Empathy: Brokenness Sojourning Near Brokenness.

Over the last number of months God has made me aware of a deep wisdom. He's kindly let me see that when people are their most human they've let their brokenness sojourn empathetically with the brokenness of someone else, staying near physically or emotionally to gently and respectfully comfort, encourage, and heal. They've drawn and stayed alongside of someone else's heartache, sin or shame to lend a compassionate ear or hold out a lifting hand. Such people do so until others heal, strengthen, and get back on their feet.

I like this definition of empathy: the ability to see oneself in another’s place and understand the other’s feelings, desires, ideas, and actions. The operative words for me are imagine and understand and other. Experiencing your own painful brokenness enables you to come near another's wretched messiness because you know what it feels to be lost, alone, overwhelmed and ashamed. I used the word sojourn to capture the idea of staying in place, abiding for the time that is needed. Empathy comes near, even if haltingly at first, but it watches and listens at the level of the heart for find the human connection which acts like a bridge to the other heart. There is freedom in empathy because we lower your well-used defensiveness to help bear the burden of another who bleeds and cries like we do sometimes. We see a person rather than as a stranger or, worse, an enemy.

I know for many of us it feels counter-intuitive to see our brokenness can build a bridge to someone else's. Brokenness is failure and shameful, maddeningly so. Am I not supposed to be cleaned up before I should even try to wipe the blood, sweat, and tears off you? I'm positive I'll be no expert for your pain or fear. Plus my brokenness is dirty and ugly. Being broken is not an asset or a tool. It's to be locked away. I have a persona to protect and a dignity to preserve.

When we are at our least humane (marked or motivated by concern with the alleviation of suffering:) we instinctively distance ourselves from human brokenness: ours and theirs. Leave the mess to someone else better qualified or who has the time. Distancing can also be locating ourselves above the human condition, thinking thoughts like: "well, I'd never do that, or "I'm not like him," or, "Sure, I'm not perfect, but at least I don't [fill in the blank]." Pride hates brokenness so it puffs up and papers over reality from a distance. When we indict the brokenness in other people, we lose humane sight and empathy shrivels. Pride is also a deceiver of the first order, an enemy of the heart, really. Accepted brokenness confounds and deflates pride. That's good.

I think empathy is most humane when it sojourns near brokenness of another because it knows the loneliness of unyielding brokenness which fills a person with shame and fear. Someone who's come to grips with his or her existential brokenness learns to defuse the corrosive heart cancer of shame because brokenness is the human condition. No one escapes it. And such a person sees parasitic fear for what it is, a sleight-of-hand charlatan that requires a willing participant; one who'll agree with only one way of looking at a threat or a problem, and accepting immediately it's going to turn out bad.

But when I let my brokenness come near that of another without judgment or lame platitudes, I offer them the freedom to drop their guard and accept help. And if I stick around beyond the initial helping something miraculous takes place: the person I help loosens a grip on self-sufficiency, opens to grace, and learns the freedom of being given what they need with no strings attached. Both the giver and the receiver display a kind of nakedness here. No pretense or illusion of self-sufficiency pervades this transaction. I'm coming near you as I am, or you're coming near me as you are; no one is superior. No one has it together; there is just connecting in the place of brokenness and need. This time it's your turn to receive.

The real deal is to stick with it when brokenness is not healed, or relieved in a reasonable amount of time in the other. I've had varying degrees of success with this. The good news is I've been made aware of my limits when it comes to sojourning with someone else's brokenness. There are limits, although I think most of us abandon the helping well before we have nothing left to give. In my work I've had a few folks with whom I could see no way to go any further with them. I had nothing left to give including my frayed brokenness. I was empty and rattled. Sojourning would have left me seriously wounded and in danger of deepening my brokenness too far. So I see a boundary. Each time was painful and they've been a small percentage of all the folks I've sojourned with. I wish the percentage was zero. Not in this world.

If you're reading this I'd like you to do some soul-searching and see where your limits of empathy are. Look to see if you have short limits and why. Ask God to show you.When he does, ask him to help you extend the boundaries so the wisdom and grace you've learned from your brokenness can sojourn with others more deeply when the Spirit picks you to get involved. Also, where do you refuse to let folks see your brokenness so they have little awareness of your need for them to come in close. where do you live in the illusion of self-sufficiency? Where is pride your guide in this illusion? 

