CHAPTER 22 STRENGTHENED WITHIN

 The purpose of this book is to help you receive deliverance and freedom from the past. Whether the past is five minutes ago or fifty years ago, you will always need this message-always. You do not have to have some horrible past to need deliverance from the regrets of your past. If you get up tomorrow morning planning to be godly, and then lose your temper before breakfast, you are going to need deliverance from the past.

The devil wants to keep you trapped by some mistake you have made, or some comment you should not have said, or some sin that you have committed, or some sin that somebody has committed against you. God wants you to be delivered from what you have done and from what has been done to you-both are equally important to Him.

We have already seen from the Scriptures that Jesus came to heal the brokenhearted, to bind up our wounds, to heal our bruises. He came to give us the oil of joy instead of mourning, the garment of praise instead of heaviness, beauty instead of ashes. He came to turn us into trees of righteousness, as the planting of the Lord, so that He might be glorified (see Isaiah 61:1-3).Jesus Himself said, "The Spirit of the Lord [is] upon Me, because He has anointed Me

[the Anointed One, the Messiah] to preach the good news (the Gospel) to the poor; He has sent Me to announce release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to send forth as delivered those who are oppressed [who are downtrodden, bruised, crushed, and broken down by calamity]" (Luke 4:18).

I believe that God is here with you right now; He has brought you to this time in your life to deliver you from something painful in your past. Perhaps you need deliverance from emotional wounds that were inflicted years ago, or perhaps someone recently offended you, and unforgiveness is holding you back from being all that God wants you to be. Jesus came to set all captives free. He knew that you and I would both need Him, every day.

Every time I preach this message of deliverance from a broken heart, I get stirred up to go and be all God wants me to be. I want you to be determined that you will not just be half of what God wants you to be, or three-quarters of what He wants you to be, but all that He wants you to be.

In Ephesians 3:16, the apostle Paul prayed, "May He grant you out of the rich treasury of His glory to be strengthened and reinforced with mighty power in the inner man by the[Holy] Spirit [Himself indwelling your innermost being and personality] (emphasis mine).

The inner man is where we need emotional healing.

Our emotions are part of our soul. We are a spirit, and we have a soul. Our soul is made up of our mind, our will, and our emotions. Our mind tells us what to think, our will tells us what we want, and our emotions tell us how we feel.

Satan works to keep your emotions wounded when other people hurt you. Proverbs 18:14 kjv says, "The spirit of a man will sustain his infirmity; but a wounded spirit who can bear?" The devil wants you to remain broken inside, so that you cannot handle the trouble that comes to all of us in life. But the Holy Spirit moves into your inner man and personality and dwells there to strengthen and reinforce you with mighty power. He reminds you of God's Word, saying, "Cast your burden on the Lord [releasing the weight of it] and He will sustain you; He will never allow the [consistently] righteous to be moved (made to slip, fall, or fail)" (Psalm 55:22).

If we have inner strength, then we can handle the problems of life. Without inner strength, we cannot even handle a traffic jam! I used to be such a mess inside that it was all I could do to deal with ordinary, everyday problems.

Our emotional wounds keep us from coping with everyday problems. We need deliverance from wounded emotions just to deal with a cranky store clerk, or a child who does not want to do what we want him to do, or a spouse who is not spiritually mature.

When we have internal problems, we have external problems. But when we are made strong inside, when we are strengthened with all might and power in the inner man, by the power of the Holy Ghost, then we can deal with all those other things that come our way.

Be Transformed Into His Image

Everyone has strengths and weaknesses, and you and I are no exception. God desires to deliver us from the things that keep us in bondage to pain. He will strengthen us through the power of the Holy Spirit and will mold our personalities in such a way that we have a Spirit-controlled temperament.

If we do not receive God's help, we can become messed up in many areas of our personalities. Our natural desires oppose the nature of the Holy Spirit (see Galatians 5:17). Left to our own selfishness, we are likely to live out the practices defined in Galatians 5:19-20, which include things like strife, jealousy, and anger. Then we may get into relationships with other messed-up people and just keep distressing each other even more. But relationships are a major part of life, and we cannot avoid having to get along with other people. The Bible is all about our relationship with God (the Godhead), our relationship with ourselves, and our relationship with others. As I said previously, if we do not like ourselves, we are never going to get along

with anybody else. Many of the battles that we have with other people come because we are at war with ourselves.

The Holy Spirit is available to help mold us into the image of Christ. It is written of God in Romans 8:29: "For those whom He foreknew [of whom He was aware and loved beforehand] , He also destined from the beginning [foreordaining them] to be molded into the image of His Son [and share inwardly His likeness], that He might become the firstborn among many brethren."

If we come to terms with the truth that we need deliverance from our wounded past, we can receive God's power to transform our personality to be like Christ, and improve our relationship with God, with ourselves, and with others. We can come to terms with our own conflicts, and receive healing in our attitude toward ourselves.

