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Get a Grip! Get Out of the Dumps! From the new Bridge-Logos release: 7 Steps Out of the Humpty Dumps By Susan Sherwood Parr http://www.susanparr.org Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall; Humpty Dumpty had a great fall… All the King’s horses and all the King’s men couldn’t put Humpty together again… Leave your gift there before the altar, and go your way. First be reconciled to your brother, and then come and offer your gift. —Matthew 5:24 (All Scripture citations NKJV, unless otherwise noted) Get a grip. Hold it! Stop for a moment! Do you feel like Humpty Dumpty—broken in pieces and unable to pull yourself together again? If you do, you are not alone. Many of us have experienced pain, battles, frustrations, disaster, loss, and grief. You and millions of others suffer pain, and many don’t know what to do about it. Remember, Humpty couldn’t put himself back together and neither can we. What do you do when you don’t know what to do? What happens when you’ve tried everything? That’s exactly what this book is about. The first thing you need to do is stop trying to understand what is happening and just stop for a moment. I’m not telling you to “turn off pain.” No. But I am telling you to stop what you think (And if possible, how you feel) long enough to reconsider a few things. Here’s what I want you to do: Stop thinking about the pain. Stop complaining or blaming. Stop wondering “Why?” There is hope...there is help! Being born again in Christ into God’s family is our greatest gift! The next greatest thing in existence is the relationship we can have with our God. There is nothing to compare with it. God cares...about you. Soon we will be taking you to the Father in Jesus’ name to help you to pray about your troubles...about your pain. You may already have prayed about what you are experiencing, but that doesn’t matter. We have a few things to get out of the way before we get to that! Even though you have probably asked God to cleanse you of any sin, I still want you to briefly take a look at forgiveness: Forgiveness of others, and forgiveness of yourself... even forgiveness of God. Some people have erroneously blamed God for their problems, pain or loss. We can release all of this. He is “Not Guilty!” And neither are you. The Soap Opera • I am in pain. • I have tried everything and I still hurt inside. • I am unable to function. • Is there something I have done? • Is God doing this to me? • Did I take a wrong step somewhere, and because of it am suffering like this? • What do I do next? I have prayed and I still hurt. I’m not sure what to do now.... Take Action One: Stop for a moment. Take a deep breath. Two: Stop looking at yourself as a failure. Three: Stop blaming everyone else for your feelings or for where you are in life. It may be your fault or the fault of someone else. That doesn’t matter. Getting help now matters. God didn’t do it! Four: No matter what the case is or was, God is able to help you where you are. He is able to heal you, lift you above the feelings by His grace, and change things. The Cure Forgiveness How can we ask for forgiveness if we refuse to forgive (See Luke 6:37 and 17:3)? I have discovered that all God desires me to become can be accomplished by His grace. If I feel like I can’t forgive, I pray something like this: “God, I can’t forgive, but I ask You to love and forgive those who have offended me in and through me by Your Holy Spirit. Please give me the grace, in Jesus’ name.” The Enemies of Answered Prayer The following is a list to consider and pray about. Once you’ve worked through it, you will be more likely to recognize these things as hindrances in your walk with God. You will want to take each of them to God, pray about them, and ask Him to remove these obstacles from your life as soon as possible. Here are some of the enemies and roadblocks to answered prayer: • Unforgiveness (Matthew 5:24) • Hatred (Matthew 5:24) • Doubt (Matthew 17:41; Matt. 21:21; Mark 9:1429) • Fear (Matthew 14:30) The above list contains sins that we need to confess. Read Isaiah 59:2, which describes how unconfessed sin blocks God from moving on our behalf. Begin Your Freedom 1. Confess: After you examine yourself, ask God to forgive and to cleanse you. If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. 1 John 1:9 2. Accept forgiveness and cleansing, by faith. Now you are ready to walk in faith with a conscience void of offense toward God. Let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water. Hebrews 10:22 Medical University Study on Forgiveness I came across a medical study in Stanford Medicine. I thought it was so helpful I want to share it with you in its entirety. The Art and Science of Forgiveness If you feel good but want to feel even better, try forgiving someone. —Frederic Luskin, Ph.D. For centuries the world’s religious and spiritual traditions have recommended the use of forgiveness as a balm for hurt or angry feelings. Psychotherapists have worked to help their clients to forgive and some have written about the importance of forgiveness. Until recently, however, the scientific literature has not had much to say about the effect of forgiveness. But that’s starting to change. While the scientific study of forgiveness is just beginning — the relevant intervention research having been conducted only during the past 10 years — when taken together, the work so far demonstrates the power of forgiveness to heal emotional wounds and hints that forgiveness may play a role in physical healing as well. What is intriguing about this research is that even people who are not depressed or particularly anxious can obtain the improved emotional and psychological functioning that comes from learning to forgive. This suggests that forgiveness may enable people who are functioning adequately to feel even better. While the research is limited, a picture is emerging that forgiveness may be important not just as a religious practice but as a component of a comprehensive vision of health. Stanford University is the home of likely the largest intervention study to date on the training of interpersonal forgiveness. The Stanford Forgiveness Project, funded by the John Templeton Foundation, is evaluating a six-session 90-minute forgiveness-training program that I developed for my 1998 dissertation study. This study demonstrated that normal college students could become significantly less angry and hurt, feel more hopeful, spiritually content and self-efficacious about managing their emotions and also become more forgiving after a six-hour training session. Moreover, the psychosocial gains were stable over a 10-week follow-up period. The new study, with Stanford