A sober understanding of our brokenness is a reality to be explored and gift softening the human heart and creating the possibility of empathy in us. people who learn to let their brokenness sojourn with the brokenness of others discover an uncommon freedom.

Sometimes I just Wish Kingdom Would Come.

I wish there was less hatred these days. Vitriol burns and scars the heart.

I wish there was less bitterness these days. Acid never heals a wound.

I wish there was less jealousy these days. Humility is a gift.

I wish killing wasn't an increasing option for working out hard problems. Murder kills 8 year-olds just waiting for their dads to finish the race, turning young men into pariahs.

I wish people thought more deeply and were less influenced by self-absorbed political posturing, and inane partisan punditry. Those who know what it cost others for them to live free are not easily taken in by sound bites and vacuous celebrity.

I wish people thought more about what actually has substance - the deep and enduring ideas which make us human, even wise and loving. Minds left to wither becomes easily lured and controlled by lies.

I wish having a good time, getting wasted, and seeing how much sex you can have with as many people as possible wasn't such a civil religion. Where did real life go, the kind that honors, cherishes and protects the other?

I wish the Church (you and me) cared more for people wandering in the dark toward death than filling Sunday Worship with a kickin' band and amazing speakers. Picking up our crosses, dying deep to self, and following Jesus no matter the cost doesn't glitter very much.

I wish bombing the innocent was not seen as act of heroism anywhere in the world. Honorable bravery for a just cause never kills the weak and small.

I wish civility returned to our national discourse and everyday interchanges. Kind words heal and generous words build bridges. Wise words win a hearing. Listening well creates relationships.

I wish the pursuit of wealth was also a pursuit of helping others overcome their obstacles and make a life as well. Helping the least of Christ's brethren opens us to the heart of the Gospel and Kingdom.

I wish religious hatred withered because people reached across the table and began to really talk about what faith means to them and why. Learning to listen to the hearts of others seeking after God is a noble thing and an opening.

I wish those working to create division between races and cultures would see their blindness and be ashamed. There is a common humanity beating in the hearts of all people God has made.

I wish my children and grandchildren could live in a world where people turned their swords into plowshares and celebrated war no more. Peace on earth and good will toward all people ...

I wish for the day when all the crying eyes will have their tears dried, all broken hearts will be healed, everything will be set to right, and love annihilates hatred and death.

I wish the deceived young bomber who will not give himself up in Watertown right now will be spared find a Savior full of forgiveness, grace and mercy.

Amen.

ADDENDUM: Lest You Think From My Last Post We Play Fast and Loose With God's Call To Holiness.

Because we put so much emphasis on grace, and the freedom to work out brokenness and sin in the community of the broken and sinful deeply loved by God, some people might think we have a low view of holiness ... an "anything goes and it ain't nobody's business if it does" worldliness.

We don't.

We see being a Jesus-follower as a totality, all of one's life surrendered to him for his use and glory. In the process of learning to let go and trust him to be Lord over our lives: we stumble, get wounded, blow hot and cold, work through fears, losses and confusion; deal with the pain of our own and others sin, labor under life's pressures and stresses of work, family, and finances; struggle to live the spiritual disciplines with some semblance of  maturity, and pursue the missional life from the heart. All of us realize we wrestle with sin. Sometimes it can be serious.

It's just we don't have a "1 whopper-sin and you're out," rule. Christians are well-known by non-believers for "shooting their chronically wounded." Some can be very mean-spirited, but always with a smile. We deeply deplore legalism, and hyper-religious Pharisaism because spiritual pride can rot a church from the inside like cancer, all the while appearing proper. Christians can and do flirt all too easily with "I'd never do that," arrogance. Our gossip can be drenched with a blind self-righteousness more than we'd ever to admit. In some communities of faith, they've lost most of what it means to be a gracious, kind, compassionate and forgiving Church of Jesus Christ. They've become something unrecognizable as such.

You see, I've worked with the Christian wounded and spiritually abused for a long time. I've seen the fear, pain, sorrow, and bewilderment on the faces and in the hearts of folks who got viciously beat up and shunned by brethren who held their heads high while throwing stones. Many of the victims quit the church; some leave Christianity all together. They found themselves on the hurting side of hypocrisy and blindness.

