. It’s time for the church to become what it should be: a place of security, not shame; humility, not pride. By standing with survivors of sexual abuse, we can build a community of kindness and restoration—a place where God’s people are healed and made whole.”
Excerpt, We Too

CC: As the spouse of a ministry leader, I received no training on practical ministry, let alone how to minister effectively to sexual abuse survivors. What do you feel is the most important thing for us, as ministry spouses, to know?

MD: That, most likely, everyone you minister to is affected by this issue. It either happened to them, or they love someone who has had this story. The best thing you can do is err on the side of belief, listen, weep alongside, and pray. If there is an outcry from a minor, you must report this to the authorities. Instead of viewing sexual abuse survivors as drains on your energy, look at them as tutors to teach you what it means to turn to Jesus and lean on him for sustenance and strength. They have SO MUCH to teach us about discipleship.

CC: After reading We Too, I feel it is going to be a vital tool that needs to be on the shelf of every ministry leader’s library. Have you written any supplemental material or do you have recommendations for other resources to help navigate this crisis?

MD: I am in the process of writing a video study and guide. Two other great resources: The Child Safeguarding Policy for Churches and Ministries by Boz Tchividjian and churchcares.com.

CC: For churches that are ready to put protocols in place for the protection of children, is there an organization that you recommend for assistance with those protocols?

MD: Yes, netgrace.org. I also have an extensive list of resources for pastors and ministry leaders here: wetoo.org/pastors

To read DeMuth’s “8 Reasons Why the Church Doesn’t Like to Discuss Sexual Abuse,” click here.

[1] Meera Senthilingam, “Sexual harassment: How it stands around the globe,” CNN, 29 Nov 2018, https://www.cnn.com/2017/11/25/health/sexual-harassment-violence-abuse-global-levels/index.html

Shalom Liddick & Mike Liddick ~Extravagant Praise

“What does it mean to bless the name of the Lord? Whenever we recognize who God is, we are praising him. How will you live in extravagant praise this week? Whatever it is – God’s got it.”

Click “play” below to listen to a time of prayer and preaching on extravagant praise from the founding pastors Shalom and Mike Liddick of Resurrection Life Church, a new church plant in Marana, Arizona.

From the sermon “Extravagant Praise,” April 2019, Resurrection Life Church.

Edgar Bazan ~ Relaunch

In the past, I’ve talked about reset as the ability to embrace and move into the new things that God has for us by not allowing the hurts of the past to hold us back. We can’t change the facts of the past, but we can change how we feel about them and how we allow them to affect us today. It’s possible to reframe our past experiences into a story of redemption by looking at them and talking about them through the lens of Jesus’ love and grace.

The outcome is that, as we experience redemption, we are able to move into the new life God has for us; we stop keeping our future a hostage to our past. We free our future by allowing God to redeem our past and reframe our whole lives around a new story of hope, redemption, and new life.

Today, I want to talk about our future. When I use the word “relaunch,” I mean the action, the opportunity, or the decision to try again that which has not been going well.

Our text comes from Isaiah 43:18, 19:

Forget the former things; do not dwell on the past. See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the desert and streams in the wasteland.

The context of Isaiah’s writing to the people of Israel takes place at a bleak period in Israel’s history. They were in captivity, conquered by the Assyrians who had become the dominating military and political power of the region. They had lost everything they thought they would keep forever, and they were homesick for the land and the blessing God had promised them.

This happened because they were suffering the consequences of wrong choices against each other and God. Israel had abandoned everything they once represented as God’s people; they had become selfish and unjust. They had missed the mark of their mission and calling as people of God. They had forgotten time and time again that the blessing given to their father Abraham and their mother Sarah was meant to be stretched out to all the families of the earth and that this was the reason for their existence, their purpose and goal as people of God. They failed because they forgot who they were meant to be. Instead of pursuing their purpose, they settled with ephemeral comforts and tried to become like everyone else.

No doubt Israel was discouraged because they thought this was the end of them. They were stuck – emotionally, mentally, and spiritually – in their past, unable to see the new life and opportunities that God was opening up. God was speaking hope and encouragement to them in the midst of their darkest times.

