3 Ways to Seek Healing From Trauma

We are in a series of messages called Mental Peace talking about mental health. Next week we will talk about burnout. Many of you right now feel like you are at your limit and can't take it anymore, we'll talk about that next week. Today we are going to talk about

trauma

. Come on. This is probably the most difficult of all the topics we have talked about in the previous and future weeks. It's a topic that, honestly, you may not hear about often in churches, but we're going to talk about it today. Many of you, unfortunately, in fact, probably most of you at some point in your life have endured something severe, some kind of trial, some kind of abuse, some kind of heartbreak.

And so, with a lot of help from experts I have been studying the Word of God and receiving advice from people who help others heal for a living and with a very heavy heart I have been praying all week that the presence of God would do something in the lives of many of you who need hope to heal. Many people think that

trauma

is what is it? What is trauma? A lot of people think it's the event, it's the injury, it's the abuse, but technically speaking, trauma is actually the response to what happens in an event.

A good definition of trauma would be this: Trauma is a response to a deeply disturbing or distressing event. Some think that trauma is physical, something like a traumatic injury, a physical injury, but the truth is that while trauma can be physical (and often is), it can also be emotional, it can be mental, and it can even be emotional. be spiritual abuse or spiritual trauma. And that's why it's so important to remember that unseen wounds can hurt as much as seen ones (congregants speaking weakly) and sometimes even take longer to heal. And it is with a very real awareness that many of you have been hurt and deeply wounded and have gone through horrible experiences that I want to share the Word of God today.

Because when you enter a church or your life group and you feel pain and want to talk about what you've been through, inevitably some happy Christian... Yes. Some very happy feeling, good Christian (congregant laughter) with very good intentions quotes Romans 8:28 in the midst of his pain. “And we know that in all things,” they tell you with a very good heart, “that God works for the good of those who love him, whom he called according to his purpose. Come on. A powerful truth, a life. The changing truth, an important truth, is al

ways

true, but it may not al

ways

feel useful.

That's right, when you're still feeling in shock or maybe in denial, or maybe you're feeling in a bad mood about what happened and you don't do it. You don't know why you can't control your emotions, you feel overwhelmed with anxiety, you feel completely numb, or, even though what happened to you wasn't your fault, you feel guilty and ashamed for something someone else did to you. So today we approach it with prayer. The title of today's message is 3 Ways to Seek Healing from Trauma, and I would love for my amazing church family to pray alongside me, God, thank you for your presence. goodness and by the work of

healing

we can find through Jesus that by his stripes we can be healed.

We pray that you will work through your Word and your Spirit to transform lives. We asked this in the name of Jesus and everyone said: Amen. Amen and amen. Alright, some of you grew up around the time I did, and I'm not proud to tell you this, but I was of the generation where someone was like, "I experienced trauma," and I was like, "Trauma Schmama ," something like, "Get over it, it can't be that bad." I grew up and when we got hurt my dad said, "Rub some dirt on it, go back to the field." Did any of you grow up like this?

A couple of you. Maybe my life was different than I thought, okay? I don't know (congregation laughs), but I grew up with a mentality of, hey, just get over it. And what I've learned is that you don't just get over trauma, you don't just get over it, you actually have to heal from it. And so what I want to do today is try to build a foundational understanding of what trauma is and then I want to show you in the Scriptures how we

seek

healing

and we

seek

God for what only He can do. And we'll start with three different types of trauma just to develop a foundational understanding.

The three different types of trauma, there is acute trauma, there is chronic trauma and there is complex trauma, three different types of trauma. What is acute trauma? Acute trauma is a response to a single traumatic event. Maybe you were in a horrible car accident or survived a natural disaster. For those of you in Oklahoma it was a tornado, for those of you in South Florida it was a hurricane, whatever it was, but it was dangerous and you survived, and it was very traumatic, your answer was. It could have been a complicated birth. One of my daughters went through an indescribably complicated birth, for others of you it might have been losing your business in the middle of COVID, or for some of you, unfortunately in college, it might have been date rape.