The truth is imagine/Northampton is just  little band of "we're working on it" broken, but loved folks who seek to follow Jesus in his missional Kingdom work all around us. We've worked hard to create that atmosphere. It hasn't been easy, and we don't always get it right, but it's not from want of trying, and then trying again. As a result, people say there is a tangible feeling of love in our life together.

Man, I hope that never leaves.

Following Jesus into the Mess Until the Cross Wears a Groove in Your Shoulder.

"The the King will say to those on his right, 'Come, you who are blessed by my Father, inherit the Kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was stranger and you welcomed me, I was sick and you visited me, I was in prison and you came to me." (Matthew 25:34-6)

"Remember those who are in prison, as though in prison with them, and those who are mistreated, since you are also in the body." (Hebrews 13:3)

"And behold, a lawyer stood up to put him to the test, saying, "Teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?" He said to him, "What is written in the Law? How do you read it? And he answered, "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind, and your neighbor as yourself." And he said to him, "You have answered correctly; "do this and you will live." But he desiring to justify himself, said to Jesus, And who is my neighbor?"Jesus replied, "A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and he fell among robbers, who stripped him and beat him and departed, leaving him half dead. Now by chance a priest was going down that road, and when he saw him he passed by on the other side. So likewise a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side. But a Samaritan, as he journeyed, came to where he was, and when he saw him, he had compassion. He went to him and bound up his wounds, pouring on oil and wine. Then he set him on his own animal and brought him to an inn and took care him. And the next day he took out two denarii and gave them to the innkeeper, saying, 'Take care of him, and whatever more you spend, I will repay you when I get back.' Which of these three, do you think, proved to be a neighbor to the man who fell among the robbers/" He said, "The one who showed him mercy." And Jesus said to him, "You go, and do likewise."

When I first came to Northampton in the summer of 2008 I grew aware of feeling displaced, a stranger in a strange land, a foreigner on the outside looking in. I likened it to what missionaries must feel when starting out in a new culture. It seemed as if I couldn't find the door into becoming a genuine part of the unique life of this small, tribal city. I must admit the experience was really disturbing. I'd only been there before when I first moved from Albuquerque to Newbury Street in Boston in the early 70's. I felt a kid amidst sophisticated grown-ups (actually I was). The Boston and Northampton experiences were disorienting.

Gradually in Northampton, God began to open a way to connect; it turned out to be a willingness to go into the mess of people's lives and on their terms. Mind you, I'd been a lay counselor for 20+ years, being in the mess was my daily experience - and I was intimately connected to my own. Be that as it may, the Northampton disquiet felt and still feels somehow different. Perhaps, I view it as messier in a peculiar way. The problems and dilemmas I encounter in people's lives here seem more labyrinthine with multiple layers of unhealth, tragedy and sorrow interwoven from decades or even generations of trouble. Whether its the story of the alcoholic Vietnam vet who broke his back, never had it fixed and now lives in chronic pain, or the Level 3 sex offender who's lost everything good in his life and lives on the street 24/7. Or it's the big-hearted, abused woman who tries valiantly to keep a semblance of normalcy and order in her life, but fails more often than not, The issues I encounter feel overwhelming, and the mess too great to walk along side in hopes of bringing redemptive change.

At the same time, I realize for all sorts of complex cultural reasons we're living through a period of tremendous strain and turmoil affecting large people groups on every continent. Northampton is merely a microcosm of global upheaval. It's in this personal and global context the Holy Spirit faces me with unsettling questions to reveal the actual state of my heart toward his Kingdom mission I've said I wanted to help shoulder (his light yoke?) He's asking questions such as:

• Do you really want to follow me into the mess everyday?
• Are you willing to sacrifice your comforts, resources, dreams, time and energy to walk in the mess with the most broken and beaten of my brethren?
• Do you merely want to talk and write about it while staying safely aloof and in control of your own Kingdom?
• Do you want to carry your cross, enter more deeply into my suffering, and die daily to yourself as your preferred way of living?
• Will you go further in with people and not look back even if it costs you everything?