God wanted them to know that even though they were suffering, they were not forsaken. God wanted the people of Israel to understand that the hardship they were experiencing would not be the end of them. God wanted to give them a fresh start, a new beginning in their life, a relaunch, so to speak. By telling them, “forget the former things,” God was saying, “it is time to move on.”

Maybe that is where we are! We may feel we are stuck, that we have failed people we love – including God – so many times that we are just getting what we deserve. If God dealt with us based on what we deserve, we wouldn’t be here. No, God deals with us with grace, to bring out the best of us and make us whole again.

God is not in the business of annihilation, but of redemption. Our God does not dwell in the past, for he is always doing a new thing. Don’t ever believe that God doesn’t want anything to do with you. If you think that you have no future, I have good news for you. God is saying, “it’s not over, I have plans for your life. I am about to do something new for you,” because God is always on the move, and he is always calling us forward.

Today, I am saying this so you can not only believe it, but so that you can also fully embrace a new life.

How can we embrace this new thing that God wants to do in our lives?

We begin by realizing that our God is forward thinking. Consider: the moment things went wrong at the beginning with Adam and Eve and their sin, God introduced a plan of salvation. Every time people got it wrong and messed up God’s work, God would continue to keep his plan unfolding. When Jesus called the disciples, and everyone else for that matter, he did it so they would follow a new path, a new way of living. He called them forward. So it is with us!

This tells us that God is far more interested in our future than in our past, that we are not a final product, and that God wants to do something new in us every day regardless of what has been. Some people think that all God wants to do is remind them of the things they have done wrong. God is more interested in your future than in your past. God is always working a future for us.

One of my favorite movies of all time is Back to the Future. In this movie, when Marty goes back to the past, he stands out. He knows things and has seen things and acts differently because he is from the future. In the first film, there are some scenes where he is thought of as weird for making peculiar decisions because his peers don’t understand where he is coming from.

In the same way, we can view all of us, Jesus’ followers, as people of the future. Let me explain. If you jump back 2,000 years to when Jesus was walking the earth, a majority of the Jewish people believed in the resurrection of the dead. They believed that at the end of time, when God set the world right, the righteous would be resurrected and vindicated. The twist is that Jesus accomplished that in the middle of the history, not at the end. God did for Jesus in the present what Jewish people thought he would do for all at the end. So, in the resurrection, it’s like Jesus became a person of the future.

In the same way, everything else Jesus has done for us – how he brought a new world, a new way of living – is about bringing the promises of the future into the present. With this, God calls us to live as our future selves right here in the present, to step into what God says is true about us, and to stand out.

We don’t have to wait for our best life to happen someday; it can begin to happen right now if we step into it. Most of the things that get in the way are our choices. I know you are thinking, easier said than done. And you are right.

How do we relaunch our lives to embrace the new thing that God wants to do in our lives? Let’s look again at the story of Israel and the challenge they had.

The problem that this story presents may help us to understand why we too struggle to embrace new life today: they forgot who they were meant to be. They lost their way. They allowed things to get in the way that disrupted their purpose and sent them onto a path God did not intend for them.

The miracle in the middle of this story and all of our stories is that God never gives up on us. God is always working to give us a future. God is always invested in our healing, redemption, and restoration so we can get back on track.

This is not just about wanting to save us but wanting to give us a good, abundant life that accomplishes the desires of God’s heart and our hearts. God has written in our hearts his goodness and creativity, all the best he wants for us.

What is your heart telling you today? What are the things that have gotten in your way, in your marriage, your family? What are the thoughts, the dreams, the desires of your heart that have been lost or forgotten over time?

Many of us have learned to have our faith in God –and that is a beautiful gift. Our faith in God grounds us in the hope for tomorrow. But let me add something else that has do with the voice of our heart: our faith in God does not mean we must doubt ourselves. Our faith in God ought to lead us to trust ourselves too. Our faith in God leads us to know not only how much we are loved but also why we were created.

