A sermon by Rev. Dr. John K. Luoma
Dr. Richard
Dobbins, the founder of Emerge Ministries in Akron, talks about a painful
memory that afflicted him for years and years. He says that he believed
that he caused the death of his mother. He believed this because his mom
died while giving him birth. So, in later years, when he got into trouble
he would tell himself that it was because he was a bad kid. After all, he
had killed his mother.
As a teenager, after he became a Christian, he had this increasing urge to visit his mother's grave. The first few times he wept over the thought that a 19 year old woman had to die to give him life. The tears helped a little, but the hurt was still there.
Then, when he visited the grave site at age 19 the Holy Spirit put a new thought into his mind. These were the words he received: "Not only did Jesus die for you, but your mother died for you. How valuable your life must be. See that you make it count for something."
He says that it was in that moment that he began to realize that we can "edit" our memories. He could not change the fact that his mom died at childbirth, but God could help him to remember the event in a less painful way and even in a way that strengthens him. He offers us a process by which we can edit our hurtful memories.
The first step is: TALK HONESTLY WITH GOD ABOUT THE MEMORY THAT IS HURTING US. This is not easy. It takes courage, but it works.
The second step is: EXPRESS TO GOD OUR FEELINGS ABOUT THESE HURTFUL MEMORIES. As we honestly talk to God, intense emotions are going to surface. When they do, we must not hold them back; we must express them. Some people will protest: "But I don't want God to know how angry I am." Dobbins says, "Think how ridiculous that statement is." We can't hide anything from God. God invites our feelings, because God knows that if we repress such intense feelings we will only hurt ourselves. More than that, God is quite capable of handling anything we express to him.
The third step is: ASK GOD TO HELP US SEE THE HURTFUL MEMORIES IN A NEW WAY. When we empty out our feelings and offer them up to God, we put ourselves in a position where God can comfort us and help us look at our memories in a new way. As we continue to pray, as we listen to his word, as we talk with Christian friends, as we participate in worship, God helps us see the hurtful memory in a new way.
The fourth step is: PRAISE GOD FOR THE NEW MEANING HE REVEALS TO US. As God gives us a new way to see the old hurt, we need to repeat the new meaning frequently in praise and prayer. We need to do this because we can be sure that Satan will try to get us to think in the old way.
Dobbins stresses that this method for healing hurtful memories is a process. When we have been thinking in a particular way for a long time, it takes a while to change it. We need to keep at it.
Now, the prayer process Dobbins outlines is a personal process, done pretty much on our own. But there is also another way to go at it. We can find a spiritual counselor that we trust who will listen to our hurtful memories and pray through them with us. Dr. Francis McNutt, an Episcopal priest and founder of Christian Healing Ministries, talks about this process in his book, Healing. He describes how early in his career as a priest people would come to him burdened with hurtful memories. He felt frustrated by his inability to help many of them. Simply hearing their confession, asking for repentance, and pronouncing forgiveness was not working. Their problems were so deep-seated that, like a lot of priests, he would send them to a psychologist or psychiatrist. That would help, but he found that the psychiatrists and psychologists were sending them back to him because they weren't equipped to deal with spiritual questions. They weren't equipped to deal with people saying, "I don't think that God could possibly love me. I can't get over the horrible memories that afflict me. How could God love someone like me?"
It was at that point that he began to successfully help people with a process called inner healing. It roughly parallels the process that Dobbins describes as "editing our memories." The idea behind inner healing is this: we ask Christ to walk back with us to the time when the hurtful memory occurred. Then, we ask him to free us from the effects of this wound. The process of inner healing has two steps.
First, we simply bring to light the hurtful memory and its feelings. Just doing this is a healing process. The questions we ask are fairly obvious: What is the memory that afflicts you? When did it begin? What do you think caused it? Obviously this is an intensely personal process, and it needs to be done with a spiritual counselor that you trust.
The second step is prayer. The counselor prays with us, and we invite Jesus to walk back into the past with us as we remember. We then ask Jesus to reach out and heal as he has healed so many others. We end with a prayer asking that the person be filled with the love of Jesus.
Again, inner healing is a process that may need to be done a number of times. Just as a physical problem isn't necessarily healed by one trip to a physician, the process may need to be repeated several times.
Judith McNutt tells the story of her most intense moment of inner healing. She says that as an adult she has been afflicted by more than one hurtful memory. She had some very specific hurtful memories attached to each of the major stages of her development. When these memories would come to her, she would see herself in each situation almost as if she were present there. She would feel again the shame and emotional burden of each situation. One day ,through the method of spiritual editing and inner healing that we have described, she had a life-changing experience. She invited Jesus into each experience and Jesus showed her what he saw. In her early childhood he saw a beautiful loving little girl. In her teenage years he saw a lovely vibrant young lady filled with faith. As he looked at her as an adult he saw a caring, compassionate person eager to help others.
She did not understand this and asked him how what he saw could be so different from what she saw. He said, "You have asked me to forgive you many, many times for each of those situations, and I have always forgiven you. Judith, those things are no longer part of your past. You can choose not to forgive yourself. You can continue to beat yourself up over them, but on my part I have forgiven and I have forgotten." Needless to say, that experience changed her life.
The words Judith McNutt received remind us of the words we read in Jeremiah today. The prophet talks about that day when God will live in intimate relationship with his people. He talks about a future in which God will "forgive our iniquity and remember our sin no more." We have received that promise in Jesus. Our sin is forgiven and forgotten.
As God's people, I think it is our task to diligently use the means that
God has given us for editing our lives. And that editing occurs through
the kind of prayer we have been talking about. It occurs as we look at our
lives through the word that God has given us. It occurs as God literally
shares himself in the bread and wine that we call Holy Communion. It occurs
as we remember our Baptism, that moment in which God said to each of us,
"You are mine. I desire to work in you." In all these ways God
"edits" our lives and we become new people.
Copyright 2000 by Rev. Dr. John K. Luoma