"Healing of Memories" by David A. Seamands

Healing of Memories by David A. Seamands

   “The pain, the pain is so strong. That is all I feel. I was raised that real men don’t cry. I don’t care anymore. I started crying the day after and I cry a lot now and am not ashamed of who sees me…I was supposed to be there. I was to go to work that day. I got up but was sick and I went and laid back down. I turned on the TV just in time to see the second plane go into the building.”

In Luke 4, we read the purpose of Jesus coming to earth.

First Jesus read from Isaiah 61:1-2a.

    “¹⁷   And there was delivered unto him the book of the prophet Isaiah. And when he had opened the book, he found the place where it was written,
¹⁸   The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor; he hath sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised…
²¹   ‘Then he said, ‘This Scripture has come true today before your very eyes!’”

   David Seamands writes, “I define a counselor as a temporary assistant to the Holy Spirit. Both of the italicized words are important. Assistant, because the goal of all Christian counseling is to assist people to become emotionally and spiritually mature enough to relate directly with the Holy spirit, the Great Counselor. Temporary, because dependence on the counselor should never become permanent. If it does, then the counseling itself becomes a part of the problem and not a means of solution; a part of the disease, not the cure. It is only a temporary means to an end, the goal of total dependence on the spirit. However, this in no way underestimates the crucial importance of counselors in the healing process. All through history God has used humans as assistants, not only to carry out His work, but also to ‘stand in the gap’ as His intermediaries who show people what His character is really like. There are vast numbers of people who feel like the scared little girl whose mother was trying to comfort her with the assurance of God’s presence. ‘I know that,’ she said, ‘But I need a God with skin on Him!’ The counselor fills this need. For many counselees, this is the first time in their lives they have experienced a stable, trustworthy, and truly loving (accepting yet confrontation) relationship. Thus the very being of the counselor is the commencement of healing…

   …the uniqueness of memory healing is walking back into our past with the Lord and asking Him to heal us at a specific time and place of need…Our prayers should be to Jesus, asking for His direct intervention and healing presence… Memories include feelings, concepts, patterns, attitudes, and tendencies toward actions which accompany the pictures on the screen of the mind. This is the way the Bible uses the concept of remembrance, or stirring us up to remember something. When Scripture commands us to ‘remember the Lord,’ it does not mean to simply have a mental picture of God. It is a command to whole persons to orient all our thoughts and actions around God…

   …It is the Spirit who takes all that He made possible by His sufferings, death, and resurrection and makes it actual in our lives now. The Holy Spirit is the paraklete. Para-alongside, and kaleo-to call. The One Called Alongside. And Romans 8:26-27 assures us that the Holy Spirit helps us with our infirmities, our cripplings, and our weaknesses. The Greek word for help is a compound of three words meaning ‘to take hold of on the other side.’ It is a beautiful and sensitive picture of the knowing, understanding, caring God who is not participating with us in our healing.”