Here is where many of us struggle. Do we know how much we are worth? Do we know how large our life is meant to be? Let me tell you something. Self-doubt forces us into lives that are too small for our dreams. We settle too soon. For the most part, our lives are about safely conforming to what has been, rather than building up new and wild dreams. And we doubt ourselves because we focus on our weaknesses, on our mistakes, on what people think and say about us, rather than on the beautiful ways we were created and gifted by God.

To this God says: “Forget the former things!” My friends, this word today is God telling us, “remember who you are, who you are meant to be. I am always with you.” God knows that when we live in doubt and undervalue ourselves, we give up on what we are meant to be, on any pursuit of our heart’s dreams. But we are the only creation in the universe that was created after God’s own image. Are we to reject that? No, we need to embrace it because by doing so we honor and glorify God.

Today, God is telling us to stop doubting ourselves and to find our strength and purpose. I believe that God placed dreams in our heart as the fuel to move and encourage us to live forward, and that God is overjoyed when we pursue those desires.

Can you hear God’s voice in your heart? What is God saying? How is God encouraging you right now? What dreams have been placed in your heart?

Often, when we pray over and over again for the same thing, it is not because God is failing to give us an answer, but because we have not heard the answer we want. What if this year we go with what we have already been told, with what is in our hearts, as scary and challenging as it may be?

I finish with this. To relaunch is not to keep things the way they are but to endeavor into new things. When God says “I am making a new thing,” that new thing is for you… you are not forgotten. What we think is the end is actually the beginning of the next chapter. It is time to move on to what’s next. You can only grow if you allow a new chapter to be written in your life. To relaunch is not about replaying the same old song but learning a new one.

If we welcome God’s love and grace in our lives; if we have faith in the future he has promised us; if we know that God is for us and not against us, then no matter what situations we face, we will be able to engage with them in a positive way, because we know that we have life ahead of us, and that whatever the former things were, they have no claim over us anymore: we have moved on from them.

I invite you to look for the courage to act on the dreams God has placed in your heart, on what you are meant to be. Maybe you are like a bird who for a long time has had thoughts of flying but is in a cage. Here, the door is open. God created us to spread our wings toward the bright sky he created for us to enjoy. May your choices reflect your hopes for the future and not the fears of your past. Live tomorrow today. Amen.

Edgar Bazan ~ A Hard Reset

What do you do when a phone freezes, stops working, or is unresponsive? You toss it to the ground, step on it really hard, and make sure is completely crashed, right?

Well, probably not. Most likely you do what most of us have done: we reset our phones to reactivate its functions, we don’t discard it. Depending on how bad it is, we may remove the battery, or do a hard reset which restores the factory functions, deleting everything in the hard drive. It’s not a good situation, but you get your phone back and start all over again.

Have you thought about your life along those lines? That sometimes we need some kind of reset when life gets so thick and unbearable that we stop functioning in healthy ways and find ourselves thinking, behaving, or making choices that are not good for us or the people we care about? In such times, what we need is a fresh start. I know I do sometimes for a variety of reasons, and maybe you do too.

Why bring this up? Maybe you have a bunch of stuff going on in your life right now that keeps getting in your way and keeps you from fulfilling what you know is God’s plan and calling for your life. You may have regrets, remorse, or guilt, the sadness of unmet goals and past disappointments that distracts you from seeing a future for your life to the point that you give up hope, saying: I am broken, I will never be whole again, there is no future for me, I gave that up long ago. These experiences and memories from the past threaten to overpower us to the point that what happened in the past is ruining our present and our future.

The sad part of it is that we think it’s normal, that we just have to deal with it. In a way, we do have to deal with the not-so-positive happenings in life. But here is the trick: we are not called to do this alone.

God wants to work his good will in everything that happens in our lives, and God is in the business of making things new, in transforming the old into a new creation. Our God is a God of opportunities and new beginnings. Our God is a God of the ultimate Reset.

Do you need a reset today, a new way of living, of moving from what was to what can be? If you feel purposeless, broken, or like a frozen, unresponsive phone, then it is time for a reset, and you are not alone.

Now how do we do this? Well, let’s learn together.

The scripture for today is 2 Corinthians 5:17. It is just one verse. And it says,

If anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new!

