The Gathering 2018 - Sr. Miriam James Heidland - Healing

so shall we just go ahead and just start with a prayer and just ask the Lord to open our hearts today to hear whatever the Holy Spirit wishes to to speak to us so let's begin and the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit Most Holy Trinity Father Son and Holy Spirit we come before you today as your children we just ask that you would root us and ground us in your love and lord I just ask for your tender kindness to be made manifest in this room at this very moment your fragrant aroma and your love and Lord I pray as we begin to speak about brokenness and areas where you so deeply desire to heal us that we would find that you're there already waiting for us that there is nothing outside of your love and mercy that our hearts would be open and receptive give us the courage today to give you just one of our veils and receive your healing kindness I pray that our hearts will be broken wide open to receive you the beautiful one the one who loves us and Mother Mary we ask for your blessing your intercession at this time as your children mother I pray that you would just wrap us very tightly in your mantle and place us right on your heart your beautiful heart and we entrust ourselves to you and your mother as we pray hail Mary full of grace the Lord is with thee blessed art thou amongst women and blessed is the fruit of thy womb Jesus Holy Mary Mother of God pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death amen Our Lady Queen of Peace pray for us and the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit so I'm going to talk a little bit about the the process of healing and just about what I would call facing our brokenness and I'm going to borrow heavily from a mentor of mine the material of a mentor of mine named dr. Bob chutes and dr. Bob chutes heads up the jp2 healing center in Tallahassee Florida he has a book in the back called be healed it's a Bluegreen book that is the number one book I recommend across the country okay so it's called be healed it's for sale on the back and if they sell out today you can find it on Amazon so I'm gonna borrow a lot of from his material here were just really really wonderful stuff and so we're gonna talk about how love authentic love authentic love in our life is the only thing that will heal broken love that's it that's the only thing in life that will heal our broken loves and so wherever we find authentic love we find healing and you see that very easily in the Gospels you see that when Christ is encountering people like we talked about Peter earlier today the authentic love brings healing to broken love so in our life wherever we find dis some parts of our hearts that are disintegrated so if we're talking about holiness my dear friends and sanctity being wholeness so that means I don't have part of my life over here and part of this over here and part of this over here and part of this over here this whole thing you know as Christ you know recapitulates all of salvation history he's calling he's bringing all the parts of our hearts together all the parts of us together to make us whole so we're living out of our identity our objective identity and whatever subjective experience you and I have it's not going to mitigate against the objective reality that I am his I'm his daughter we're sons and daughters of God so any parts of our hearts that we find are disintegrated parts of our hearts that are maybe living in lies or have parts of our hearts that are just don't believe which I which is one of the reasons why I love the story of where Christ comes to encounter Thomas because he comes to heal him of his doubt which is really beautiful and don't all of us have doubts in our life we have doubts about who God is who we are what life is about and so Jesus comes to heal our doubt so all the parts that are disintegrated Jesus comes to bring us into wholeness so only us so we're gonna talk a lot about authentic love because it's only authentic love that heals broken love and when we talk about love we're talking about two will the good of the other right to bring the other into communion to will what is good for them so God is always willing he wills what is good for us to bring us into his own beautiful life his own beautiful heart I want to talk a bit about story because his story is very important and I guarantee you that you know as we talked about well how we all have a story and stories have many chapters to them and so if you look at any good story if you think right now of your favorite story you have you know a hero of the story of a protagonist you have an antagonist you have a mission a story is going somewhere it's on a journey so for example one of my favorite stories is Lord of the Rings okay so here this ring has been given to Frodo and Sam these little these little hobbits you know that ring is not given to elves or to dorbz or to minutes given to these little hobbits and they're set out upon a journey which they have no idea what they've signed up for and how many times I was saying this the other night you know how many times in our life do we have parts of our story where we say to ourselves I did not sign up for this part like this yeah not this part like not this part of marriage not this part of the priesthood not this part of Christianity I didn't sign up for that part and so we had these parts of our hearts right that kind of mitigate against us and so what's the response that we're going to give in all of this I want to say one thing to you my I'm all about growing a maturity and I gave a lot of talks on how to grow in maturity but one of the things that my spiritual director often will say to me which I've really taken into heart in a lot of ways many times in our life especially I think as we get begin to and I'm going to very reverently very reverently today look at some wounds in our life okay and sometimes in our lives we say not unlike job many times we say why did this happen to me why like why did you allow this to happen to me which is a very human question right and many times we want to understand because we think if we could understand we could accept it and I think there's a certain truth to that if you've ever had something happen in your life where you've said to yourself I remember when my father was um when I was in Rome as a novice my the phone rang one night and you know when the phone rings the nights usually never good news and remember being upstairs in my room in Rome and I heard the phone ring downstairs and nobody ever called us in the middle of the night and I can't explain it too but I just had this kind of sick feeling in my stomach like this is not good and five minutes later my superior came up to my room and she had tears in her eyes and I could see them because I could see in the street light had the tears were glistening in her eyes and she said sister your mom and dad are on the phone and I said okay so I went downstairs and I picked up the phone and I knew whatever it was was not good news and my mom it was my mom and my parents were very healthy my actually my dad retired early to do volunteer work for my religious community they're just wonderful people wonderful people and it was my mother on the phone and she said honey um your dad I went to the doctor today they're actually volunteering at a mission and wasn't even there a regular doctor she said your dad went to the doctor today and your dad is very sick and I said how sick is he and she said he was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer today and that was Fat Tuesday was a day before Ash Wednesday and we buried my dad on ascension Thursday and some member coming home I was 24 and saying to myself this is the