Healing In His Presence

Hey Friends! I hope everyone had a beautiful Easter. We had two services at our church yesterday, and I really enjoyed them both. My heart was so full when I left. What a great start to a new week! Today, as promised, I’m continuing on the topic of soul healing and I’ll be finishing up next week. I pray that this “mini-series” has been a blessing to you so far. If you missed last week’s post, you can read it HERE.

Soul healing is the transformation that takes place in our mind, will, and emotions, as we allow God to do a deep inner work in us. The more we spend time with God, and the more we allow His Spirit to work within us, the more whole we become because He alone is the source of our healing. He takes our brokenness and turns it into something beautiful. I remember what it feels like to be broken. I had so many hurts in my life. Fear and torment ruled me daily and I didn’t even know what peace was. Everything in my life was suffering because of the turmoil within. I didn’t know how to become free, but what I did know, was that God was the answer. I made a decision then to allow God to do a deep work in my life. No longer would I deny or hide or blame others for the difficulties I was facing. I was ready to acknowledge my need for healing and chose to bare my soul before the Lord, so He could have His way in my life.

David prayed a similar prayer in Psalm 139:23-24,

“Search me, God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts. See if there is any offensive way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.”

God is a gentleman. He won’t force us to change. Ultimately, the choice is up to us to surrender our will to His and let Him do what needs to be done within our lives. It may seem easier at times to just stay right where we’re at. We can get used to living in a certain way, but God’s way is always better. When we allow Him to work in us, we experience healing & freedom we could never have even imagined.

When God began this healing process in my life, I didn’t have a textbook teaching me how to be healed, but I had the Word of God. 2 Corinthians 3:17-18 opened my eyes to the transformation I was looking for in my life. It says,

“For the Lord is the Spirit, and wherever the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.  ¹⁸ So all of us who have had that veil removed can see and reflect the glory of the Lord. And the Lord—who is the Spirit—makes us more and more like him as we are changed into his glorious image.” 

After I read this I thought, “Wow….I want this transformation in my life! I want to be free!!” The fact that we can actually be changed so much, that we reflect the glory of God in our lives is amazing! Maybe that seems so far out of reach for you today, but I can attest to this transformation. It IS possible! Who I am today, is not who I was. I remember after a year of just allowing God to do this deep work in me, I looked in the mirror one day and I realized that I didn’t even look the same. My countenance was totally different. No longer were my eyes filled with pain or anger, but instead, I saw the love of God looking back at me. My whole paradigm changed; the way I saw things, the way I experienced life…even my relationships changed! Peace was present in my life for the first time and I was experiencing a joy that I never thought possible! God is so faithful!

Moses is a beautiful example of this inner transformation. He went from a person with deep hurts in his soul, to someone transformed by the glory of God. Moses had a troubled upbringing. He was abandoned by his mother, yes out of love, but still, abandoned. He grew up in a society that said who he was (a Jew) was worthless, and so he had to hide who he was from everyone. Think about the rejection he must have carried daily. We certainly saw his bottled-up anger manifest when he murdered the Egyptian. And when God called Moses to service, we also see the unworthiness Moses felt by the way he argued with God about his inability to speak to Pharaoh. Here is God calling him, and yet Moses couldn’t accept it. Moses had soul issues! And understandably so! But God!! He saw in Moses the potential He placed inside of him, just like He sees it within each one of us. Moses’ life began to change from one of brokenness to one of wholeness and freedom as He began to spend a great deal of time with God. We see that Moses would go to the Tent of Meeting to commune with God (Exodus 33). The Bible says God talked to Moses face to face as a man speaks with a friend. This was how close their relationship was. And through this relationship, so much transformation took place in Moses that even his face shone with the glory of God, for all to see (Exodus 34:29-30). What an encouragement! The more time you and I spend with God, the more that transformation will occur in our lives. We become transformed from the inside out so that not only we recognize the difference, others will too!

When I made this decision years ago, to let God begin this healing process in me, I really didn’t know what to do. All I knew is that 2 Corinthians 3:17-18  said that in His Presence I would be changed. So I determined in my heart to be in God’s presence as much as possible. At this time, I had already begun reading my Bible as I never had before, and the truth of the Word was beginning to transform me (Romans 12:2). My heart was being prepared to receive the healing I needed. Lies were being exposed and I was catching a glimpse of the life God had for me. In that season, I would come home from work every day and just sit in God’s Presence. I would go to my room, close my door and stay there soaking in God’s love and healing power. Often I would read my Bible for a while, and then I would put on worship music and I would just soak in His Presence. This is what the Holy Spirit directed me to do and so I did it. This was over 20 years ago even before “soaking” in His Presence became the popular thing it is today. Thankfully, more people are getting this revelation that our souls need to be healed and transformed and it’s only in His Presence that it happens.

Some evenings, I would literally be sitting there in God’s Presence for hours. I was so desperate for change and I felt such peace in God’s Presence that I didn’t want to move. Each time I spent with God, I felt different, and I was different, because every time we come into God’s Presence, we’ll never be the same. So, what’s happening when we do this? God is doing a deep work in us. It’s actually something supernatural, that our human minds can never fully understand, but God is bring healing to our soul and spirit as we sit in His Presence. We are literally “being changed into His glorious image.” We exchange our weaknesses for His strength. As the Great Physician, He goes where no knife can go, doing surgery on our souls and mending our broken hearts. He severs the cords of bondage from our lives, and He restores our souls to wholeness. In His Presence there is healing.

Please know soul healing is a process. This is why God promises to finish the good work He starts in us until the day Jesus comes back (Philippians 1:6). The healing of our soul happens layer by layer. God only goes as quickly as we can handle it, which is an encouragement because often the healing process feels painful. During our healing process, things come to the surface that needs to be dealt with and as we allow God to deal with the root issue, His healing power is able to touch that wounded area. I’ll be sharing about that part of the healing process next week. But for now, I want to encourage you to press into God. Sit in His Presence. Soak it in. If you need some worship music, I found this on youtube, just click HERE. You can take the scriptures in this post and meditate on them. Take time to be still and just breathe in God’s presence. Know that He is right there with you. As God does this healing work in you, if something comes up that feels difficult to bear alone, I encourage you to find someone you trust and who is mature in the Lord to pray you through the process. But know this, you can trust God to do what only He can do in your life, and know that whatever He does, it will be good because He is a good and perfect Father ALL the time.

Hey! Just wanted you to know that I love feedback, so if you’d like, feel free to comment, just say hello, or share what God is doing in your life. There’s a comment box below. 🙂 Have a beautiful week!