Healing of Memories and Emotions page 1

I was practising for the college cricket team. It was a beautiful setting: we were using the nets at Clifton College, a big public school in Bristol, and it was a sunny evening in May.

I ran into bowl. At the end of my run, I jumped up just before releasing the ball, as most quick bowlers would do. But I never bowled that ball. I landed heavily, and fell to the ground. I had sustained a knee injury.

For months after that incident, one thing I could not do easily was kneel. Even today, fifteen years later, I get occasional pain and weakness there. My osteopath says I sustained damage to the anterior ligaments.

Why am I telling you this? To get your sympathy? Just for once, no! I want to use it as an image of what it is like when there is pain of all kinds in our lives. Sometimes a hurt or an injury from the past prevents us from functioning healthily in the present. A pain caused years ago can get in the way today of us doing all the things God wants us to do. And this is true of emotional pain and the bad memories linked with them every bit as much as physical pain. In fact in my experience the emotional pain from the past is often much more disabling than the physical injuries.

And it is that theme of healing memories and emotions that we are thinking about this week in our series about Christian healing.

These memories and emotions can be a whole host of things: they may be connected to something done to us by someone else - a rejection, a lack of unconditional acceptance, or maybe something much worse and traumatic, from bullying through to abuse. They may be to do with something we have done in the past that we are desperately ashamed of, and we do not feel we can be forgiven and go forward. They may be about unhelpful thought patterns or beliefs that we have held, maybe since childhood. Sometimes those beliefs are ones we have cherished, but do not realise they are unhealthy. Or they may be in the form of messages that keep repeating in our minds, such as "You are useless".

In the space of one sermon I cannot go into detail about all of these, but I do believe I can briefly outline these and give pointers to the way in which Jesus Christ can help us and heal us. For those who wish to do further reading on the subject, I highly recommend books by the American author David Seamands such as 'Healing for Damaged Emotions' and 'Healing of Memories'.

For now, however, I shall just explore the three areas I just outlined, namely: where we have been hurt by others; where we are ashamed of our past; and unhelpful beliefs.

next page

[ Home ] [ Up ] [ About Me ] [ Articles ] [ Kulcha ] [ Links ] [ Messenger ] [ Musings ] [ Search ]

Copyright © David D Faulkner, 2006 except where other sources are attributed or noted as inspiration.