Category Archives: Healing

Challenge, Healing, Issues of the Day

Real Fear Vs. False Fear

I grew up without a fear of dogs until one cold and snowy day. While sledding at my neighbor’s house, their mean-spirited German Shepherd was released from his chain (a big chain I might add). He chose to go after me while on my sled and bite me in my meatier portion through several pair of pants. I immediately went home crying. Later, around age 15, I was riding my motorcycle past a neighboring farm and their mongrel decided he didn’t like motorcycle riders. He actually caught me, made a leap straight up and latched on to my left arm. I had several really nice puncture wound, landing my mother and me at the Dr. for a tetanus shot and wound care.

Undoubtedly, I became a little skittish around dogs, especially big dogs. But was my fear legitimized by these incidents? I believe it was. The fear was based on real life encounters with real life dogs and real life bleeding wounds to prove it. Fears can be real due to actual life experiences and fears can be false. Let me explain.

Bethany said “I do” to Derek, madly in love with him. Without reason, she struggled almost daily that Derek would one day leave her. No matter what Derek said and no matter how he reassured her, she still maintained her fear. Where was it from and why was it so powerful in her life?

When Bethany was just five years old, her father walked out of her life. She carried that fear into her marriage and was waiting for her husband to do the same one day. It was a false fear, based on no present reality or truth.

Someone once shared with me that the word FEAR could be an acronym.

When our fear is based on the real, our Father can heal that place in us by His love because His love casts out fear (See I John 4: 18). When the fear is false, His truth can set us free from the lie that is holding us captive. Our job is not to assume that all of our fears are based on truth. We can pray as they are identified and ask God what is true and what is false so that healing can follow.

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Encouragement, Healing, Leadership

Pursuing Personal Steps to Change and Healing

 Wholeness is a lifelong pursuit.  Here are a few steps to help:

  1. If God were mean-spirited, angry and going to “get me,” I’d already be “got.” Instead, He placed all of His anger on His Son, on the cross and not on me.
  2. My heavenly Father planned me from eternity (Ephesians 1: 4) and He so much wanted me born that the family I was born into was/is inconsequential. The truth is, He so much desired a relationship with me, that according to Acts 17: 24-28 this is the time, the season and the place of all eternity that I would be on the earth.
  3. I was presented the gospel and I asked for forgiveness of my sin and received the unconditional love of my Savior, Jesus, and became born again.
  4. I stopped blaming my earthly parent; he/she was not perfect. The revelation from God is, “You were never a perfect son.” To this day, I am not a perfect father/mother or son/daughter. I had to let my earthly parent off the hook from perfection and realize he/she carried with him/her lots of generational pain and hurts themselves.
  5. The more of the love of God I received for myself, the more of the love of God I received for my earthly parents and family. I am a child of the King and a vital part of His kingdom and through me He changes culture, even family culture. I am an adopted son in which I now cry, “Abba! Father!” (Romans 8:15)
  6. I was no longer in need of the approval of my earthly father or mother when I knew I had the approval of my heavenly Father. Romans 15:7 says, “Accept one another, then, just as Christ accepted you…”
  7. When my heavenly Father told His Son on the earth He was His beloved Son in whom He was well pleased, He also said that to me. My identity and my esteem were no longer in who I thought I should be, but in who I already was in Christ. I was destined for adoption as a son, according to His will and His purpose. (Ephesians 1: 5-6)
  8. Life is not about me, my stuff, my need for healing or my brokenness. If it were solely about me, I would still be broken and walk in the curses of the generations before me. Christ became a curse for me, so that the curses from my father’s father to my father, to me, and to my children are broken through His death on the cross. “Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us…” (Galatians 3:13)
  9. There is no longer a need for retribution or justification. What happened to me became a reason to pursue wholeness, maturity, security and sanctification in my God and His truth. I needed to get back at no one. Jesus took this need for human justification by being the only Just One that could actually justify. (Romans 3: 21-31) I am justified by faith.
  10. Today through health and healing, I set the boundaries. I speak the truth in love with respect and a spirit of honor.

Prayer For Healing

Dear Heavenly Father, out of my personal brokenness I have allowed things into my life known and unknown that do not honor You. I confess to You my need for ongoing healing and restoration. I give freedom to You or Your representative to help me step down into and expose my own sewers. I give permission for You, the One who was broken for me to reveal, to bring to light rebellion, deception, independence, insecurity, comparison, compulsions, guardedness, self-justification, pride, critical judgment of myself and others and any and all ungodly beliefs. I repent for any and all of these and trust You to do the work of healing that only You can do so thoroughly.

 I now come to renounce the beliefs, the thoughts, the emotions and the reactions that the evil one has perpetrated in my life from these beliefs. This is not who I am in You. For by Your grace I am a son/daughter, forgiven, regenerated, redeemed, restored and filled with the Holy Spirit of God no longer to be afflicted or harassed in these areas again. In Jesus’ name, Amen.

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