DISCIPLESHIP: Emotional Healing
Transcribed by PulpitAI (with edits)
Introduction: Jasmine Anderson
Well good morning. My name is Jasmine. I get to lead the Mission and Outreach Commission.
So, as Steven mentioned, on Friday we got to hear from six of the global leaders of WDA (that’s the Worldwide Discipleship Association), and they were sharing with us what they do, which is primarily teaching discipleship according to the way that Jesus did. And the beautiful thing about that is it is limitless as to who it communicates with. It works in all cultures all over the world. So it was so encouraging to hear what they were sharing. It is just really powerful work in so many countries around the world. So this morning we get to hear from Akeem (he’s from Nigeria) as well as Fernando (is from Romania).
Emotional Healing: Reverend Akim Dalyop
Good morning. It gives me great joy to be here with you all and to share with you what God is doing in our lives around the world. As you’ve heard, I’m from Nigeria, hence the dress. I’m grateful to God to be here with my brother, Fernando, a brother from another mother. He’s from Romania. And like you’ve heard, he’s gonna share too.
This morning I would like to share a passage of scripture and say some few things. I’m gonna tie in what we’re doing in Worldwide Discipleship alongside with my message for this morning. So, if you have your Bible—the scripture will come up there. I want to read from Isaiah 61. Isaiah 61, just three verses, and then I’ll carry on from there. Isaiah chapter 61, from verse 1 to 3. The scripture reads from the NIV:
The Spirit of the Sovereign Lord is on me,
because the Lord has anointed me
to preach good news to the poor.
He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted,
to proclaim freedom for the captives
and release from darkness for the prisoners,
to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor
and the day of vengeance of our God,
to comfort all who mourn,
and provide for those who grieve in Zion—
to bestow on them a crown of beauty
instead of ashes,
the oil of gladness
instead of mourning,
and a garment of praise
instead of a spirit of despair.
They will be called oaks of righteousness,
a planting of the Lord
for the display of his splendor.
My dad told me a story. He actually had the privilege of studying in the United Kingdom. He told me a story of a friend of his who was Nigerian and took his laundry for services. This was in the late 70s. And so he took it there, paid money, and left the clothes. But he didn’t have enough money to come back to pick up the laundry. So he asked his friend, who was a British guy, to go pick up the laundry for him.
So when he left the laundry, the guy who was in the laundry, who happened to also be a British guy, wrote the list of things that he brought, wrote all the names of the clothes. And then the man, the Nigerian, had actually brought something like this to go through the laundry. So he wrote down on the list, “One pair of trousers, one pair of shirt,” and he didn’t know what to call this, so instead he wrote, “One pair of parachute.”
And when his friend came to pick up the clothes, his friend met a different guy. So they went through the list, and they looked at all the clothes, but his friend knows what a parachute is, and so he kept on looking around for the parachute. And then they decided they would call this guy and say, “Come over to come and see what you dropped off.”
And he said, “I don’t have any money.”
He said, “I’ll pay it for you.”
So the Nigerian friend had to come all the way to the laundry, which he didn’t want to do, and then they went, and he saw the clothes, and he said, “Oh, they’re all here.”
But they said, “They have a ‘parachute.’”
And he said, “No, this is not a parachute.”
I won’t tell you what the name of this is until after the service, but I have a point to my story.
When things are not properly defined, abuse or neglect or confusion is inevitable. And that goes the same saying in Matthew 28:18–20, when Jesus talked about the Great Commission and said, “Go and make disciples,” many times we don’t understand exactly what it means to “make disciples.” We probably assume it involves evangelism and it also involves, “Well, that is making converts,” and it also involves raising people to be like Jesus.
Among what Jesus taught his disciples is connected to our text for the day, and amongst them is the ministry to the poor, the brokenhearted, the captives, the prisoners, and so on. Collectively, this is called the “ministry to emotional healing,” And that is what I’m gonna be speaking on this morning for the next probably 10 minutes—emotional healing.
In Isaiah 61, verse 1–3, the prophet Isaiah talks about Israel’s restoration after exile, and this is when talking about Babylon’s conquest of Judah. Historically, Judah was the southern kingdom. In 2 Kings 25:1–21, 586 B.C., you see that Babylon took over Judah. So Isaiah writes a prophetic letter of comfort to the children of Israel for their restoration.
