Putting Your Past Behind

Someone sent me the link to the article below yesterday. As I read the story about the author's therapy with Samuel (his patient) I just felt like crying. For it reminded me of how I gave my hurts to Jesus the last time. It's really a very powerful way to be healed emotionally. Although I didn't go through such a therapy, but I did mentally and emotionally give my hurts and the one who hurt me to Jesus. That was how I got over things very quickly. I like the following song....


Are you tried of chasing pretty rainbows?
are you tired of spinning round and round?
wrap up all the shattered dreams of your life
and at the feet of Jesus lay them down.

Chorus:
Give them all, Give them all,
give them all to Jesus
Shattered dreams, wounded hearts, broken toys
give them all, give them all,
give them all to Jesus
and he will turn your sorrow into joy

He never said you would only see sunshine
he never said there would be no rain
he only promised us a heart full of singing
that's the very thing that once brought pain.


For those who have got their past hurts haunting them and stunting their growth, making them unable to move forward, I would recommend they follow the detail instruction stated in this article. The followings are only excerpts of the therapy...


How to Take a Hurt (Bitter Root) to Jesus


Just How Does a Person "Put the Past Behind"?

"See to it that no one misses the grace of God and that no bitter root grows up to cause trouble and defile many." (12:15).

What comprises these "bitter roots?" They consist of traumatic experiences of pain, distress, disappointment, guilt, etc. That starts the seed of bitterness growing. And without a good resolution to that trauma, once afflicted, the bitter memories and how we represent those memories in our minds-and-bodies can keep a person continually torn up with that pain as much as if the person continued to go through that experience. And so it grows like a poisonous root. And as it does it makes toxic and bitter more and more facets of the person's life.

Samuel's guilt and grief arose from a very bitter root that had long driven his behavior. Grief, guilt, bitterness, low self-esteem, co-dependency, sexual compulsions, eating disorders, etc., indicate bitter roots at work in people's lives. These pains almost always hark back to some specific event, interaction, or hurt and then continue to grow and take on a life of their own by the way we internally represent them ("as a man thinks in his heart...." so he increasingly becomes!).

Yes, a person can love Jesus and live as a devout Christian and still have bitter roots of hurt and ugliness continue to control one's emotions, states, and behaviors. For that very reason, the Hebrew writer wrote that we "see to it" that we don't miss out on the grace of God due to some poisoning, toxifying bitter root. These bitter roots, for the most part, work unconsciously within us and so often require therapeutic assistance in uncovering and resolving them.


Taking a Bitter Root to Jesus

All of our negative memories come coded in some unique mental codings of each person. Christians who have "Jesus" (their images, understandings, representations of Jesus) coded in their minds have their own unique system of making that internal representation.

1) First, take one of your fingers (or if you use this to assist someone else to make these transformations of the heart, they have them take one of their fingers) and point to where you see yourself (and/or someone else) in the painful memory or "bitter root." You will point to that memory and identify its location. Now, point with the other hand at the location of Jesus.

2) Next, only move your eyes, but not your head, so that you move the image of the hurt or the "bitter root" so that it shifts to the same location that you have of Jesus. As you do this, move your hand as you make this shift. As you move the image of the hurt into the same location of Jesus, turn the image of the hurt into the same codings that you have for Jesus. As you do, say something like this to yourself, "Now, as I give this person to Jesus, I will notice how Jesus receives that person unto Himself fully and completely. And I allow that person in my mind to begin to look just like Jesus in terms of having the same location, brightness, color, etc."


De-Briefing The Process

Several factors take place in this procedure. First, you utilize the healing power of the Holy Spirit, i.e., Jesus indwelling the Christian. Second, the truth of the Word of God, and the individual Christian's belief in that Word, become actualized as you quote pertinent passages that direct yourself or another to give the "bitter root" to Jesus. The techniques of NLP simply provide the conduits for the healing power of the Holy Spirit.

Third, you utilize not only your belief in the Lord, but also all the resources gathered from having lived a life of faith. Often I have clients share with me how the Holy Spirit will bring to their memory specific spiritual experiences or passages of scripture during this procedure.

Fourth, you cooperate with God's creative process as you work with the neurological processes of the human mind in directing yourself to change the mental codings and word meanings of the "bitter root" into the mental codings of Jesus and higher level word meanings you have about Jesus.

Fifth, by placing the content of a bitter root image into the image of Jesus/God, one is meta-stating the lower image of the hurt with the higher frame of the image of Jesus/God. The more powerful (meta-level) structure of the image of Jesus/God will modulate/change/over power the image of the hurt. A person who holds faith in the Lord Jesus cannot hold any kind of a bitter root in His presence. The Lord will win every time.