From the Executive Director’s Heart

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Summer 2000 Issue V

March 23rd marked the successful completion of our initial CROSSCURRENT group, while on May 16th we concluded our second Living Waters program. After meeting together weekly for eight and thirty weeks respectively, twenty men and women had a greater understanding and acceptance of the intimate, unconditional love of our '"Abba" Father!

What a joy it is to see people being set free from various strongholds such as same-sex attractions, pornography, sexual promiscuity, the effects of sexual abuse, shame, self-hatred, emotional dependency, narcissism, various fears, idolatry, self-deception, blocked feelings and the basic inability to love others well. In some ways, they had become more like the "true self" God had always intended them to be.
 

The operative word here is be(come), which implies a process. Someone once properly noted, "we are human beings, not human doings!" That doesn't mean we don't put forth some effort, however, we often get caught on the performance treadmill in order to feel better about ourselves and/or please others. This sort of thinking and behavior can adversely effect our relationship with God, in an effort to earn His love. We may not consciously be doing this, but due to real or imagined "love deficits" in our lives, we may compensate by trying to dull the pain in any number of compromising or counterfeit ways.
 

The pain of the familiar is often easier to endure than the pain of the unknown, and we gravitate away from our true Source of Life in order to gratify our fleshly desires. C.S. Lewis writes, "Pain insists on being attended to. God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pains: it is His megaphone to rouse a deaf world." It is indeed a grievous pain to give up the substitute pleasures that have long captivated our souls. This is a stark contrast to redemptive suffering which requires repentance, surrender and Godly sorrow. George MacDonald states, "The Son of God suffered unto the death, not that men might not suffer, but that their sufferings might be like His."
 

In order to receive true healing of our souls, emotions, sexuality, etc., we must first acknowledge that we have that need. Mere mental assent or human understanding is not sufficient to accomplish this. It is a heart issue.
 

So what are some roadblocks we erect in order to deny God access to our heart of hearts? Or how have we lived out of the false self instead of the true? A simple definition of false self is "the self that is alienated from Christ." "Out of our broken souls we have sought wholeness in false ways." In fact, we may have based our identity more on our sins or woundedness, than our true identity in Christ.
 

Mastered by false perceptions and self definitions adopted outside of His presence, we live from a false self. We take on labels that don't truly define us, but ultimately will do just that! The following song portrays the "Divine Exchange" of the false self for the true:

I Will Change Your Name
You shall no longer be called
Wounded, Outcast, Lonely or Afraid
I will change your name
Your new name shall be
Confidence, Joyfulness, Overcoming One
Faithfulness, Friend of God,
One who seeks My face."

(c) 1987 Mercy Publishing}

"Our identity in Him involves suffering and death to our false self, before Christ can resurrect the true self." We must allow the Holy Spirit to reveal our hurts and the pain we inflicted upon others, but more importantly how we have grieved God with our reactions to these wounds.
Surely we live in a fallen, broken world and there is no perfect solution this side of Eternal Glory. The tension of the now and the not yet! But I believe it is God's heart to restore us to our true selves: the self that emerges in union with Christ, by allowing Him to continually transform us into the image of His beloved Son! "Jesus reveals Himself as the basis of our freedom, by calling us to identify with Him in His death and live out of His resurrected life."
 

Ask Christ to come meet you right in the midst of your pain and shameful pain escapes. In time, His satisfying love heals and fills your voids as you continually lay down your false ways of relating and seek Him from your true self.

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