Simple Christian Approaches for Trauma Healing

Well, hello my brothers and my sisters. Today I want to continue on the trauma healing journey series that I've been doing. And today, I want to bring us back to the simple when it comes to biblically based Christian approaches and understanding the healing and working through trauma. So, welcome to the healing and freedom journey. Mark de Jesus here. I am your brother from another mother, bringing you insights along the way. I'm all about mental, emotional, and relationship health. And if you are too, you have arrived at a great place.

As I said, what I want to do is continue on the trauma healing journey and today get into simple Christian, biblically based approaches when it comes to trauma healing. I talked about the Bible and trauma, and there's a lot that I brought in there, but I wanted to get into this a little bit more and just bring us back to some important fundamentals because I find in the healing journey, all of the transformation, healing, and things that happen in our life, in our journey that are redemptive, are powerful and life-changing. They bring us back to the simple things because brokenness is complicated, isn't it? Your life is complicated. A lot of different factors going on. But I want to bring us back to healing, which is simple. We'll get to that in just a moment. But do me a favor, click that like button and click subscribe and go over to markdejesus.com where you can support these broadcasts and also get a hold of a lot of other materials for your healing and freedom journey.

So, let me begin by asking you this. If you were to ask the average Christian, "How do I heal and work through trauma in my life?" You're going to get a wide variety of answers, aren't you? Depending on who you're talking to, what stream of Christianity you're connected to, etc. What I want to do is I want to get back to the simple fundamental aspects that make our healing and freedom journey more fruitful. And I want to always root it in the love of the Father and the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, 'cause all our struggles and battles are bringing us back to that, to get deeply rooted in it. And what I want to bring about is many, many fundamental things that we overlook or maybe we go, "Yeah, yeah, yeah, we do a lot of that, don't we? Ah, let me get to the deeper stuff." We often equate deeper depth meaning complicated, like you got to really wrap your mind around it. Whereas going deeper is actually bringing us to the simple, but getting it more in our hearts and experiencing it in our relationships. So, that's very, very important.

And while many of us, you know, when you're asking the average Christian, you know, how do I work through trauma in my life? Many will say, you know, the church seems to be a bit behind. Many people that I meet with or talk to or communicate with say, "Man, why isn't the church talking about this kind of stuff?" Well, what I want to do is just in light of all that, bring you, 'cause you want greater mental, emotional, relationship health. Otherwise, you wouldn't be watching this. I want to bring you back to the simple. But I got to explain the simple. Simple does not mean a quick fix. And I need to cut into a lot of our desire for a quick fix, a quick remedy. And there are many out there that promise quick fixes and quick remedies. And I want to cut through the dysfunction of that and get us back to simple, fundamental. But it doesn't mean quick fix. It doesn't mean it's going to be all easy. Because many times we look for the place of least resistance or we look for just, ah, I don't want to deal with this stuff. It doesn't necessarily mean that it isn't going to be without resistance. There isn't going to be some work and healing. And simple doesn't mean suddenly you're just going to arrive at this place where just none of it ever bothers you ever again and you are just all better. I think that puts an unrealistic expectation on what the actual healing journey looks like.

So, as I get into this, there's a couple of resources that I'll bring up and I'll recommend as I walk through these simple approaches because I want to, I want to bring you back to that. If you experience trauma in your life and you find yourself bumping up against just the struggle, and the struggle of trying to get well, and then you're also like, "Well, what does the Bible say about it?" And you might be a bit confused. What I'd like to encourage you in, if this broadcast has meant anything to you or if my previous talks on trauma have helped, couple things I would point you to. One is my series on the gospel and heart healing and transformation. The slide you see there on the screen is the first. And what I did was I went back to the, the, uh, powerful, powerful passage of Isaiah 61, where it is echoed in Luke's gospel, where Jesus reads of it and proclaims that his ministry is fulfilling it. And I break down aspects of how within the gospel is an invitation to experience healing, to experience an exchange of grief for beauty, for ashes. And I walk through that in layers. So, I definitely encourage you to get that. And also my materials on the heart healing journey because I try to bring a call to the body of Christ that, hey, our hearts need healing and awakening. We need, we need to connect back to the life of the heart again. And so the things I'm going to bring out are going to point to that. But keep in mind, all of this is a process. All of this is a journey. Okay?

So, I'm going to lay out a bunch of simple precepts. And I want you, don't get overwhelmed with all of them, but pay attention to something that where you go, "You know what? I need to get back to just the fundamentals of what that is calling in my life." Because in my experience over decades of work with people, is that we overlook the fundamentals. We think we've got it, and we don't realize. No, we actually are always learning, always needing more of the depth of God's foundational precepts for our life and our journey.

