Dear People Who Keep Company With God,
I grew up being two persons. There was a shy and a bit insecure person and there was an inward grizzly bear ready to attack when threatened. I was easy to get along with, accommodating and desired to please, but if someone crossed a particular line with me, it was all out war.
Salvation really did bring a lot of healing, deliverances and change to me as a person, but I still carried a lot of emotional wounds deep in my heart. Sadly, I didn’t know they were there and were working in the background of my heart like a malicious virus.
The Proverbs tell us, “by sorrow of heart the spirit is broken” (Pro. 15:13). Deep inside I was a broken person. As I began my journey into the Father’s heart, it became crystal clear my brokenness was at the top of His agenda.
In the first chapter of Floyd McClung’s book, The Father Heart of God, he used King Saul’s daughter, Michal, as an illustration of a person with a wounded heart. It was surprising; I had never considered why Michal responded so outrageously when David danced before the Lord (1 Sam. 6:16-23). I just wrote Michal off as a bitter loser.
Floyd brought out that the men in Michal’s life, especially her earthly father Saul, used her like a pawn on a chessboard. Her venous outburst to David came from all the abuse that eventually festered into bitterness and hatred.
For whatever reason Michal never dealt with the pain and hurt in her heart and the last we hear she was plagued with spiritual and physical bareness for the rest of her life. On one level, it doesn’t seem just. She was damaged goods. She needed help. We don’t know, maybe an offer of help was given to her, but she chose to remain a victim of life’s abuse.
It was a different version of my story, except I was not willing for my story to end like her story. I wasn’t sure what to do, but I had a dream about a grizzly bear that told it all. In the dream, I was at my childhood home and my brother lay dead in the yard. He had been killed by a grizzly bear. I knew it was stalking me and for a time I eluded it. Finally, it caught up with me and grabbed me by my throat and the dream ended with the bear holding me by my throat up in the air and growling furiously.
I woke up and heard the Holy Spirit tell me I was going to destroy everyone I loved and eventually myself if I did not allow Him to heal my heart. The crazy thing is my name means bear. That bear was the real me. The shy and accommodating guy was just a façade to protect others and myself from that restless grizzly inside of me.
I said yes Lord and that was the beginning of one of the most gracious seasons of my life. I look back now with great thankfulness and awe. The trajectory of my life was forever established during that time.
The Bible tells us “The Lord is close to the brokenhearted and saves the crushed in spirit” (Ps. 34:18). In Psalm 147:3 it says, “The Lord heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds.”
I knew from my encounter with the Father’s heart that I had access to Him and now I was giving Him total access to my heart. I learned something paramount during that time; healing is fundamental and foundational to who the Father is and in all that He does.
“Our Father is famous for His kindness to heal even the thankless and cruel.” (Luke 6:35)
Many Blessings, BW