My answer most often to these and related questions turns out to be varying degrees of "yes": "Yes, as long as you'll help me," "Yes, but," "Yes, oh, you mean right now?", or "Yes, maybe (which usually means not so much)." I know I don't want to live pursuing the American dream of wealth, power and prestige. I've never wanted to do that, although having some financial security, and being able to travel with family occasionally, or take time off, see more plays, concerts and arts events still has their charm to me.

By nature and motivational design, I'm motivated by values, they drive me instinctively, but I also have the same character flaws, selfish desires, blind-spots, and frustrating weaknesses (aka sin), as other Jesus followers. I hate that I have them (pride?), but they live in me, and I need daily transforming, lavish grace to cut through their substantial influence. Oh yeah, and I've a large, much practiced "gift" for wandering - some of it's my ADD, and some my motivational bent for exploring. The problem is when sin and design hold sway, I avoid the mess and pursue more pleasant activities and amusements.

The fact of the matter remains, I know if I'm to fulfill the summons to this imagine/Northampton mission my King has given me with Tricia and my teammates, I must make an avowedly consistent beeline for the mess and then linger there with Jesus. He always goes to the mess in people's lives - although they may not let him in - and he wants us to be with him there every day. We're not to be silent in the face of suffering, distant from the tragedies and sorrows of ruined lives, detached from the cries of the voiceless and oppressed, or too busy with our pleasures and securities to let our hands get dirty in someone else's chaos.

Cutting to the bone, we are to do things like:

• sit with and dry the tears of the abandoned (radical empathizing).
• feed the hungry as much or more that we feed ourselves (radical sharing).
• comfort and ennoble the discarded, warehoused feeble and dying (radical re-humanizing).
• give away more than we keep (radical giving).
• befriend the wearisome, smelly, dirty and obnoxious (radical befriending).
• give our money more to the Kingdom mission than ensuring comfortable lives for ourselves (radical financing).
• teach what we know to the ghettoized and disenfranchised who have no teacher ((radical equipping).
•  disarm hate with tenacious love so courageous and unexpected it shames and neutralizes the tyrant (radical peacemaking).
• pursue  and care for the addicted even when he or she is in the depths of using (radical care).
• downsize, simplify, embrace redemptive downward mobility (radical sanctification).

You see, the mess is the earthly dwelling place of Jesus. In becoming a mess-dweller by choice, you walk in solidarity with the One who came to seek and save the lost, crushed, abandoned and dying here and now. You actually find your true life there and come to know him in the face of the forlorn. You see his beauty in lives filled with trouble, sickness and death. The broken, bleeding and crucified Christ is mysteriously recognized in the deformed and hardened. By being at home in the mess, you can see and hear him in the lives of these people. You learn to notice and sense without shying away instinctively.

Tricia (lately through the life of St. Francis of Assisi) and both of us through the persistent inviting of the Holy Spirit are being asked to shoulder our crosses in a manner which inevitably invites us to share in the suffering of Christ in the suffering of humanity. We are not in any way special in that regard. This call is the call to all people of Christ. It is the Way of the Cross, the hard way, but the way freedom for the world. Grace makes it possible to respond and grace makes it possible to persist wholeheartedly. Amazing grace; grace of the life in the mess with Jesus.

PRAYER

Holy One, Wondrous One, Son of Man, Son of God, Suffering Servant, Christ, my magnificent King, make us able to prefer living and serving in humanity's crushing mess with you. Enable us to shoulder our crosses until it wears a groove in our shoulders and we bear the marks of unconditional love. Give us uncommon courage, the love of heaven, Spirit-soaked creativity, and humility able to connect with people who frighten and repel us. Give us hearts that long for justice, mercy, and redemptive freedom for even those who mistreat and despise our solidarity with you. Let the mess in people be our healing ground and setting-free place. Deliver us from the world's enticing addictions to pleasure, amusement, wealth, power and selfish gain. Fill us to bursting with the Holy Spirit's love for you, and what you love that our days may see love triumphing over death in all its rotting malevolence. 

 

In Defense of Inner Healing.

There comes a time in a man's life when you just have to say something; you can't let this one go by. To do so would be a missed opportunity at, best, and cowardice at the worst.

This, for me, is one of them.