Before I get into that, I've got to bring up something that I think is very important, and that is the Christian solutions. I'm, I'm putting air quotes up. Things that we often promote in Christianity that actually do not help trauma healing. They don't help mental health healing. There's three of them I want to bring up, and these are actually found in a book I read a while back by a gentleman named Dan Allander. Dr. Allander has been teaching on mental health and trauma and heart healing for a long, long time. He's influenced a number of people, including John Eldridge. You may recognize that name. And I actually read the older edition. There is a newer edition. I haven't read that one. I read the older edition. So, I'm not sure how many changes were made to it. I will say the book had a lot of examples and some intense pain in it. I found it, even as I was reading through, like, wow, you know, the stuff he was bringing up and the examples of situations that he's had to help. But I found his, there's a section there about aspects that take place in Christian culture that can make healing from trauma worse. And I'm going to bring out three of them. And I find all three of them myself in my own work and interacting with people.

The first is what he calls denial-based forgiveness. Forgiveness is brought up a lot when it comes to trauma. But there is a form of denial-based forgiveness that takes place. I find that many, and forgiveness is very important. But many times in Christianity, we can shove forgiveness so soon into the process that it doesn't give room for people to work through the emotional healing of it. And we often have this equation too, that if you're, if you're still struggling with the memories or you're still struggling with the pain of it, then that means you haven't forgiven. And many people write to me with this statement, "Mark, I've been through this kind of trauma, this kind of thing I've been through. I've forgiven, but I'm still struggling." And they're in a cycle of condemnation because of a distortion of what the role of forgiveness is in their life, in their journey. But he talks about a denial-based forgiveness that involves a forgive and forget approach, where forgiveness is built on top of forgetting. And he makes a statement in the book, saying, "Forgiveness built on forgetfulness is a Christian version of a frontal lobotomy." It's very, very interesting. He also says, "To be told the past is the past. We are new creations in Christ. So don't worry about what you can't change." At first, it can relieve some of the sense of facing unsightly reality of the destructive past. But after time, the unclaimed or unworked-through pain that hasn't been worked through in process, it kind of keeps popping up. And many of you found that it kind of keeps just nagging, and you're like, "Ugh, how do I deal with this? How do I work through this?" And he talks about denial involving a hyperfocus on the brighter side of life. And there's a lot of that in Christianity, where it's hyper-positivity. "Look at the bright side. Look at the bright side." Now, we all need a little bit of that, but this gets into where they put rose-colored glasses that deny the acknowledgment of painful realities that you've been through.

So, he writes, "The result is either a sense of deep personal contempt for one's ability to forgive and forget, or a deep sense of betrayal towards those who desire to silence the pain of the abuse in a way that feels similar to the perpetrator's desire to mute the victim." There's a lot said in there. You may need to rewind what I just said. But he says, "We see this phenomenon with the religious leaders who deceive the people of God, shouting peace, peace, when there is no peace." Coming from Jeremiah 6:14. He says, "Imagine trying to forget someone. The effort itself focuses attention on the person you long to forget." So, in other words, this brings out the way of the law, right? The law says, "Thou shalt not." And the problem is that actually creates an arising up of sin. It's like, from a basic standpoint, if you try to stop thinking, stop thinking, stop thinking, stop thinking, what happens? It happens even more, right?

In addition, Dr. Allander says, "To forget your personal history is tantamount to trying to forget yourself and the journey that God has called you to live." And so he writes, "We are free to face the parts of our souls that remain scarred and damaged by the effects of abuse without feeling that we are denying the gospel." And as I mentioned, so many get confused around the subject of forgiveness. And certainly, I've met many who have an absolute refusal to even discuss the journey of forgiveness. I've seen that. And it hinders the healing process. But there is a denial-based forgiveness. Like, quick, let's put this forgiveness in here, let's forget about it. And many times people in the body of Christ are like, uh, we don't know what to do. We don't really hear about it anymore. So, just forgive and just let it go. When you see somebody cycling and cycling and cycling in the same story, often times it's needing some renewed insight that calls them to work through the emotions. Forgiveness is a part of it, but there's more to the healing journey than just that silver bullet that we often attach to it.

The second is what he calls pressured demands to love. In the midst of trauma realization, in the midst of your pain, it's like this megaphone comes to you, "Make sure you're loving. Make sure you're loving." So, it denies your ability to just work through the humanness of emotions, the messiness of it, the stuff that rises to the surface that you're trying to work through and navigate through. A lot of it's a part of the grieving that needs to take place. He writes, "The typical pressure love solution involves being nice, don't cause conflict, and pretending relationships are fine as the evil charade unfolds." He writes, "Some Christians have opted for a decision-based, emotionless act of the will to be nice and inoffensive. Love is many things, but it is never weak or lacking in passion." He writes, "Simply telling an abused person to love his or her abuser is unhelpful, even if love is an essential component of the change process." How many of you found this to be true? And maybe some unhelpful input that you've been given.

The third he calls dramatic spiritual interventions. And I see this a lot, a lot, where we are looking for some kind of magical thing that's just going to wipe it all away. And we all long for that, don't we? We long for something that just gives us a reboot, a restart. But those who walk the trauma healing journey know it takes time. It takes learning. There are some messy seasons. There are some valleys. It takes practice. It takes learning. It takes patience. And it takes more learning. It's all part of the journey.

