As an additional introduction to this book, I would like to begin by revealing an aspect of God's character and personality.
In Matthew chapter 12 verses 1-21 Jesus demonstrates one of God's most important attributes. He shows that God is more interested in people who are hurting than He is in rules and regulations.
The Pharisees were giving Jesus a hard time about doing certain things on the Sabbath.
When Jesus approached a man with a withered hand in their synagogue, the Pharisees again challenged Him asking if it was legal to heal a man on the Sabbath. In verse 12 Jesus said that this man was more valuable than animals that are rescued on the Sabbath. In verse 13 He said, "Stretch out your hand." The man's hand was restored as whole as the other. Now get this; the Pharisees plotted how they might destroy Jesus.
The real revelation comes in Matthew 12:18-21 which quotes a prophecy in Isaiah 42:1-3. "Behold! My Servant whom I have chosen, My Beloved in whom My soul is well pleased! I will put My Spirit upon Him, And He will declare justice to the Gentiles. He will not quarrel nor cry out, Nor will anyone hear His voice in the streets. A bruised reed He will not break, And smoking flax He will not quench, Till He sends forth justice to victory; And in His name Gentiles will trust" (Matthew 12:18-21).
Children used to go to the riverbeds and cut off reeds in order to make flutes. When they bruised the reed, they would not attempt to repair it. They could very easily discard it then go to the river and cut off another reed. The smoking flax was like the wick in an oil lamp. When it began to smoke instead of giving off clean light, they would simply cut off the wick that was smoking and cast it out.
My paraphrase on this is, "I do not throw people away just because they are bruised. They are invaluable to me. Just because your life has been bruised, just because your life is not reflecting the light of your God given purpose but is a smoking flax, I will not give up on you. I will come and heal the bruise and restore your life so that your light may again shine with the divine purposes of God. I will not cast you off, neither will your purpose be cut off. Healing your bruises will cause your flax to shine bright. Healing your inner bruises will cause you to ride upon the high places of your destiny and purpose in life."
Humans have a much more delicate psyche, spiritual and emotional make up than most of us realize. When God created Adam He created him for relationships. God told him to always eat from the Tree of Life, the Word of God, and to meet Him in the Garden. He brought Eve forth as a relationship companion of the highest type, except for Adam and God's. He created Adam to always be dependent on Him as a Father and provider.
When Adam and Eve preferred the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, being their own talents and intellect without God's involvement, they fractured the most important relationship, that with their father, and they died. They died spiritually instantly, and eventually their bodies died.
This break with their Father caused guilt, shame and self-rejection. Eventually this sin was passed down to their children and to you and me as iniquity, or a liability with which we were born. This is called a generational curse.
Broken relationships and dysfunctional families can even be found in Jesus' lineage.
Dysfunction is passed down and the broken relationships compound throughout the generations. We find ourselves born into families that are full of broken relationships, or at least are reaping the iniquity of their forefather's iniquities. Many who live in a fatherless family find themselves sexually abused by father figures. Others have a father, but the mother will not allow the father to exercise their fatherly discipline; some are abused by their fathers.
As a result they find themselves living inexplicable lives. These include lifestyles that God never intended for his humans to experience. Perhaps we have eating addictions, drug and alcohol addictions, maybe we are perfectionists or religious legalists. These are all ways to attempt to "medicate" our inner wounds, which were really caused by broken relationships. It could be success or money that we use, or maybe inordinate sex and sexual relationships. Then we experience the fruit of these medications and broken relationships, some of which are shame, self-rejection, depression, anger, suicidal tendencies, hatred, selfishness, choosing to marry the wrong people for the wrong reasons, and the list goes on.
Some turn to religion, some to psychology and psychiatry, some to secular counseling. Others just drown in their medication methods, placing the blame everybody else, and live a life which is geared towards "Getting as much out of life as I can grab, happiness, adventure, success, money, power, etc."
