Declare Your Restoration
Removing Blocks of Healing
Identify Your Blocks
Knowing what blocks to healing we have in our lives is important. We must know what we need before we can begin healing. It takes introspection and a strong sense of self to discover our fractured parts. Introspection takes courage. We must be brave and honest with ourselves about our character behaviors, shortcomings, and flaws. Knowing ourselves honestly and intimately will lead us into understanding our fractured parts.
We can identify our fractured parts by journaling, talking to a professional therapist, and asking a trusted friend. But our first path is always Jesus. Jesus and Holy Spirit should be our first “go-to” Helpers when it comes to removing blocks to healing that we have in our lives. They know exactly what we are going through and what we need to be healed.
We must be able to hear the Lord and be sensitive and discerning of the Spirit to understand how to move forward. Below are several ways to get started on the process of healing.
Practice Self-Care
Preparing for healing takes self-care. When we care for ourselves, we are honoring the temple that God gave us to steward in this life. Self-care is for the mind, spirit, and soul as much as for the body. We must care for our whole person, mentally, physically, emotionally, and spiritually. When we are out of balance with our self-care we are out of balance with God. One of the best ways we can practice self-care is with love.
God lives in us when we love, 1 John 4:12–13, TPT reads:
“…But if we love one another, God makes his permanent home in us, and we make our permanent home in him, and his love is brought to its full expression in us. And he has given us his Spirit within us so that we can have the assurance that he lives in us and that we live in him.”
With God in us, we are able to heal. We must love ourselves in order to fully love God and others. Loving ourselves takes some work when we’ve been unloved as a child, rejected, abandoned, or otherwise traumatized. Any form of child abuse will leave us unloving as adults. We become unloving because we feel unacceptable and unworthy of love. The truth is that we are worthy of love. God can show us how to love again through trust and patience. We must be willing to leave pain and suffering behind to love again.
While in pain and/or suffering, we are vulnerable to new traumatic events as well as re-experiencing past events. It’s a catch-22 that being ready to heal makes us vulnerable to more traumatic events and to re-experiencing traumatic memories or flashbacks of trauma. The very same vulnerability can work for us to heal but can also leave us open to new pain. Being vulnerable takes courage and hope that in the process of healing, even when we feel more pain, the hope can bring us through to the other end of it all.
Courage and hope lead us in the process of self-care and healing. The more we love ourselves, the more prepared we will be for our healing. We must find hope in our circumstances. There’s a lot of hope in the Bible. There’s hope in Jesus as the Lord of our lives. Jesus gets started on healing us from the second we believe in Him. And Jesus always finishes what He started. Jesus is the Finisher of our faith.
Use Love & Kindness
Satan and his minions hate to love, so love is what we must do. When we are down, depressed, anxious, or in any other bad place, we must love God, ourselves, and others. When we are not doing well and we are kind to others, love increases and the darkness leaves. There’s instant freedom for us as we practice love for ourselves and one another.
Practicing love for ourselves and others sows love into our whole being. Remember, according to Scripture, we reap what we sow (See Galatians 6:7). If we want more love and kindness in our lives, we must love and be kind. Being loving and positive will prepare us for healing. When we are positive, we are more open to processing painful events and memories. No matter what we sow, we must keep our eyes on the Lord.
Focus on The Lord
We must keep our eyes on Jesus and everything He is teaching us as we prepare to heal. Peter learned above all the apostles to keep his attention on Jesus. Once, Peter courageously walked on water with Jesus. Here’s what happened: Peter took his eyes off the Lord, began thinking on his own, and feeling frightened he sank. In Matthew 14:28–31, TPT, we read:
“Peter shouted out, ‘Lord, if it’s really you, then have me join you on the water!’ ‘Come and join me,’ Jesus replied. So, Peter stepped out onto the water and began to walk toward Jesus. But when he realized how high the waves were, he became frightened and started to sink. ‘Save me, Lord!’ he cried out. Jesus immediately stretched out his hand and lifted him up and said, ‘What little faith you have! Why would you let doubt win?’”
