Tuesday – Healing in Brokenness

http://picasaweb.google.com/johnacrews1/PacwaMeeting2009

Upon rising today, we realized that the electricity had gone off for most of the night, but we were grateful that we did have beds. Because the power was gone, they couldn’t prepare the normal breakfast, so we enjoyed coffee and break and went on our way for a counseling seminar, led by our team member, Mary Langford. Mary is a Christian counselor, and how the Lord prepared her to speak powerfully for Him here in Burundi!! She opened the session with this question: “Do you live each day knowing how much God loves you?” Though most of us would be quick to answer, “Yes,” if we are honest, we may not really experience His love in our hearts and daily experience. Mary shared four basic principles: God loves us with an everlasting love. We are all wounded people in some way, wounds that can keep us from experiencing God’s love. Jesus came to set us free! God wants to use each of us as a “wounded healer,” to experience His deep inner healing and then help others to be healed in the same way. As Mary shared from her own journey with the Lord, we could all identify with one another. As she began to peel away the layers of woundedness, she explained that wounds, trauma, are genuine losses that result in grief that must be mourned before it can heal. Healing can only come when the wound is opened up to the light of truth. Grieving is an essential part of healing; without it, we cannot heal. We can’t forgive others, and self-destructive bitterness is the result. We can’t but a quick bandaid or ointment on these wounds; they need the deep surgery that only God can provide. Mary shared about the reality of emotional anguish by walking us through what Jesus experienced in the garden of Gethsemane. Through His pain and suffering, Jesus won victory over sin and death; He provides victory! But we have to walk in this victory to have true freedom and not continue to live as prisoners to pain. So we started to unravel the process of how to grieve, which requires having “sanctuary time” alone with the Lord. Tomorrow Mary will present methods to work through grieving to find release, freedom, and realize deep healing that God so wants for each of us.

What a powerful time! These women, who have endured so much pain and suffering, hung on every word, but it was a message for all of us. We are praying and anticipating a mighty work of The Spirit tomorrow, knowing that God is at work in very special, personal ways. How grateful we are that He has brought us to Burundi! We’ll have more to share tomorrow, but please pray for the session tomorrow, the men’s fellowship with the young men, and for God to reveal Himself in deep, powerful ways, meeting each one at their point of need.