It was a real revelation to me when I discovered that most of these human maladies are the result of one cause, that being broken relationships and the rejection associated with them, either past or present, especially with father figures. Considering that God's priority for us is a relationship with Him and good relations with others, it is no surprise that broken relationships cause all these problems.
Even with very good fathers and family background, if our relationship with our Heavenly Father is not right, we are liable to suffer many of the issues I have listed here.
May we as the church minister God's healing with this in mind!
I pray that the Lord give us all His compassion for wounded people and that we would see them through His eyes as victims who need mercy and compassion.
The Hebrew Scriptures, shows us story after story of dysfunctional people. Look at Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, David, Moses, and the list goes on. Those stories show us real history. They also show us that God did not give up on His creation, although at times it got so bad that He had second thoughts. But He never gave up because He was not caught off guard. There are no "Oops" moments with God.
The Hebrew Scriptures bring hope. They speak of a deliverer, a Messiah, who would come and bring the solution for this issue of a break with our fathers, and especially our Father God. They speak of the blood of a perfect lamb being shed to atone for sin.
Psalm 103 brings in hope, as it says in verses 1-4 and 12-13, "Bless the LORD, O my soul; And all that is within me, bless His holy name! Bless the LORD, O my soul, And forget not all His benefits: Who forgives all your iniquities, Who heals all your diseases, Who redeems your life from destruction, Who crowns you with lovingkindness and tender mercies." "As far as the east is from the west, So far has He removed our transgressions from us. As a father pities his children, So the LORD pities those who fear Him."
A new and fresh look at types of forgiveness.
Transgressions and iniquities affect us not only when enacted by us, but also when perpetrated against us by others. Notice God has a remedy for both those sins we commit and for those committed against us. Both are important. Some simply see forgiveness as something God does for us when we sin, but we will see it is much more as these chapters unfold.
It is difficult to comprehend the love of God.
Watchman Nee in his book Song of Songs [1] does an excellent job. One of his efforts to write about the love of God is taken from page 115 of his book:
"His belly is as bright ivory overlaid with sapphires" (Song of Songs 5:4b).
The word belly is better understood as the seat of the emotions, being identical with the word for deep feeling found in chapter 5:4 where she said: "My bowels were moved for him." The verse carries The inference that the Lord Jesus too, was a Person rich with the deepest sensibilities, that He was moved with great feelings of love for His people. Ivory, unlike the lifeless gem, is obtained from the elephant's tusk. Ivory is the product of pain and indicated that His love for her was born out of His sufferings unto death as a Sin-bearer. The deep feelings for His people were nurtured within His super-sensitive life because of the greatness of the suffering and death He underwent for them. These feelings being "overlaid with sapphires" are pictures of carvings on the ivory which speak of delicate and exquisite craftsmanship and picture many facets of His feelings.
There carvings combined to show that His loving and tender feelings were neither superficial nor casual. They were "overlaid with sapphires" indicating heavenly clearness as in Exodus 24:10: "And they saw the God of Israel: and there was under His feet as it were a paved work of a sapphire stone, and as it were the body of heaven in his clearness." There sapphires were overlaid upon and around all His deepest feelings: hence, when those feelings of love moved out to His loved one, how heavenly and transcendent did they appear!
The remedy.
Psalm 68 brings in healing hope for the break with the father relationship, which is really the key to our problem of rejection. "A father of the fatherless, a defender of widows, is God in His holy habitation. God sets the solitary in families; He brings out those who are bound into prosperity; But the rebellious dwell in a dry land" (Psalms 68:5-6). Here the Lord exposes Himself as One who understands our need to have a father/family relationship to be whole. It is amazing to see the unveiling of some people who looked like a lost cause and see their lives totally turned around because they saw God as their perfect Father.
Remember, Jesus bore our wounds of rejection by being rejected Himself by His Father on the Cross. "And at the ninth hour Jesus cried out with a loud voice, saying, 'Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani?' which is translated, 'My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?'" (Mark 15:34).