Almost 2 weeks ago I was at a "school" of sorts held over a long weekend in southern Connecticut. I'd been invited by a friend to be a part of the worship. I was glad to do it . . . always a chance to play the instrument God fashioned me for.

During the course of the extended teaching, the speaker (who has a growing influence), at least 5-6 times denigrated and mocked a mode of healing Tricia and I've been closely associated with for 25 years. Some history:

In my 30's, through a series of God-orchestrated "circumstances," I spent a year going through inner healing with a very brilliant and spiritually gifted Episcopal priest. I went weekly for the duration. God let me know in no uncertain terms, I was going under the "spiritual" knife over issues which dogged me since my teens. Prior, I doubt I'd heard of inner healing. If I did, it registered little meaning with me.

My year of emotional, psychological and relational healing set me free to such a degree if I'd not gone through it, I'd have never been a counselor, or spiritual director. I wouldn't have led retreats or been sitting at my desk writing this blog about my thoughts and experiences planting imagine/Northampton. Ministry, at all, would have been a distant and far off land traversed by others.

The healing I received through the Holy Spirit from stifling memories and quietly suppurating heart wounds liberated me in a manner nothing else had. It was a redemptive, internal unbinding which opened authentic emotional manhood to me. Prior, I was a boy inside, a 35 year-old boy. He died when I could finally forgive my father for what his brokenness did to me. My anger was cut from its blood supply and I unlocked. I healed.

In fact, I so unlocked that God soon sent folks to me for inner healing. I was so enthusiastic about my experience of the process that I studied with this priest after our work together, and did extensive reading. Studying with him felt akin to being in graduate school, so extensive was his mastery of theology, biblical and cultural anthropology, psychology, and Christian spirituality, especially related to healing. I was able to trust the Holy Spirit, access my own healing and what I'd learned to help people overcome sometimes devastating wounds.

For the last 25 years to the present I can testify God works through deep healing in ways only he can.
I'm not sure what experience the speaker had to so categorically mock the inner healing ministry, but he must have seen abuses or gross ineptitude. From my experience and watching Jesus use Tricia brilliantly to heal deeply scores of women crushed by the sin of others committed against them, I'm bewildered by his position. Frankly, this teacher is completely in error with his blanket denunciation.

So in defense, I need to lay out a few key inner healing principles:

1. Healing, in general, has always been a critical component of the Gospel message: healing of the catastrophic separation from God because of sin, healing of relationships, healing of the body, and healing of the heart and mind, of nations: (Ps. 103:1-4; Mt. 10:8; Lk. 9:6; Mt. 14;14; Mt. 24:14; 1Cor. 12:9; Rev. 22:2) A key reality of the Kingdom of God is access to healing. Jesus demonstrated it in the Gospels as a means of establishing his identity as God's Anointed One ushering in a new way of life; the way of the Kingdom of God included healing.

2. Inner healing applies the Gospel to the experience of, and how a person thinks about or responds to his or her most emotionally crippling experiences in life. Biblical truths about forgiveness, salvation, redemption from sin, and the radical love of God illuminate a person's perception of his or her intrinsic worth. Wounding experiences always threaten to steal the truth of how God values each one of us. What happened in the past obstructs our ability to apprehend the beauty God sees in us. As that occurs, we disengage emotionally from the wonder of God's gracious gift, and settle into living an emotional half-life preserved by a noxious tangle of lies. Worse, we disappear and pose or find an acceptable persona behind which to hide. The authentic self is suppressed and held at bay for to avoid true intimacy and vulnerability at all costs.

Here's what inner healing accomplishes:

Isaiah 53:4 asserts Christ bore our griefs and carried our sorrows on the cross. He took them completely and opened the possibility of healing from their deleterious effects in our hearts so we might be freed from re-living horrors for a lifetime. Miracles occur through inner healing because what he bore on the cross and accomplished through the resurrection; miracles which overturn the emotional lordship of abuse, neglect and violation.

Psalm 247:3 states simply that God "heals the brokenhearted, and binds up their wounds," because of human cruelty, indifference, lust, oppression, and deceit. It's not hard to break a heart or crush a human spirit, especially in the tender and trusting years of life. A broken heart dims the light of life in a person, muting their unique voice, and subverting their power to truly live. Through inner healing the Holy Spirit neutralizes the domination of evil and restores a person's ability to pursue living life to the full, a gift Jesus said he came to give (John 10:10).

