Robert Morris - Mending
Alright, so we began a series at Easter called The Ministries of Jesus. Before that, I was in a five-week series called The Gifts of Jesus, out of Ephesians 4: apostle, prophet, evangelist, pastor, teacher. This is out of Luke 4, and these are the five foundational ministries of Jesus. The first was Salvation. So I'm going to show you all five of them, just so you'll know, when you read, you can be looking for them, and I just put an -ing to make them all action to show you. So here are the five foundational ministries of Jesus: Saving (which we talked about Salvation on Easter). Saving. Mending. That's what we're going to talk about this week, mending. Freeing, Healing, and Anointing. These are the five, this is according to Jesus.
Now, Luke 4, quoted from Isaiah, five basic ministries, foundational ministries: Saving, Mending, Freeing, Healing, and Anointing. And so this week is Mending. So Luke 4, let me just remind you of part of the passage 'til we get to the part about mending broken hearts. Alright? Luke 4, verse 16. "So He came to Nazareth, where He had been brought up. And as His custom was", we talked about all this Easter, "He went into the synagogue on the Sabbath day, and stood up to read. And He was handed the book of the prophet Isaiah. And when He had opened the book, He found the place where it was written:", this is Isaiah 61, "'The Spirit of the Lord is upon Me, because He has anointed Me to preach the gospel to the poor...'" That's Salvation. We talked about that and the acceptable year of the Lord at the end of the passage two weeks ago. And then here's this week, "'...He has sent Me to heal the brokenhearted...'"
Now, obviously, the word brokenhearted is two words. It's a conjoined word. It's two words put together. Broken is a word; heart is a word. In the Greek, it's also two words. That's what a lot of people don't realize. They think, "Well, this is one word," because it's put together in English, It's actually two words in the Greek. Broken is the word suntribo, which means to break, to shatter in pieces, or to bruise. To break, to shatter into pieces, or to bruise. And the word heart is kardia, which is where we get our word cardiac. I was looking for Dr. Carrasco. Kardia. Is that right? That's the cardiac unit. So that's the heart unit, alright? We get it from this Greek word. So what this word means is, Jesus said, "I came to heal those who have had their heart broken, shattered, and bruised".
Now, I'm not going to ask for you to raise your hands because either all of you would raise your hands or if you didn't, some of you would lie because we've all had a broken heart at some point. It's been shattered, It's been bruised, broken into pieces. This is what Jesus came to do. By the way, the heart are your thoughts and your feelings. It's the seat of your emotions. That's the way most theologians define the heart, the seat of your emotions. I don't know if you realize this, but your heart can think. Let me read you some scriptures. Proverbs 23:7, "...for as he thinks in his heart, so is he". Not just his mind, but his heart. Matthew 9, "Jesus, knowing their thoughts, said, 'Why do you think evil in your hearts?'" This is Jesus talking, who created the human body.
I read a study a while back that there are heart transplant patients that have the memories of the person that they got the heart from. And the scientists are trying to figure it out, but it was already figured out. Your heart can think. Have you ever said this? I'm trying to talk to you about the seat of your emotions, who you are as a person, not this physical organ in your body. Have you ever made the statement, "I love you with all my... heart". Okay, so here's what you were saying, according to some people, "I love you with all my pump". "My pump loves you". Now, there is a physiology, obviously, but there's something inside of us that's deep, that can get hurt, and that can get wounded. Would you agree with that? So Jesus comes along and says, "I've come to heal the brokenhearted".
There's another line in verse 18 that I think also refers to this. It's verse 18, it says, "to set at liberty those who are oppressed", in the Old King James, it actually says, "to set at liberty those who are bruised". This word means "bruised". "To set at liberty those who are bruised". Now, bruised, as I understand it, is when the capillaries underneath the skin break and then there's discoloration because there's bleeding under the skin. So in other words, it's an inward wound, inward bleeding, and even when the discoloration goes away, if there's a re-injury, those capillaries can break again, and it can begin bleeding again. Okay, this is what bruise is like.