Now, this can get into where many ministry emphases can get into in the realm of inner healing. And I was going to incorporate into this video the, um, some perspectives on the inner healing movement and some, some feedback and thoughts and kind of a review that I have of many of those practices. But I decided to move that into another video and just focus in on what I'm going to get into here in this broadcast. That this promotes the rise of quick-fix hustlers that promise you, if you'll do this. And I really want to caution you of getting sucked into people that promise a quick-fix experience, or if you'll just do this, everything will change. Because quick cures, they don't resolve deeply rooted damage. Deeply rooted damage takes time and takes intentional work. But many magical quick-fix cure promoters, they will, they will tell people, "Just do these things and everything is going to be fine." The problem is is that quick-fix promoters, they often have to cover up their, when they talk about somebody who's magically cured testimony, this person that they use as examples, they're often not as cured as they claim. And I'm telling you this because I've looked into this. I've asked people questions. I've followed up, and the quick-fix claims were not as quick and black and white as they projected. So many times they have to ignore that there's much more that needs to be addressed than they're revealing.

And I see this way too much in Pentecostal and charismatic circles too, where we want this, like, testimony of like, "I don't have any more trouble." I mean, again, we quickly put them up to a podium to share to create this image of fully healed. And then everyone in the seats, everyone listening and watching, it can often come under condemnation because they're going, "I'm not seeming to have those kind of results." And I want to push back that what we're promoting is not what we're, what was, what is being presented there. And I mentioned Pentecostals and charismatics, but quick-fix cures are not unique to any group. I've, I've seen this in, in a, in a, in many Pentecostal and charismatic reasons, but you can see them in a lot of different places. And what happens is these kind of approaches can prevent people from the journey and prevent people from the continuing deeper work. We all want this, like, this just never bothers me anymore again. And so then if it bothers you, you get condemned that then you're not healed. And then we just keep going in this cycle. And that's a vulnerable position to be in. It's a very vulnerable position to feel like, ah, this stuff still bugs me. So then people jump in with their divine Job's friends kind of feedback, "Oh, this is what you need. This is what you need to do." And sometimes the church lady gets invited into these kind of scenarios, and it's not helpful.

Okay. So, in looking at that, I want to talk about, let's get us back to the simple, fundamental. These are things that are important. And I like to use the word precept, right? Because precept speaks of basic, fundamental instruction. Now, this what I'm going to share with you applies to all mental health, not just trauma, but these are the things that we need to get back to in the body of Christ, and things we need to get back to when it comes to healing through the traumatic pain that we're carrying in our life.

Number one, and this is anytime we're dealing with any kind of pain, we've got to start with dealing with the shame factor and working through the shame that clouds the healing process. Because when shame is in the picture, healing gets very distorted. We beat ourselves up. We turn on ourselves. We condemn ourselves. And the arena of shame comes under the biblical umbrella of what's described as condemnation. Because condemnation accuses you and then shows punishment following. And so shame falls under that. Toxic guilt falls under that. Judgmentalism falls under that. The one who's been under trauma is needing to make a shift from a judgmental-based perspective to a merciful-based perspective. The scriptures remind us that mercy triumphs over judgment. It's easy to judge. It's easy to condemn. You don't need to be smart and intelligent. You see it all over the world. You see it in the church, out of the church. People jumping to judge, jumping to condemn. It takes a whole different perspective to be merciful.

We see this all the way from the beginning where Adam and Eve came under the influence of shame. And we see it all throughout the scriptures of people's response. You see it in the woman who's caught in the act of adultery. And most likely, she's probably had a traumatic history that influenced her adulterous ways. We judge the adultery, but not necessarily see the history of what influenced her life and her journey. And Jesus cuts through and reminds, and removes the accusation. "He who is without sin, cast the first stone." He clears out the shame because I, and looking at that scripture, you see shame was a major driving force in this woman's battle. And actually clearing out the shame set her free to not only heal but to go and sin no more. It's one of the most powerful pictures that we see of the impact of shame, but also the need for us to work through it. Because it's very hard to work through the messiness. Trauma is messy in itself already, but shame comes in and really clouds it. Makes it very, very difficult to get to work on the areas that need healing, that need the areas of us that feel unlovable, that feel so flawed. We feel unclean. Shame drives us to push our story away, hoping it goes away. "Just get that part of our past out of here. I can't take it anymore." But God is redemptive, and that painful part of your history is a part of your story and your journey. It's actually something that you can be a blessing to others. He wants to be redemptive in that. But shame won't let us. So even just sharing the struggle is difficult with shame, right? Even just articulating, getting the words out of your mouth. Shame will prevent people from even getting help when you've had trauma. Even going to someone seems frightening because of the impact of shame. And many of us are making the exchange. We're moving from condemnation into grace, life-changing grace. So, first and foremost, we've got to recognize the shame factor. I used to call it a no condemnation zone, right? In my pastoral work, like a no condemnation zone, so we can roll up our sleeves and get to work because we're not condemned. We're loved. But trauma will inflame a sense of condemning shame.