Today, this text is also talking about a messianic prophecy that was foretold, and Jesus answers to this in Luke chapter 4, verse 18–19. He says, “This prophecy has come true.” You remember the story where he stands up, reads the scroll in the synagogue, and sits down, and everybody looks at him and is waiting to hear what he has to say, and Jesus said, “This message has come true,” you know?
So basically, this prophetic passage of scripture is actually with regards to what Jesus’ ministry is—healing emotional wounds, proclaiming liberty and freedom, restoring sight (physical and spiritual sight), and setting the oppressed people free. So in this context, when Jesus speaks in the Great Commission and says, “Go and make disciples,” we must do this all with the understanding of the foundation of Jesus’ ministry and mission, which is emotional healing, because everything that is listed in Isaiah 61, from verse 1 particularly, it has to do with emotional healing.
And that’s one of the things we do at Worldwide Discipleship Association. We do not just make disciples, but we discover there’s a need for emotional healing for people to grow, because discipleship is about helping people to grow—meeting them where they are, helping them to take the next step, and helping them to grow. And we know that when people have burdens or baggages, it is very difficult for them to grow.
So three things are involved here, and I will quickly just say them. First, the meaning of emotional healing or the emotional healing ministry. This is simply meeting the need of people who have emotional problems; significant distress or impairment; social, occupational or other areas of functioning; people going through trauma caused by poverty; incarceration in the prisons; physical abnormalities; and so on.
I had a sister who was born perfectly normal, and one day, somehow she started convulsing. And they took her to the hospital and discovered that she had type C polio, and it caused her brain not to function properly. She could not walk. And for 19 years—I was the next to her—I had to care for her. I hated God at that time. I really did. And it took me to go through an emotional healing safe group program to be able to see God in a different light and see that what he was doing with me and my sister was for my good. But it was not easy.
So this ministry is to help heal hurting hearts as a result of the past so that people don’t repeat the past. People tend to stop growing spiritually. Sometimes they plateau, and they don’t continue to grow. And in fact, sometimes it gets worse—they decline, and this is not good in terms of discipleship if you want people to grow.
So the church has a huge responsibility in the Great Commission by including in it emotional healing. Not just the church, but we as individuals who are involved in discipleship also have a great responsibility of including emotional healing in our strategy in helping people to grow or take the next step.
The second thing I want to say is: Why is the ministry of emotional healing in the church very imperative? Why is it very important? Because it has to do with healing of pain, and many problems come from unresolved pain. Particularly pains in the past. Growth occurs when pain can be resolved, and there are several sources of pain.
First we have pain that is caused by abuse, either active abuse or passive abuse. Active abuse involves physical abuse, sexual abuse, verbal abuse, emotional incest, and negative messages. I think, when I look at this list, I have gone through a lot of these things. I have been physically abused, and I will be vulnerable here to say I have been sexually abused as a man, growing up as a boy. I have been verbally abused. It is a very common threat to find in Africa, where we are growing up and our parents don’t see any good in us. And I have been involved in emotional abuse, and negative messages have been sent to me.
And then part of abuse, you have passive abuse, which is something I never really paid attention until I started going into the Restoring Your Heart program. And I discovered that this has to do with needs that are not met, like security, like value, like acceptance.
Just while I was here in the States touring with the WDA guys, I got a message that just by my house, someone got kidnapped, and we have been praying for how God will release him. And this is by a Fulani Jihadist group, in which I am working with to help those who have come to know the Lord to be able to reach out to their own people and bring them to Christ. And so right while I was in the States, I felt insecure, particularly for my family, because I have left my wife and my children in that place. It feels very uncomfortable. So passive abuse is there. It’s a way of you needing emotional healing.
And then sinful choices we make also can result to pains that we need to be healed emotionally.
Our personality is another thing. We are not perfect human beings, and I like the song we sang. Our goal is—as we go through the process of sanctification, our desire is to be like Jesus. We are not like him yet. We are trusting that we will be like him. And when we see him, we shall be as he is—glorification.
And then sometimes also the role we play in our family also can cause pains. I was the second born, but because I lost my sister who had the wild polio virus, I turned out to be the first, and I had to play the role of the first child. While I was here, I had my younger brother sending in—he needed money for one thing or the other that he needed to pay for. And I had to see how to attend to that.
And so we go through these pains. As a result of these pains, some children have not been able to adapt very well, so they have decided to go into addictions; some, they unhealthy defenses; some, they suppress negative emotions; and some builds, you know, stress over time. And then they are unable to feel positive emotions because they have gone through so much damage in their life. And that’s why there is a need for the ministry of emotional healing in discipleship in the church.