Now, I need you to know something. This message is going to be different than any message I think I've ever preached, in that I don't... Now, please hear me. Please relax, okay, when I tell you this. I don't have three points. I know, I know. You're disappointed. But here's why. When I went to pray, all I'm going to do is explain it to you, give you a couple of examples, and then I'm going to take the last part of this message and actually minister... well, I'm not going to minister. I'm going to facilitate Jesus, ministering to your broken heart. You're going to leave here with part of your heart healed, and with a way to get your heart healed. I'm going to show you how this happens, alright. So this bruise, you can bump it, and it starts bleeding again. It's like you're sitting around in a room, and you're all joking around.
You know, "Your nose is so big," "Your legs are so skinny," and you've got all these jokes, and then you say something and the person goes, and runs out of the room crying. And everyone looks at you like, "Why did you do that"? And you say, "I didn't know she was sensitive in that area". And then they say, "Everybody knew she was sensitive in that area". Okay, what you did was you bumped a bruise. It wasn't just what you said, it was what her daddy said to her. It was what her first husband said to her. It was what her boss said to her one, do you understand what I'm saying? Listen, you don't get over stuff like that. You might try to get hardened in that area, but the best thing is to get healed in that area, not hardened in that area. And so Jesus came to do that.
I was skinny growing up. I've overcome that. I have worked. It's been a daily battle. Even if I don't feel like getting a Blue Bell, I think, "I've got to get a Blue Bell, Otherwise I'll go back to", okay, so I've overcome that. But one thing, I have skinny legs. I had skinny legs when I was growing up. I have legs that every woman would like to have. But when I was young, I mean, I was really skinny, and I remember, I hated gym class because the bottoms of the gym shorts, you know, were made for sumo wrestlers, and then my little leg would be sticking out, you know. And there was one gym class where the boys and girls were in there together. Most time we weren't, but we were all in there together, and we were waiting for the coaches to come and tell us what to do.
So we're all sitting around, and this big jock was in there for some reason. I don't know why he was even in there. Maybe he failed math again and had to go back to PE or something. And so he says in front of everyone, "Hey, hey. Wait, everyone. Wait". He said, "Robert, there's a string hanging off, Oh, sorry. That's your leg". When I got bigger, I beat him up. But, anyway. I wasn't saved, okay. I wasn't saved, alright. I didn't beat him up. He would have pulverized me. But anyway, I just, things like that happened, and when I was young, I couldn't pronounce my Rs, And when I went through inner healing, which is what I'm literally about to take you, I'm going to ask the Lord to bring some memories to your mind that He wants to heal. We're going to submit them to the Lord.
And please hear me, you're still going to have the memory, but you're not going to have the pain associated with it anymore. It's incredible. It's phenomenal. And so when I went through inner healing, this guy that was taking me through inner healing, he would get words of knowledge, you can read about it; it's 1 Corinthians 12. It's one of the gifts of the Holy Spirit. In other words, he would know something without having known. He doesn't know it naturally. And he would say, "I see something," and he'd share it with me, and it would spark a memory in me. So he literally said, "I see a little boy on a playground, and he's crying, and all of the kids are laughing at him because he can't pronounce his Rs".
Well, if your name is Steve Dulin and, you can't pronounce your Rs, it doesn't matter. When your name is "Wabbot Mowwis" and you've moved to a new school, it matters. And when every day during coloring time, you have to get up and go to special classes, speech therapy, it matters. You all with me? These things hurt. These things cause wounds. And it's all through Scripture when you look through Scripture. Let me show you just a couple of scriptures because remember, I really believe, anything you can show me in the New, I can show you in the Old. Psalm 147, verse 3 says, "He heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds". It's talking aboput Jesus. And we just read it in Luke 4. This is a scripture you might know from Matthew 12, but way before it was in Matthew 12, it was in Isaiah 42, verse 3. "A bruised reed He will not break".