Let’s get some context first.

Like us, the Corinthians were struggling with many problems and difficulties. One of them was living into their new identity as followers of Jesus. As new believers in Christ, they were becoming a part of a new way of living that was in drastic contrast to their old ways. The Corinthian Christians needed to be reminded of this and encouraged constantly about their faith, to not give up and give in to the old ways of living before they knew Christ.

For this reason, in this text and within the context of the letters to the Corinthians, Paul talks of a “new creation” as the transformation that takes place in us that makes us to be “born again,” meaning, saved from the condemnation of sin and death, and the evil powers of this world, to become people of God: children of light with a restored and new life.

However, there is always conflict when you have two elements at odds, in this case the old versus the new. There is a sort of battle between these opposing elements. The moment we embark on our new life, the old yells back at us, reminding us who we were, what we did, or what happened to us, with the only intention of holding us back by discouraging us and putting in doubt our worthiness.

For this reason, a common struggle Christians face today as much as back then is to fully leave behind the old and fully embrace the new. Although your soul has been saved, maybe your mind has not caught up: a part of you is still stuck in the past, in the old, in the very thing about which God has said: “you are the one talking about it, I don’t even remember that anymore!” In other words, what happens in practice is that the devil will always bring up your past to discourage you, but God will always remind you of your future to encourage you to keep moving on.

So when I talk about a reset in this context, I mean the ability to embrace and move into the new things that God has for us by not allowing the hurts of the past to hold us back. Becoming new creatures, as Paul says, is the ultimate reset for anyone, “for everything old has passed away and everything has become new!”

But this is one of the most difficult practices, isn’t it? How do we move away from the old? Is it possible?

I think it is, but we have to change it. What do I mean by “change it”? Like changing the past? Yes, like changing the past.

At first this sounds like a contradiction. How can we change something that already happened? But why does the past matter at all? What is the past to us today? What do we get to keep from something that already happened? Why does the past have so much power over us?

Well, because of the memories; we get to keep those –either the bliss or the trauma.

When we talk about the past, it is really the memory that we are talking about. The story that runs on a loop in the back of our minds of what has happened. This is critical because the past – those memories – only exists in our mind; but they have a direct effect on what happens today and will happen to us in the future. Why?

Because they define us. Although those events may not even matter anymore, they have so much power and control over our minds that they affect our decisions.

Recently I learned about epigenetics, the science that tells us that we are the sum of our experiences, that what happens to us – mentally, physically, emotionally – affects our biological composition, which means that everything that happens to us lays itself like tire tracks tattooing itself across our body-mind and literally making us the product of what has come before.

For example, an experience of trauma from the past seen through a certain lens can physiologically create stress responses like cortisol, stress hormones, and anxiety. All these responses may exist today –even if the event took place many years ago. According to epigenetics, we are the product of what we were and what we continue to allow to affect us today. That is why it is so hard to let the old go. Because it is tattooed all over our lives and we think that that is normal. And the more we replay it in our minds, the more it takes over us, printing itself all over our lives, defining who we think we are.

This idea led me to ask the question, “can we change what has already been, meaning our past experiences? Can we remove those unhealthy marks out of our lives?”

I think we can.

Here is something amazing: our cognitive framing, our interpretation of reality, our use of thoughts, memory and language to frame our past experiences, even how we speak about them, can actually allow us to change our very past experiences. The story we tell, the story we choose to tell about what has happened, can change what has happened insofar as it may change how we respond to those very experiences today.

Of course, we can’t change the facts of the past; but we can change how we feel about the facts and how we allow them to affect us today. So, if the past can affect you negatively today, perhaps you can change the past positively by changing your response to those negative past experiences by reframing them and seeing them through a different lens.

While we can’t ignore the past – it happened – we can reframe it into a story of redemption by looking at it, by talking about it, by thinking about it through the lens of Jesus’ love and grace. We change our past by allowing it to be redeemed.