worst thing that has ever happened to our family like this is what one of them it was like one of the worst things that had ever happened to our family and I member thinking my dad's a good man like he's like Lord have you noticed because he's that really good man he retired early to do volunteer work for you I like who does that you know like who and they would pay for other repairs to our convent out of their own pocket and they just they gave and they serve and my mom is president of Legion of Mary and brings communion to the shut-in I mean just you know and we had all these holy priests pray over my dad and I really thought I was not unlike the disciples on the road to Emmaus I really thought God was gonna heal my dad so many people prayed for my dad they had novenas of masses prayed in from everybody came and prayed for my dad and we were at the hospital that night and it was very interesting because the journey started with my mom and I and it ended with my mom and I and we were there in the hospital the night he died and I remember just the room was very quiet they took him out of intensive care and they put him upstairs in a room and it was just the three of us and my mom and I began to pray the rosary and as we finished the Rosary and as we said amen my dad went home you know and there was something very beautiful about that moment it's still one of the most beautiful and one of the most sorrowful moments of my entire life and I just remember sitting there in the stillness and realizing at that moment and not like in a pious way cuz we were in deep grief but remembering and seeing for the first time that God did heal my dad took him home at his funeral we had the reading that where Jesus says I'm going ahead of you to prepare a place for you so I remind my dad about a lot Mike don't forget me okay cuz I like you know but something else that happened and that is my mother and I had a huge healing in our relationship because as I told you before in the earlier talk my mom and I were not getting along we had so much I was very broken she was broken and we were transmitting our brokenness on to each other and so out of that as you know very well when you're taking care of somebody that's dying it like very clear very quickly doesn't it you just do not have time for such nonsense and so my mother and I had a huge healing on our relationship that began during that time and it just continued its continued the 17 years since my father has passed away so I can look at that situation even though we still missed my dad to this very day when I visit my mom at home I still expect my dad sometimes to come downstairs with coffee you know just those little things you're like oh you know he's having coffee where he belongs but you know we miss him but I can honestly say that there are threads so the the threads of God's will the threads of God's plan that I can see I can see that something that was so epically sorrowful for our family that I can see these golden threads of like wow had that not happened this would have happened if you had those at moments in your life okay so but I do so so many times we say God why did you allow this to happen and so we have just because we're so little look we have these little understandings of kind of God's plan but I really do believe there's certain things in life that we will not understand until we see God face to face and when we finally see him face to face to face with unveiled faces as st. Paul says we will gaze upon him with unveiled faces we will finally see as we are seen and known as we are known and all will be made clear and I think there'll be many things in our life where we will say oh right that thing that I rallied against you my whole life about is the one thing one of the very things actually saved me right the things that we have in our life and so my spiritual director will often say to me a sister marry me said the question in your life is not why did God allow this to happen the question in your life is how will I respond okay that's the Chuy's of the truly mature spiritual person that truly mature spiritually mature person does not sit in the question of why they sit in the question of how will I respond okay because if God is good if we believe the premise that if God is good that he will bring all things too good out of what has happened in our life that as we talked about in the divine economy of salvation nothing is wasted so a san agustin says God would not allow anything to happen in your life but he does not plan to bring something even greater out of he gives us beauty for Ashes yeah so there's nothing that's beyond his Redemption there's nothing beyond it Our Lives is beyond his Redemption so he's going to bring authentic love into our life and what that love does is that love resurrects us I was listening this morning to a praise and worship song and the course of the song says the resurrected King is resurrecting me I was like Amen bring it on like bring on the resurrection you know the resurrected King is resurrecting me and so he's coming into our life and he's bringing us authentic love and what authentic love does is it heals the cold parts of our hearts the calcified parts the parts that remain in doubt the parts that remain in self-reliance and self-righteousness and all the ways we try to make ourselves right which you've ever tried to do that as exhausting isn't it it really is exhausting to continually try to prove to God why he should love us it's exhausting it's exhausting because what we find at the end of the day is that we're lovable because He loves us and it almost seems too simple doesn't it we're like it can't be that easy but all beautiful things I think are really simple I got it ultimately is very simple very simple and how He loves us and so I think if I could just just kind of illustrate this with a story we talking about story let's talk about narrative one of my favorite stories is a story that says a tale as old as time is called Beauty and the Beast right beautiful story of a girl a funny lovely but a funny girl named Belle right who's in a small French countryside who just wants more out of life she just wants more and so there's a wonderful part in the story and it's in every version that you see whether it's on Broadway whether it's the cartoon whether it's the live-action version of eating the Beast where she's just kind of had enough of the smarmy man in Gaston who was pursuing her and she runs out into the clearing of this mountain and she's a beautiful sound of music moment because we don't know every musical leads back to the sound of music and so she is out in the hill and she says this she just sings from the top of her voice from the depths of her heart and she says I want adventure in the great white somewhere I want it more than I can tell and for once it would be grand to have someone understand I want so much more than they've got planned you know and she goes back to her dad and she asks her dad and she says dad am I am i odd and her dad's a bit eccentric himself and his my daughter odd why would you say that and she says well the town people say so and he says they say that because they're small-minded but let me tell you something there was once a woman that people considered odd until one day they found themselves imitating her and she walked forward to her towards her father and she says to her father tell me one more thing about my mother tell me one more thing about her and he looks at her and he says your mother she was fearless she was fearless and what we find out is that when her mother in in in Paris at that time when the plague was ravaging Paris her mother became sick with the plague and rather than have her husband and her child die