God makes an amazing statement through His prophet Malachi in the final book of the Hebrew Scriptures, the Old Testament. "Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet Before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the LORD. And he will turn [go back to the starting point] The hearts of the fathers to the children, And the hearts of the children to their fathers, Lest I come and strike the earth with a curse" (Malachi 4:5-6).
I have personally examined that Scripture for years looking for revelation. I kind of understood it, but I always had this desire to see more into it than I knew I was seeing. Looking into the Amplified Version and into the Hebrew words of this Scripture, it could be paraphrased as follows:
"I am going to send you people, who carry the name of Elijah, or in other words (what the name Elijah means) say of themselves, 'Jehovah is my God.' I will reveal My heart to these people, thus making them prophets of this revelation I am going to give to them. This revelation and their prophecy will be in the very face of and during the end-times sufferings and tribulations age (which we are now in). These people will proclaim My message to the ones who feel rejected by their father figures. That message is, 'Jesus My Son has taken your rejection because I rejected Him on the Cross. He bore that for you, therefore I can now turn My heart towards you with My love, and for many their response will be to turn their rebellious heart back to Me their true Father.'"
I don't have space to break that all down, but I feel that I have kept the meaning of the Hebrew translation.
The angel told Zacharias, the father of John the Baptist, a similar message. "He will also go before Him in the spirit and power of Elijah, 'to turn the hearts of the fathers to the children,' and the disobedient to the wisdom of the just, to make ready a people prepared for the Lord" (Luke 1:17).
Jesus performed a miracle as recorded in Mark chapter 2 that I believe tells that story better than any theology. (Mark 2:1-12).
1 And again He entered Capernaum after some days, and it was heard that He was in the house.
2 Immediately many gathered together, so that there was no longer room to receive them, not even near the door. And He preached the word to them.
3 Then they came to Him, bringing a paralytic who was carried by four men.
4 And when they could not come near Him because of the crowd, they uncovered the roof where He was. So when they had broken through, they let down the bed on which the paralytic was lying.
5 When Jesus saw their faith, He said to the paralytic, "Son, your sins are forgiven you."
6 And some of the scribes were sitting there and reasoning in their hearts,
7 "Why does this Man speak blasphemies like this? Who can forgive sins but God alone?"
8 But immediately, when Jesus perceived in His spirit that they reasoned thus within themselves, He said to them, "Why do you reason about these things in your hearts?
9 "Which is easier, to say to the paralytic, 'Your sins are forgiven you,' or to say, 'Arise, take up your bed and walk'?
10 "But that you may know that the Son of Man has power on earth to forgive sins" --He said to the paralytic,
11 "I say to you, arise, take up your bed, and go to your house."
12w Immediately he arose, took up the bed, and went out in the presence of them all, so that all were amazed and glorified God, saying, "We never saw anything like this!"
Notice in verse 5 when Jesus said, "Son." The word "son" in Greek is teknon, which carries this meaning: "You who have been begotten by a father and family but have no relationship with either." Notice, this man's family did not bring him to Jesus, but four men who had faith. Jesus forgave him of his sins first, then addressed his broken relationship, and then came the healing.
Notice in verse 11 what Jesus told him to do. "I say to you, arise, take up your bed, and go to your house." I suggest that Jesus wanted this man to go and reconcile things with his family, forgive them, and even lead them to Jesus.
I believe that is a picture of a real church, using their faith to bring paralyzed people to Jesus. Would we just bring people to Jesus and let Him do the work instead of trying to fix them, which often leads to more wounds.
Teknon does not necessarily mean there is no relationship, it simply means one who has been begotten. I believe the implication by Jesus was as I have stated. There are other words Jesus could have used.