This is the reset we need! We stop keeping our future a hostage to our past. We free our future by allowing God to redeem our past and reframe our whole lives around a new story with the hope we get through Jesus Christ. We don’t let our past get in the way of our future anymore. We break the cycle of oppression. We don’t choke on our fears and disappointments but rework these experiences through our faith in Christ. And in turn, we output all of our stories from the past into a story of redemption, knowing that we are more than we were because of what has happened to us today, because of our faith in Jesus the Christ.

I believe that there is a lot more for us in our lives that God wants to bless us with, but we don’t see it because we continue to allow an unredeemed past to dictate our future. And just like the Corinthians, we may find ourselves with a new faith but old thinking, old behaving, old brokenness marking us for life.

We can’t ignore the past. It is never going to go away, as long our memories of it exist. So, change it; redeem it; let the gospel of Jesus, the Word of God, bring healing into your past and transform it into a beautiful story of redemption. Don’t let it haunt you anymore. Look straight at those fears, unmet goals, disappointments, and hurts, and say: you are forgiven, you are redeemed.

I know this is not easy at all. The brokenness from the past holds us by making us feel as if what has been must always be. But here is the truth. We were never created to live defeated, guilty, condemned, ashamed lives defined by feeling unworthy. We were created to be the ultimate reflection of God’s self, full of light, life, and goodness. Let us stop building on brokenness and start building on hope, forgiveness, reconciliation, and acceptance. Let us allow our past to be transformed into a story of redemption, where our decisions of today reflect our hopes for the future and not our fears and brokenness from the past. Remember, new faith with old thinking does not work well. So let’s also stop acting on the brokenness of our past, and start living in the power of the new life Christ makes possible for us day after day.

Finally, let us be certain of this: what God is offering to all of us today is a wonderful thought: the best days of our lives haven’t happened yet. We are not here by accident. This is your confirmation. Everything is going to be alright. God is making a way for you right now. All you have to do is to welcome God’s Word into your life, so it can speak new life into your mind and soul, reframing your feelings, thoughts, and everything from your past that has been getting in your way for so long.

I invite you to frame your life, your whole self, in the gospel of Jesus Christ, in the love God has for you, in the grace that has been bestowed on you. That is our reset!

Be encouraged today: you are going to make it. Your life still lies ahead of you. You are becoming as you keep on living and walking the pathway Jesus sets before you. Go ahead. In the words of Toby Mac: “You’ve got a new story to write and it looks nothing like your past.”

Amen.

Michelle Bauer ~ Desperate for Mercy: Shouting All the More

As Jesus approached Jericho, a blind man was sitting by the roadside begging. When he heard the crowd going by, he asked what was happening. They told him, “Jesus of Nazareth is passing by.” He called out, “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!” Those who led the way rebuked him and told him to be quiet, but he shouted all the more, “Son of David, have mercy on me!” Jesus stopped and ordered the man to be brought to him. When he came near, Jesus asked him, “What do you want me to do for you?” “Lord I want to see,” he replied. Jesus said to him, “Receive your sight; your faith has healed you.” Immediately he received his sight and followed Jesus, praising God. When all the people saw it, they also praised God. – Luke 18:35-43

Have you ever felt like you had to yell to get God’s attention? Take a moment to imagine yourself as the man trying to get Jesus’ attention. What might motivate you?

The man begs Jesus to have mercy on him. What about the man’s request do you think catches Jesus’ attention? Jesus was trained in the Scriptures and knew what Micah 6:6-8 teaches about mercy. How did Jesus’ response to this man demonstrate what it looks like to love mercy?

It is a challenge to be seeing impaired in any time and culture. But what do you think life was like for a blind person 2,000 years ago? In what ways might he have suffered? In what ways are you suffering right now? God invites you to talk to him as honestly as you can about your pain.

Everyone in this story seems to be annoyed with this man, except Jesus. What do you think made Jesus stop and talk with him? Take a moment and picture Jesus stopping to talk with you about your need.

“What do you want me to do for you?” What do you think about Jesus’ question to the man, whose need seems so obvious? Today, what would you like Jesus to do for you? How does it feel to ask him? Take a moment and listen for a response.

What would it be like to be instantly healed in your area of greatest suffering? What is it like to wait to be healed in this area? How is God showing mercy to you as you wait?