It was a one-time event, it was horrible and the response was traumatic. Then the second type is chronic trauma, and it is a long-term response to prolonged or repeated events. It is not a one-time event, but a long-term event. For example, some of you may have been bullied throughout high school, or others experienced racism for most of your life. It could have been that you were very, very young, five, six years old, you came across pornography for the first time and you looked at pornography at six years old, at seven years old, at eight years old, at nine years old, and I've been. watching for years and it is a very traumatic experience for you.

Some of you grew up in a home where there was alcohol or drug abuse and lived in an environment that never felt safe to you. Others of you were sexually abused, not once, but several times and often by someone who should have protected you instead of harming you. There is chronic abuse. And the third type is called complex trauma and is a response to multiple and continuous events. This is when you grew up in a home or are married to someone and you see some combination of all the things we talked about. There is chemical abuse, emotional abuse, physical abuse, there may be sexual abuse and the list could go on and on.

And no matter what you've been through or on what level, trauma changes you and it changes your perspective, it can change how you see people, it can change how you see God, it can change your perspective on life. I will give you an example of something that is not as serious as what many have gone through, but as my counselor says: "You don't compare trauma, you simply look to God to heal you." That's how it is. I went through a series of unusual events as a child. I have been in multiple car accidents on the passenger side of the vehicle.

Now, again, for those of you who are my age, I grew up in the era when we didn't wear seat belts. Does anyone remember that time when there were no seat belts? We even lay in the back of a car by the window and took naps as kids for hours on end. This was the time when you packed an entire high school baseball team into the back of a pickup truck, drove 70 miles per hour down the highway, and thought you were smart. It was a very fun era and by the grace of God we lived in this silly era, but that's when I grew up.

Those of you who are online, you can write in the chat if you were there, "I was there", you did that too. And then I was in the passenger seat of a car when I had another accident. I had just turned 16 and my friend had turned 16, and we were in his truck and driving down a side street to get to a four-lane highway. And he leaned over to me in his truck and he had this crazy look in his eyes, I'll never forget it, he leaned over and said, "What is this?" And he ran the stop sign and crossed the four-lane highway.

I looked up and could see that the timing was going to be perfect for all the wrong reasons: there was another vehicle coming probably 70 miles per hour directly at me. I don't have a seat belt, I'm on the passenger side looking up, looking up, getting ready, getting ready, getting ready, getting ready, getting ready, getting ready, and his car came right at my door and by the grace of God he barely missed me, crashed into the back of the truck, I spun it three and a half times, ambulances, hospitals and the story goes on and on and I'm terrified of traveling with any of you. (congregation laughs) Any of you, I don't care how well you drive, I mean, no offense, you drive and I drive that way, I can barely stand it.

My flight instructor said I fly like a fighter pilot, think Tom Cruise. (congregation laughs) But I fly like a crazy man, I drive like a grandpa driver. And you say, "You're a grandpa," and that's true, but I've been driving like a grandpa since before I had kids. I'm in my fifties and I've never been ticketed for speeding, I've never been in an accident, I'm traumatized, that changed me. For you, it may be that someone hurts you and you don't know how to trust people, it may be that you have a hard time trusting God, it may be that you grew up without money and so you have these really dysfunctional views and fear of not having enough.

No matter what, someone may have done something to you and that's why you're traumatized by the worry that one day the same thing will be done to one of your children. How do we heal from trauma? But today we will look at the Word of God and we will actually look at someone who you probably wouldn't guess experienced trauma. I went through seminary with a master's degree in theology, studied the Scriptures for years, and it wasn't until I researched this person this week that I became aware of the Apostle Paul, the person most of us would never think was traumatized. , the guy who wrote two-thirds of the New Testament, the guy who said, "To live is Christ, to die is gain," he experienced acute, chronic, complex trauma.

And I want to show you and I want you to see it and I want you to see what God did to bring healing and how God brought him to a stronger place based on what he had gone through. You go all the way to his conversion. If you don't know, he was the guy who was killing Christians, he wasn't a Christian and his conversion was traumatic. My conversion was like a Christian Hallmark commercial. I felt bad for my son, I went and knelt on a softball field at night, the sun was setting, the birds were singing, there was a Michael W.