Please hear me. When the Holy Spirit brings up a memory to your mind today, it's not to hurt you; it's to heal you. I promise you. I was taking a guy through inner healing one time. You could call it emotional healing, inward healing. Like a bruise. It's on the inside; the wound, a broken heart. And so I was praying with this guy. This guy was huge, huge. I mean, a big, strong guy, and he had a big beard. He looked like... Now some of you will remember this, some of you won't. He looked like Grizzly Adams. How many of you remember Grizzly Adams? Isn't that amazing? Our Church is getting so old. I have a picture of Grizzly Adams. If you just, because I was looking... That's him. So that's the way he, I mean, his head is almost as big as the grizzly bear. That's what this guy looked like. That's what he looked like.
And so I'm taking him through, asking the Lord to call memories to his mind that He wants to heal. Then we would submit them to the Lord for healing. Then I would pray a prayer of confirmation, which is what I'm going to do in just a minute with you. And all of a sudden, I had this picture in my mind, and I said, "I see this little boy, and he is running in a field, and there's a man driving a car chasing him, and the man's laughing'" This Grizzly Adams guy falls on all fours, knees and hands, and starts wailing in the building. Wailing. He's in my office. And I mean... Like, not crying like men cry. Like, "No, I had something in my eye". I'm not talking about that kind of crying wailing. Wailing.
I remember thinking, "What are the other pastors thinking that's happening in this office right now"? And he wailed and he wailed and he wailed, and then we submitted that memory of the Lord. And I told him, I said, "Now, when we do and when I pray over you, you're actually going to feel the stress leave you. You're going to feel it. You're going to feel the pain leave you". And it was amazing. And the joy on his face when he sat up. And so he told me, he said, "Robert, that's probably the most painful memory of my childhood". He said, "My father and my uncle were big men, like I am great big men, strong men, but they were mean men, and they were drunkards. And we were out working in the field one time, and my uncle went to get his car to bring it in, to bring some tools to the tractor where we were working, and he had to turn. My dad said, 'Go open the gate.' I opened the gate, and he had to turn a certain way when he came in, and I thought he was turning toward me. So I ran the other way, and he turned the other way and I started running, and he started chasing me".
And he said, "I thought he was going to kill me, and he was laughing". And he said, "When he finally stopped, my uncle and my father stood there and just made fun of the 'little crybaby'. 'Look at the little crybaby. look at the crybaby.' And they just laughed and made fun of me". And he said, "In college, I started getting in fights". And he said, "I literally sent men to the hospital. I used to have to have police officers beating me with nightsticks to pull me off of people". And he said, "I realized when we were praying that I was actually beating up my father and my uncle all those years". And then he said this to me. He said, "I'm 35 years old, and I've never gotten married". He said, "I feel like the Incredible Hulk. I feel like that there's something in me. There's a rage in me that when it goes off, I can't control it. I can't stop it". And he said, "I've never gotten married because I was so afraid that I would get angry and kill my wife or my children because I can't control my strength when I get angry". And he said to me, "But today it's gone. I know it's gone. It was healed just a moment ago".
And that guy, three months later married a young widow with three children. God just touched him. God healed him. I'll tell you one more story that I've told you, that when my mother was 16 years old, my grandfather, her father, was murdered. I don't know if you've, hopefully you've never had anything like this in your family, but it affects your family. It affects your family. This is trauma to the deepest level. He was shot three times with a .45 caliber at close range. They brought him out. He laid his body on a cot. He was still alive. They took ice cubes, back then, they had blocks of ice. This is why some of your grandparents and great grandparents refer to the refrigerator as the ice box. "Go get me something out of the ice box". Because they would just put it in a box to keep it cold, keep the ice in it, and they would use that to cool things. They put blocks of ice on his chest, and they were melting because the blood was coming so fast that it was just melting the blocks of ice.
