The Healing Power of Love


10/17/2010 - Exposing the Wound



This morning we begin a brand new series that I've calledThe Healing Power of Love. It's a series that I hope and pray will help heal some of the wounds in our lives that keep us from fulfilling the great commandment of Jesus which is to love God with all our heart, soul, mind and strength and to love our neighbor as ourself. That, Jesus said, is the bottom line. That's what we were all created for, to reflect the love that God has for us back to him and to share it with one another.

But it's been my observation over the years that there are things in all our lives that can keep us from becoming the kinds of lovers that God wants us to be. There are wounds and hurts and scars in our past that distort our image of self, get in the way, and make it difficult for us to love God and other people because we're not very happy with who we are. And unless those wounds and hurts find a measure of healing it can be very difficult to move forward and maintain healthy relationships.

Jesus said, "Love your neighbor as yourself." But if we don't have a healthy view of self, if we don't view ourselves through God's eyes, it seems to me that we'll have a very difficult time loving others. Somebody has said, "Hurt people hurt people. Healed people help heal people." And I believe that's true.

Often when I describe the church to people, not just our church, but God's church in general I use the analogy that the church is both a hospital and a mission. We talk a lot about mission around here because as followers of Jesus Christ we're on a mission just like he was on a mission.

In John 20:21 Jesus said, "As the Father has sent me, I am sending you." That's mission. Jesus sends us into the world just as the Father sent Jesus into the world. And our mission is to be a blessing, to help enact God's kingdom, to be salt and light, to bring a little bit of heaven to this earth right now, to make a difference in this world. Those are things we talk about often.

Operation Christmas Child is part of that mission. In fact, when we jumped into it a number of years ago it was the first thing we did that had a pure mission component. And since 1993 over 77 million shoeboxes have been given to needy kids in over 130 countries. And Valley View's given at least a few thousand of them. God only knows how many kids and families have discovered Jesus through a shoebox gift. It's a tremendous outreach and we love being a part of it.

So the church is on a mission, but the church is also a hospital. It's a place we're healing and transformation can take place. A big part of Jesus' mission was healing, physical and emotional healing. He opened the eyes of the blind and made the lame to walk, but he also gave worth to people who felt worthless and love to people who felt totally unlovable. Healing was a visible display that the kingdom of God was breaking into this world and the curse was being reversed.

Disease and death were not part of God's original design in the garden. They came as a result of sin and rebellion. And there's coming a day when there will be no more death and disease. But until that time comes God is in the process of healing us, of making us whole, of transforming us little by little into the image of his son, Jesus Christ. And emotional healing is a part of that work that will finally be complete when we see Jesus face to face.

The apostle John puts it this way in 1 John 3:2-3, Dear friends, now we are children of God, and what we will be has not yet been made known. But we know that when Christ appears we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is.3All who have this hope in him purify themselves, just as he is pure.

On Wednesday nights we've been having a great time together eating and laughing and going through our mission and vision statement calledImagine. If you couldn't make it this time around I hope you can catch it the next time. And as we've done that I've been reminded of the healing aspect of the church.

In our vision statement we say things like... we want to help people ... we want to look out for each other ... we want to learn to live like Jesus and love like Jesus ... we want to be transformed into better people ... we want to grow through failure and suffering ... we want to take time to address the roots of our anxieties and pain ... we want to be a place where we can find help and healing and the power to change no matter how desperate our situation may be.

That's the church being a hospital, a place where healing can take place. Hospital and mission. Both are necessary. In fact, I believe that a big part of healing happens as we're on mission together and we go out and see the depth of need around us and learn to appreciate God's incredible grace in our own lives. Healing demands that we eventually get our eyes off of ourselves and on to the needs of others. People don't stay in hospitals forever.

In his classic book called Healing for Damaged Emotions, David Seamands talks about the hurts and the wounds in our lives using the analogy of a majestic sequoia or giant redwood tree. And if you go out west you can see cross sections of these great trees that have been cut down. And by looking at the rings in the wood trained naturalists can determine what happened to the tree throughout its lifetime.

Each ring represents a year of growth. One ring might reveal a year of drought when there was hardly any rain, another ring a year when there was too much rain. One ring might show that the tree was struck by lighting that year or that a forest fire almost destroyed the tree or that it experienced some kind of blight or disease. And of course a bunch of rings show normal years of growth. All of that data lies embedded in the heart of the tree, but you'd never know it unless you got behind the protective bark and into the core.

And that's the way it is in our lives too. Beneath our protective bark, the person we are on the outside, is the story of our lives written on the rings of our heart. And that story includes all the wonderful things that have happened to us for which we're grateful, but it also includes the wounds and hurts from our past that make up who we are.

And those rings, those life experiences affect how we look at life and look at God and look at others and look at ourselves. I've met many people over the years who have trouble seeing God as a loving heavenly Father. That image just doesn't work for them because they didn't grow up with a loving earthly father.

They grew up with a father who was distant or demanding, absent or abusive or who abandoned them altogether. So until that wound is healed it can be difficult for them to believe that there's a Father who loves them and cares about them and wants the best for them. How do you deal with that kind of hurt and not allow it to define your view of God or your trust in other people?

Some of us struggle with feelings of inferiority and a deep sense of unworthiness. And so we live everyday battling feelings of inadequacy and anxiety and that nagging inner voice that says, "I'm no good. I'm a failure. Everything I do is wrong. No one could possibly love me."

