Healing, Prayer teachings

Can God Have a Conversation with You?

Can God have a Conversation with You?

Some might say not anymore. They would say that if you want to hear from God, read your Bible. Everything He has to say to mankind is written in the Book. I beg to differ. The infallibility of the Bible has been established for hundreds of years. That is not in question here. The question is, “Does He still speak to us today?”

I believe He does. Although we can be mistaken about whose voice we are hearing, with the help of the Bible we can check what we are hearing against His Word in the Bible.

In John 10:27 we read Jesus saying to His disciples, “My sheep hear my voice and I know them, and they follow me.”

In Isaiah 30:21  we read, “You will hear a voice behind you saying, ‘This is the way, walk in it.’”

In Psalms we often read of people crying out to God, expecting an answer. In view of these and many more scriptures on the subject, we have a Biblical standard of hearing God’s voice. Based on that, I believe it is safe to say we can hear God’s voice.

What does His voice sound like?

In the many years of experience listening in on conversations people have had with God, I can tell you that there are a few ways He chooses to speak to us. It is rarely an audible voice. More often than not it is a voice that you hear in your head. Yet sometimes it isn’t a voice at all.

In some cases it is a “knowing”. That is, you suddenly are aware of something you never knew before. As in my Healing from Sexual Assault, I suddenly knew that I was not injured from the trauma as much as I should have been given the circumstances. In that article, I also wrote about seeing Jesus, whom I did not see with my physical eyes at the time of the incident. I saw what He did to help me in my memory when I asked Him where He was. I also mentioned the words I heard in the incident.

Some people get colours and ask for an understanding, some get a song running through their head. Yet others get a verse from the Bible that just stands out to them, makes sense and they apply to the situation they are facing.

When I am in prayer with someone for their healing, I ask them to report to me whatever seems to becoming to mind, even if it doesn’t seem to make sense or apply to what we are praying about. Then we look at it and ask the Lord for clarity. I will often ask for a Bible verse that applies to what they are seeing or hearing or to whatever they may seem to be receiving.

A Few Checkpoints

There are a few things you can check to see if God is talking or not.

  1. Does it agree with the Bible? It is most helpful if you are familiar with the Scriptures or receive a Bible passage to check what you hear.
  2. Does it agree with God’s character? God loves us. He is not mean and condemning. He corrects us and offers us good things according to His loving character.
  3. Does the result end in peace? The truth will bring us peace. We may need truth on several issues, but each truth will bring us closer to complete peace.

There are many more things we could say about this, but that is not within the scope of this blog.

I encourage you to take a risk and try to hear God’s voice. Write it down. Then you can analyze it with the help of the Bible and a mature friend who is familiar with His Word.

Uncategorized

Freedom from Fear

Fear is that four letter word that can keep us from so many benefits in life. Although fear is intended to protect us from physical danger, out of its normal function it can prevent us from taking emotional risks that will not harm our physical bodies. That kind of fear is based on our belief that we believe will be hurt beyond what we can bear.

Have you heard the acronym FEAR is False Evidence Appearing Real? As I have dealt with many fearful people in my years as a Healing Prayer Specialist, I have hundreds of stories of people overcoming fears based on false beliefs. There are three stories that come immediately to mind.

I’ve found that many men particularly have a difficult time expressing feelings. Sometimes this can cause serious problems in their relationships. Because three men’s stories are similar I will describe them as one whole composite.  Their common problem was not a refusal to share their emotional selves with their wives, but that they simply were not in touch with their feelings at all.

We will call this fellow Jackson since I don’t know anyone by that name. Jackson’s wife brought him to the prayer team because she was desperate to experience a fuller relationship with her husband. They had been married ten to twenty years and in all that time she had never seen him angry, sad, laugh out loud or cry. All he ever did was smile and talk in a relatively mono tonal voice. His countenance never changed even when their daughter was diagnosed with a serious illness and his parents had died.

She wanted his support in their time of crisis and she didn’t feel supported when he couldn’t share his emotions on what mattered to them. She left her husband with me and my teammate and went elsewhere to pray.

The Conversation We Began

As we talked about her concerns he sat casually with his arm hung over the back of the chair and one leg crossed over the other. His tone was easy going and the smile on his face never changed. We talked about several moments in their lives when one might have experienced pain. They had experienced two miscarriages before their first child was born. They had a loss of job, a house fire and most recently the diagnoses of very serious consequences for their daughter who was a teenager. All of these situations he spoke about as if they were simply circumstances in a fiction book and of no consequence.

I asked him if he felt any emotion at the time of the incidents. “No,” he replied. “That’s why I’m here, isn’t it?”