In Luke 4:18, Jesus quotes Isaiah, declaring in the synagogue, "The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to proclaim the good news to the poor; he has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those that are oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor." People who need inner healing are held captive to what others have done to them, or to the sin for which they are most deeply ashamed. Inner healing through the Spirit gradually unbinds people to live at liberty from the wounds they suffered or oppression they lived under. They don't pretend it "never happened," rather Jesus confronts and removes the fear, shame, unforgiveness, anger and condemnation infecting and ruling their hearts. His love helps them internalize God's favor.

One of the most powerful passages undergirding the efficacy and practice of true inner healing is 2Corinthians 10:4-5, "For the weapons we fight with are not of the flesh but have divine power to destroy strongholds. We destroy arguments and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God, and take every thought captive to obey Christ." What it says regarding the inner healing process, although admittedly in the context of Paul's letter he's not addressing the process of inner healing per se, is that even lies which grow from being hurt, defiled or abuse by others must submit to the lordship of Christ through inner healing. There, he asserts authority over the distorted, anguished thinking of people who've had their sense of self radically altered by sinful acts and the lies attached to them. When terrible memories are healed internally it's because Jesus makes them submit to him and replaces what occurred with love and utter acceptance for the wounded one. Emotional a re exposed and strongholds are destroyed.

Romans 5:1 "Therefore being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ." Not only is the person made spiritually whole from the substitutionary atonement of Christ on their behalf so that positionally they're at peace with God by faith, but they experience peace from tormenting memories of terrible things. Inner healing leads to peace because the destructive power of what people did to (or withheld from) them loses its force through Jesus taking authority over it. Subsequently, peace with the past settles in over time.The peace given through justification sinks more deeply into the heart of the wounded because it can be more clearly seen. Guilt, shame, and fear can't stifles its presence.

Paul speaks of an existential/spiritual transformation in 2Corinthians 5:17, "Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away; behold all things have become new." The healing is so existentially profound and complete that a new way of being is created by regeneration. Inner healing revives the grasp and deepens the reality of being a new creation to the person devastated by abuse, neglect and hatred. This transformation from old to new to which Paul refers occurs instantaneously at the point of new birth. However, sanctification is the process by which we grow into our new creation relationship with God and others; we learn to live love and service as our primary way of being. Inner healing becomes necessary when people are emotionally, physically or spiritually traumatized and can't embrace fully this new creation way of living. They need to be freed and settled into the new way.

Ephesians 3:17-9, "That Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith; that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth, and length, and depth, and height; and to know the love of Christ, which passes knowledge, that you might be filled with all the fullness of God." At the heart, inner healing slowly opens people to being firmly established in the passionate, affectionate love of Abba Father. Being filled with the fullness of God is his longing for his Beloved that we might be unleashed to receive and share such love from what we've experienced in him. Inner healing lowers a person's guard so he or she better receives love and gives it with growing generosity and abandon. A guarded heart is a heart rooted in the shallows of God's healing love. Healing helps people be less defensed and protected; less hidden and opaque. They become conduits for unconditional love in ways never imagined because that same love freed them to healthy vulnerability.

Inner healing exposes and defuses the toxic, cancerous fear that overtakes the heart of someone who's been terrorized and dehumanized by human evil. 2Timothy 1:7 proclaims, "For God hath not given us a spirit of fear; but of power, and love, and of a sound mind." God himself has graced us with an ability to think soundly (from a firm grasp of the truth), love well and live in the vivifying, fructifying power of the Spirit. Inner healing attacks and exposes the sources of malignant, abiding fear. Fear is a cruel taskmaster keeping people enslaved and irrationally confined to what appears safe, but actually just imprisons them in an illusion of self-guarded safety. Inner healing opens people to the unparalleled power of Christ over life and life's enemies. It also opens people to the power God has placed in them to live their lives in freedom and life-giving enterprises. Crippling fear teaches people to stay away from life; inner healing unchains and beckons them to an authentic present and promising future. Fear is gradually silenced by the gentle, peaceful, but authoritative voice of the Spirit in the jangling memories of pain and terror.

