Sunday June 15th, 2008
“Divine Emotional Healing”
Mind, Emotion, Physical
Title: The Father Wound
Romans 1:18-21, 24,28 NKJV
This morning I’d like to continue preaching on a series of sermons in regards to Divine Healing. I had planned on preaching only one sermon on Emotional Healing, but God’ has really impressed me to preach one sermon part A today, part B next week. This morning is Father’s Day, but this day often brings mixed emotions in our life. Father’s Day though, is a day that God’s people can be healed emotionally. So this morning I’d like to deal with the subject of “The Father Wound”.
Ps 68: 4-6
4 Sing to God, sing praises to His name;
Extol Him who rides on the clouds, by His name YAH,
And rejoice before Him.
5 A father of the fatherless, a defender of widows, Is God in His holy habitation.
6 God sets the solitary in families; He brings out those who are bound into prosperity; But the rebellious dwell in a dry land.
There are some of you here this morning or listening to me on CD that need to hear me this morning!!
I don’t believe there is enough awareness in the church of how significant the role of the Father is in the family unit. If that were the case we would see more father’s actively participating in the church, but that is not the case. The reality is that many of us grew up without seeing their own father as a guide who was teaching his children during the rearing years. For those of you that had a “dad” this sermon may fall on deaf ears, because you were privileged with having a dad, that provided the affection, discipline, and love you needed to grow into adulthood. But many of you may have grown up like me, and have been emotionally scarred due to the relationship with your Father, and it’s is those scars that limits you in your relationship with the Heavenly Father. These limitations can keep the gospel from relevancy in our lives, but rather keeps the gospel from touching others lives at bay.
Ps 68:6
God sets the solitary in families; He brings out those who are bound into prosperity;
Church, there are folks here …….that are bound…. emotionally due to the relationship they had with their Father… that is affecting and limiting…. their relationship ….with God
Seven years ago when Billy Graham brought the revival to Paul Brown Stadium, he said that in the 50 years that he had been preaching, that he felt that the Cincinnati area was the most spiritually oppressed city he had ever preached to.
Oppression is the act of using power to empower and/or privilege a group at the expense of disempowering, marginalizing, inhibits our voice.
Listen, spiritual oppression ……. Subordinates our will
………Captivates our minds
……… Limits or relationships
Spiritual oppression takes up our energy to act upon spiritual things, Spiritual oppression acts a a silencer to work against the things God wants for us to do at Marshall Road First Church of God.
Church, God wants to use our church, but there are some things that many of us need deliverance from
Need to gain control over
Need to get victory over
I have felt a sense of oppression since the first Sunday I have stood behind the pulpit, there are some things that need to be said
Things that need to be pointed out
Things that have been ignored
Stuff that we have swept under the rug
Let me be clear this morning;
The Way you view your earthen father………….. will determine….. how you view your…. Heavenly Father, because your subconscious… is fundamentally trained to process the word “father”. to the nearest example.. in your life.
Listen, someone is going to get delivered this morning
some are going to have an ahh hah moment
Some of you need to be healed emotionally
The relationship that you have with your father determines how you will and do relate with God the Father.
This is all going to make sense just stay with me.
J.B. Phillips wrote a book called “Your God is to Small”
“The way you view God, is how you view the Heavenly Father”
If your father role was absent, then God is absent from your life
If your father was physically abusive, then God is seen as abusive”
If your father was silent, then God communicating with God is difficult
If your father was distant, then God feels like he is distant
If your father was a fault finder, then God sees your faults too.
But church, there is a difference between a Father and a Dad.
Mark 14:36
"Abba, Father," he said, "everything is possible for you. Take this cup from me. Yet not what I will, but what you will."
The word Abba; is an Aramaic word, to translate into today’s language, that you can cry out to God saying Daddy, or Papa, or whatever you would say to a loving father. That’s how close you are to God when you are a child of God.
Rom 8:16
The Spirit Himself testifies with our spirit that we are children of God,
Jesus had an intimate relationship with God, and you and I as children of God can have that same type of relationship through the Spirit, it was the whole purpose for Jesus going to the cross.
After all, if we call God a father, it works better if our own fathers were around when we grew up.
But for many people they don’t know their father, or their dad is distant. For others, they know their father all too well and he is physically or emotionally abusive.
But church, there is a difference between a Father and a Dad.
A father is the political correctness referring to a man that is involved with the conception of a child with a woman. I find that a cold way of reference. A dad/daddy/papa is an affectionate term used to describe a loving relationship for a child to relate with. A daddy listens, cares, kisses, and watches over all those who are in his charge.
We need more men to step up and be daddy’s in the Church,
Esther 2:7
7 And Mordecai had brought up Hadassah, that is, Esther, his uncle’s daughter, for she had neither father nor mother. The young woman was lovely and beautiful. When her father and mother died, Mordecai took her as his own daughter.
We need men who are already dad’s, to be willing to become dads to the children who are without one. AMEN
Dads play a significant role in a child’s life, they are a role model.
Men raise your sons to be men who will be dads and not just fathers!
But this morning there is real emotional vacancy that has wounded and scarred more people of this generation, that has limited and bound a person from relating with God.
The time has come for Emotional Healing to take place
For the Father Wound to be healed.
How do we heal the “Father Wound?”
1.) Validate the Father Wound
Validate - to make valid; substantiate; confirm.
Ps 68:4
5 God is a father of the fatherless,
If you can identify with me in acknowledging that your dysfunctional relationship with your own father, predicates the dysfunctional relationship with God, then you confirming that a “father wound” exists.
First, God is not your father, rather God is like a father.
The word Father is a metaphor to help us understand our relationship with God. We have to give God the benefit of the doubt and say no matter how good your father was, God is better. Are you with me?