The second thing that is incredibly important is grounding our hearts in the love of the Father. We always need to begin here. We all carry father wounds, mother wounds, aspects of neglect. It's everywhere. It's everywhere. I spend my life and my journey behind the scenes, and father and mother wounds are everywhere. Even if you had a decent home growing up. But we live in such a, a series of generations have so much neglect and so much trauma within the neglect and complex trauma where the trauma even happened within the home. Because God designed that your home be a safe place for you to go back to when trauma happens. Growing up in a good home doesn't prevent trauma from happening, but it provides a home base by which you can go back to. And I guess we could call it good enough parenting. Good enough parenting creates a safety where you can have a home base to go back to to work through. But here's something about people who've experienced trauma that they often say, they do not remember being able to tell their parents about the trauma or even sharing a lot of things that have happened to them. It wasn't that sense of safety being established there. And so I've been spending decades seeing how much early childhood dysfunction, neglect, and brokenness within homes is impacted. And then you add trauma on top of that. And this is all calling us back to being renewed in the love of the Father and to see him in that way.

So, I encourage people to, what I call, to address your God filter. What is your God filter? Talk to a believer, especially in the context of their pain. And very soon, you're going to get their lens of how they see God, the themes and beliefs, how they relate to him, and how they relate to God's role in their pain. And it's very known if you work in trauma kind of work, that trauma spins out your God filter. It just, it just sends it on the top and just winds a wheel, spinning you and disorienting you. It leads many people to think that God authored the trauma. Many can see God as watching the trauma but doing nothing. Some can see God as just doing, he's not involved in your life. He just doesn't do nothing in general. And it brings out anger towards God. Anger towards others in a way that just keeps cycling. It keeps cycling. And it's often the residue of the trauma that's rising up. But overall, it's a common pattern that we transpose our broken, unloving experiences in life onto our God lens. We can transpose our father wounds onto Father God. We can transpose our mother wounds onto God and how he relates to us. And so trauma healing involves learning and often relearning who God is in his love and his goodness and his compassion, the love of the Father. And it sets the stage for the healing journey because otherwise, we're going to avoid him. The sense of drawing near with our hearts and connecting it, it feels frightening and terrifying. Which is why I encourage a lot of people to get a very simple resource, "Experiencing God's Love as Your Father." These are slow steps to walk. I'm going to resource you a lot today, point you in certain directions to get the equipping journey because this then leads into the rejection mindset that I talk about. This is kind of a part two from that, "Experiencing God's Love as Your Father."

Another area that is important is getting rooted in the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ. And I, I talk about this a lot. Love and grace. Love and grace. Love and grace. Love is who God is. Grace is how he operates and delivers his love and his empowerment in your life to walk a healing journey, to walk a relational journey, because grace points us to relationship. Grace points us to what Christ has done. And I have a whole series on grace. You can look at the first one, "What is Grace, Part One?" You can begin the journey on this because in the healing journey, we have to recognize that trauma will disconnect our sense to grace. It'll inflame our unworthiness. It'll inflame performance. Oh goodness. And we got to earn and strive and figure out. And if you don't feel completely healed, there's something you messed up in. You got to do something more. And we get out of touch with the beauty of grace that's welcoming us to just simply learn to receive. So many of you in your journey, you're recognizing, "I don't know how to receive God's love. I don't even know what it's like to be loved." You're lifelong performers. You're perfectionists. You're condemning yourself. Grace is a journey of pointing us to what Christ has done and the cleansing work of his righteousness that is now mine, that I can now live in that. But it takes some learning and often times relearning because we're such performers and we're such, we're so locked in self-condemnation.

So, as we take this journey and continue these, again, these are simple precepts that are so important for trauma, but important for mental health. And another is learning to receive nurture and comfort. When you're in pain, where do you go? When you're in pain, when you have a trauma flashback, where do you go with it? How do you find comfort? Many of us shrug our shoulders and go, "I don't know." Because we struggle to receive comfort from God. We struggle to receive comfort from the Holy Spirit, which the Bible calls the Comforter, to remind us of what is true and keep us rooted in that. We don't know how to comfort ourselves. Even furthermore, when someone else is loving on us, we struggle to receive it. We struggle to take it in. And so it's important to learn how to connect to comfort and connect to God in our suffering and pain because so much trauma involves suffering. The Bible has a lot to say about our suffering and Jesus being acquainted with our struggles, with our infirmities, with our weaknesses. And God is very merciful and nurturing towards us in our pain. But we have a hard time connecting to that, don't we? Because our frequency of what nurture looks like. Because this nurture is going to point us to the merciful nature of God, that he looks at us in our traumatic pain and doesn't judge us and go, "Come on, hurry up. Get over this." He's very patient. And that's what nurture brings out. You may be encouraged by going to my nurture resource page, markdejesus.com/nurture. Some of it will point to some resources that I have in my healing and freedom community. I have a whole course, an audio course on nurture that many have found to be very, very helpful.