Peter doubted what he was doing and sank. We learn here that doubt is one of the biggest ways we can turn away from the Lord. When we aren’t focusing on Jesus, it focuses us on the world and our flesh. Yet, Jesus is never far away from us. Listen to what Mark 1:15, New King James Version (NKJV) says:
“The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand. Repent, and believe in the gospel.”
Jesus and the Kingdom of God are never farther away from us than our own hand at arm’s length. We are the ones that keep Jesus away, but He’s always near to us. Jesus is always ready for our repentance and reconciliation. Jesus wants to heal us, but we have to let Him into our lives in order to do so.
Pray & Prepare for Healing
Pray for healing. We can prepare for our healing by continually praying for ourselves. Praying for ourselves readies us for healing by opening up our will to align with God’s will for us to be healed. When we pray for ourselves, we are asking the Lord in intervene on our behalf for healing. It’s advisable to pray as much as possible until the healing has happened, or we’ve been set free. Praying in the Spirit, in our angelic tongues, helps heal us even more.
When we pray in tongues, we are praying in a language unknown to us, unless we are given the interpretation. According to Galatians 5:16, we are to walk in the Spirit, rather than the flesh. In order to walk in Spirit, we must be set free from the enemy of God. Praying in tongues can free us from what we don’t know we need freedom from. Praying in tongues is a proactive approach to healing. Tongues give us a direct connection to God. If you don’t have tongues, just ask Holy Spirit to give them to you and/or get help from a Spirit-filled friend.
Use the prayer model below or pray on your own:
Lord God, I repent for having blocks to healing in my life. In preparation for my healing, I repent for allowing false idols to enter the life that has kept You away from me. I repent for allowing false idols to sit in Your position in my life as the One True God through Christ Jesus. I repent for ____________ (name as many false idols as you feel you have used, such as a person, career, possessions, etc.). God remove these false idols from me. Lord, remove from me all of the ungodly false idol gatekeepers I have put in place. Wash me cleanly in Your blood. Cover me and fill me in the areas I have fallen. My desire is to be healed fully mentally, emotionally, physically, and spiritually.
I Just Published My Creativity Book
Hardwired for Creativity: Art Supplies for the Mind
A Handbook of Godly Wisdom, Strategies & Freedom
Available here at Amazon.com
Hardwired for Creativity is a teaching memoir and educational workbook, focused on encouraging and supporting growing creative students before and beyond the knowledge of formal art principles and techniques. Creativity is expressed in a variety of ways, like painting, writing, performing arts, crafts, woodworking, business management, and employee development.
This book is divided into two Sections. The first Section is divided into four parts: cultivating creativity, developing creative work, thinking differently, and acknowledging others. Section two is full of creativity-related topics, such as brainstorming, project management, critiques, research, intuition, and procrastination. All these topics are important to developing creative work and a creative lifestyle.
Emergent students, artists, and creatives need tools of everyday understanding to successfully sustain balanced lives of creative structure and freedom. This book is dedicated to the exploration of these everyday topics through a variety of pedagogy, like qualitative research, and the creatives’ life experiences.
My Secret Place
Entering Holy Ground
Our Secret Place exists in the innermost depths of our being and the outermost heights of our existence. It’s a place that begins and ends in the battlefield of the mind in our soul, the flesh of our body, and the essence of our spirit. The Secret Place exists in us where we meet Jesus, Father God, and Holy Spirit, and is sacred and holy ground.
Holy ground occurs in the very heart of God’s presence. There are only two places in Scripture that mention holy ground, and both are about Moses. The first verse refers to when Moses was in the presence of God in the form of a burning bush. The second reference was in Acts 7:33 talking about Moses’ experience. Listen to Exodus 3:5, NKJV, “Then He said, ‘Do not draw near this place. Take your sandals off your feet, for the place where you stand is holy ground.’”
If you’ve supernaturally encountered God’s presence in any form, you know that you know that you were with Him. And if you’ve had that experience of being in His holy presence, you’ve touched your Secret Place.
Every Believer in Christ walks with differing abilities to access God and their Secret Place. The Secret Place is easily sensed and accessed by some Believers in Christ Jesus. Other people struggle because their Secret Place lies more dormant and inaccessible. Recognizing and accessing our Secret Place is pivotal to our walks of salvation because we must mature by intimacy and relationship with God.