Next, I asked him, “Are you willing to explore where your emotions are?”

“Sure,” was the easy reply. “Oh, there they are,” mildly surprised, “They are in the basement behind a locked door.”

“Are you willing to open the door?” I asked.

“Yes, but I can’t. It’s locked,” was the reply.

“According to the Truth, who has the key?”

“Why I do,” he said, again mildly surprised, but smiling in the same manner.

“What do you believe might happen if you opened the door to your emotions?” I asked him.

The Surprising Answer to His Question

He looked at me and paused, clearly thinking. I waited. Then he told me of the last time he let himself express his emotions when he was with his dad as a boy. His dad had sharply reprimanded him for being so emotional and told him to never be a crybaby again. He believed that any emotion was bad and that if he got emotional, he was bad.

We asked the Lord for His truth in the matter. He was assured that emotions did not make a person bad. All of a sudden, Jackson looked at me and said, “I can open the door now. I’m ready.”

I waited for him to act on his statement and watched his face as his eyes swept back and forth. He looked puzzled, then happy, then a bit confused then a huge smile swept across is face. He took a deep breath then looked back at me.

“Would you mind telling me what just happened?” I asked.

“Don’t you know?”  he seemed surprised.

“No, this is your experience not mine.”

“Oh,” pause. “Well I didn’t experience what I expected.”

“What did you expect?” I asked.

“I expected to be overwhelmed by a flood of emotions” he responded.

“What did you get instead?”

Again he smiled broadly. “I got peace…. and a little bit of joy. It makes me want to giggle like a school girl.” at which point he threw his head back and laughed out loud. As he recovered from that, he grew more serious and said, “I got the impression that it’s ok to laugh and cry. I also got the impression that our daughter will be ok. There is a treatment plan in place and we will all be ok now.”

The Aftermath of Truth

Weeks passed before I saw Jackson again. His wife was with him and she was smiling broadly. They were in a giant mall walking hand in hand down the way. His face was animated as they were in conversation and they waved at me from a distance.

As I said this is a composite of three different men. Most times I do not get to see the results in the lives of most recipients of this type of prayer, but one of them, I did. Seeing the resulting change in a relationship because of healing makes my ministry very rewarding.

Choices, Healing, Story of Healing

Healing for Sexual Assault

Blessed are the Pure in Heart

I was studying the Bible in the Book of Matthew and arrived at Chapter 5 verse 8. “Blessed are the pure in heart for they shall see God.”  I wanted to know how a person could really purify their heart enough to see God.

I had been listening to a teaching tape on the beatitudes when I heard the author of the teaching series direct us through a series of prayers and proclamations that would help up to get “pure in heart”. I was eager to get my heart cleaned up. I wanted to see God and live to tell about it.

One of the definitions of “pure in heart” is “unstained with the guilt of anything” This is an act of God. This is not something I can do. So, in thinking about my question at the beginning of my story, going to God to get His perspective was my action that led to Him purifying my heart and conscience.  Heb. 10:24 says “our hearts are sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water.”  One of the meanings of “evil” conscience is freedom from a conscience that accuses us of guilt.

Agreement with the Scriptures and Prayer

As I progressed through the prescribed list of activities, I could tell that I was making some progress and I felt a sense of relief as I confessed sins, forgave people for ancient offences and gave God control over my life. Somewhere in the process, the instuructor announced that we would be pure in heart if we had come into agreement with the scriptures and prayed. Now we should be able to “see God”.  Then he asked us when in our lifetime had we wished we could have seen Him.

Suffering from Guilt and Shame

Immediately the spring of 1982 came to mind when a stalker succeeded in luring me into a trap where he was able to kidnap me and take me to a place where he was able to brutally sexually assault me. For years I had been plagued by the resulting nightmares, fear of someone coming up behind me, and many other results of the trauma. I also suffered from guilt and shame wondering how I’d gotten myself into such a situation.

I instantly remembered the day as if it was yesterday. The perpetrator was before me, 6’2” tall, 240 pounds. He was someone I had known briefly and spoken to three or four times before. His countenance was dark and foreboding and his previous conversations with me terrified me enough to ask him not to contact me again. All the way to his destination, I prayed for an open door. I was not able to find a way out and now I saw the room I was in. I saw the window, the door, and the furniture in the room. I felt the terror all over again as I heard the man demand that I take my clothes off.

In the safety of my own home, I asked God to show me where He was then. Instantly, I saw Jesus appear in my memory and the next few minutes were all replayed in slow motion. As the man swung his hand toward my face for refusing to obey him, I saw Jesus put His hand up and absorb most of the blow. I saw the Lord’s hand vibrate from the force in that strong arm. The blow connected with my face, picking me off my feet and throwing me into a corner of the room where I landed on the floor.

