Inner Healing

Contributed by:
Natalie Ward
care ministries director

What happens when we anticipate and we expect, but we are just met with frustration? What happens when we allow our circumstances to define us?

We can allow BITTERNESS to take root.

So what do we do with our bitterness?
Sometimes we attempt to take it on ourselves and become determined to solve it or control it - only to wind up wasting time, destroying and distracting ourselves, and then planting seeds of bitterness in others.

---

This weekend Pastor Ron shared about the name of God “Jehovah Rophe”- The Lord who heals…who comes to us as he did to the wandering Israelites (Exodus 15:22-26) and makes himself available to HEAL. Our tendency is to often associate his identity as “healer” with “physical healing,” which for some of us doesn’t resonate because we aren’t in need of physical healing. For the Israelites, the main need wasn’t physical healing either. God, however, challenges us to recognize that he desires to heal beyond outward physical healing, and instead do an inward healing of our hearts - something we all need…something the Israelites needed.

Some of our circumstances that have brought about pain, defeat and bitterness seem OVERWHELMING. In the midst of these moments, God responds by reminding us – you can’t, but I can…let me heal you. We so often allow our bitterness and circumstances from our past to continue to paralyze us by distracting us from all God desires for us to become and accomplish for His kingdom now.

“When you fail to become the person God designed, all the rest of us miss out
on the gift you were made to give.” John Ortberg, The ME I Want to Be

When we hold onto bitterness, we give up on the person God has created us to be. When we choose to give up our bitterness, and let God do a healing work in us that only Jehovah Rophe can do, there’s no limit to the potential of what God can do.

“Your longing to become all you were meant to be is a tiny echo of God’s longing to begin the new creation.” John Ortberg, The ME I Want to Be

Imagine if we all allowed God to do an inner work of healing in us – giving to him once and for all our bitterness, our pasts, our circumstances – and moved into a “new creation” with renewed life that he so desires for us to be living here and now. He began a work of healing in Exodus with the Israelites with the use of a tree…and He makes available that same healing in all of us today because of the work that was accomplished with another tree – the cross – that restores and resurrects new life.

Will you let him – Jehovah Rophe – heal you?

Something to think about:

1. Is there any pain, circumstance or past frustration that you are holding on to – that you may even be bitter about – that you need to hand over to God?
2. Is there an inner work of healing that you need God to do in you?
3. In what ways have you seen God bring about new life through his healing in your own life or in the life of another?
4. What practical ways can you outwardly reflect the hope and work that God has done in you?
5. Is there anything standing in the way of you pursuing all that God has created you for?