Inner healing is the healing of our inner man, which we refer to as our soul. Our soul consists of our mind, our will, and our emotions. Inner healing is sometimes called emotional healing, or healing of memories, or soul healing. Therefore, inner healing is healing of the mind, the will and the emotions.
We have learned that euphoric recall tempts us to return to our addiction because it allows us to remember only the good things about our experience with chemicals. Even though euphoric recall is powerful, it is not the real reason we return to the chemicals.
When we have inner hurts and damaged emotions, because of what others have done to us or what we have done to other people, we have learned that chemicals medicate our painful memories. For many of us that is the reason we continue to drink and drug. We medicate our emotional pain.
We will look at rejection, the root of rejection, shame, physical abuse, mental abuse, sexual abuse, guilt, unworthiness, and insecurity. We will discuss how these wounds have controlled our lives.
Inner healing is a process. It is not an overnight cure for the problems of our flesh. There are many facets to inner healing. Every good thing God does for us helps us on our way to health and recovery. Inner healing is not a substitute for walking in faith. It is a part of becoming whole and healthy in the three major relationships of life:
1. Our relationship with God.
2. Our relationship with ourselves.
3. Our relationship with others.
There is a division of labor in the inner healing process. There is a part for which God is responsible, and there is a part for which we are responsible. We cannot do God's part, and God will not do our part.
As we go through this program, we will take time to get deeply into our inner man. We will give God access to the deep areas of our lives. That is the only way God will be able to change us.
Some of us have very likely experienced sobriety at some point in our lives, but have found it to be so painful we couldn't stand it. This means there are some things within us that only God can heal. These are things from which we need to be set free.
Inner healing is a process, which allows God to give us insight concerning certain problems in our lives that are related to past events. We will return to those events and allow them to surface so God can deal with them.
We will not simply use our imagination, we will actually bring the Lord Jesus Christ into each past experience. We will allow Him to give us insight in the situation, and we will allow Him to heal us in it. We will give Him complete freedom to minister His healing power.
Inner healing does not mean we will generate a memory lapse. We will not forget the bad things that have happened to us, or the bad things we have done. God gave us a memory and we are to use it. We will realize we have been healed when the memories return, but the hurt and the pain from those memories will no longer exist.
Memories will always be with us. Everything we have experienced is in either our sub-conscious or our conscious minds. Our problem is that things we have experienced in the past influence us in the present. They still hurt or bother us. It is as if we carry a sack full of old garbage around with us. If we have come from a dysfunctional home, or if we have been chemically addicted, we probably have painful memories from the past. In all likelihood, we have damaged emotions and fears and phobias.
One of the most common fears is the fear of rejection. We did not develop the fear of rejection when we entered a rehabilitation program. We probably had the fear of rejection before we became addicted to chemicals. Or, perhaps, because of drinking and drugging, we may have allowed such a fear to come in.
Some addicts can overcome the death of a spouse easier than they can overcome divorce. They realize their drinking and drugging probably caused the divorce. The resulting shame and guilt become a tremendous burden.
Many of the negatives we carry around with us may have come from our addiction. On the other hand, these negatives may have come from our childhood, prior to our addiction. They could even be a combination of both. We will examine these possibilities in more detail, later.
When we awoke this morning, we had within us a lot of things, which we have carried over from the past into the present. There could be a memory of one particular event that seems to surface often. It could be something we have done, or something that someone has done to us. It could be the memory of an accident, or a death, or a divorce, or abuse of some kind.
Any dominant memory that continues to surface may cause us shame or humiliation or pain or anger. This is a sure sign that something is not right within us. These are the memories we are going to bring before the Lord. We will allow Him to show us what we need to do with them.
We, ourselves, are unable to make these memories go away, and we are unable to stop them from hurting. But if we allow the Lord to show us what to do about these events in our lives, if we allow Him to do His part, we will place ourselves in a position to receive His healing.
As we bring all these things from yesterday into today, they become a part of us; therefore, we take them into tomorrow with us. There are very few wounds that time alone can heal; time usually doesn't heal anything, it tends to make things worse. Only Jesus can heal us.
Unless they are healed, those things, which have been fermenting over a long period of time, will cause us to react in a certain way toward others. We need more than just time. Healing is a process, and it will be accomplished in time, but it is only the Lord who will heal us, not the passage of time.
We have done many things that have been wrong. We have even violated our own value systems. And we have had people do us wrong. Some have abused us, and it has caused us problems. If we want to experience healing, here in the present, we have to find a way to truly let our past go.
THREE DIMENSIONAL THINKING:
The scripture upon which we base this teaching, is Philippians 3:13.14. Brethren, I do not regard myself as having laid hold of it yet; but one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and reaching forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.