And if this ministry is not carried out, the past is likely to repeat itself. There are people that, after getting married, constantly keep getting angry for no reason. And sometimes it leads to a lot of divorce, but if you trace out what was happening, it could be that someone was repeating what had happened to him in the past.
I had a friend who went through the Restoring Your Heart, and when it came for us to talk about some of the things we were doing as adults, he shared some things that were not going right with his wife. And as we traced it, we discovered that he was repeating something that his father did to his mother, and he witnessed it, and that was not corrected, and so he decided that it would be the normal way to live in his matrimonial home. And so there is a need for us to address this in discipleship.
The last thing I’m going to say is: How do we engage in this ministry of emotional healing within the church or as people that are discipling?
The first thing I believe that Jesus would want us to do is—he gives the answer in Matthew chapter 11:28, and I want to read that passage of scripture. In Matthew 11, verse 28, Jesus says a profound thing as he talks to the weary. And it says in Matthew 11:28–30, it says:
“Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.”
So the first thing to be able to get involved in this emotional healing ministry, as you disciple or as the church engages in discipleship, is to first come to Jesus. If you do not know Jesus as your Lord and personal Savior, it is important that you do so. That will be the first stepping stone to take. This is mandatory. It’s very important to achieving the Great Commission.
The second thing is, there must be acceptance—a deliberate conscious acceptance of wanting to grow. A hunger to grow. A hunger to be different. And I think of friends who, from the blues, just one day decided to stop selling drugs on the streets of Nigeria and decided to go into full time missions. Up to today, I still wonder—it baffles me. How did this guy do it? And when I have conversation, he—I know I met him after he had been serving in YWAM (Youth With A Mission), and he told me that he just made up his mind. He was deliberate. He wanted to quit this taking drugs and selling drugs to young kids, and he just wants to be different. And it is possible to do that. So after accepting the Lord Jesus Christ, the second thing is to make a deliberate effort. To say, “I want to grow. I want to leave where I am and move to the next phase of my life.”
Thirdly, it is to be part of a safe group. And this is very interesting to me, because many times we come to church, people don’t feel safe, even though it’s supposed to be a safe place.
You know, as a pastor of a church, I had complained some days ago to some of my elders, and I said, “I am tired of all these people coming and giving me all their problems.”
And one of my elders says, “Pastor, I hope you know the church is like a hospital. It is a place where people that are sick come in, and the few of us that God has helped us, are doing well, to help those that are coming in to get better.”
And that sunk really deep in me. And I am like, “Wow. I need to do something to make this environment a healthy place, and that means I must make it a safe place.” Because you go to prayer meetings, and people don’t really share prayer items concerning themselves. They rather would share it about somebody else, but the issue may be about them. Like if, they will say, “Oh, pray for Tammy. Oh pray for…” sorry for using names, but just, “Pray for Rachel,” or “Pray for my friend John, they’re on the verge of having a divorce.” But really the issue is about me. And because I don’t feel good to say that, “Pray for me. I am struggling. I’m on the verge of having a divorce,” it is gonna go out, and everybody is gonna talk about it in the environment, and it becomes toxic, and then I leave the environment. So we must be able to create a safe group.
And one of the things that WDA has been able to do very well about that is start this Restoring Your Heart program, and in that Restoring Your Heart program is to create a safe group where you can actually share your issues with friends who are safe. And you go through what we call a “Processing Pain” material, and then we go through “Understanding Emotions,” and then you go through a material with what you call “Conquering Shame,” and then you end up with another material called “Created With Needs.” And that will help you as you meet with this group of people and create a safe environment. And I am gonna not say much about that, because that’s what my brother and friend Fernando is gonna speak about.
But I want to conclude with this. Remember that Jesus’ mandate himself was to minister to emotional needs, to bring restoration or emotional healing, and healing emotional wounds like the brokenhearted, proclaiming liberty and freedom to people who are captive, restoring physical and spiritual sight to people who are struggling without sight, and setting the oppressed free is all part of the Great Commission.
The question is, what is your ministry doing about it? What is your church doing about it? And what are you gonna do about it? And I pray that the Lord will open our eyes to have more understanding on this in Jesus’ name, amen.