God is the perfect type of father. And no matter how bad your father was, it doesn’t mean that speaking of God as a father is a bad idea.
See the role of fathers in ancient Israel helps us understand something about God, without limiting God.
Paul says that we are heirs of the Kingdom of God.
Like it or not, the Bible was written in a time when it was the sons who inherited from their fathers. So speaking of God as father helped get through the idea that we can inherit something from God.
But the Bible also makes it clear that it is not men and boys alone who are inheritors of all God has to offer, women and girls can also fully inherit in God’s kingdom. Got it?
Validating the Father Wound is understanding that the wounding wasn’t your fault, nothing is wrong with you.
The person inflicting the wound, all to often is transferring their wound they suffered and have carried throughout their life.
They have reciprocated what they know,
What they have been taught.
But you have to come to terms with this truth
You have to substantiate it, for healing to begin in your life
How do we heal the “Father Wound?”
2.) Confess False Coping
The reality is that many of us grew up with
a void of their father’s blessing.
A void of their daddy’s reassurance
A void of their papa’s consistency
The lack of our father’s love compels us to reach outside of the father child relationship, in order to fill that void remaining.
Coping- is to face and deal with responsibilities, problems, or difficulties, to the best of their knowledge:
We often deal with life they only way that we know how. The coping choices often tragically deepen our struggle and our pain.
When I was in college we watched a movie called “DAD” from 1989, for my adolescent psychology class. The movie’s storyline is about a workaholic father, Jack, who is now retired ( played by Jack Lemmon), and his son John, ( played by Ted Danson) has followed in his father’s footsteps. John has given up his life to building up his career, sacrificing his first marriage and his relationship with his son along the way. Late in the movie, Jack goes through a life threatening medical crisis and John comes and visits his father in the hospital. Not knowing how long Jack has to live, Jack asks his son a question that hit me like a ton of bricks: he asks” we’ve never hugged before…can we try now?” As the story continues John see’s that he tried to fulfill his longing for a relationship with his dad with work, and was setting his own young son up to continue the cycle.
Many of us had withdrawn, passive fathers who were there physically but missing in action (MIA) emotionally. A father’s silence can be just as devastating as any kind of abuse, it leaves a child wondering, “do I matter? Am I worthy being loved?” Can you hear that child still speak today?
Is it your voice that is questioning?
Yeah, you have tried to smother that little voice out
You may have convinced yourself that is doesn’t exist
You say ‘you’ve moved on’ or doesn’t bother you”
Then why does it still hurt? Why does Father’s Day make you an emotional wreck?
It’s because you are the one trying to deal with pain.
We are not capable of dealing with emotional wounds on our own; we don’t have the capacity to know how to heal our injured heart by ourselves.
Church, hurting people hurt other people. And we as a body of believers must recognize that the “father wounds” effect the growth and stability of our church.
Think about it… who has walked through our doors who are dealing with a “father wound”? Who is sitting in our pews battling a ‘father wound”.
When I have brought up father wound issues in the past I often hear” well, my parents did the best that they could.” Defending our parents is a natural response born out of love, but it is also used to avoid feeling the pain.
Avoidance of the father wound compels people to cope with it on their own. Women attempt to satisfy the void with a husband or boyfriend just like their own father. They are easily attracted to instantaneous gratification to fulfill the void and to often us food and alcohol to satisfy the hurt. Men tend to struggle with addictive habits such as alcoholism, sex addiction, workaholics, and drug use.
False coping is an attempt to self medicate our emotions.
To passify our true feelings
To justify our sinful nature. Amen
But all of these are false coping mechanisms, and result in sin.
Church, we are hurt deepest by the people we love and need the most, and there is no deeper wound than the one that comes from our father. Running or denial won’t resolve a father wound, it must be faced.
Facing our “father wound” doesn’t mean we blame our parents for the sin we used to medicate it.
I chose alcohol /drug addiction to deal with my
“father wound”, my parents didn’t force those decisions on me. No matter what happened, we must take 100% of the responsibility for choosing to turn to sin to cope with our father wound.
Apart from God you are incapable of bringing healing to your heart
Allow God to move you past coping, but bring you into His healing.
The only way that we can emotionally whole is for us to admit that our way of coping is incorrect and be willing as children of God to confess it before Him.
Listen, God wants to heal you this morning. Preach VICTORY
He wants to make you whole emotionally, because being an emotional basket case limits who he can reach through you,
He is limited because of the imbedded distrust
Limited to only certain areas in your life
Pastor, I am just not ready to let go right now.
Listen if you continue to try a fix it yourself it will destroy you
It will devastate your family
Your pain will eliminate your relationship with God
Because Church, we have to cease, so that He can increase. AMEN
This morning you might be here and you are totally identifying with me. Satan would like nothing else but for your to keep your “father wound” to yourself.
Just keep all those feelings of hurt pent up inside of you
He would like nothing more but to keep you from acknowledging the pain your carrying.
Why? Because it controls you.
Come this morning and confirm.
Validate your wound before God. When you substantiate the “father wound” in your life, you take the condemning power away from Satan, and take the first step of healing in your life.
Perhaps you have confirmed “the father wound”, but you have tried to deal with it on your own. Maybe you have turned to an addictive behavior to try to pacify the pain, but the wound is still there.
Listen, you cannot self medicate your wounds by your self, you need to come and confess them to God, I have tried to do this on my own, with this or with that, and have made a bigger mess out of it. Lord, forgive me for dealing with my wounds this way.
How do we heal the “Father Wound?”
First we must validate that it does exist, second we must confess that we cannot deal with it alone.
INV
Next week I continue this sermon. How do we heal the “Father Wound?”, by Exposing the Father Wound, and Exchanging the Wound For Grace.