We are called to mature as Believers in Christ as we walk out our salvation story. Our salvation story is our testimony to living life with the Lord. Our testimonies never go away, always improve by increasing our relationship with God, and are to be celebrated no matter how hard they may have been.
Many of us have had difficult lives and we want the future to be different. We want to change to become the person we know we were meant to be. The beauty is that we can change when we enter our Secret Place with Jesus. We change because we are blessed in God’s presence with healing, wisdom, strategies, knowledge, understanding, and love.
Enter your Secret Place with Jesus to change, heal, grow and find freedom. By entering the Secret Place, we can get rid of many of the negative challenges we face in life because we will mature. In our Secret Place, we can increase positivity and learn about employing constructive actions and activities available to us for living an abundantly full life.
Living in Love
Walking with God
Scripture says that when we love God, He will abide in us (See 1 John 4:12). Think about that. The God of everything will live in us. He will make us His dwelling place. Our lives can be difficult here in this world. We are attacked at every opportunity the devil gets to come against us. He hits us with illness, ruins relationships, and distracts us from time with the Lord. The devil steals, kills, and destroys as he roams around like a lion seeking whom he can devour. And devour he will when we forget that God live in us when we love Him.
It sounds simple enough — just love God and He’ll live in you. The thing is, we don’t always know how to love. Love is twisted for many of us who have suffered. We have a less than perfect definition of love thanks to our upbringing or dysfunctional relationships. We don’t know how to set effective boundaries, honor each other, or remain independent versus being co-dependent. We have had parents divorced, trauma and abuse, and we’ve engaged in self-destruction.
Our only out is Jesus. Jesus is the only One who can heal our understanding of love permanently. Holy Spirit knows what we need to learn and grow in love. God is the foundation of our loving relationships. We must cry out to Him with sincerity of heart for restoration of love in our lives. So, let’s stay in God’s Word, Who is Jesus Himself, and ask Him to show us how to engage in His righteous and unconditional love. Let’s walk with for love Him. Let’s know that no matter our understanding of love, He will live in us and teach us how to love ourselves and others.
Christ Is Our Example
For [as a believer] you have been called for this purpose, since Christ suffered for you, leaving you an example, so that you may follow in His footsteps. He committed no sin, nor was deceit ever found in His mouth. While being reviled and insulted, He did not revile or insult in return; while suffering, He made no threats [of vengeance], but kept entrusting Himself to Him who judges fairly. He personally carried our sins in His body on the cross [willingly offering Himself on it, as on an altar of sacrifice], so that we might die to sin [becoming immune from the penalty and power of sin] and live for righteousness; for by His wounds you [who believe] have been healed. For you were continually wandering like [so many] sheep, but now you have come back to the Shepherd and Guardian of your souls.
1 Peter 2:21-25, Amplified Bible
Fun & Play for More Creativity
The following is an excerpt from the book I am currently writing called, Hardwired for Life: Art Supplies for the Mind.
Explore
| “A merry heart does good, like medicine…” — Proverbs 17:22, New King James Version (NKJV) |
We must play and have fun because we will often need to refill and recover after long periods of creative activity. Creativity can be even more draining than other mental work activities because it is emotionally challenging. It’s emotional to tap into our target audience’s thoughts, feelings, and desires. It takes some intentional and serious mental gymnastics to walk a mile in our user, viewer, or reader’s shoes. We have to become someone else as we develop our craft in order to get it right. What better way to recover than to have some fun?
Creative work demands creative outlets for us to rest and reset our bodies, spirits and souls. Having fun and playing around are perfect ways to restore our energy and creative flow. When we are having fun, we are disengaged from stress, chaos and drama. The world takes a back seat when we are having fun and nothing else matters. Pain and other symptoms of dysfunction disappear during play and our bodies thrive in the rest.
When we are creative, we are drawn into the “now” moment and are able to tap into God’s power and Spirit. The same is true when we are having fun. We become childlike when we play and can find the innocence it takes to connect with God. Play needs to be creative and fun.