So I’ll call my brother and friend Fernando. He’s going to speak for the next 15 minutes on the Restoring Your Heart ministry: How to create a safe group. Fernando?
How to Create a Safe Group: Reverend Fernando Frincu
Good morning. Thank you Akim for the fifteen minutes. It’s supposed to be ten, so I have five more.
So as Akim says, I am coming from Romania. As you may see, my shirt is quite different than yours. I am not saying necessarily it is much beautiful, but it is different. So this is kind of the traditional shirt that, in the past, Romanian men use. The girls still use it. It is much more famous between the women than the men, so you will not see too men like this, but you will see a lot of women with something similar. So the colors, it’s our traditional colors in the shirt, which is black and red. And this is our flag, so you can have an idea. You see, it’s nice, it’s beautiful. It may not be like an American one, but it’s still nice. So, I will put it here.
My name is not a common name in Romania. Many people ask, “Fernando? Where’d that come from, this name?” So, my mom, when was pregnant, at that time they didn’t check if it’s a boy or a girl, but he used to listen to a famous band from Sweden, which is ABBA. You may remember. Why are you laughing? It’s a good band. But they have a song, “Fernando, da-da-da-da-da, da-dum.” I am not a good singer anyway. But my mom says to my father, “If our baby will be a boy, his name will be Fernando. If it will be a girl, her name will be? Fernando.” So I’m Fernando.
So when I go to Brazil, the people used to ask, “What is your name?”
I say, “It’s Fernando.”
“Yeah, but what is your real name in Romania?”
“It’s Fernando.”
“How do you say it?”
“It’s Fernando!”
“That’s not a Romanian name!”
“No it’s not. It’s because the music.”
So why in Brazil? Because I spent twenty years as a missionary in Brazil in planting churches and also working with WDA. But when I am back to Romania after many years, the people that doesn’t know me ask, “What is your name?”
I say, “It’s Fernando.”
“Ah, you take this name because you were in Brazil?”
“No. That’s my name, Fernando.”
So either way I go, nobody understands why I am Fernando, but you know the real story.
Ok, saying that, I just want to read one more verse. Believe me or not, we didn’t talk before about the text that he was gonna preach. I didn’t ask him. But the text that I wish to read when I talk, it’s exactly Isaiah 61. But I have one more verse than him, so I will read the fourth one. He read three, so I will be shorter. So the fourth verse says:
They will rebuild the ancient ruins
and restore the places long devastated;
they will renew the ruined cities
that have been devastated for generations.
I am sorry my English is not so good, but trust in the Bible that you read.
This text brings us hope, actually, because we live in a broken world, because the sin. But Christ come to bring us hope. It doesn’t matter how was our past, how is our present, how is our world. It also is hope.
And the first things of hope is the gospel. As the verse 1 says:
… because the Lord has anointed me
to preach the good news to the poor.
So we know that Christ come to bring us a good news. So in this morning, by this message and what we say, we think it’s a good news for everyone. It doesn’t matter how broke you are, how was your past—there’s still hope for you.
Christ come also, not just to bring a message, but he come to bind with us, to create an intimate relationship with him. But you may say, “Yes, but still my life is not so good.” But having a good relation with Christ, he invites us to learn how to have a good relation with one another as a body of Christ. So the healing process is not just having a good relation with God, but also having a good and healthy relationship with other people. And in the body of Christ in church, we learn how to do this.
But it’s not just having a relation in self, but he come us to give us freedom. Many of us was captive by our culture, by the things that we just learn in our family that not always it was healthy. We may think that was healthy because, “Always it was like this. Everybody do this,” but doesn’t means it’s healthy in self. But through the gospel, he come to give us freedom from whatever kept us. “And release from the darkness the prisoner.” He wants us to come to the light and to understand the real life that God has for us. As the Bible says, “You will know the truth, and the truth will release you.”
And in another part, Christ says, “I come from my sheep has life, and abundant life.” Is that correct, the word? Some words I’m not sure about it. I know what I want to say, but…
So he does just want us to live biologically, physically, but he wants us to enjoy. And you may ask, “Could we enjoy in this broken world? Could we have joy here on the earth? We should just wait for the Heaven, where everything will be perfect.” Is needed everything to be perfect to joy? But the bible says that, no, we can have joy even through the suffering. We still can have joy in a broken world.