It took over 30 minutes for the ambulance to get there. And my mother had to watch something that no 16-year-old girl should ever have to watch. And there were no school counselors, no guidance counselors, no professional help. Nobody knew. Everything went right back to normal. And my mother did not talk about this, listen to this. She did not talk about it to anyone, including my father, he told me, for 63 years. She was 16. When she was 79, she went to a memorial service. Her cousin was at that service, and her cousin was there that day when her father was shot. And for 3 hours, they talked about it.
Now, it is good to talk about things. It is good to talk, especially with professionals about things, who are believers who know how to work through it. But what I need you to understand is, Yes, talking about it helped my mother, but Jesus is the one who healed her heart. That next week I was sharing part of my testimony. This is in August of '14, if you want to go back and listen to it, you can hear the whole story of it. But I felt led to call her and say, I wanted to talk about how my grandfather, which I never met, was shot and killed, and explained how that affected our family. And she had just talked to her cousin and she said, "I would love for you, if this will help people, I'd love for you to talk about it". And she told me the details for the first time. I shared them from the pulpit, called my dad then the next day and said, "How's mom doing"? He said, "She's doing fine". I said, "Now all those details I shared, you knew about, right"? He said, "I didn't know those because your mother has not even", think about that, "Your mother had not talked to me about them either".
She had never talked to anyone. Her heart was broken. But we watched, she lived until she was 85. She passed away two years ago, but we watched, almost 86. We watched my mother change. She was a believer since she was young. I'm telling you, Jesus saves us, but Jesus can help you right now, too. He's just not going to get you to heaven. He can help you on this Earth. You don't have to live with the pain you're living with. It's supernatural. So here's what we're going to do. I'm going to ask the Lord to bring memories to your mind that He wants to heal today, and there's going to be some pain with some of them. And then we're going to pray a prayer. I'm going to lead you in this prayer. I'd like for everyone to pray it. Everyone. What we're doing is we are appropriating by faith what Jesus already did for us on the cross. That's the same way you get saved. But we're appropriating that He's going to heal your broken heart, too.
Let me show you the prayer so you know. You say, "Well, I'd like to see the prayer you're going to lead me in," because maybe this is all new to you. Here's the prayer. "Almighty Father, I submit these memories to You". If we can put this on the screen where everyone can see it. I thought we could put it up there unless something broke. There it is. Praise the Lord. "Almighty Father". I was at a church one time, and the pastor was asking for a scripture and it didn't come up, so he cast the demon out of the machine, and the scripture came up. Okay. Not out of the person, people are great, out of the machine.
Alright, here we go "Almighty Father, I submit these memories to You. I ask You to heal me now from all the stress and give me holy forgetfulness". I'll explain to you in a moment what that means. "I choose now, by an act of my will, to forgive," That's very important. We'll explain that, "to forget, and to be healed in Jesus' name". Holy forgetfulness doesn't mean, and when we say, "I choose to forget," doesn't mean that you're not going to have the memory anymore. You know the Bible says that God has chosen not to remember your sins? It doesn't mean He doesn't have the memory of your sins anymore. It means He's chosen not to bring it up again, to use it against you.
So that's what you're doing. You're choosing. You'll still have these memories, but the pain won't be there, and you're not going to bring them up again and use them against you. And then when we say, "I choose to forgive," that means I choose to forgive any person associated with this memory (listen, this is important), including yourself, because we did some things, some of us did some things in our past that we're very ashamed of, and we might have that memory come up, but when we submit it to the Lord, we're actually choosing to release ourselves from that because some of us made a mistake 30 years ago, and we still beat ourselves up about it to this day. So we're choosing to forgive.