I want to lead you back to a simple precept of relating to yourself and your battle from compassionate grace. Compassion points us to the love of God. Grace points us to the work of Christ and what he's doing. And this is a journey. Trauma healing is a journey of relating to yourself in a new way to combat the shame that wants to cloud things in your life, that wants to make you an enemy of yourself. This was a game-changing precept, and I wrote about this in "God Loves Me, I Love Myself" and in the heart healing journey, right in the middle of it. And I have it on my start here page that you can check out. It's called Heart Healing and Freedom. You can go to my topics page, and there's three audio. See that chapter 13, 14, and 15. You can, of course, get that right in the middle of the book if you have a copy of the book. Again, I'm resourcing you a lot because this is important that we learn and take in our heart these things and marinate on them. So, compassionate grace and how you look at yourself and how you look at others because I want to equip all of you to be witnesses of compassionate grace, to be effective in your world because you're not quick to just judge, condemn, or quick to jump into strife. But you come to bring a truth that sets us free, but you have a compassionate and gracious way about you. So, incredibly important and something we cannot bypass or skip around.

The journey of healing through trauma involves processing through the emotional pain that comes with trauma. Through now, we want it to go away. We want to get rid of it. Get it out. Cast it out. Suppress it. Shove it down. Ignore it. Get it. Cover our ears. I, I can't take it anymore. But the journey is not about that. It's walking through it. It's walking through it. And I encourage you, read the Old Testament and read through the agony because the Old Testament has a lot in the stories. We get a lot more detail of stories. We get stories in the Gospels, stories in Acts. But in the Old Testament, you see a lot of the processing, the years, the decades, the agony, the pain, the ups and downs, the mistakes, the trauma, the family drama, the betrayal, the stuff that happens. If you want to look biblically, David and Jesus Christ himself are fantastic examples. We see Jesus in the garden. You see Jesus, uh, in moments of his prayer, the ache that he had. You see David echoing such incredibly powerful emotional processing. You see David encouraging himself in the Lord. All that in my "What Does the Bible Say About Trauma?" You can revisit. But we need to learn how to work through these emotions. And a lot of it involves grieving. I'm going to get to that in just a moment.

I want to invite you in this healing journey to embrace meaningful routines. Meaningful routines that help connect your heart to God's renewing work. Now, what I'm saying here is when you've been through trauma, what you need is a deeper sense of restorative work to restore. And I want to encourage routines that help become Psalm 23 practices where the psalmist said, "He restores my soul. He brings me beside the still waters and he brings restoration, right?" And where you're able to connect. And don't make this a list of chores that you have to do. But there's these are many biblically based practices that most people actually don't make a part of their daily life. Some of them, but a lot of it's done out of like punishment. "I'm afraid God's going to punish me," or because you have to. All the things I'm going to mention, I want to encourage you to consider them as a practice, as an act of love to your healing journey, not a fear of being punished. "If I don't do this, God's going to punish me." That just further inflames the after-effects of trauma. But things like stillness, getting still, slowing down, allowing our senses to breathe in the here and now, in the present moment. The art of meditation, of slowing down your mind and focusing. So much have so much anxiousness and attention deficit issues, distraction, and this and that calling for us. And I believe for so many of us, there's a message calling us to a slower life, to a simple life, slowing down and marinating on the scriptures, not just racing through them or chasing disturbance, of marinating on passages that feed your wounded heart. Many find great comfort in the Psalms because there's a whole spectrum of emotions and processing that's brought up. Examples of worship and just sitting before God, or examples of praise to help for the spirit of heaviness. Many people find a practice of journaling to be helpful where we learn to connect to thanksgiving. Now, that needs to be in proper perspective when it comes to trauma healing. It's not, you know, just jumping to, "Oh God, thank you for this bad thing that happened to me." No, but it's learning to connect to gratitude of the here and now. Like, "Okay, I'm alive today. I'm breathing." See, getting back to those fundamental things. When I speak of prayer, I'm talking about where you learn to do an exchange with God, to cast your cares on him, to bring your pain to him, learning to be still and just receive. Contemplative prayer, which is a form of prayer where you're aware of God's presence and love, and you slowly focus your heart on him who is loving and compassionate and gracious, and let it have an impact on your heart. Many ruminators find that difficult because they're used to spinning, and when they pray or when they follow spiritual routines, they're used to spinning in them or doing them to just check off a box on a list. I'm talking about routines like maybe taking a walk in nature, connecting to nature, or just having week daily routines of just going for a simple walk and taking in the sun, the fresh air, participating in church rituals like communion, gathering with other saints, and just having a moment to connect to the safety of being with someone who's loving, who's caring, or just having a simple routine. And I found sometimes just going through that where I focus in, "Now's not the time to think about all the million things that are distracting me. I'm just going to let my heart focus on the beauty that's available in communion." For example, I practice communion with my family. Sometimes the church setting, it's a bit too rushed, and I like to take my time and let it sink into my being. I see all these kind of practices of allowing our hearts to get recalibrated in safety.