Christ come to bring this joy in this present life even though we go through the suffering. Of course, when we suffer, we want vengeance. We want the justice be done. But the other verse says:
… to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor
and the day of vengeance of our God,
to comfort all who mourn…
God will make the justice. So we be confident that everything that was done, God will judge. We need to rest on him.
And he is our comfort. He wants to comfort us. But how he do that? We always talk that, “God is comfort. He will comfort us,” but how he is doing? Well, in the 2 Corinthians chapter 1, Paul says that God deliberately makes him and his team go through deeply suffering in order God to comfort them. By the comfort that they will receive, they can comfort the church. So what Paul says, “Because of you, God makes us to go through a deep suffering in order to learn how the comforting works and to comfort you.” It wasn’t something theological, intellectual. They needed to pass through the suffering in order to have empathy with the other people. So sometimes God brings us to the suffering, and by that he gives us a ministry to know how to help another people. But unless we learn to deal with suffering, we cannot help other people, and the suffering will be something that just damages us and will damage our relationship. So the suffering, it’s a knife with two faces. The suffering can break you down, but the suffering can bring you up and be a blessing for you and other people. The difference is not if you suffer or not. The difference if you know how to deal with.
And the verse 3 says:
… to provide for those that grieve in Zion—
and bestow…
How you says that?
… bestow on them a crown of beauty
instead of ashes,
the oil of gladness
instead of mourning,
So you see, he removes the pain. He removes whatever was bad in our life, and he turns out the life to be joyful and a blessing when he restores us.
And the last verse says:
They will rebuild the ancient ruins
and restore the places long devastated.
Which that means that these people, they will not just be restoring self, but they will be the ones that bring restoration in the next generation. As Akim says, they will stop the sin, they will stop what was best in the past, to don’t bring to the next generation. And your life could be restored. It doesn’t matter what happened in the past.
So I will say that, as Ecclesiastes says, “The life of man is short and full of suffering.” We cannot avoid suffering. We cannot avoid pain. We cannot avoid to be hurt. It doesn’t matter if you have a good family, you have a good job, you have money, but because we live in a broken world, in a way or another, we’ll be hurt. That’s the reality. It doesn’t matter how we run from this. The Bible says it’s full of suffering.
As we grow, very often we are hurt in many ways, but not knowing how to deal with the—people, kids, but not knowing how to deal with the pain, they very often, as Akim says, they go in addiction or defense mechanism, which that means they try to do something about that pain. And if the parents they don’t teach them, how to deal with the pain, they try to do something in order to medicate their pain. So addiction will be anything that they have that they can be distract to don’t deal with the pain. It can be food; it can be video games; it can be anything.
And defense mechanism is the way that the kid will choose to do in order to don’t be hurt again. Let’s say that a girl was abused by a man. She may choose to don’t be close ever to the mankind, to man, to stay far away from any men. (When I says “man,” I says “men,” not so as to make the difference.) But you may think, “Well that is good, because you will not be hurt again.” Well, it’s good and bad, because God’s making a way to be fulfilled, to meet our need, by the relation with other people. And not all the men they are not healthy. So by doing that, she stop herself to be nurtured by other healthy men in life. So this is not good.
So as these kids they grow, the things get worse. The addictions get worse. And so on. And one day they…
And the past still have a great impact in the present. In adult life, we may think, “The past is the past. Okay, whatever that happened is there. We’re done. We are Christian. We are free, and that’s it.” But it is not like that. Soon you realize that some stuff that you do in your life is not healthy. And what happens with the pain that was in the past but you didn’t deal in appropriate way with that? Did that go away? No. It actually is building in your body in the form of stress. And for a long time you can deal with that, but it come a moment—usually when you get 30, 40 years— that you cannot anymore stay with that. And suddenly people, they become nervous, they start to have all kinds of problems for nothing, they don’t know where that come from. But actually, soon they realize that what happen in the past is still having impact in their present.
So imagine, if you have to measure the stress, if you have a line from 1 to 10. And when you are in 10, that means you blew up. You are in the max. So let’s say that my stress is already in 7, and my kids do something that deserve, like, 3. An action for me that they come 3. But I am already in 7, which 3 puts me in 10. So my reaction to my kids will be overreaction, will be 10. He only deserve 3, but I will do it in 10, because I am already in 7. So that’s an example to see how the stress is going.
