The Path to Healing

About 4 years ago, I walked into my doctor's office with my stomach in knots. It was my old peptic ulcers coming back to give me grief. My doctor deals in natural medicine, and so I was expecting her usual treatment, a natural remedy, an intestinal cleanse, or some other healthy cure. Instead, she looked at me square in the eye and said, "If you don't find out what emotional problem is causing these ulcers, they are never going to get better." That was a shock.

What could possibly be causing me to have stomach problems? She asked me to think back to the first time I had them and what was going on emotionally at the time. "If you can't figure it out," she told me, "Ask God to make it plain." He showed me all right, and it wasn't pretty. Next she explained to me that instead of properly dealing with the emotional pain and stress that was going on at the time, I had buried it. Now it was coming back to haunt me in the form of stomach ulcers. " Now that God has shown you what it is" she continued, "Tell Him the truth about it, and allow yourself to be angry or cry or whatever." That done, we talked about what the right response should have been in that situation. I spoke the truth about it.

I was emotionally exhausted after that little session, but I felt so much better. Over the next two weeks as things came to my mind, I walked through the same process. By the end of the two weeks, my stomach ulcers were gone. And they haven't come back. I decided that this process was pretty painful, but I really liked how I felt. So I went for more. The next things that came to the surface were worse than the first, but going on the good results, I went for it.

Like an onion being peeled, layer after layer, more and more emotional garbage has surfaced. I have had to expose my true heart to God To my shock, I did not find anger at my failure, but mercy and forgiveness. This was healing. After a number of years of doing this, I'm feeling pretty good. No, the truth is, I'm feeling great.

This morning I picked up a book called "The Healing Path" by Dr. Dan Allender (I highly recommend it.). In his book, Dr. Allender discusses the various ways Christians try to deal with their wounded emotions. Instead of taking God's Healing Path which is, at first, very painful, we avoid or bury our emotions by using all sorts of tactics. We lie to ourselves about the real condition of our hearts, and the real agony of the situations we find ourselves in this sinful world. And the reason we have so many health problems is because we have not followed God's path to healing.

I invite you to join me on this Healing Path. The longer I've traveled down this road, the more renewal I've experienced. I've found physical healing, emotional healing, and best of all a closeness to God that I had not experienced previously.

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