3. Inner healing takes advantage, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, of the incredible power of imagination. It's that creative faculty of the mind which makes mental images, creatively formulates or signifies the minds conversation. Ideas, concepts, experiences, mental constructs and thoughts of all kinds can be pictured through the imagination in some form. It is the imagination that the Spirit employs to vividly depict memories, painful or otherwise, and then provide a way the mind can bring Jesus into the middle of the painful remembrances such that people "see" his Lordship over the offenders, and offenses against the person. Being able to put ones self back into the horror and "see' Jesus in the midst of it powerfully makes real the healing of the ordeal which has paralyzed the person sometimes for decades. Not only that, but healing actually occurs. The terrible sting and binding power of what happened is neutralized, and the person gradually emerges authentically from it's taint. 

Tricia and I've witnessed this hundreds of times as counselors, and we've kept a pile of cards and letters from over the years testifying to the lasting effect of God's work in the deep heart. Inner healing is a powerful means by which God frees the captive. While there are all sorts of counterfeits and inanities practiced in the name of inner healing, to be sure, the inner healing we've experienced, were taught, and practiced is at the heart of the applied Gospel of Jesus Christ

We also know many gifted and spiritually mature Christians around the country who are serving the Kingdom of God beautifully by helping heal crushed hearts through inner healing. They are hard-working bringers of the Good News and bearers of hope to the voiceless, feeble, maimed, and broken in our midst.

The teacher I heard recently denigrate this ministry of healing just doesn't realize how sadly far off the mark he is, and what a disservice he does to the Body of Christ.

May Jesus open his eyes.

No tear dries alone . . . unnoticed.

I was thinking about the fact that the Scriptures it said the prayers of the saints go up to God as a sweet fragrance to him. So I began to wonder how the suffering and tears of the world go up to God?

This is what I heard: "The tears of my people in their suffering I mix with my tears for them, and for the suffering of the world. Your agony is my agony.

When you are wounded; I am wounded.

When you are abused; I am abused.

When you are forsaken; I am forsaken.

When you are oppressed; I am opressed.

When you are abandoned; I am abandoned.

When you are mocked; I am mocked.

When you are violated, I am violated.

When you are crushed; I am crushed.

Not one of your tears is forgotten by me. I know them all. All of them will be dried and turned to laughter.

Remember that the cross married your agony to mine and sealed the promise that soon I will bring everything to rights. The world will be healed. It's peoples will rejoice. The oppressor and abuser and murderer and tyrant will be exposed and  brought to justice. No injustice is forgotten. No tear dries alone . . .  unnoticed.

My blood, agony and tears are restoring Creation. The Laughter of Heaven will turn all the sorrows I have collected into the leaping of true Freedom and Joy.

Hold fast to all my promises. Carry my love with you as a bond of surety.

Never forget I know every tear. I have each, and I will never forget them or you.

Following Jesus the Liberator Is Our Primary Identity.

Last Sunday I was set to give the message for imagine/Northampton's Very First Christmas Celebration. But due to the threat of the heavy snow we were supposed to get (which turned out to be only a dusting even though the radar showed it snowing over Northampton for 24 hours), we canceled Sunday's celebration on Saturday. Oh well.

Anyway, I thought I would share briefly what I was going to say.

Some background, first (I know this is not a complete sentence, by the way). Over the last
several months due to my reading of Ken Bailey, N.T. Wright, and John Howard Yoder, as well as Shane Claiborne and Jim Wallis earlier, I am being changed in how I view what Jesus came to do and how the Kingdom of God is to operate in my life and the lives of others. Almost 100% of my ministry before coming to Northampton was to Christians, teaching them to hear God and helping them heal. It was about liberation, but the focus was on people who already acknowledge Christ. All of it good stuff.

My change has come in two forms.

First, I realize increasingly Christ's liberating revolution was as much about overthrowing and neutralizing the universal Powers (Satanic rebellion, sin-infected cultural institutions, social conventions and traditions) that crush people, lull them into trifles, or destroy their lives as much as it is about my personal salvation as a sinner in need of the liberation of the cross. I have zero doubts I need Jesus's substitutionary atoning for me. But it isn't merely about my personal need as desperate as that is. I am just one tiny part of an astounding Creation-freeing Story, the likes of which is beyond our imagining in its scope and import.