But learning to grieve the loss from the past releases the present. It gives you the chance to be free of whatever that happened in the past. So the good news is that, if you didn’t do that in the past, you still can do it now by processing pain, how Akim says, in the safe and healthy environment in the group. You can still take that loss, whatever that loss was—an abuse or whatever that was—and to go through the grieving process and to reach the forgiveness in the end and be released.
So the people, they want to grow. The growing is expecting in our life as a Christian. But it doesn’t matter how much you pray and read the Bible. You realize that some people, in some point they stop growing. They are stuck. And it doesn’t matter what they do, they cannot just go from that point. And we realize that this has to do with emotional wounds from the past. So unless this will be addressed, they’ll not grow. But once they go through this process and deal with their emotion, with their pain, in a proper way, suddenly they start again to grow. So it’s a very releasing process.
But this is not just from the past. Once you do this, this is a tool to continue dealing with your pain. Because we don’t talk just about the past, but how we deal in the present with our losses. We may lose a job. We may lose somebody dear in our family that just died. We may lose the health, or whatever that will be. Because we’ll still be broken. We’ll still be hurt. It’s unrealistic though to say, “I’m in a good church. I’m in a good shape. I have money. I have a good family. I have everything I need to don’t be hurt again.” But that’s not realistical. You can go in the street, and somebody that is drunk hits your car, and suddenly you will be paralyzed. You didn’t do nothing wrong. But that’s just an example to show you that it’s impossible to don’t be hurt.
But the biggest problem is not if we are hurt or in pain. Of course we don’t like this, but that’s not the biggest problem. The biggest problem is how to deal with this, because that will make the difference from that on if you will be healthy or not. For some people, the suffering and the pain and the loss is the end of their life. That’s why some people, they suicide, they go into depression, and all that kind of problem. But for other people, the suffering is the beginning of new life. It’s a restoring life, and these people, if they are restored, they will help other people that they go through the same things. So it gives you a tool to deal with the present issue.
Because the people, the society today, doesn’t want us to grieve. It doesn’t want us to see that we cry. If somebody dies, after three days many people say, “Okay, stop, now go on with the life.” And we are forced to look nice, to smile, even when we are broke inside. But the grieving is God’s way to deal with our pain. The suffering is God’s way to grow us. That’s why Paul says we need to rejoice when we go through different suffering, because these create in us patience, hope, and character. So the suffering is the major way that God chooses to grow you. It’s the major blessing in our life.
Let me just give this example. How you are safe at all? How you all enjoy the eternal life? Why we enjoy the eternal life? Because Christ suffered for us. Because Christ died for us. So you see, the suffering, it was actually the way for God save your life. And that’s why the suffering could be the way that God grow you and also make you a blessing for other people.
But we need to deal with. So that’s we do in our restoring program. We help the people how to deal with this. We have a Processing Pain book where you learn about your past, about certain pattern, if they was healthy or not in your original family; how impact has the past in your present; but also how to deal with. We also have another book, Conquering Shame for the people that they was dealing with bullying in their past, so how to go through this. And the third book is Learning About Emotion, how you deal with your emotion in a healthy way.
So I hope all this help you a little bit, give you a small idea about our organization, our work. We go around the world teaching churches and people to be healthy, so we hope that you will be partnering with us in your prayer, and we hope to see you again. May God bless you.
Concluding Remarks: Pastor Steven Osborne
Thank you so much for sharing with us this morning, and just really excited about the ministry.
As I was reading Isaiah 61 this morning, I was really encouraged about the hope that it brings, because really, it’s a passage of hope and the power that we experience and can experience in the life of Jesus. And so this morning, as I’m just, you know, pondering and reflecting on this passage, and even the Holy Spirit just speaking to me, the reality is that we all experience pain, and we all experience suffering. And the question is, what do we do with that in our lives, right? And so when we deal with it from a biblical perspective, it makes us better. We mature in our faith, and then scripture actually tells us, then we become ministers, right? The Lord can take that pain and the things that we’ve experienced, turn that around, and so that we can actually minister to other people that maybe have gone through the same things. We cannot minister with compassion to people if we don’t deal, you know, or if we don’t go through pain and things in our own lives. Right? It is very hard to have compassion and to understand suffering and different things that people have gone through if you have not gone through anything in your life.