Now, one of the most overlooked processes that is throughout the whole Bible and it's very important for trauma healing is grieving. I believe it's so overlooked. We don't know how to grieve, and trauma brings up the need to grieve. You're never prepared for it. You're never prepared to grieve. But when pain hits your life, the need to grieve becomes real. Let me say this. If you get nothing out of this broadcast, please take home this. Many of your unwanted emotions are signaling a need to grieve. These anxious things that rise up within us out of nowhere. This heavy depression that weighs over us. These panic attacks or just these spirals we spin out on. Often times they're signaling these things need to be grieved through. Anxiousness may be a signal. There's some things to grieve. I feel this like in my chest, this like just weigh me down kind of anxiety. And when I learned the need to grieve, to grieve, because grieving is about working through loss, and loss and traumatic pain can lead to anxiousness, can lead to depression, can lead to spikes of anger, spikes of irritability, or just rage. And what's really needed is grieving. We try to snip the branches on those symptoms, but we often don't get to the root of grieving. And so we often get stuck in loops of the same unwanted emotions, and we're not recognizing our need to grieve, to just cry through. And people go, "Ah, I've cried enough." Okay, it's all right. And others go, "I haven't cried in a long time. I can't cry." Or maybe one day you said, "I'll never cry again." Or whatever relationship you have with tears, but they're a powerful tool. God built it within your body, that tears are a way to let pain work its way through. But so many of us, right, we get so go, go, go. We get so tough. We don't let that grieving part open up avenues of tears to do a healing work. God designed your physiology with this.

This leads me to another powerful word. I want to encourage you. Do a word study on it. Discover it. I, I'm, in my own journey, doing a lot of thinking and reading pattern. This is where I'm at in just understanding healing overall, is the word lament. It's a very powerful word. It's a form of prayer that expresses grief, pain, sorrow, and all the confusion and disorientation that comes with it. Some of it's a lot of just throwing it up, the pain, to God, and I don't know what to do. I don't know where I'm at. This is a, this is a lost art often times in the body of Christ. Even though the Psalms and many scriptures are covered with what? Lamenting. It involves your heart crying out to God in the messiness, in the darkness, in the evil, in the pain that you're seeing, in the struggle, but learning to do it in a fruitful way. Because many people, they might think they're lamenting, they're just venting at God, and then they just walk away. But true lamenting involves hanging in there. Yes, you vent. And God's not troubled by your venting. "God, I don't know where you are. What's happening? I can't take this, right?" But you learn to hang in there to find, discover grace for just the next moment, the next step. There's an entire book about lamenting. It's called Lamentations. And it's actually poetic written laments over the destruction of Jerusalem. And it's fascinating because it involves a prophet who warned Israel of what was going to happen and was calling them to turn, to turn, to turn, and is now seeing the destruction of it. And while he could have stood there and just yelled for days and days, "I told you so. I told you so. I told you so." He laments and he connects to God's heart, to the Lord's heart over Israel, even in their mess-ups. The connection to his mercy, which he wrote, "His mercies are new every morning."

Many of us need to know how to lament and grieve the pain of loss. The Psalms are filled with laments, raw emotions, cries for help, disappointments, and tragedy, and questions. Many of the expressions in the Old Testament are visceral. The language that's used, it includes the physiological engagement with it. "My bones are in agony," you'd see written. "My eyes grow weak in sorrow." You see, you see written, "As the deer pants for water brooks, so my soul." This imagery of just in your physiology. And as I mentioned, many of us are so disconnected to our physiology. We get super heady. We're disconnected to the physiological aspect of connection in it. You see writers writing about, "How long, God, will you forget me? How long will you, how long do I wait?" The most famous one found in the Psalms, which was echoed on the cross, "My God, why have you forsaken me?" The cry of lament of God, "I grieve. I mourn. I mourn the pain." You see, Christians are so quick to fix. "God's in control. God's in control. Cast your cares on him." Right? We go to the hyper-positive. We go to the, we go to the letter Z without going through A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, J, K, L, M, N, O, P, Q, R, S, T, U, V, W, X, Y. Just want to make sure I know my ABCs, right? Many Christians are going to Z first. We want that. And we're not knowing how to sit with people and be able to lament with them, to weep with those who weep, as well as rejoice with those who rejoice. Say what you want about Job's friends, but they sat there with him in the beginning because it needed grieving, lamenting. This is a powerful, powerful tool that's overlooked and it's not shared enough because many things in our lives need just simple lamenting. We want fixing. "God, fix this thing," and we keep bypassing the journey, bypassing the process.

Another aspect of fundamental precepts is the power of forgiveness. Forgiveness is connected to God's love and grace. When you connect with love, you see the beauty of forgiveness. You see the beauty of being forgiven. And I encourage your forgiveness journey to start with learning to receive God's cleansing forgiveness over your life and over your journey because it then impacts how we see others and how we relate. Now, many people need need some help in understanding forgiveness. In my journey, both in pastoral work, teaching work, one-on-one work, I found that most Christians need teaching about what forgiveness is and what it is not. 'Cause many see it as, "Well, if I still remember, I haven't forgiven." Or they think forgiveness means they have to be best friends with somebody, or that they need to keep somebody in their life if they've forgiven them. And so there's a lot of distortions that I find around that subject. I also find that it's important to learn to receive forgiveness. Forgive yourself. We hold ourselves to a lot, don't we? We hold ourselves to a record of wrong. We can be resentful to ourselves, holding ourselves to something. Forgiveness is such an important facet of the journey.