The Lord turned to me, pointed to me and gave me permission to stop fighting.

All of a sudden, I knew things I didn’t know before. I had not been seriously wounded in that encounter. I had no whiplash, no bruising, no soreness on my back, shoulders or head where I’d landed. Furthermore, I knew that the Lord wanted to minimize the effect of the noise on children who were within hearing distance of where I was.

Then I saw Jesus take a chain and wrap it around this man from head to toe. While I was wondering what that was, I heard Him say, “I bind the spirit of murder.” Then He announced that He had given me eternal life and no one could snatch me out of His hand. I had been given to Him by His Father and no one was able to snatch me out of His Father’s hand. ( I found this later in John 10:28)

Not My Fault:  No More Guilt

At that point, the terror I’d felt for years disappeared. The details of the actual rape scene that followed was fast forwarded and  relegated to the place of the unimportant. Then I saw the Lord put a white sheet over me and wrap me in it. He told me it wasn’t my fault and he restored to me a sense of innocence that has lasted for more than twenty years. All the emotions from the trauma were replaced with peace and calm.

At that point, He asked me if I wanted to see this man as He saw him. I agreed. I was at the foot of the bed we’d been lying on and this huge hulk of a man shrunk before my eyes into the body of a two-year old, and with a child’s voice begged me to tell him he was loved. I felt compassion for him instead of the outrage I’d experienced before. I was able to forgive him from my heart and have prayed for his salvation since then.

The Lord then showed me that He commanded the man who intended to rape and murder me, to take me back to my own vehicle where I was able to go home. When at home, I rocked in my rocking chair for weeks and months, and Jesus let me see how He rocked with me while I recovered over the course of the next weeks and months and how  He brought people alongside of me who prayed for me and loved on me.

The perpetrator came to my home about three months later to ask for forgiveness. I talked to him through an unlocked screen door with words of forgiveness. I refused to allow him to enter. I said I was not obligated to trust him again even though I forgave him. When the guy tried to force his way into my home, he could not open the door even though it was not only unlocked, but also would regularly fly open in the wind. He tried several times while I went to my phone to dial the police. He left before I could find the number (this was before the days of 911). This too was an act of God protecting me. I never saw the fellow again and have never been threatened or molested since then.

I feel safe and secure knowing my life is in God’s hands now.

Memories are No Longer Painful

Since I received that healing, my memories are no longer painful. I sleep without nightmares and do not fear I will “get myself into trouble”, but can rely on the Lord to keep me safe. The incident was not wasted. I have been able to help many women find healing for similar situations since then.

Ask for God’s Perspective

Perhaps you have been the victim of a trauma similar to mine. If you are still alive, it is because God intervened to some measure. He is not mean because He “let it happen”. If you are angry at God because of what man has done to you, may I suggest that you can ask Him to give you His perspective. Misplaced anger can keep you from receiving the healing you need.

By the time I received my healing, I did not blame God for what one man did to me. I was in fact very thankful to Him for intervening. There is more to the story, but that is enough this time.

Bible Stories, Choices, Stories

A Biblical Account of Transforming Truth

New Information Can Bring Healing

Here is one of the Bible accounts that I think illustrate the principle of how God can heal with new information. The story is found in the Bible in the Book of Daniel, Chapter 3. It’s a familiar story for those who grew up going to Sunday School: the story of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. I would encourage you to read it again in your own favourite translation.

In this story a king named Nebuchadnezzar ruled over Babylon. He was, an arrogant cruel tyrant who held all of his subjects’ lives in the palm of his hand. In this particular story, he set up a giant golden image to be worshipped. To make sure he was obeyed, he announced that anyone who didn’t fall down and worship the image would be thrown into a fiery furnace.

King Nebuchadnezzar heard that three of his leaders, namely Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego, refused to worship the golden image. The king was in a furious rage and ordered the furnace heated seven times more than usual before he had the three men thrown into the fire. Would you agree that Nebuchadnezzar was emotionally upset? That sounds like an enormous understatement.

Our Beliefs Impact Our Emotions

Why do you suppose he reacted so violently? May I suggest that his fury and rage were based on his beliefs:

He was absolutely always right

He had the right to expect and demand complete and unquestioning obedience because he was the king and like a god

Perhaps he was also very much afraid of allowing any other opinion or practice lest he appear weak before men which could cost him his own life

If you skip the middle of the story and jump straight to Chapter 3 verse 30, you might scratch your head and wonder, “What on earth made him change from vengeful rage to promoting them in the province of Babylon? What would calm a fury and lead to an endorsement?”