You may not be paralyzed in body, but maybe in spirit or in lifestyle. Maybe you are paralyzed to stop drugs, overeating, pornography, or any other obsessive behavior. Maybe you are eating to medicate your relationship emptiness; maybe you are doing destructive things to your body like cutting or other such painful acts. Maybe you cannot stop inordinate sex, looking at pornography, anger, depression, and the list goes on. Your external paralysis has an inner cure for which Jesus paid the ultimate price.
Then Jesus said, "your sins are forgiven you." In other words, those iniquities that have cut off your father son and family relationship were borne by Me. Forgive means to cut away and take away. That rejection and relationship void that had made this man paralyzed has been borne by Jesus at the Cross. Jesus could have just as easily said, "Son, I am going to the cross in a few years and there My Daddy will turn His head and reject Me, so that this sin you have endured will be forgiven and taken away from you.
Isaiah 53:5 says that Jesus was bruised for our iniquities. Iniquities are an inner wound, as bruises are also inner wounds.
Jeremiah said, "In those days they shall say no more: 'The fathers have eaten sour grapes, And the children's teeth are set on edge.' But every one shall die for his own iniquity; every man who eats the sour grapes, his teeth shall be set on edge" (Jeremiah 31:29-30). In other words, in the New Covenant, Jesus will absorb that which could not be absorbed in the Old Covenant. The curses from former generations will not have to be suffered by you because Jesus suffered them in your stead.
Look what happened! "Immediately he arose, took up the bed, and went out in the presence of them all, so that all were amazed and glorified God, saying, 'We never saw anything like this!'"
When you allow Jesus to go down deep and forgive those things done to you, or perhaps issues that were iniquities and were passed down to you by forefathers, and you agree with Him to issue that forgiveness, then your outer issues will be healed. Understanding this bigger picture about forgiveness will make it easier for you to forgive those who have hurt you or who have passed down iniquities to you.
Healing starts from the inside and works its way out.
There are ways in which we can cooperate with the Holy Spirit to allow Him to get down deep, underneath all of layers of "onion peels" to our inner wounds, and we will cover those in later chapters.
Perpetrator or victim?
So far we have been focusing on the victim of the rejection, and how this causes wounds in him or her. We also need to address the fact that the perpetrator of abuse and/or rejection can also receive mercy and forgiveness. Most likely if you were or are a perpetrator you have also been a victim. You may be feeling a lot of guilt and condemnation as you read this. You should feel a healthy guilt. However you need not feel condemnation, or a final judgment. Your final judgment can and should be forgiveness through the work of Jesus Christ. Yes, He took your sin as well. He stands forgiving you and invites you to accept his forgiveness as you confess and repent and put yourself into His hands for healing. It may not feel like it comes immediately, but keep pressing in.
The night before I wrote this, a man I know came to me with a testimony. Actually by the time I finished writing this chapter, there were three such testimonies. I knew that this man was a radical follower of Jesus, and I also knew that he had been in bondage to sexual sin. Even though a believer, he struggled to become completely free. He testified to me that his woundedness came to him from his father who did not raise him properly. However, because he forgave his father his father is now a radical follower of Jesus. He is a man who stays hungry for the Word. My friend told me that he now sees his father as a "King David" who committed horrible sins, but finally became a "Man after God's heart."
Prosperity of the soul.
3 John 1-4, Amplified Bible says,
1 THE ELDERLY elder [of the church addresses this letter] to the beloved (esteemed) Gaius, whom I truly love.
2 Beloved, I pray that you may prosper in every way and [that your body] may keep well, even as [I know] your soul keeps well and prospers.
3 In fact, I greatly rejoiced when [some of] the brethren from time to time arrived and spoke [so highly] of the sincerity and fidelity of your life, as indeed you do live in the Truth [the whole Gospel presents].
4 I have no greater joy than this, to hear that my [spiritual] children are living their lives in the Truth.
Prosperity defined by The Strong's Concordance in 3 John means:
Easy to travel through, good, well and a good way, a good journey. To make prosperous, to be led in a prosperous journey, success. To bear fruit, to come to completion. Antonym: To suffer shipwreck, to fail.