The next word I use with hesitation. And I'll tell you why. Because the word mind renewal gets used over and over and over again. It's based out of Romans, about "be transformed by the renewing of your mind." I, the reason I struggle with it, it's in the Bible, but I struggle with it because it's used so much and sometimes I struggle with using words that are overused and they're often dismissive. But mind renewal is something that needs to be brought to a discipleship process in somebody's life. This is relationally learned. We think of mind renewal as just, "Stop thinking that way and think this way." Some areas can do that. But we often teach mind renewal in a very cerebral kind of, "just stop thinking that way" kind of approach, instead of teaching people to experience renewal by allowing our emotions to be involved in the renewal process. Right? So if I sit down with you and I talk to you about your pain, I've got your attention. If we talk about your pain, I've got your heart, right? In the sense of I'm now having access to your heart. And in our pain, the learning is real, 'cause that stuff, man, we feel it in the mirror of our bones. So mind renewal is done best when we're learning to emotionally. And I know some people misunderstand me when I say this experientially, and I'm not promoting experience above theology and Bible, and people can misinterpret that, and that's just fine. That's just fine. But the word of God needs to be experienced. Just truth needs to be experienced. We experience through practice. So most people are taught mind renewal in a very sterile kind of, "just think differently" kind of way. Your thought patterns are driven by emotions. And emotions need to be worked through relationally. And God is relational. Just as Jesus worked relationally, emotionally with his disciples, he works with us as children of God in that same way.

How did Jesus do this? Two things that he did was when he would teach, he would use stories. That's why many of you, when you watch a movie that moves you, it may trigger a traumatic experience, and you're like, "Whoa, where's that coming from?" I've had many moments watching a movie where it's like, "Good grief, I didn't know I was going to have that kind of experience with it because some kind of meaning was triggered for me." And so Jesus would tell a lot of stories because in story, we find ourselves connecting to God's ways in a meaningful way. They'd ask him a question, and he'd say, "Well, a certain man." And he'd tell a story. So, one is he'd tell a story. Two was through the learning of experience. He'd send them out, go out, they'd step out, and through the practice, he would talk with them. Trauma healing involves, we need to learn how to experience these things. That's why, one of the things that I provide in the heart healing journey, and if you go to the training course material, there's a volume one that's free for people to access, is there's a prayer that I put in there, or words, affirming words of a heart of a father, where I share a heart of a father's words to you to let those words impact your heart, right? My wife also put together an audio where she communicates a mother's heart of comfort, right? Where we're learning to experience renewal, right? The information I'm giving you is great, but at some point, we need to experience it. So, it's often through story, and it's often through practice that mind renewal takes place. I can learn about love all day long, but I've got to start activating it, practicing it. I've got to love somebody else. I've got to step out. When someone loves me, I, I got to acknowledge it, even though it's awkward. "Thank you. I appreciate that." Right? We have to embrace new practices for that renewal to take place.

In healing of trauma, we're renewing our relationship with peace because trauma tells you that peace is not there. The danger still lurks. And so that danger keeps spiking, keeps spiking, keeps spiking. Even though you're away from the trauma, you're away from the traumatic environment, you're still spiking in it. Still spiking in it. And what we're doing is recalibrating our sense of safety. Safety is about learning to rest in love. Trauma keeps you hypervigilant where you feel separated from love. I did a video recently about disconnect. You can look that up. Just type my name.

And type in disconnect. You'll see it. Where mental health gets hammered by a sense of disconnect and trauma inflames disconnection. Disconnection from God, disconnection from ourselves, disconnection from people and the world around us.

So what does it mean to feel safe with God? What does it mean to be able to to be able to rest yourself as the Bible uses the analogy, the secret place of the Most High and abide under the shadow of the Almighty? I will say of the Lord, He's my fortress, my my. He speaks of him as a rock in Him I trust. He's a covering, right? But for many of us, we've not known how to do that. Life feels very unsafe. The world feels very unsafe. It feels evil. It feels dangerous. And the fear and the the harsh experiences we've had inflame that.

But we're learning to recover that. "I am, I'm safe with you, God. I, I, I'm safe within my own body. I, I've even found people will practice this, say this to themselves. I'm safe right now. I'm safe with you, God. I can be safe with myself." And if you can find one other human being to feel safe with, that's a blessing. Just one. Don't make it complicated. I need a tribe. I need all kinds of people to just one person to be safe with, right?

And in the journey, we're learning how to res how, um, renewing how we respond to fear because fear, what it, what it does when it gets hijacked from trauma, it teaches us to live as though the trauma is still there. So, we're rebuilding safety, but we're also taking steps one at a time to get back into life, so to speak, of getting back into relationship, finding new patterns, new relationships, new opportunities where we're learning to connect with people in meaningful ways.

The Bible speaks in First Corinthians about the power of faith, hope, and love. And I found this very helpful in healing through depression, but also in the healing of trauma and mental health is rebuilding faith, hope, and love. And I'll say them in reverse because that's often how, how it builds up. Love, hope, and faith. You can look at those resources I've had. But we're, we're rebuilding our hope based on His love for us. And out of that hope is the, is faith, is the substance of that hope. We take new steps forward.