The word forgive means "release". Okay? Okay, everyone ready? Alright, so I want you to just close your eyes. Every campus, every Gathering, every person online, just close your eyes. The reason I've asked you to close your eyes, this is not to manipulate you, but just so you can tune out whatever's going on around you. And I'm going to ask the Holy Spirit to bring some memories to your mind. And then in a moment, I'll lead us in this prayer together, and then I'll pray a confirming prayer.
So, Holy Spirit, I ask You right now in Jesus' name, will You bring memories to the minds of my brothers and sisters that You want to heal today, in Jesus' name?
Now, you don't have to fight it, against it, but you don't have to also try to conjure up something. Just allow the Lord to bring some memories from your past, and some of you might not think they're that painful, but it may be that they remind you then of something else that reminds you of something else that then gets to the root of a memory.
Lord, I ask You in Jesus' name to bring memories, maybe from childhood, maybe things that were said, maybe abuse, maybe verbal abuse, maybe physical, maybe sexual. Lord, I ask You to bring embarrassing memories that the enemy has jumped on, hurtful, harmful memories, maybe memories of being abandoned or rejected or made fun of, maybe memories of mistakes that we've made that we've never been able to let go of or release or forgive. Maybe, Lord, You're bringing memories of things that we said to our spouse. Maybe if, Lord, someone said something like, "If it weren't for the kids, I'd be out of here," and we regret saying it. Maybe we said something to one of our children, and we regret it so much. Lord, I want to remind my brothers and sisters, I'm not asking You to do this so that we feel bad or so that we are hurt, but so that we can submit these to You, and You can heal the brokenhearted, and that's us. We're the ones that have been bruised and shattered, and according to Luke 4, this is one of Your ministries.
So, Holy Spirit, will You bring memories to our minds right now? I'm talking about every person listening to me right now. Will You bring memories to our minds that You want to heal? And, Lord, we know that salvation is done through the blood of the cross, and yet, Lord, we know that You also continue to minister to us, and continue to set us free as we grow in You. So that's what we're asking for today. We're asking You, Lord, that You do exactly what You said You would do in Luke 4 and Isaiah 61. I'm asking You to heal the broken, the shattered, and the bruised places in our lives today. So, Lord, will You bring those memories to our minds right now? And now I want to ask you just to repeat this prayer after me. Almighty Father, I submit these memories to You. I ask You to heal me now from all the stress and give me holy forgetfulness. I choose now, by an act of my will, to forgive, to forget, and to be healed in Jesus' name.
So, Holy Spirit, will You bring memories to our minds right now? I'm talking about every person listening to me right now. Will You bring memories to our minds that You want to heal? And, Lord, we know that salvation is done through the blood of the cross, and yet, Lord, we know that You also continue to minister to us, and continue to set us free as we grow in You. So that's what we're asking for today. We're asking You, Lord, that You do exactly what You said You would do in Luke 4 and Isaiah 61. I'm asking You to heal the broken, the shattered, and the bruised places in our lives today. So, Lord, will You bring those memories to our minds right now? And now I want to ask you just to repeat this prayer after me. Almighty Father, I submit these memories to You. I ask You to heal me now from all the stress and give me holy forgetfulness. I choose now, by an act of my will, to forgive, to forget, and to be healed in Jesus' name.
Now let me pray a confirming prayer:
Lord, I want to agree right now. I agree right now in Jesus' name that these memories are healed by the blood of Jesus, in Jesus' name. And I speak to the souls of my brothers and sisters, and I say, be healed and be made whole in Jesus' name. And I speak to all stress associated with these memories, and I command you to go in Jesus' name. And I speak to all spirits that attach to these memories, all spirits of inferiority or insecurity or pride or anger or bitterness or unforgiveness or resentment or malice or envy or jealousy or embarrassment or humiliation or shame, I speak to every demonic spirit that has attacked my brothers and sisters through these memories, and I commend you to go in Jesus' name, and I declare to you that you can never again use these memories against my brothers and sisters as they are healed today in Jesus' name, amen and amen and amen and amen and amen and amen and amen and amen, in Jesus' name.