she sent them away so that they could live because that's what mature love does mature love wills the good of the other and you see already in Belle this mature love how her love her heart is different she desires an epic adventure and she desires authentic 11 she desires a life that's worth living and so you know the story if she comes into a contact with the Beast and and this beast was a man a very narcissistic self-centered man who had the world at his fingertips but his heart was cold and you see a woman shows up to the castle one night and all she wants his one-night shelter from the cold winter and he mocks her and he makes fun of her and he won't give it to her and she offers him one rose nick's change for just one night stay of shelter and he will not let her do it and he makes fun of her and at that moment when he sends her away when he rejects her she changes into a sorceress and she cast a spell on the entire castle now everything that's inside of him that's already there is now on the outside now I don't know what your worst sin is or what you struggle with or what you're most ashamed of but could you imagine that if that was that it's on the inside of most of us all of us had those parts of our hearts let's be really honest imagine that that's now on the outside for everybody to see and he's become a beast what he was already inside now it's outside its manifested and you see when people struggle with that kind of shame there's a lot of anger that comes out of it people that are very angry a lot of times what's that the hardest deep fear and shame okay but it's manifested in anger that's often destructive or it's passive-aggressive but so you see he's very full of shame inside for his behavior it's like these things about him that he is broken that he can't help in a certain respect but also that he keeps indulging so like there's this it's such a great analogy for our lives and so as you know very well she can't she comes in contact with him and he comes into contact with her and what they realize is that she realizes that that's not really who he is and they each have a moment of self sacrificial love where she saves him he saves her and she saves him actually he saves her twice and she realizes that at the heart of who he is is not a beast but he's a man worthy of love and at the end of the stand if I'm spoiling this story if you don't even know where you been your whole life okay I just want to say that right now like if I'm ruining Beauty and the Beast for you Wow okay so but at the very end of the story as he gives his life for her and as you know that this the the prophecy of the sorceress said when once the last rose petal falls that everybody in the castle will remain the same forever there is no hope of redemption no hope of restoration and only love can heal this curse but the tagline of the whole movie is says who could ever love a beast right so what we find out at the very end of the movie as he gives his life for her the beasts give his life for her and there's that last rose petal is falling off the rose she finds him at the top of the castle and she speaks out as out her love for him and she says I love you as the rose petals falling her words are falling also and they come out of her mouth and they cascade down upon him and they penetrate this deep thick furry beast like you know exterior and they penetrate to the depths of his soul and her words get there before their last rose petal hits the ground and they resurrect him one of the best resurrection scenes in cinematic history is the Beauty and the Beast I'm telling you okay because what happens is her words penetrate the depths of his soul and as that happens he begins to resurrect and light light just shoots out from him it shoots up from his fingertips from his eyes from his heart and it literally lifts him off the ground and as he's being transformed into that from this beast he's being transformed into a man and he's restored as a man but he's not the man he was he's a man who's authentically loved who know who she is and when he lives and that kind of love the kingdom is restored what happens when the beast is restored the kingdom is at peace and it's her love that heals him so there is nothing else in our life my dear friends that is going to heal us it is not lust it is not recognition it is not degrees it is not it is not it's not there's nothing else in our life that will heal broken love other than authentic love and this is what God offers to us at every moment this is what God offers to us through people that authentically love us I don't know if we've ever had a moment in your life where I know many times in my life as especially in the beginning stages of healing for me when I had secrets that I had never uttered before and there's a wonderful saying in the 12-step group there's 12-step meetings one of the best ones and they say we're only as sick as our secrets right we're only as sick as our secrets and I had a lot of secrets I mean and you know marriages have secrets families have secrets churches have secrets and secrets as we know the Dark One's destroy they become very destructive and so I had a lot of secrets and I remember part of my journey was just finally speaking out those secrets and I was sure I was sure and you know you don't speak out your secrets to everybody I mean you hear me you hear me sharing my story with you and I'm very honest about my story but I can also say there's parts of my story that will never be uttered in public right so like you speak to the story your story to people who can receive it who people who can bear the weight of it people were you're in your own journey enough where you can reveal your story right and I know for myself at the very beginning of my story and I was revealing my story to a very wise woman who God had sent into my life to help me and I actually couldn't even speak it out loud I couldn't utter the words of the things that happened to me the things that I had done in my life so it for an entire year this might seem silly to you but for an entire year all I would do is I would email her once a week with a different installment of my story and I would tell her okay well when I was when I was 11 this is what happened and this is this is the story of what happened and just sometimes typing those words on the computer that was the first time I could even utter what had happened to me and she would read that and she would receive and she would respond in our journey continued then so it's the process of speaking out right the secrets of our live the dark parts of our hearts and I was very convinced every week it was very funny and this is how God loves us like I just his love is so beautiful for us the people that he sends into our life that you know we call it Jesus with skin on right the people that come into our life that just love us cuz I was so convinced not just with her but also just parts of my store when I started to speak it out verbally and maybe new areas of my life or even areas my life now that I find that I'm like oh my gosh it's so embarrassing I can't believe I still struggle with that or whatever and telling somebody that you think for sure well this is the part of the story where they're gonna be like so disgusted with me they're not gonna want to talk to me anymore you know or this is finally the point to where the person in your life says alright well that's enough I've just had enough of you I'm just you know and unfortunately we have people that that happens with but people that authentically love us never ever ever do that and I've been so convinced many times okay when I finally tell this person this they're going to be disgusted with me and I can't tell you how many times I would