The answer is found in verses 24-27. Nebuchadnezzar was astonished when he saw four men walking in the midst of the fire unharmed and the form of the fourth one is like the Son of God or the son of the gods. When he called the three Hebrew men out of the fire, they were not singed nor did they even smell like smoke.

Truth Can Set Us Free and Change Our Attitudes

Nebuchadnezzar had a complete emotional transformation that day. Interestingly enough there is no evidence that anyone else saw the fourth person in the furnace. Not even Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego mentioned seeing him or talking to him. It may have been for the king’s eyes only. But none the less, the truth set him free from whatever he believed enough to completely change his attitude towards the Hebrew servants and their God.

I believe that God can grant you freedom the same way by showing you things that you could never see without His help. Because God is not limited to time, He can appear anytime and act in ways you could not have imagined on your own. In the next post, I will share with you how He showed up in one of my own most difficult circumstances.

 

Healing, Story of Healing

The Natural Resistance to Healing

 The Natural  Resistance to Healing

There is a natural resistance to healing. It’s hard for some of us to believe we need any.  After all, our lives seem to have an order about them. We have control over our own affairs quite well, thank you. To suggest that we need healing is rather ridiculous after all.

That reminds me of a story. One time, I was a part of a group mentorship class. I had taken the training to learn one method of healing prayer which seemed to work quite a bit better than some of my other courses I’d taken. Furthermore, I had been accepted on a healing prayer team where I could be an apprentice. That was really helpful to me since I was paired up with an experienced prayer team member each week and could practice the method I’d learned and get helpful suggestions. The cool thing was that the Truth would always show up even when I had no clue if I was doing things properly and the recipients of prayer would get great breakthroughs in spite of me. At the end of each evening I was fine tuned by my mentors. If I really got stuck, the more experienced prayer partner could take over the session.

One of our leaders found me to be particularly irritating. At first I was confused about it and in due season, I began to see that how I talked and laughed was very disturbing to him. Seeing him disturbed, disturbed me so I went to one of the other leaders for the healing I needed so that I wouldn’t be so disturbing to him. As a member of the team, I was always able to get prayer for my own stuff since it was built into the program as each member of the team was required to have at least 10 healing sessions per year. Sure enough, I found my need to please others had been a dominating force in my life. I found the source of the problem and the truth set me free. I experienced the peace that follows a good prayer session.

The next week I met the leader who found me so irritating. The interesting thing was that although he was still irritated by me, I was no longer disturbed by his behaviour or his remarks about how much I talked.

I decided to talk to him about the situation. I told him that I noticed his annoyance towards me and he agreed that he found me to be grating on his nerves. I told him about my prayer session and the success I’d had and the peace I was now enjoying. I asked him, “Is it possible that the source of your irritation is an area you need healing in? Perhaps it’s not actually me who is the problem, but the pain my personality or mannerisms triggers in you.”

He seemed taken aback at the mere suggestion. He seemed quite agitated but agreed to explore the possibility with his own prayer partner since no one else on the team seemed bothered by me. The following week he returned to me to let me know that I was indeed correct. The trigger had been dispelled and we became friends for many years after that.

The moral of the story: Don’t be too quick to believe that you don’t need healing. You might just find yourself held hostage to the words, actions or mannerisms of others. And that would be a shame.

Choices

What is Truth?

These were the famous spoken words of Pontius Pilate just before he gave consent to have Jesus crucified. It’s a good question. One that many people ask today.  What is truth? I found that truth is not just some statement of fact, but also a person.

Can a person really be the embodiment of truth? In the Bible, Jesus said to Pontius Pilate “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father, but through me.” (NIV version, emphasis added.) When I read that, it explained why sometimes when I was remembering a painful memory, when I would ask for the whole truth in the matter, I would see Jesus helping me, giving me insights, or protecting me from more harm than I actually received.

I’ll give you an example:

When I was in my first year of grade school, I was very nervous and uncertain. All through my school years, with the exception of grade 11, I was a C average student and I thought I was dumb. There were three or four students who had failed that grade and were repeating the year with us. One day, as an adult, when I was really struggling to learn something, that feeling of being dumb and fear of failure overtook me and all I wanted to do was quit and forget all about this idea of ever learning something new. I stopped what I was doing and took stock of my feelings. My stomach was in knots, my shoulders were very heavy as if I was carrying 30 extra pounds on them wrapped around my neck and choking me. I sought the source of these feelings, looking into my past to where they all began and I landed in my seat in the classroom of my first year in a one room school house in my home town.