University professor of education Carl Thoresen, PhD, as principal investigator, will allow us to measure the effect of the forgiveness training on a broader range of psychological variables and some physiological variables as well. It will also investigate what influence, if any, religious affiliation and spiritual practices such as prayer and meditation have on the participant’s willingness and ability to forgive. We teach the forgiveness training in groups of 12 to 15 participants and do so through the use of lecture, discussion, guided imagery and homework practice. Published studies on forgiveness have shown the importance of forgiveness training on coping with a variety of psychologically painful experiences. Studies have been conducted with adolescents who felt neglected by their parents, with women who were abused as children, with elderly women who felt hurt or uncared for, with males who disagreed with their female partners’ decisions to have abortions and with college students who had been hurt. These studies showed that when given forgiveness training of varying lengths and intensities, participants could become less hurt and become more able to forgive their offenders. The frontier for forgiveness research is to look at what effect forgiveness may have on a subject’s physical health and well-being. To date, there have been no scientific studies that conclusively demonstrate that forgiveness improves or worsens physical health. However, the initial results of some studies funded by the Templeton Foundation (which has launched an initiative to investigate forgiveness) suggest that when people experience forgiveness, there are positive changes in measures of participants’ cardiovascular and nervous systems. While there is no direct evidence, there are a number of lines of research that suggest that learning to forgive can be predictive of improved health outcomes. There are some studies that show that mismanaged anger and hostility is a risk factor for cardiovascular disease. In both my dissertation study and the study on men whose partners had abortions, the forgiveness training resulted in a significant lowering of anger levels. What was interesting about the dissertation study was that the participants were able to significantly reduce both long-term and short-term anger levels even when the baseline levels were in the age-adjusted normal range. One explanation for why forgiveness may be beneficial for physical health is that it deepens and promotes interpersonal relationships. Another possibility is that forgiveness is a form of religious expression or may be an indication of a positive spiritual experience. There exist a number of studies that attest to the beneficial effect that positive relationships and good social ties have on indices of physical health. There are other studies that implicate social support with decreased mortality. There is also a group of studies that demonstrate that people who have strong religious affiliations, or use religious coping, have de-creased mortality. Forgiveness may be viewed as an analogous example of the ability to see one’s life through a positive or healing lens. While the research is only suggestive, it may be that all of us could benefit from training in managing life’s inevitable hurts and using forgiveness to make peace with the past. In this way, forgiveness may be, as the religious traditions have been claiming all along, a rich path to greater peace and understanding that also has both psychosocial and physiological value. Frederic Luskin, Ph.D., a postdoctoral fellow at the Stanford Center for Research in Disease Prevention, serves as director for the Stanford Forgiveness Project. Receiving Forgiveness Forgiving others is powerful. Receiving forgiveness is even more powerful. Think about having a clear conscience and the peace of mind that it brings. God can give this to us. Good advice: Forgive, and be forgiven. Humpty’s Workbench After you examine your heart and life, confess all sin. Make sure you are willing to forgive. Now you’re ready! What Is My Part? 1. Stop everything. Remove all limits to what you think God can do. Today is a new day. This moment is a new moment. 2. Decide to change your thinking. Enlarge your view of God. 3. Stop complaining, blaming, and worrying. 4. Look forward to what God can do. You may have been trying to do this, but I’m going to give you some information in this book that will do a new thing in your life. 5. Get the attitude, “God can. I can’t, but God can. I’m going to start fresh and see what God can do.” 6. Thank God and praise Him for what He is going to do according to His will. What Is God’s Part? God is faithful. He loves you and He is interested in you. God cares for the lilies of the field and He cares for you (Luke 12). His promises are true and they belong to you (2 Corinthians 1:20). His Word is true (Rom. 3:4). God’s Word will accomplish what it set out to do (Is. 55:11). Don’t doubt it! Let’s ask for God’s help out of the dumps! The Prayer Dear heavenly Father, I ask you to have mercy on me and to look upon me in my hurt, my pain, my need. I cannot heal or help myself. I commit everything into Your hands: The reasons, the source, the answer. Heal me and bring me out of this pain and trouble, in Jesus’ name. Amen. Think About It There is joy in knowing that God is alive and well and that He is interested in you! He wants to answer your prayers. Did you know that in two of the gospel accounts of Jesus’ life it says, “Everyone who asks receives” (Matt. 7:8, Luke 11:10)? Jesus said that His disciples had not yet asked for anything. He encouraged them to ask so they would receive, that their joy be full (John 16:24). That goes for you and me as well. Promises to Cherish “Behold, I am the Lord, the God of all flesh. Is there anything too hard for Me? Jeremiah 32:27 ‘Ah, Lord God! Behold, You have made the heavens and the earth by Your great power and outstretched arm. There is nothing too hard for You. Jeremiah 32:17 For everyone who asks receives, and he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks it will be opened. Matthew 7:8; Luke 11:10 Now therefore, let the fear of the Lord be upon you; take care and do it, for there is no iniquity with the Lord our God, no partiality, nor taking of bribes. 2 Chronicles 19:7 For there is no partiality with God. Romans 2:11 But he who does wrong will be repaid for what he has done, and there is no partiality. Colossians 3:25 And my God shall supply all your need according to His riches in glory by Christ Jesus. Philippians 4-19. For all the promises of God in Him are Yes, and in Him Amen, to the glory of God through us. 2 Corinthians 1-20.
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