finally tell the secret I would tell the struggle I would tell the shame and I would look at that person in the eye and they were just looking at me with complete and total love complete and total love and when you know that your love we only heal from what we feel safe to heal with right so this is why the healing journey continues this is my love continues as as the as the the shores of love are shored up so to speak right and the rivers of love flow the deeper the love goes the deeper the roots of the tree go the more that the tree can bloom so love is always deepening you know healing is always deepening and I think often honestly if I were to be very honest with you and just you know as a religious sister you become by default instance a leader right and people are looking to you and so I hear like I said I hear stories from people all over the nation I hear stories all the time and I hear stories from people from every walks of life and I hear stories from leaders in the church I hear stories from priests I hear stories from religious sisters a lot of them who have addictions that are really struggling that have nobody else to talk to and there's an unfortunate kind of reality of a lot of people buy into is that if I'm a leader in the church then I can't have any problems if I'm a leader in the church then I can't admit that I need help if I'm a leader in the church I can admit that I'm still in my day struggling with doubt or I'm still having this or I can't be accountable to anybody like if I'm a leader I can't be vulnerable and I'm telling you right now my dear friends that is death to leadership because it might not be where you're out in public telling your whole story and I don't recommend that you know I don't mean that's a certainly a marked call for certain people but you and I must have people in our life as leaders in the church you and I have have have people in our life that love us as people that just love us that can hear our story that we can be accountable to that call us up into glory that are with us on the journey you know Christianity is meant to be lived as a fellowship and it's not just a gathering of bodies but of gathering of hearts you know so I just want to say that just as a caveat because I think it's very easy I know for myself you know I went back to counseling this last year just because I needed some extra help in certain areas and I tell you I could see that in myself saying lord have mercy girl he'd been working even working on this a long time are you really gonna go through yet another layer of it and that was like that was a lot of my own stuff coming out right there and I could see the truth thank God I'm like no this is what I need and I'm gonna go for it and here we are right so you and I no matter where we find ourself in leadership we must have people in our life that have permission to speak into our life okay and that we can be people with the we can we can have no pretenses with okay so I just want to kind of go there as we talk about authentic love when we talk about I'm gonna talk about kind of the anatomy of maybe just if you could think of one thing in your life okay so I'm gonna kind of sketch this out for you so if you could think of one thing in your life and maybe it's something that you go to confession with a lot so sometimes in our life we go to confession for the same things like over and over and over and over and over again and you know all of us have certain tendencies and so that's why it's very important that you and I must know our own story okay so Christian know thyself we must know our own story and that means we have to know all the chapters of our own story and so if there's a chapter of this story of your life right now that you don't want to look at I would highly recommend that your prayer be today Lord just help me look at that chapter in my life okay because the chapters of our life that one we're unwilling to look at can ultimately just lay waste to our entire life and what we do is we kind of end up coping with life versus living an abundant life like Jesus says you know I came that you might have life and have it to the full not just to manage well so when you and I have chapters of our life that we're not looking at many times what we end up doing is just managing well instead of living life to the full okay so if you could think of like the one thing in your life and many times what's happening is that one thing in your life is bearing fruit up here and what we do many times is we take that fruit to confession okay amen for that right so I'm just gonna let me just use the example I'm gonna use two different examples I could use a couple let me just use the example of gossip can I just use that for just four cuz I'm sure that never happens to you but I do that every now and then okay so if you look at the tree like what's bearing fruit on the tree is gossip okay so and you might go to confession and you might say to father you know father a gossiped about this it was just a prayer request but I mean you know I passed it along right sometimes we pass those things on we should not even be mentioning those things okay so we're gossiping about that and so so we're talking about an objective set of gossip we're on either revealing the sins of somebody else that I just have no business doing or I'm passing on information that's just none of my business or I'm detracting from them I'm saying something about them that's slanderous okay so I'm taking that sin to confession which I should now that's wonderful but do you understand that any fruit on this tree comes from the roots of the tree okay so like from the fullness of the heart the mouth speaks so I'm gossiping up here but that's really just the fruit of something the fruit is going it's you know being produced because it's got going through a trunk of a tree and it's coming from the roots okay so the next time I'm gonna do that so say for example I find myself gossiping again what I'm gonna do is you talk about you know the seven deadly sins and they're attached to something else but I'm gonna ask myself Holy Spirit what's what's really going on here what's happening because I guarantee you there's a whole story there's a whole thread like why you do what you do it's got a long story to why you do what you do we've got patterns of life patterns of behavior patterns of belief that are indicative of kind of how we live our life so I don't know so if I'm gossiping what's going on here so I'm gonna go down to the trunk of the tree so what dr. Bob talks about in speaking of Ephesians when he talks about the tree and he talks about being rooted and grounded in love he uses these three terms so at the roots of the tree he would call the roots of the tree security rights the security that we have in Christ being rooted and grounded in love so if you and I have a tree that's route this rooted in security it's gonna give birth to good fruit but if like all of us have parts of the roots that are not secure they're insecure so they give birth to something else so security it's at the bottom of the tree the trunk of the tree is maturity and what gives rise to maturity but purity okay and that st. Paul's letter to the Ephesians where he talks about the journey from being rooted and grounded in love that goes from security to maturity to purity and it grows in different stages and it grows in different parts of our hearts okay so if I'm looking at the tree so if you looked at gossip is like say impurity so to speak because it's not clear it's not transparent it's not going toward God it's a bad fruit I could look at the maturity of like what's really happening here is it a sin of anger am i angry at that person so I used my example like I used