Wild at Heart | Week 7

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Week 7 | Healing the Wound

Weather | 72° F | Humidity 100% | Wind: 3mph N

4 Pax continued the book study at Adventure Park at 6:15 for the seventh week of Wild at Heart.  Thank you to all the HIM that posted. All Pax are still encouraged to attend. Even if you don’t have the book, just show up to fellowship and grow spiritually with us.

The reading assignment was Chapter 7 – Healing the Wound.

Soul-to-Soul Oneness:

  • John’s favorite event of the day is snuggling with his boys when tucking them into bed. Boys want to be guided into adventure and test their strength, but it is all done within the context of an intimate relationship.
  • There is a common them between bestowing masculinity, and healing the wound, and that is relationships. Relationships with other men and a relationship with the Father.

The Source of Real Strength

  • Guys are unanimously embarrassed by their emptiness and woundedness
  • From even before the fall ours was meant to be a desperately dependent existence
  • John 15:5 (NKJV) “I am the vine, you are the branches. He who abides in Me, and I in him, bears much fruit; for without Me you can do nothing.”
  • We are the branches, Christ is the trunk. We were made dependent.
  • Our sin is that stubborn part of us that wants to be independent.
  • Our culture encourages us to be independent: John Wayne, James Bond, Ad slogans.
  • We believe that needing anyone is a weakness (men never asking for directions, maybe Siri sometimes, its easier to ask a computer)
  • Jesus did nothing by himself, he needed his Father for everything.
  • Men are harsh with the brokenness in them, feeling like there is a boy inside.
  • Luke 17:2 (NLT) It would be better to be thrown into the sea with a millstone hung around your neck than to cause one of these little ones to fall into sin.
  • God is furious about what happened to these young children.
  • Good Will Hunting – it is no shame that you need healing, look to another for strength. We were made dependent on God for strength.

Entering the Wound

  • 10 year old boy’s father committed suicide. “A child takes life as it comes because he has no other way of taking it…”
  • We must take out and enter our wound. Author explored his through his anger.
  • “…I too was a fighter who saw myself up against the rest of the world and I had accepted my wound and never grieved it.”
  • The false self is an elaborate defense against entering our wounded heart.

Healing the Wound

  • If you wanted to learn how to heal the blind and you thought following Christ around would make it clear, you’d wind up pretty frustrated. There are no formulas with God.
  • Healing took place through relationship with others. Spending time with a man he respected, who respected him.
  • The healing of our wound flows out of our union with God.
  • Common themes as we seek the restoration of our heart:
    1. Surrender:
      • “Until you have given yourself to him you will not have a real self” —C.S. Lewis
      • Christ offers a lot more than forgiveness. “Its OK that you have broken your leg, I forgive you. Now finish the race.” Cruel.
      • Isaiah 61:1 | Christ has come to free our hearts, to restore and release our souls, our true selves.
      • Ask Him in to heal all the broken places inside you and release you from your bondage.
    2. Grieve: Your wound, your loss matters.
      • In grieving we admit the truth.
      • Tears open and cleanse the wound.
    3. Let God Love Us:
      • Few men are ever so vulnerable to simply let God love us. “I’d rather be in control, admired for me.”
      • Abiding in the love of God is our only hope & true home for your hearts.
    4. Forgive: Forgive our fathers and all those who have wounded us.
      • “Forgiveness is setting a prisoner free and then discovering the prisoner was you.”
      • Forgiveness is a choice, not a feeling.
      • Forgiveness must reach the emotional core of your hurt.

God’s Name For Us

  • Relate to Jesus and to ‘God’ as Father. It can be difficult if you have been hurt in the past by a father figure and associate fathers to pain.
  • Masculinity is passed from father to son, then from Father to son.
  • Allow God to father you. Adam, Abraham, Jacob, David, Jesus all learned who they were out of their intimacy with God.
  • No one but God sees what the man is. “Yes God sees me…and what he sees is my sin”. Wrong.
    1. Your sins have been washed away by Jesus.
    2. You have a new heart: Ezekiel 36:26-27 | ”I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you.”
  • God sees the true you. The man he had in mind when he made you.
  • Maximus’ heart is given over to eternity, yet he stays and fights so that others may be free.
  • We are children of God, and he is our Father, and our friend.
  • “True masculinity is spiritual”. Spirituality is not feminine.
  • The father’s voice is never condemning.

Out of Our Wound Comes Our Glory

  • My Bunkie painting. “You cannot be the man who rescues, until you are rescued.”
  • The false self is never wholly false. Those gifts that we have been using are often quite true, but we are hiding behind them.
  • The power of our life is in us, not some golden bat.

Postscript – It is vital that we find healing for our wounded hearts!

“Desperado
Why don’t you come to your senses?
Come down from your fences, open the gate
It may be rainin’, but there’s a rainbow above you
You better let somebody love you
Before it’s too late” —The Eagles “Desperado”
“The task of healing is to respect oneself as a creature, no more and no less.”  — Wendell Berry
“The deepest desire of our hearts is for union with God. God created us for union with himself: This is the original purpose of our lives.”  — Brennan Manning

Homework | Read Chapter Eight: A Battle To Fight: The Enemy

Thoughts for the week:

What is your mission in life? How do you identify your true self? What things are in opposition to you discovering and fulfilling this?