EMOTIONAL HEALING: PART I.

Emotional healing encompasses the integrative healing of a person’s socio-pneuma-psyche-soma areas of their personality, in other words their body, soul, spirit and relational areas. This emotional healing comes defined from past history by those who have ministered to those who have been wounded.

One of those persons who have ministered in this area is David A Seamands. In his book ‘Healing for Damaged Emotions’ he talks about the feelings of anger, guilt, depression, inferiority, and perfectionism which tells a person that they are ‘not good enough’, ‘not worthy’.1 But he shows how permanent freedom from inner turmoil and damaged feelings can take place when looking at Jesus and what He did at the cross. That it is a process being led by the Holy Spirit, cooperating with Him, who is a gracious, loving and understanding God!

Another person is Lewis B Smedes, whose book ‘Shame and Grace’, shows the social and spiritual aspect of a person needing healing. For example he talks about social shame2 , which brings about the concept of rejection. In a personal note, I felt rejection when I first came to the US at 11. It was a new country , new language, new people, so it became clear to me that I tend to isolate myself, even some now. The Lord has worked on me in this area, as for example back in 2013 there were two new persons sharing my home and I learned more about socio-relations as it pertained to my personality. Smedes also talks about spiritual shame3 which tells of the price to pay to see God: need to humble our sights of self in order to see how awesome God really is! Through my journey with the Lord, I have seen how it is not about ‘me’; it is all about Him! I used to be ‘perfectionist’, ‘independent’, and the Lord has dealt with me with the help of the Holy Spirit in these areas and is still working on me, more so since I took the class on Emotional Healing at the King’s University!

NOTES
1 David A Seamands, ‘Healing for Damaged Emotions’, ( Wheaton: Victor Books, 1981),5.
2 Lewis B Smedes, ‘Shame and Grace, (San Francisco: Zondervan Pub. House, 1993),53.
3 Ibid., 45.