kind of that opportunity to do track from them or pass on something maybe I'm feeling left out maybe for a second if I knew that I had a little bit of information that would make me more important or ingratiate me to certain people so I just couldn't help it pass it along do you see I'm saying okay and so at the bottom of the tree though are usually some wounds right where I believe I'm either not enough I believe that I have to perform well I believe that there's all these lies that are attached to the very very bottom okay so when we're looking at that what we're looking at is whatever in your life right now just one area of your life okay that we talked about where do you want God to encounter you or maybe you've been wearing a veil for a long time it's gonna have long fruit okay it's gonna have long roots because of the fruit so here's the deal what I found very what was life-changing for me when I first started studying under dr. Bob and just being mentored by him was that he had something that it's not original to him but he developed in a very cohesive manner was you know he says we're all very familiar with the seven deadly sins but he said from all his years of being in marriage and family therapy and he's an ardent Catholic and just his own journey like I said that book be healed chronicles and you'll find more details about this teaching in that book but he said what he found after years and years and years of healing people hearing people's stories okay and kind of working with people what he found is that there's not just seven deadly sins what's accompanying them is what he calls seven deadly wounds right because he said many times were sinning because what is a sin a sin it was to miss the mark right it's a violation of love but it's me trying to grasp at life on my own because I don't believe God is gonna give it to me it's the same light that's in the garden it's always the same thing so in our life where we're sinning whether we're you know whatever that is it's just everybody if I'm trying to gain control over my own life and usually those areas where we try to gain control come out of deep in our life okay so I'm just gonna read to you the seven deadly wounds that he lists which I think if you listen I'll read them to you a couple times and you might find that one or two really resonate with you really resonate with you okay so the first wound he identifies his abandonment abandonment and abandonment says I am all alone and no one understands me okay I'm abandonment the second is shame shame says I am bad I am dirty and perverted it's my fault okay so shame the third is fear fear says if I trust if I speak if I confront I will be hurt or die okay so out of fear we live at a fear-based life number four is powerlessness powerlessness says I feel overwhelmed and I don't know what to do number five is rejection which I charge you that was my core one rejection rejection says I am not loved or wanted and I have no value number six is hopelessness hopelessness says it's never going to change there is no hope right this is never gonna get any better as as good as it's gonna get and the last one that he identified is confusion and confusion says I don't know what is happening to me okay I don't understand this so abandonment shame fear powerlessness rejection hopelessness or confusion and these are what he calls identity wounds and many times these the very wounds that attack our identity are objective reality as sons and daughters of God so if you have a good experience in your life that has one of these wounds many times those are the things it can often be revealed to you when the self talk that happens when something goes wrong you will all those little tapes that go on in our mind when something goes wrong and usually they're probably really tailor-made just to you and sometimes when you fail you might say I'm not smart enough I can never figure this out and maybe that's something that your mother or father spoke over you you're stupid you're never gonna be anything right and so here you are an adult and we're adults and we still hear those same things because it's a wound that goes deep in our identity when something you know if something doesn't work out we might feel afraid I knew I couldn't do it and if I tell the truth about what happened they're gonna reject me do you see what I'm saying so you know we have these parts of our hearts and what they are they're really revealing to us kind of the deep the cracks in the foundation of our souls and it's really great dr. Bob says you know you know we talked about the seven deadly sins and he says you know we usually specialize in one or two of them you know so like in the seven deadly wounds we you and I usually have one or two right we could probably relate to all of them in certain regards but you and I usually have one or two that really you're like oh wow Wow and so what happens is if you could look at your soul like a castle okay what happens is that it those wounds just by default of living this side of heaven right we all have them is that they lend themselves to deep cracks in our foundation and when our foundation is cracked the the house doesn't rest firmly and cracks in the foundation let in wind they let in rain all right this is exactly where a lot of you who do unbound ministry this is where this Satan will come right into those cracks right in the foundation okay so what we're always asking to do is as Christ is always about our heart we're always asking him to go down to the depths of our foundation to heal our foundation because see what happens when these things happen is we try to were very smart and we're very capable and so what we try to do is we tried to take control of our life and we try to manage our life very well so let me give you an example I'll just give an example from my own life okay so from my own wound of rejection okay now I am an adult now and I can psychologically understand adoption I can understand teen pregnancy I can understand I can understand the psychology of a lot of the things that have happened to me in my life but inside we're talking about the experience inside you know the experience of what it was like to be abandoned as a newborn what it was like to be rejected in the womb what it was like to be a burden not a joy okay and so that crack and my foundation and what that does is when our wounds are filled with pain okay we make certain beliefs about ourselves so my belief about myself for a long time was I'm a burden and my default lens it was fascinating to finally realize that my default lens like the sunglasses that I was wearing in my life or the eyeglasses that I was wearing in my life or ones of rejection and I would just always expect people to reject me like it just was like a fault thing I'll make of course you're going to because that was a that was a primal experience of mine do you see them saying okay and so then what we do to protect ourselves like we talked about the areas of self-reliance in our life where we're trying to just manage our life is that we make what we call inner vows you've ever had a moment in your life where you've said to yourself I will never trust anyone ever again I will never forgive them I will never be like my mother I will never be like my father I will never allow myself to be vulnerable I will never allow anybody to see me as weak I will never reveal my weaknesses I mean you know we hear those things okay and so there might be realities of say your parents that were very very broken and you're growing up saying man I I don't I don't want to be like that which would be a healthy thing if the behavior is destructive but what we do is we make vows not out of a holiness like you know a husband and wife