But a lot of times then, unfortunately, when pain hits and when suffering hits in our lives, we do two things: either we get stuck and we get mad and we get angry and we get bitter, or we allow the Holy Spirit and people and the church where we become vulnerable and we bring that pain and that stuff to the Lord so that the Holy Spirit can minister to us so that we can become healthy and so that we can become ministers to people that are hopeless. Right? And it is a beautiful thing, and unfortunately, and what I’ve even been hearing this weekend is that all over the world there’s a tendency for people to stay stuck in their hurt, right, and this incredible ministry is really trying to help people all over the world to get unstuck and to say, “What are some of those next steps that we need to take so that we can get unstuck and actually allow God to use our pain and our past to bring hope and encouragement to other people?”
And so this morning—because it’s actually quite a really spiritual message and what they’ve shared with us—I want you to pay attention this morning to your own heart and ask yourself if you have been stuck. Do you feel like you’ve been growing spiritually in your life and where you’re actually on a place where God has been using your past, your pain, your suffering, your brokenness, but you’ve been experiencing healing in your life, right, and now God is using that? Or maybe you’ve been stuck and you’ve been sitting in some pain now for years. And I just have a sense this morning that the Lord wants to start that process. Hear me what I’m saying. I’m not saying just completely—I’m praying that the Lord will completely heal and fix and restore you this morning, that you will leave here with a major turnaround and a miracle in your life, but I have a feeling a lot of times it’s a process, and maybe that first step this morning is to just say “God, I am sick and tired of being stuck. I am sick and tired of blaming my past. I’m sick and tired of blaming my mistakes. I’m sick and tired of the things that have impacted my heart and that I have allowed that to keep me in a spiritual wheelchair. You have more for me.”
When we read Isaiah 61, the Lord wants to rebuild. The Lord wants to restore. That’s the God that we serve. That’s why Jesus Christ died on the cross for us—not that you and I need to be stuck, but that we can experience healing, that we can experience deliverance, that we can experience freedom so that we can impact God’s Kingdom. Can I hear an amen? I believe that with all of my heart this morning.
And so this morning I’m gonna ask you to do a very non-Covenant thing, okay? I want to encourage you this morning, if you feel stuck in some pain in some of your past, if you’re dealing with some things this morning, I’m gonna ask Pastor Akim and Fernando to come up, and I want them to pray over you this morning. If you want to take that first step this morning, if you want to trust the Lord this morning for complete healing in your life, to get unstuck, to be restored from some of your stuff in your past, will you stand with me? And I’m standing with you, because I’ve got stuff. Right? And so if that’s you this morning, if you need that prayer and you want to take that first step with me, let’s stand together. Let’s trust God, that he will start to restore in us, and that we will become those ministers of hope and healing and compassion. So I want to invite you, just where you’re at this morning, just close your eyes. And if you want to take that first step this morning, will you stand with me? And then Pastor Akim, Fernando, will you guys come and pray for those that are standing?
Closing Prayer: Reverend Akim Dalyop
Yes, Lord. Jesus, we thank you for this morning. We just thank you for loving us. You loved us with us with an everlasting love, and you see right through us. And Lord, there are times in our lives that we realize that we are stuck. We’re not growing the way we want to. We’re not spending time in your Word the way we want to. We’re not just doing the things that we feel we ought to do. But even in that state, we’re made aware from scripture that you love us and you want us to move forward. You want us to grow and to overcome whatever pain that is holding us down.
And so Father, right now I pray in the name that is above every other name, the name of Jesus, that whatever pain, whatever thing that holds us down, it will bow out of our lives in the name of Jesus, and it will release its hold on us so that, Lord, we can be free, we can be restored, we can be emotionally healed. I have gone through several moments of healing, and I can attest to your healing power. It still works even today.
So I thank you, Lord, for these ones standing, that, Lord, your hand will be upon them, Lord, that you will keep this pain away from them, using it, Lord, to move them to the next step and phase of their lives, and that, Lord, they themselves will be a ministry to others. Thank you, Jesus.
Closing Prayer: Reverend Fernando Frincu
Heavenly Father, we continue in your presence, and we thank you for your Word that encourage us, that bring us hope, and we thank you for Jesus Christ that’s come to suffer and to die for us and to restore our life. As we stay here today, we ask you to open our eyes, open our heart, to be open to start this process of restoring, let you to restore our life.
And we ask you specifically for those that they stand up and they want to be involved in this process, that you may give them grace, you may give them direction, and you may help them how to start and how to go through this process of grieving in order to be restored and be healed, and they can be a blessing for other people. We ask you that the blessing of restoring be upon them and upon this church from now on, in Jesus’ name. Amen.