And then we meet Christ and discover his incredible love for us and his amazing grace and forgiveness. And it's awesome, but even as Christ followers we can carry those old feelings of inadequacy right into our new life with Jesus.

Part of us believes that God really loves us and forgives us, but another part questions whether that's really true. "No one's ever cared for me why should God? How could God possibly love and forgive me?" Those feelings don't just disappear when we come to Christ unless we allow the good news of the gospel to penetrate deep into our hearts where God intends it to go. That's the healing power of love.

Some of us struggle with perfectionism that often comes from growing up in homes where we never felt like we were good enough or like we could measure up. And those feelings haunt us the rest of our lives.

This week I read about a successful pastor named Bill who suffered a complete nervous breakdown that put him in the hospital. He was a driven workaholic and just couldn't say no to people. His church loved him and they would do anything for him, but he wouldn't let them. He had to do it all by himself.

Turns out that Bill grew up in a home where he really wanted to please his parents. As a boy he'd help his mom set the table, but she was always correcting him, seemed like he could never get it right. And so as much as he tried he could never please his mother.

He couldn't please his dad either. He'd bring home his report card with B's and C's and his dad would say, "You can do better than that." So he worked harder until he finally got all A's. And the day he did he was so excited to tell his mom and dad that he ran home from school. He could hardly wait. And when his dad looked at his report card he said, "Hmm. I know some of these teachers. They always give A's."

So when Bill became a pastor all he did was exchange one mother and father for a few hundred of them. People that he tried to please but were never satisfied. Finally, he just collapsed under the pressure of trying to prove his worth and value.

Some of us struggle with feelings of inferiority, some of us with perfectionism, and some of us are just filled with fear, all kinds of fear and anxiety. The greatest perhaps is the fear of failure. I think that's one of my greatest fears. And if we're not careful our fears can keep us out of the game and sitting on the sidelines because at least on the sidelines we can't fail. Or that's what we think.

But when we're not in the game we are failing, failing to put to use the talents and the gifts that Jesus has given to us to love and to serve one another.

John writes in 1 John 4:18 (The Message),There is no room in love for fear. Well-formed love banishes fear. Since fear is crippling, a fearful life - fear of death, fear of judgment - is one not yet fully formed in love.

I believe that God can heal these wounds and a whole lot more and that he wants to heal them because he wants us to be better lovers of others. And that happens when we have a right view of God and a right view of ourselves. Taking the time to look into ourselves in this way and examine our hearts is not self-centered, especially if the goal is to love our neighbor as ourselves.

And the Holy Spirit promises to help us in our weaknesses. I love the passage in Romans 8:26-27 where Paul writes, In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us through wordless groans. 27And he who searches our hearts knows the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for God's people in accordance with the will of God.

The Spirit of God knows our hearts and longs to help us in our weakness and in some mysterious way prays for us with wordless groans. We're not in this alone. We are in this healing, transforming process together with God. He's the one that's going to accomplish it. This is not some self-help program.

But it's a process. And we are involved in the process too. The healing of our hearts doesn't just happen instantly when we trust Christ. That's when the healing begins, but it happens progressively as we allow the Holy Spirit access to the wounds and the hurts and the scars of our past. That's all part of fully submitting our lives to the Lordship of Christ.

Worshipping and reading the Bible, praying and having more faith are important to the process but it involves more than that. Because we can do all those things and still stay stuck when it comes to the emotional damage in our lives. And when we tell our friends who are struggling emotionally that they just need to read their Bible more or pray more or have more faith we can do them a real disservice. It's not that simple.

It's like the guy that was traveling on a flight and was served a meal that had a roach on top of his salad. When he got home he wrote a letter to the president of the airlines complaining about the meal.

And a few days later he was shocked when he got a response from the president himself who said, "This was very unusual, don't worry. I want to assure you that that airplane has been completely fumigated. In fact, all the seats and upholstery has been stripped out. It's highly probable that this particular aircraft will be taken out of service. We've also taken disciplinary action against the flight attendant who served you that meal and they may even be fired. I can assure you that it will never happen again. And I trust you will continue to fly with us."

The man was so impressed by the letter! He couldn't believe it, until he noticed that the letter he had written was stuck to the back of the president's letter by accident. And when he pulled off his own letter he saw a note to a secretary at the bottom that read, "Please reply with the regular roach letter."

We can't give the regular roach letter to those who are struggling with deep seated emotional wounds. We need more than pat, scripted, simplistic answers which often drive those who are hurting deeper into despair and disillusionment.

So as we begin this new series together let's agree not to do that and let's start by asking God to show us the areas of our lives that he wants to help us with, the hurts that he wants to reveal and to heal. Just one is enough. He'll be gentle with us. He doesn't want to blow us away. He's a gentle healer.

Remember the Holy Spirit is praying for these things as well. In fact, Jesus describes the Holy Spirit as our counselor. He wants to lead us into all truth and how he does that is up to him. He may choose to reveal that wound directly to us or show us something in the Scriptures. He might make us aware of it through an incident or experience in our lives. He may use a teaching like this or a good friend or a professional counselor to point something out. He's used all those things in my life and still is.

But when he reveals a wound it's not to shame us and drive us deeper into guilt that we're not perfect. Remember, he always reveals to heal, to bring the hurt out of the darkness and into the light so that we can be transformed a little bit more into the image of Christ and become better lovers of God and one another.