come to it together and they make vows out of love and out of holiness but these vows are made out of anger they're made out of deep anger and deep bitterness and they're often made out of judgment right so here we are binding ourselves in a sense to a certain person out of just deep anger and deep bitterness and deep resentment and we say I will never ever ever do that and what we do is we create this just calcified fortress around our soul and anything that gets closed anything that comes near to getting to the heart of who we are anything that just touches on the areas of our woundedness man it just triggers a deep reaction have you ever had a reaction of something in your life that was way over the top from what was the rude the real situation oh my gosh and you're like what's happening right like this you're saying to yourself I had that happen to me some time ago and it was something that happened to me that was painful but it went so deep in me I I went to the bathroom and cried in the bathroom I'm like 40 why am i crying in the bathroom like what's wrong here you know and I know myself well enough to know that this wasn't a painful situation but man it is triggering something so deep in my heart right now that I know this is an area of my life where God needs to look I need to allow him to take the veil off or I need to give him the veil whatever you feel most comfortable right I need to give him that part of my heart and to come out of agreement with any vows that I've made any judgments that I've made against people because as you know very well working with people if you can't see it in yourself I hope you can see in other people that those that those vows that we make the hard packs and we make the areas of judgment that we make with people they keep us bound they keep us stuck and they keep you know unforgiveness it doesn't stop God forgiving us forgiveness versa it stops us from receiving it and passing it on one of the deepest areas of our life that we stop God's grace from flowing as areas of unforgiveness and where we judge other people it's very interesting you know um you know when we talk about seeing God face to face right we see God face to face and I find that moment very beautiful but I also find it very sobering as well because we will finally like we said see as we are seen and know as we are known and there will be no misunderstandings never sent somebody an email or even talking to them and they misunderstood you and then you have to go back and say that's not what I meant I didn't mean it like that you know don't text me that tone of voice you know whatever you like that's know what I meant I did I didn't mean that okay but when we see God face to face there will be no misunderstandings there will be no oh God you didn't understand see you didn't really get me cuz he gets it thank God thank God he gets it I'm so glad God his God can I just say that uh thank God but there will also be no Lord you didn't understand and I tell you I tell the story often when I talk about forgiveness which is I'm gonna talk about that quite a bit now that you know we know the story very famous story where Peter comes up to Jesus and he says to Jesus you know like Lord how often we have to forgive people like seven times you know I love Jesus she's like Oh Peter not seven times seven times seventy times or seventy-seven times depending on the translation that you're reading and then he tells the story about this unforgiving servant son forgiving steward and you know when we think about that story of this you know the master calls into the dis servant who was my lifetime of wages lifetime of wages which he can never pay back and the master calls in the debt and he says pay me back what you owe me and the master the servant falls in his knees and he begs for mercy and he says please please give me time I promise you I'll pay you back I promise you and the master knows very well that this this servant has been completely horrendously mismanaging his money I mean this is not a small offense this is a lifetime of wages you know and he says to him Jesus puts in the heart of the master you know he says moved with pity moved with compassion moved with mercy the master forgives his servant his entire dead-tired oh and what happens that servant goes and he goes out into the the household of another you know and he finds another fellow servant who owes him six months wages which is not even comparable a lifetime to six months and he begins to seize I'm just the visual image of the sees him and throttle him saying pay back what you owe me pay back what you owe me and that servant falls in his knees and he says verbatim verbatim the very thing that the servant had just said to the master over them that servants having none of it and he orders them to be sold to put into prison till he pay back the last debt oh and the servants are horrified and they go back to the master and they report the entire fare to the master and the master calls back in the servant and I'm paraphrasing here he calls him back and he says like what are you doing what are you doing I forgave you your entire debt I forgave you your entire debt because you asked me to but this servant of yours who owes you a mere fraction of the amount him you cannot forgive and I always find it very interesting in the story that that servant says nothing nothing he doesn't say oh my gosh oh my gosh you're right I didn't know that he doesn't say oh yes I totally forgive he says nothing I had a vision of myself one day when I was well into religious life thank you of myself and that story that parable and I can tell you that I was not the benevolent master I can tell you that I had an image of myself of the person who'd hurt me the most and to be very honest with you as the person that sexually abused me and I had a person I had an image of myself with that person when I was holding on to them the collar of their shirt strangling them throttling them saying man you pay back what you owe me because you owe me you owe me and after all those years of dealing with that pain after all those years of you know and I was in a sense very well into my healing and I was shocked to find this part of my heart so I'm talking about you know here here you if you've you know wow I didn't know that about myself that I was still so consumed with rage and so consumed with anger and so consumed with judgment because in that person in my in my mind that person was a monster and I remember being a young girl saying I will never forgive you ever which is the most dangerous thing you can ever say because what I was doing I I mean I what I was doing I was blocking my own heart to God's mercy what was festering inside the castle of my soul wasn't a beautiful garden it was a garden full of just thorns and anger and clinical depression all these things that were like they're bearing fruit on my tree but I just didn't quite understand what had happened and in that moment I saw myself I'll never forget it and I knew that I could not go back to drinking that ship it sail they didn't wanna I didn't want to go back to my addiction that wasn't gonna help and I just remember just being horrified it like this the state of my own heart in that particular situation and I just released my grasp on that person and I'm like I can't I can't do this anymore I can't live like this and I don't know how to get beyond this because you know we had these trite little sayings in English where we say forgive and forget right and sometimes those things are easy to do but sometimes they're not isn't as a matter of fact in the Catechism it says it's not in the power of the memory to forget but through forgiveness the memory is purified so the memory becomes one of