This was not a promise to Gaius to whom this letter was written. It was rather the wish of the writer, John, in the same manner in which we would write saying, "I hope you are well and have all your needs met." In verse three, John adds to that hope the observation that when you are living your life in the Truth of whole Gospel you will prosper.
Prosperity of the soul begins, as is stating in verse 3 above, by "living in the Truth of the whole Gospel."
We need to first anchor our beliefs in what Jesus did for us and who He made us to be. Then we need to act on that belief, as the word "believe" in the Bible is an action verb.
Prosperity of the soul is made complete by taking up your cross for the three areas of you soul.
1. Will. Is Jesus really in control of your life? Have you made Him Lord? That is the condition of being saved, making Him Lord. Saved is to be delivered from danger.
2. Mind. Do you take up your cross and take your ungodly thoughts captive and allow the Word of God to heal your mind?
3. Emotions. Do you allow your emotions to control your life, or do you take up your cross and tell your emotions to get into the back seat?
This is living your life in the Truth of the whole Gospel. This is the healing of your soul. The soul's prosperity will follow the taking up of your cross as defined above, and prosperity in your life will follow.
Help in tough financial times.
Many people are brought to the "end of themselves" in the area of finances. It is through this door that Jesus brings many people to trust Him and His Father. I call this being changed through a felt-need. If you are unable to make life work financially, you are a candidate for healing just as this paralytic was in Mark chapter two.
Imagine this. The paralytic was unable to work and function in life. Not only was he dependent on others for his livelihood, but also he could not marry and have children. His self-esteem was most probably very low, and no doubt he was living without hope.
If you find yourself with this felt-need, then begin to live the "Overcoming lifestyle" that we will be describing in this book, and you will be converted from a teknon son/daughter (one who is merely born but with no intimate relationship), to a huios son/daughter as described in Revelation 21 below.
God shows us in Revelation that after we go through all of the tough times of standing on His Word in the face of tribulation, doubt and being tempted to not trust God, that the end of it will be a wonderful connection with God our Daddy, our Abba, provider.
"He who overcomes shall inherit all things, and I will be his God and he shall be My son" (Revelation 21:7). We inherit all things. We are no longer a son, teknon, a son without the intimacy of our Daddy, but in this Scripture son is translated, huios.
Huios defined in Strong's Concordance.
Those who revere God as their father, those who in character and life resemble God, those who are governed by the Spirit of God, repose the same calm and joyful trust in God which children do in their parents (Rom. 8:14, Gal. 3:26), and hereafter in the blessedness and glory of the life eternal will openly wear this dignity of the sons of God. Term used preeminently of Jesus Christ, as enjoying the supreme love of God, united to him in affectionate intimacy, privy to his saving councils, obedient to the Father's will in all his acts.
My co-editors and I have amazing testimonies on how God, through our huios relationship with Him, has performed miracles in our finances and other felt-needs in life.
I am talking about God coming through in our financial lives way beyond what our natural talents, abilities and opportunities could have produced. As we have gone through the inner healing process, it was almost a series of concurrent events that occurred in our financial realms. Businesses were formed, major debts were cancelled, funds came in for ministry, homes were purchased, and worry over the day to day finances vanished. We could see Jesus active in our lives taking care of our financial situations. We still see Him as the King of the Kingdom. We can testify that when we sought first His Kingdom and His righteousness, that all the things we needed were added (Matthew 6:33).
What you may expect in the chapters to follow is our emphasis these main points:
1. Strengthening your personal relationship with your Father God, your true self, and others.
2. Cooperating with God as He delicately uncovers our inner wounds and heals them, or in Bible vernacular, forgives them. It is all in the relationship!
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[1] Nee, Watchman. . Song of Songs. Christian Literature Crusade. Fort Washington PA. 1965, page 115.