Smith song playing somewhere in the background: "Friends are friends forever if the Lord is the Lord for them." I woke up, a new creation in Christ, saved by the grace of God, it was an amazing and peaceful experience. The apostle Paul was killing Christians and in Acts 9 you can read about it. A light from the sky threw him to the ground. We don't know for sure what light knocks people to the ground, but according to my fifth grade science class, it was probably a bolt of lightning (congregation laughs) possibly struck by lightning. And then a voice speaks from heaven, and the voice does not say: "Hello, my servant, I have chosen you." The voice says, "Why are you persecuting me, Saul?" God knocks him down and asks him a question face to face.

So, Paul is blind, for three days, and God doesn't say, "Don't worry, in three days I will send this man, he will come and pray for you and you will be healed." God doesn't do that. He's just blind, he's struck down by lightning, a voice from heaven is not particularly generous, and then he's blind for three days, and then he's healed and this Christian murderer becomes a murderous Christian preacher. Come on. He preaches the gospel. And then the good news is that God rewarded him with a six-figure salary, great benefits, and lots of babies. (congregant laughter) No.

No, no, no, no, no, no. For the rest of his life she endured prolific abuse and fled to save his life. In fact, I want to show you on the screen a map according to the Bible, just the verses that we have, in every city that we see, he had to run out of the city trying to escape to save his life. Recently someone was rude to me at a restaurant and I decided to leave. Here is my story. (congregation laughs) Paul went out from city after city, after city, after city, after city because people were trying to kill him and take his life.

He endured severe and ongoing trauma and healed from it. And I want to show you three things in the Scriptures that we can do and that we can learn from the Word of God to seek healing with God. The first thing we learn is this when we look at Paul and one thing we must do is process the pain of our trauma. Now, as a side note, in order to process it, you have to acknowledge it. And I want to start here and say, some of you have been through something and you're trying to let it go and try not to act like it ever happened.

You don't heal when you ignore the wound. That's how it is. You don't heal when you suppress the wound, you don't heal when you try to forget the wound, you begin to heal when you take it to God and begin to process it. And some of you have to own up to what you have to say: "I was abused." Nowadays there are some people who think that everything is abuse. Just because someone disagrees with you doesn't mean you've been abused, just because someone corrects you, just because someone believes something different than you, that's notOne way, God, we have the faith to believe that you can endure the worst pain we have ever experienced and somehow become stronger, closer to you one day to help others with the same comfort that you have given us.

We pray this in the name of Jesus. Everyone say, in the name of Jesus. In the name of Jesus. We pray this in the name of Jesus. Amen. Keep praying today if you want, keep praying today. (congregation applauds) This time, no one looking around, There are those of you who don't know God intimately. And right now you may know that "I don't really know God intimately." Let me tell you about the goodness of God. God loves you more than I can describe, so much that he sent his only Son, Jesus, the Son of God, perfect in every way.

And Jesus was abused, he was mistreated, he was beaten, he was punished because he was the innocent lamb of God who died in our place as the perfect sacrifice. He took the punishment we deserved and died for the forgiveness of our sins, and the goodness of God resurrected him, why? Anyone want some encouraging news today? Whoever calls on the name of the Lord, Jesus, his sins, his brokenness, his sorrow will be washed away, all his sins will be forgiven and he will be new. From wherever you are looking today, those of you who know, "I don't really have a relationship with God." God is a relational God, He doesn't want you to simply serve Him, He wants you to know Him, to be loved by Him.

You walk away from your heart, you walk away from your sin, you take a step towards Jesus, you come to Him. As you cry out to Him, He will hear your prayer, forgive your sin, and make you new. Wherever you are looking today, those who say, "I need Jesus, I need Jesus, today I give my life to Jesus," that is your prayer, raise your hands now everywhere and say, "Yes, that's it." my prayer right here." Praise God for you and for you too, others today say, "Yes, Jesus, I need you, I surrender to you." Those of you online just write it in the comments section, "I am surrendering my life to Jesus" and together as a church family, we pray.

Pray, Heavenly Father- Heavenly Father. I need you I need you. Your grace. Your grace. Your love. Your love. Your forgiveness. Your forgiveness. Your salvation. Your salvation. Jesus save me, Jesus save me, forgive me. Fill me with your Spirit so I can know you and follow you. new life, now you have mine. In the name of Jesus I pray. For someone praises God who is worthy of all praise (congregation applauding).