So the collective witness and work of Christians demonstrates that the stranglehold of the Powers can be defused without violence or anarchic rebellion. We can live differently and demonstrate a freedom from oppression no matter how enticing. Our Holy Spirit infused values can transform what the Powers commandeered:

Love undermines fear.

Sacrificial service subverts pride.

Grace deflates hatred.

Generosity shames selfishness.

Jesus's revolution seeded at his birth, created at the cross, launched at the Resurrection and spread at Pentecost irrevocably severed the root of "the sickness unto death" in the universe. It is finished at the heart. It is the Story of all stories without which would make all of life "sound and fury; the tale told by a fool, signifying nothing." Jesus liberated the universe and his revolution is well underway.

Secondly, the Church, you and me, has been given the divine mandate to spread this subversive liberation. We are to head out all the time and work patiently to make disciples. We are to love and serve the world, witnessing to the transforming power of Jesus to free the captive and overturn the Powers. By our ordinary and simple lives we gain a foothold and establish life in midst of death.

Your primary (first order) identity as a Jesus-follower is that of a liberator and revolutionary. What? I know that might sound over-blown, but is it? What other primary identity could possibly trump it for the Christian: being an American or other nationality, your profession, the local church you go to, who you voted for in the national election, your ethnicity, financial or social status, what town or neighborhood you live in, or whether you are a Yankees or Red Sox fan? Jesus makes it clear in Matthew 25:31-40 that our primary identity centers on incarnating the his life-giving love to the least of our brethren. and anyone else he puts in our path. We are to spend the rest of our days so doing. We are servants (actually bond-servants, if you will). Nothing we do or can do is more important. Matters of eternity command our closest attention and our deepest daily loyalty, do they not?

Jesus liberated and sanctioned us to go about every last one of our days bringing the kingdom into the lives of people we meet, care for, work with and live around. Each day affords us the opportunity to unlock someone with a word, gesture or act of service that opens them just a little to the Gospel. How we do so does not have to be spectacular or clever. It will be merely the expression of a person who has been undone by the loving liberation of Jesus, and desires the same for everyone else who will listen and see.

Do you see yourself this way? Are you paying attention? Are you holding back? Is it your primary identity truth be told?

I have a long way to go in being really useful to his revolution, but I want to be.

I ask him to sovereignly make it so. I am more of a mess than I like to admit or show publicly, but history testifies he uses messes like me way beyond what they could have imagined.

May what he started in me years ago in Boston be completed such that his revolution is more and more my way of living and that of the McDermott household.

Loving is the first order of business

The last 2 weeks I have been prayer-walking through the Main Street area of Northampton walking a circle from Smith College to the Post Office and back to our offices on Armory Street. As I walk, I have been trying to sense God's heart for the people and how he would have me pray for them and for the city as a whole. The walks have been inspiring and deepening. God lets me see into things as I walk.

First, I have been struck by how much Northampton is an "occupied city" spiritually. It is as if the city is enshrouded and fraudulently commandeered by unseen minions of darkness, oppression and death. If you linger and look carefully this sense is palpable. My daughter, Eslie, referred to it by saying, "It is as if there is beauty underneath, but it has been covered and suppressed." I am also unnerved by the realization that most people there live unaware that a tyrannical alien army has infiltrated the city, and stolen its true Heart. A tragedy really.

The second more disturbing awareness I have as I walk is that I do not really love this city or its people. My heart is not consistently broken by their bondage and blindness. Yeah, sometimes I feel it, starting as a sadness for what could be, and then becoming a welling anger at the one who came to kill and destroy. This feeling is almost a flash of holy rage.

What I know would be better for my heart is that it be overtaken by compassion which won't leave and unsettles me to loving service and spending my best time doing good for these people. I want to, but I am still in my head most of the time. I want eyes that see and a heart that takes selfless action almost as an instinct. Their pain and oppression needs to be mine -- their despair and brokenness my passion -- their blindness and fear my call. I need to be about their freedom and life through the One who has it always near His heart and asks me to share it.

So superficial caring will not do. Its insulting and barbaric. I know I need grace and a heart of flesh if I am going to leave anything good behind in this place after my watch. Jesus has to make this real or I will be easily satisfied with my puny idea of helping. Have mercy on me, Lord.