Play is full of joy and peace though it can take on a competitive quality that brings more stress than healing. Fun on the other hand is just fun without agendas. True strength and power come from the type of creative play that leaves us laughing and experiencing joy. Joy carries permanent healing, whereas play can be used unwisely and only holds temporary stress relief.
Using Play in Our Lives
People often use play ineffectively. Many forms of sports and hobbies are considered play. We play golf, we play football, we play tennis, etc. all of which have the stresses of technicality, strategy, and physical and mental strain. Play can become a war with ourselves and others.
We have a built-in need to play as human beings that must be satisfied. Unfortunately, we also play at war. Play that is unrighteous puts us at odds with one another. We end up playing negatively in battle with each other at all levels of government and society. We compete with political parties, we rival with fashion, and we chance our health, all in destructive ways.
The key is understanding that innate need we have to play and use it constructively for God’s Kingdom. We can use play for God’s Kingdom by getting healthy and then helping others to play effectively. We must heal in body, spirit, and soul in order to begin to make an ongoing difference in God’s Kingdom. Healing helps us to be wise about our service to God. We also become more creative when we are working from wholeness.
We will never be perfect here on earth, but we can heal enough to run our race of salvation as a winner. When we are healed, we see God’s will and plan for our lives. We can see that we are truly victorious just where we are at, and that is a priceless expression of success. When we are healed, we know that we are running the best race possible. We are co-creating with God, we are having creative fun and playing appropriately in our lives, and we are more free.
Jesus Loves Me Podcast: Biblical Healing
Healing has such a controversial history, but the Bible is very clear on its meaning today. Listen as Jana and Sharon discuss the ins-n-outs of healing in the Christian church as believers in Christ Jesus. Healing may not mean what you think.
If You Don’t Mind
I’ll Share My Creativity
Something has been bothering me lately. How can I host and maintain four blogs with podcasts on three of them, and videocasts on one?
I’m an artist and author and have a lot happening in my life regarding my health. I have been diagnosed with five rare diseases or disorders, yep five. Not to mention what I call my lesser diseases, such as Type 2 Diabetes and Fibromyalgia which are a result of some of the other illnesses. The annoying five are:
- CRPS (Complex Regional Pain Syndrome)
- EDS-3 Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome Type 3)
- POTS (Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome)
- DID (Dissociative Identity Disorder)
- PNES (Psychogenic Non-Epileptic Seizures)
I have separate blogs for CRPS and DID. I also have a site I rarely post at which is janarawling.com for my art making (though I forget to post stuff). Add to that, I am a Believer in Christ Jesus and have a blog site for that at HardwiredForLife.com (I have a partner on this one), and well, you see where I’m going with this. I get very tired and can’t post to all of them consistently, and I don’t. I suffer from symptoms every day mainly including pain, seizures, overall fatigue and falling down (sometimes breaking bones). I’ve had to stop working as a commercial art professor, which I miss very much. But I can still write when I feel okay, and I can make some art, which brings me joy through the pain.
I was wondering if I should combine some of the blogs, but I’m pretty sure that someone with CRPS doesn’t care about my DID, DIDers don’t care about POTS, and so on. I’ve been asking the Lord about it and He told me that the common denominator for all of my sites is not only me, but also is my art making, my creativity.
God told me that DIDers, CRPSers, Believers, and Artists all enjoy creativity. So, if you don’t mind, I will post the same art making and writing to all of my sites. That way, I have some universal content. I will still keep everything separate, but some creativity will be the same.
Whew! I feel better now. I feel that sharing my creativity is something I can do that will bring me tons of joy. Plus, I’m working hard on my healing and joy is a precious remedy.
Thank you for participating in my journey from wherever you’ve come.
With Love,
Jana
P.S.: Can I pray for you? If so, contact me via email, or just say, “Yes” and I will be honored.
P.S.S.: I’m currently writing a book called, “Hardwired for Creativity: Art Supplies for the Mind” that should be finished sometime this year. I’ll let you know when that happens.
God will Heal
Come, and let us return to the Lord;
Hosea 6:1-2, NKJV
For He has torn, but He will heal us;
He has stricken, but He will bind us up.
After two days He will revive us;
On the third day He will raise us up,
That we may live in His sight.
Hardwired for Life 
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