But I find what's important that people are rebuilding, and this is all biblically based. This is all biblically rooted precepts of your community of support and fellowship. This is where some families are great and where other families are not. This is where some churches are very effective in this area. And I often find smaller avenues can do it better and the bigger avenues people just kind of get lost, right? Where some churches are very effective where others are not at all. The power, the power of meaningful relationships and rel relationship interaction is where you can really learn to feel safe when you've been through trauma.

And forgive me, I'm having sound glitches here. When you've been through trauma, people just don't feel safe. They don't feel safe. And I'm not telling you jump in and jump into the deep end with people right away. They need to earn your trust. They need to earn your, your, you need to respect the stages of getting to know you. There's a lot of love bombing and and jumping into relationships too quick in the body of Christ. We're not respecting each other's journey in the sense of letting time happen.

So, I'm talking about meaningful reactions in two ways. One is intentional interactions where you're in a group where you're sharing your journey. You're working through your journey. You're healing through your journey, right? Maybe it's a recovery group, maybe it's a group around the theme that you wrestle and battle with. That can be great, right? We're like, we're here to do some work on that. But the second one is often overlooked and that's just regular interaction. Just simply to connect. Going for a coffee, having some ice cream, going for a meal, going for a walk together, meeting around a common interest. Simply to practice, "I'm safe here. I'm safe here. I'm okay. I'm okay." I'm learning to renew. I'm learning to renew.

Then you hear other people's stories and you feel a little less crazy. "I relate to that. I relate to that." There's not one person I have met in my journey who shared their struggle that I can that I cannot go, "I relate to that," or "I could see how that would be incredibly painful." And many times, just hearing other people's journey puts your journey into perspective.

But, but I find that in learning to connect with people, just feeling seen, just feeling known, just feeling understood, feeling validated. It's incredibly powerful. This cannot be overlooked. This is not just me and God. It's me, God, and you. To you, God, and and me and some other people in your life. The invisible God shows His healing work through our visible relationship interactions. And heart healing, mental health brought me back to the importance and simplicity of that.

As I, as I look back at people that are working through trauma and just what it looks like, we're learning to grow in the redemptive and restorative power of God. Redeem, redemption means to buy back, to take back. There's this whole work that we see through Jesus Christ. It's in the gospels of the renewal that's taking place. Now, we want our fingers to be snapped and boom, everything's just magically changed. But we don't make room for the journey. Would you allow God to take you and lead you beside the still waters to restore, to connect to His gentleness that in all things He remains gentle, He remains kind and how He relates to us?

This is, this is, and churches that are healthy, they'll make room for this. People that value this because you value when you value these redemptive restorative things, you value being healthy. And, and there is a rise in the body of Christ of Christians that are going, "We want to be healthy. We've been chasing after a bunch of things and we're goofy, dysfunctional, and all over the place. We're, we're messes. And we, we need to get back to the heart of just relational restoration."

I found for many of you that are healing through trauma, God is building a resilient and overcoming heart. Resilience is the ability to to bounce back. And I hesitate to use the word bounce because it pictures a quick thing. Just, just bounce back. Boom. It just happens like that. Nope. It's learning to recover from the challenges in your life because when you go through trauma, it changes a lot of things. There may be a limp you carry. There's some scars there. But I'll tell you what tough experiences do for so many people. It makes us more compassionate to others if we'll allow it. More gracious, more humble, more understanding. And the pain you went through and the comfort you received can be greatly, greatly used.

In the midst of it all, God is raising up overcomers. People that have had hell that they've gone through, but they stay in the game, they persevere, they keep learning, they keep showing up, they keep connecting to the love and grace that's available to them, and they share it with others. And I believe many of you have the heart of an overcomer.

So tell me, which aspect of today's talk was a help to you, was an encouragement? I wanted to take some time to revisit these fundamentals. Which one of all these that I mentioned do you go, "You know what, that's where I need to get back to." Would you write it in the comments or even email me? I love to to hear when people say, "Oh, this really helped me. This really blessed me." And please do me a favor. Click that like button and subscribe. That helps out a whole lot. And you can go over to my website, markius.com. You can click on the donate button to support these broadcasts. And there's tons of resources that you can take advantage of there. I'm just excited to be a brother from another mother to you.

And I want to take a moment to just pray for all those who watch this broadcast. Father, I ask in the name of Jesus Christ that You'd meet each person who's connecting to this message, connecting to the trauma healing journey. You see, You know what so many have been through and the agony and difficulty and confusion and disillusionment that they face. You're ever present. You're near. You're here. But we struggle to connect to it. We struggle with the realization of it. Our faith gets weak. Our hope suffers and love feels disconnected. And God, I pray that through this broadcast, they felt Your gentleness and Your kindness and Your compassion. Let it breathe new life, a restorative work in my brothers and sisters. I thank You for this in Jesus name I pray. Amen.

I look forward into the next broadcast. I'm going to talk about inner healing and some facets of it, my perspective, some concerns that I have. I'll share that with you as well as my own experience. And I hope to do some Q&As on this topic as well as I continue on the trauma healing journey. Lord willing and the creek don't rise. This is your brother from another mother saying I'll be back with more insights for your healing and freedom and your trauma healing journey. But in the meantime, I'm out.