Paul is saying that he is standing in the present today. In the first verse he makes it clear that he has not arrived, that he is not yet what he wants to become, he doesn't have it all put together. But he understands that he must constantly be putting all things behind him, not necessarily forgetting them, but practicing the ongoing process of leaving things in the past.
Paul is not talking about an absence of being able to recall, he is talking about laying aside the things that are behind him. Paul had a bad past; he was a lot like us in that respect. When the Lord got his attention on the road to Damascus, he probably felt a lot of guilt and shame because he had been murdering Christians and imprisoning them, all in the name of the Lord.
Paul didn't have a problem with alcoholism or drug addiction, but he had some issues in his past which gave him emotional pain and hurt, and he had to deal with them. He had to get right with God and receive God's forgiveness. So, he realized the need to lay those things aside in order to go on with his life. He did not ignore them and say they never happened.
Ignoring something is not the same as being healed of that thing. Ignoring is not inner healing. Each incident must be dealt with, then we can lay it behind and it will no longer bother us.
Our problem is we don't readily deal with painful events. We repress them, with the hope that if we don't think of them they will not bother us, or they will go away. But the truth is, we do think of them, and when the memories return we push them back down. This process is repeated constantly in our lives, and that leaves us hurting, dying inside.
Paul also said in those verses that at the same time he lays those things behind him, he reaches forward and presses on. He is not just pushing back, he is pressing on.
Do you see the truth that Paul has grasped? He is focusing upon the present. Today is truly important. We call this three dimensional thinking, and it is very necessary for us to develop. As Paul stands in the present, he can look at the past. He makes a decision to put some past things aside, so he can work in the present.
Because he is able to do this, his future will be different from his past. He no longer allows the events of the past to infiltrate with their negative influence.
It is the same with us. If we don't work today on our relationship with God and allow God to work in us, we will awaken tomorrow morning in the same frame of mind we are experiencing today. But if we allow God to change us today, our future will be different from our past.
ONE DIMENSIONAL THINKING:
The opposite of three-dimensional thinking is one-dimensional thinking. A good example of a one-dimensional thinker is the person who writes a bad check. That is very one-dimensional. We know there is no money in the bank to cover the check, but we think one-dimensional, we are not concerned about the future. We may even write more than one bad check. We don't look at the past and learn from it. When we are one dimensional in our thinking, we see no further than the end of our noses. Our dominant thought is, "I want it, and I want it now!
We are like the mule the farmer puts blinders on, we can see in one direction only. We don't look at the past to learn from it, and we don't concern ourselves about the future. We are only interested in what we are going to get today and how we are going to get it.
Because we are one dimensional, we repeat the same mistakes in our lives, over and over again. We will make a mess in our lives, leave it, and go somewhere else and make another mess just like the first one, never learning from the past and never looking to the future.
But all these messes have hurt us. They have caused us problems. After we have been in a program and have been free from chemicals for a while, we begin to remember some of the things we did and some of the things we said. The Holy Spirit puts His hand upon us and brings some of those things to the surface to be dealt with.
This is what we need cleaned up. Like the Apostle Paul, we have to start laying these things aside. We have to deal with them and go on. We can't carry bags of garbage with us the rest of our lives because they will destroy us. They will generate adverse reaction and response to every experience in our lives.
Can you imagine what it would be like if we never emptied garbage can? What if we did nothing but press down the new garbage on top of the old? It wouldn't be long until we would be unable to get near the garbage can because of the smell of the putrefaction.
That is what is happening inside us. That is why many of us react the way we do. There is garbage inside us. God wants to clean it up; God wants to heal us. And we can be healed, but only through Jesus Christ. It is impossible to heal ourselves. Inner healing reaches beneath the surface problems of alcoholism and drug addiction. There may be many issues in our lives, but God will take care of all of them if we will let Him.
It is possible for us to have been in a rehabilitation program for a period of months, and to feel much better physically than when we entered the program, yet continue to be weary and heavy-laden inside. Matthew 11:28-30. "Come to Me, all who are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take My Yoke upon you, and learn from Me, for I am gentle and humble in heart; and you shall find rest for your souls. For My yoke is easy, and My load is light.
Jesus said we would find rest for our souls through Him. We have learned that our soul is our mind, our will, and our emotions. That is what is weary and heavy laden in us. That is where we hurt. And the only way the soul can be healed is through the Spirit of God. God is the One who sets us free.
Jesus is ready to heal our internal pain just as He heals our external pain. Suppose we hurt our finger some time ago, but it has since healed. We can look at the finger and remember the accident as if it was yesterday, but the finger doesn't hurt anymore because it has healed.
That is physical healing. The same principle applies to the mind, will and emotions. For our finger to heal, we had to do certain things. The doctor may have told us not to get the finger wet. If it got wet and became infected, we had to go back to the doctor. The doctor re-opened the wound and re-stitched it. Eventually, the finger healed. It took time, it didn't happen the next day. It may have taken as long as a year.