Now I know that memories are not always accurate for details, but they are more like a composite of how we perceived the event. In my case, I was sitting in my desk believing I would never learn anything here and I would never measure up. The teacher rewarded the fast learners with toys to play with while us slowpokes would labour to catch up. I never got a toy during the whole year. I really believed that was because I was slow, not too bright and useless.

When I asked for the truth, I “saw” Jesus show up in my memory, squat beside the desk and give me a toy to play with. He assured me that speed of learning was not related to intelligence and that intelligence was not related to value or worth. He opened a book before me and showed me pictures of animals that have been created, each one with its own measure of intelligence and speed and yet every one of them was a valuable member of the world and would be greatly missed if it was extinguished from the earth.

Then Jesus kissed me on the forehead leaving a mark on me and assured me that I would grow up and bless a lot of people if I don’t give up. Peace washed over me. Joy trickled in where defeat had been, and in just a few minutes I was back to work with renewed energy to learn what I needed to learn. My learning power is still not super fast, but I am less easily discouraged than before.

Healing

Forgive and Forget: does it really work?

Some people get impatient with people who are wounded. They get tired of hearing the stories of those who never seem to get over certain things.

“Forgive and forget,” they say.

“Move on,” they say. “

“Let it go,” they say.

If it were that easy, don’t you think they would have by now? I do not believe people really like misery as much as the impatient seem to think they do. As a matter of fact, I think that those who get annoyed or grumpy toward their wounded friends or relatives are more triggered by the pain of others than they might realize.

I have found, that when the one who is annoyed examines their own lives, they will find the patience to listen to others when they deal with their own pain which causes so much irritation.

Back to the question of whether or not “forgive and forget” works. It is true that forgiveness can be an integral part of healing. But is forgiveness healing? Not at all. Forgiveness can lead to healing but healing and forgiveness are 2 different things altogether.

Let’s look at a Biblical definition of forgiveness: According to Easton’s Bible Dictionary Forgiveness is: one of the constituent parts of justification. In pardoning sin, God absolves the sinner from the condemnation of the law, and that on account of the work of Christ, i.e., he removes the guilt of sin, or the sinner’s actual liability to eternal wrath on account of it. All sins are forgiven freely ( Acts 5:31 ; 13:38 ; 1 John 1:6-9 ). The sinner is by this act of grace for ever freed from the guilt and penalty of his sins. This is the peculiar prerogative of God ( Psalms 130:4 ; Mark 2:5 ). It is offered to all in the gospel. (M.G. Easton M.A., D.D., Illustrated Bible Dictionary, Third Edition, published by Thomas Nelson, 1897. Public Domain, copy freely.)

As you can see, it is not necessarily the removal of pain but rather the removal of sin and it’s punishment. Not all pain is caused by one’s own sin. Neither is all pain caused by the sin of another.

Next let’s look at the definition of healing: To restore a person or wound to health; cure a person or disease; of a wound become sound or whole. (the Concise Oxford Dictionary copyright 1952 public domain).

It is therefore clear that they are not the same.

I would suggest from my years of experience in the healing prayer ministry that although some can forgive without healing as an act of their will, when healing comes it is much easier to forgive. Healing is the restoring of a person to wholeness. When we are made whole in an area of woundedness, the ability to forgive is a natural by product of the healing and peace is the result.

Choices

Everybody Gets Hurt Sometimes

That’s right, honey. Everybody gets hurt sometime. There is no free and easy ride for anyone. We live in a fallen world, some say. We get to choose how we will deal with those bad days, weeks or years.

Hi there,

My name is Muriel Rae. I’ve had my share of bad days, just like you. I used to be a victim, and I grew very unhappy. I whined, cried, begged, ranted and raged for life to be different and grew angry and depressed. I put on fake smiles at all the right times but never left my sad state of mind. I felt helpless.

One day I got tired of my life as it was. I thought I’d done all I could to be the best person I could be and had been rejected for my effort. I wanted my life to be different. I wanted a change. This blog is a record of my story. Some changes took a long time, some happened in an instant. I’m still on the journey.

I am sharing this with you because maybe, like me, you want a change. It all starts with one simple decision and then another and another. We all get to choose. It is the one single talent everyone has. The ability to make choices.

It is my hope that you will learn from my story. Perhaps you can make your life different.

 

My life is radically different today than it was when I made my first big decision. It is full of joy and blessing. It’s not perfect of course (who’s life is?). But it is a whole lot better than it was because I chose to embark on a healing journey. It’s been a wild ride at times. But, oh how glad I chose to go this way. Join me if you like. You get to choose.

Helping you find healing from the inside out