You may still blame yourself for abuses that you did not have anything to do with. The devil may be telling you there must be something wrong with you; otherwise, people would not have treated you the way they did. If you were sexually abused, the devil may be telling you that there must be something wrong with you, or else that other person or persons would not have used you for improper purposes. But you were not created for improper purposes, and any abuse you may have suffered was an injustice. A child who is abused has no ability to look at her

abuser and say, "You have a problem, and I am not your problem. You are trying to give me a problem, but I am not receiving it."

When abuse continues against us into adulthood, we find it even more difficult to defend ourselves against the devil's deceptive lies. Satan plays a recording in our thoughts that repeats:

What is wrong with me? What is wrong with me? There must be something wrong with me or this would not be happening to me. What am I doing wrong?

What am I doing wrong that you have to talk to me like that? What am I doing that you never want to put your arms around me and love me?

What am I doing that when I go to Mom or Dad for a hug, they push me away? What did I do that my parents did not even want me so that they gave me away ? What am I doing that you want to treat me like your mistress instead of your daughter? What am I doing? What is wrong with me?

Nobody else I know is being treated this way. There must be something wrong with me.

Some people listen to this record of internal pain over and over, year after year after year, until suddenly they are adults looking for someone to love them because they were never offered the love they

needed and deserved. They are so love-starved that they are incapable of loving anyone else the way God intended them to do.

I speak from personal experience when I say that if you still relate to that kind of internal pain, you will probably find it difficult to enter into a normal relationship and have normal expectations of anyone else. You may want your friend or spouse to make up to you for the years of abuse you suffered. But such unrealistic expectation of a friend or spouse puts them on overload and possibly scares them away. They may be trying to give you everything they know how to give you, but until you are delivered from the wounds of your past, nothing that anyone else does for you will ever be enough. I remember going through a time when I was never happy. I always wanted Dave to do something else, always wanted him to do something more. And he sincerely tried for years. He did everything he could to help me through my crisis of pain.

Dave is a real easygoing guy, and he tried so hard to make me happy. But one day he looked at me and said, "Woman" (the only time Dave calls me "woman" is when he is fed up, which is not too often), "now hear this. I have tried to make you happy. And you know what? I have decided that it can't be done. No matter what I do, I am not going to make you happy." Then he said, "So guess what? I am finished trying."

Allow God To Fill Your Empty Heart

Thank God, the Holy Ghost was working in me through this crisis to strengthen me. I was just beginning to read the Word, and was beginning to see that all my problems, all of my present unhappiness, was not somebody else's fault-I had a problem in me. So I started working with God to get my life turned around.

Many married people end up in divorce when they realize that their spouse is not going to make them happy. They say, "If you're not making me happy, then I am not staying in this relationship." So they look for somebody else to make them happy, but their root of rejection keeps them brokenhearted.

A root of rejection will leave you insecure, with low self-esteem, and no confidence. Until you are delivered, you will always expect someone else to make you feel good about yourself. I needed daily fixes of self-worth, just like an addict craves his drugs. I needed reassurance all the time; there was no end to my deficiency, and sometimes, the more attention I was given, the more I craved. People who have a root of rejection in their life feel unloved and insecure. Their personality is broken; they are shattered inside. As a result, they are constantly looking for something to make them feel okay. They try everything: a better job, a promotion, a spiritual gift, a position in the church, the right friends, the right label in their clothes, the right kind of car to drive, the right kind of house to live in, the right

social group to belong to, or unending compliments. They seem to always imply, "Tell me I am okay, fall all over me with compliments, let me always be right." Insecure people cannot be corrected because they already feel so bad about themselves.

I know these things about insecure people because I had every one of these problems until the Counselor, the Holy Ghost, and the Word of God brought me out of that pit of despair, from ashes to beauty.

The Holy Spirit is the only One ordained to do a work within us. He fills our heart with God Himself. I encourage you to carefully consider again Paul's prayer for us, which was "[that you may really come] to know [practically,through experience for yourselves]the love of Christ, which far surpasses mere knowledge [without experience]; that you maybe filled [through all your being]unto all the fullness of God [may have the richest measure of the divine Presence,and become a body wholly filled and flooded with God Himself]!"(Ephesians 3:19, emphasis mine).

If we become wholly filled with God Himself, we will not crave the reassurance of others. We will be so flooded with God's love that it will overflow into our relationship with Him, with ourselves, and with others.

If you will allow Him to do so, God will deliver you from the pain of your past. Receive God's healing,

and allow the Holy Spirit to have His way in your heart. He will fill you with all the reassurance that you need to enjoy life. He will show you how to put the past behind you so that you will not even feel pain if you remember it. Ecclesiastes 5:20 promises the person who totally commits himself to God: "For he shall not much remember [seriously] the days of his life, because God [ Himself] answers and corresponds to the joy of his heart [the tranquility of God is mirrored in him]."