compassion and God took them in a very very serious journey into the depths of my own soul and what I know about that person and I know the person that person to this very day is not sorry at all I have confronted them about what happened and that person is not sorry they're not at all interested in even admitting anything they actually called me crazy right and so for me I was like well here's another journey so if you had these stories in your life my dear friends you're not alone and I knew for myself looking that person I said Lord one of my superiors gave me the best piece of advice I've ever heard one of them at least and she said if you're ever struggling with somebody in your life ask Jesus to show you how he loves them ask Jesus to show you how he relates to them and so I did and I got on my knees I'm like Lord I can't do this like I know we can't we can't forgiving or I can't do this I said how do i how do I relate to this person I just I can't go on like this I can see how broken they are they're broken like their life is so incredibly broken and they don't even know it and just like to see their sorrow to see the rage of that person just to see their life as a total train wreck to this very day and that person is just not interested in have anybody speak into their life and I saw for the first time like that person's not a monster they're just really broken and God loves that person too and he died for that person too and his heart is to see that person forever United with him in what we call heaven also and I was like oh right no so forgiveness my unforgiveness my dear friends it's not something that just happens to theoretically whether it's a small offense or a large offense what it does is it it has a real empower to build up these huge walls right between us it's certainly on the other person and I'm not you know forgiveness and reconciliation or two different things okay but I'm talking about the mere act of releasing our grasp on a person and commending them to God no matter how small or large the offenses taking a full account of what had happened right and allowing God asking how to forgive their sin and asking God to heal them and to heal us because that's what love does coming out of agreement with all the vows that I've made where I'm gonna protect myself where I'm gonna take care of myself coming out of the areas of my life of just chronic anger and chronic forgiveness and just the kind of the things that we do that we we settle into and we call it life but it's really not you know so it's a part of your foundation when you think about maybe today you've been thinking about fruit right and you've been thinking about maybe the roots of the shree of maybe some of the area of like where you find yourself feeling even as an adult powerless or hopeless or confused or full of shame or just feeling rejected you know those at times are very indicative of also areas that need deeper forgiveness where we receive the forgiveness of God because as Pope Francis says you know God never tires of forgiving us and I love it in the very in his letter for the year of mercy the very first sentence of the entire letter says Jesus Christ is the face of the father's mercy the mercy is a faith and that he never tires never I can't even imagine that that he never tires are forgiving us so it says as you and I allow these areas of our life where we've have beliefs that are faulty where we believe identity lies you know where we just had these old stories like these old parts of our story that just really what Christ is desiring to do he's desiring to arise to bring us to arise and so it doesn't go away I wish I could tell you it goes away with my pretending it doesn't exist but it doesn't do that okay it actually is transformed you know love authentic love transforms is transformed by the Healing Touch of God where you and I bring the wounds of our heart and we bring them to his pierced heart where wound meets wound and he heals us he heals us so if you don't mind for the next few minutes I would just like to invite you and if you don't want to you certainly don't have to it's not a Catholic school I don't have a ruler okay so total total freedom here and if you don't mind I would just like to lead you in a little forgiveness meditation okay so you don't have to take notes for this and I would just invite you to put anything that you have in your hands if you want to just put it down and I'm just gonna lead you through some steps and on a journey and I'm just gonna say a couple things so if just for times sake I'm gonna have to keep going okay but if you find that you need to stay on a certain step or stay in a certain place you just stay right there okay so don't worry about it I'm gonna keep going because of time but you don't have to go on with us if you find that you know you might not know who to forgive and we're gonna sell you spirit to help us do that but don't worry about it okay and please many times what we do in life is we self-censor so something will happen in our life and it'll come to our mind and we'll say well that's too small that's not a big deal don't do that okay let's just see whatever wherever the Holy Spirit wants to go today let's allow the Holy Spirit to do that sometimes the person we need to forgive most is ourself I think a lot of us have ourselves by the collar of our shirts berating ourselves after all these years of something that we've gone to confession for something that maybe we have a struggle with or maybe a chronic area of our life that we just feel so ashamed about and we have ourselves and we say things to ourselves we would never say to anybody else and then it's not God's desire for us right and then I think quite frankly many people struggle with anger with God and God is supposed so to speak like we're stuck in the chronic question of why why'd you allow this to happen and we're angry at God and we're afraid to be angry with God but I wanted to tell you that God's not afraid of that so maybe you need to have a little conversation with God today and that's okay okay so wherever you find yourself it just want to tell you that's okay okay so let's begin the name of the father and the son of the Holy Spirit so we just come before you today Lord and you just asked for just an anointing of your Holy Spirit upon us and Lord Jesus we just ask that your precious blood would cover us at this very moment we just pray that you would bind any distractions any areas of fear in our life brother your precious blood would come and wash over us and anoint us you would clear our hearts and clear our minds and allow us to encounter you so Holy Spirit I just ask for every single one of us in this room right now all of us watching on the livestream I ask that you would bring to mind the one person that we need to forgive today who is the one person it could be something small could be something big they could be living or deceased so who's the one person who needs our forgiveness today and I just want to invite you to to picture them somewhere in your mind they can be close to you they can be far away from you you can put them wherever you want and I just want to invite you to look at them and just to pay attention to what you feel just as even as you look at them and you might feel a lot of things and you might feel nothing it's okay but what is it like to just look at them wherever you find yourself in a situation with them [Music] and as you look at them I want to invite you to take a count within yourself of what happened okay so forgiveness is actually taking a full account of the debt of how it felt what it was like what what's the situation what's the whole story of how that person hurt you and how it's affected you so just want