The memory of the occasion may return often, but the memory isn't painful because the finger is healed. It was important that we followed the doctor's orders, because the infection could have developed into gangrene and eventually it could have killed us. That is the process we are facing as we let God heal us of our inner wounds. It is important for us to see the principle in the relationship between the outer man and the inner man, where healing is concerned. God can heal our damaged emotions, so that when the memory of the occasion surfaces, there will be no more pain. The damage has been healed, even though the memory is still there.
Our natural inclination has been to stuff our hurts into the deepest recesses of our minds. Now, we need to learn how to allow these things to surface. We need to look at them and to give God access to them. This is very important. Once we have experienced God's healing in our lives, the fear of allowing these damaged emotions to surface will be destroyed. Until we experience that, we will have a fear of coming before the Lord with our hurts.
We have to start dealing with the past. We have to learn how to lay the past aside. Unless we do, we will have no alternative but to continue to carry our past garbage into every present moment.
BROKEN RELATIONSHIPS:
We are born into relationships. Any home, which is not Christ-centered, is dysfunctional. Every dysfunctional home experiences what we identify as breaks in relationships. The breaks occur when something is said to us or done to us that cause emotional wounds.
For instance, our parents may have told us that we were no good, or we would never amount to anything. Such a statement from someone whose opinion we respect causes a break. Lack of attention or lack of affirmation also causes a break. Rejection is a major break, and so is abandonment. Any kind of abuse, whether physical, mental or sexual, will almost always cause a break in relationship.
It is natural for us to try to recover from those breaks. We try to build a bridge back to our need for love, acceptance, and forgiveness. Some of us have attempted to use chemical addiction as our recovery program from the breaks in our relationships. Because we have received so many wounds in our early years at home, we have attempted to medicate them through chemical addiction.
In our chemical addiction, we have been led to believe we have found some worthiness, some security, and some peace. We have been disconnected in our relationships because of what has been said to us and done to us. Through chemicals, we are really trying to become reconnected to the relationships God has called us to be in from birth.
Adoption, for example, often leaves a child with a stronghold of rejection. This can go all the way back to when the child was in it's mother's womb. That feeling of being disconnected, that deep emotional wound is still there, even though the baby may have been put into a loving Christian home with fine Christian parents.
It is always present, and it continually motivates the emotionally wounded person to try to reestablish that broken connection. It is a wound that must be healed. The attempt to reconnect starts immediately after the break, and it continues until it is dealt with and healed.
It is important for us to understand that a child which has been raised in a dysfunctional home will often turn to something that will give him a sense of belonging, a sense of acceptance, a sense of security which he could not get out of the home relationship.
There is something in the use of chemicals, perhaps it is the environment, and perhaps it is the peer acceptance, which re-establishes a connection with something longed for. What most of us have been trying to do is to get reconnected. Unfortunately, we have chosen a substitute way, which will never fulfill our need.
The truth is, God is the Person to whom we have to get connected. Our relationship with God is our first step. At the same time, we must look back and examine those things that have been driving us, and understand how they have affected us.
Some of the occasions that have caused disconnections may have been relatively small. Perhaps they were affirmations, which were not said at a time when we needed to hear them. These could have been little things, but at the time, in the life of a five or six year old, they could have made a tremendous impact. Such incidents can easily cause a disconnection.
One of the main things we discovered about chemicals was that we could feel good, even if it was for only a little while. We could place ourselves into a fantasy world in which we could be accepted. Our relationships were fantasy, but at least they were relationships, and that was acceptable.
Those of us, who have grown up without a father or without a mother, or perhaps without either parent, have been disconnected from the start from what God intended for us. That doesn't mean we can justify attempting to reconnect through the use of chemicals.
We need to understand that God has a provision for these disconnections. We may not have had an earthly father, but we certainly have a heavenly Father. Unfortunately, a five or six year old child doesn't realize God has made provision for him.
We will be looking at specific events that have caused disconnections in our lives. A slap across the face is easier to take than a damaging cut with a tongue. The slap hurts less and for a shorter period of time. Damage done by the tongue stays with us for a lifetime; it contributes heavily to the malformation of a life
Physical abuse is a big problem, but an even bigger problem is what has been done to us by what has been said to us. We have grown up within the restrictive barriers of childhood put-downs. And many of us have become what we were told we would become. We have acted it out because we believed it. We need to look at these areas.
Session One . . . Introduction
Personal And Group Exercise (see page 106)
1. Why is it difficult for the chemically addicted to handle sobriety?
2. In what way does a negative memory have an effect upon our lives?
3. Why is it important for us to lay the past aside and focus upon the present?
4. Describe a one-dimensional attitude.
5. Describe what is meant by a break in relationship.