to invite you within yourself just to be very honest and take a full account of the situation and what happened and how it's affected you if you feel certain emotions rising to the surface that's okay and if nothing is that's okay too so just where ever you find yourself just let it out what happened what happened [Music] and I just want to invite you at this time to within the depths of your heart and the silence of your heart to look at that person and finally tell them what happened from your perspective how did they hurt you and you can tell them the whole story and you can tell them however you want to tell them but I invite you to be very honest in your image of telling that person what happened and how it's affected you so you just tell them the whole story however you want to tell them [Music] just come Holy Spirit you are welcome here there's us that your healing balm would be part of our hearts and souls just anoint us just pray for all the tender parts of our hearts right now give us the courage to utter what has been on uh turd and to speak light to the darkness many times what happens when we struggle with wounds is what we've talked about is we've have identity wounds planted within us so Holy Spirit I just ask that you would reveal to each one of us right now if there are any identity wounds that have come about because of this particular pain and so what do we believe about ourselves because of this suffering so many times they utter themselves like we've talked about where we say I'm stupid I deserved it I should have known better I'm making a big deal out of this it's not a big deal I'm making a big deal out of it nobody cares I have to figure it out on my own nobody came for me I'm dirty I was never loved what is that so holy sprit I just asked that you would reveal to us any identity wounds that we believe about ourself because of this pain [Music] and so what we're gonna do in the silence of our heart is in the name of Jesus Christ we're going to renounce those so within your own heart you would say in the name of Jesus Christ I renounce the lie that I am powerless I renounce the lie that there is no hope I renounce lie that I'm stupid that I'm ugly that I can't figure it out that I was never wanted and the name of Jesus Christ I renounced the lie that and there might be a few come Holy Spirit in Holy Spirit I ask that you would reveal the truth of our identity at this very moment who are we in this moment I ask you Holy Spirit you powerfully profoundly speak to the depths of who we are what is the truth what is the truth of who we are at this very moment even in this suffering who are we we are beloved that we are seeing that we are loved that we can do all things in you Lord this is not the end of the story that we are pure whole good loved wanted and we're going to announce that so in her hearts we're going to say in the name of Jesus Christ I announced the truth that I am a beloved son a beloved daughter whatever speaking what is the Holy Spirit speaking to you that I am beautiful that i am smart that it was not my fault but there is this situation can be healed [Music] and Lord Jesus I ask at this moment that you would also reveal to each one of us any areas that we've judged the person that hurt us where we've judged them out of anger where we've said that they're monsters that they're they'll never get it that they're awful people I don't know so Holy Spirit I ask that you would reveal to us any ways that we've judged the person that hurt us out of anger 'no set of pain out of bitterness and we just in the name of jesus christ renounce those judgments and asked repentance we sleep repentance and forgiveness for the ways we've judged that person we release those judgments Lord and turn away from them and we turn to you and if you're willing I want to invite you to take that person with you to the foot of the cross take them with you to Calvary and you can put them wherever you want you can put them far away you can put them near you you can put them near Jesus but I just want to invite you to take that person with you and bring them to the foot of the cross and I just want to invite both of you to look at the face of Jesus as he is they're so vulnerable that his heart is broken wide open and his words to us or father forgive them for they know not what they do his face is one of kindness it's one of deep compassion and mercy and as you look at his face I would just like to invite you if you're willing to ask Jesus to forgive that person Lord Jesus I pray that you would forgive them I know you love them and it might be really hard for me to love that person or to see any goodness and them Lord but I'm gonna trust you here and I pray that you would forgive them that your mercy that your precious blood would wash upon them that they hurt because they're hurting Lord ask that you would humbly forgive them [Music] and if you're willing I would just like to invite you to turn to that person turn to that person as you both stand there at the foot of the cross and I would just like to invite you to look them in the eye and I would like to invite you through the power of Christ on the cross to forgive them to choose today to forgive them to look them in the eye and say through the power of what Christ has done I choose to forgive you and today I release my grasp upon you and I seek no revenge I will your good and I commend you I commend everything that's happened I commend everything in my heart to the heart of Christ and I ask Lord that you would heal both of us heal both of us as your children heal both of us as the one that's with the ones that you love and give us peace and lord I ask that you would bless that person Lord you and loan know their heart you know the center of their being you know why they do what they do I humbly asked you would profoundly blessed that person and I humbly ask that you would bless me as well give my heart a heart of compassion one that sees one that rest in you give me a forgiving heart so that my life becomes a forgiving way of life and one a life that's continually poured out in your love and mercy softened my own heart Lord and help me see for you love us and we just seal this time we seal these these acts of forgiveness whether they're new or whether they're old that they would continue to journey more deeply all of us into the heart of God and we make this prayer through Christ our Lord haiman name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit amen what am i one of my favorite sayings is that Christianity is not reform school it's not behavior modification Christianity is the complete transformation unto glory where God becomes man so that man becomes God were divinized and transformed into the one who loves us and my dear friends I you know you and I may not ever see one another again this side of heaven right but it's my hope that for all of us that like you know the quote says that our longing would never cease that our longing for his beauty for his intimacy for his goodness for his truth for his perfection that our longing would never cease and that his love his intimacy his fragrant aroma would be so deeply embedded within us there would be a fragrance that washes over all those we meet but they would see us face to face and say I know that the Lord is alive and well because I see him in you right and that's God's deepest delight that he loves us and that we belong to him god bless you thank you [Applause]

Channel: Renewal Ministries

Views: 14,496

Rating: 4.9411764 out of 5

Keywords: Christianity, Jesus, Christ, Evangelism, Mission, Spirituality, Evangelization, Religion, Catholic, Church, God, Trinity

Id: 52k_XWY6fEA

Length: 60min 32sec (3632 seconds)

Published: Thu Apr 09 2020