Well, good morning my friends and welcome to the Heritage Hour. I’m Mark Gonzales, your pastoral encourager here in Southwest Florida. And I’m so delighted to be with you on air, online, and in media ministry for over 35 years now.

So thank you for sitting with me at the feet of the Lord to listen for His heart to touch our hearts. Well, if you joined us a couple of weeks ago, you know we’ve just started a brand new series, probably going to be about eight parts. In this series, I’m calling Soul Care Portraits of God. We finished up one called the Passion Week Portraits of God.

But because I see portraits of God throughout the scripture, now I’m seeing them more in, I guess, categories or themes.

And so this one is on soul care because I’ve been doing a deep dive for the last, oh my gosh, 10 years now about the heart level of things. We tend to get so busy with all the projects and all the plans and strategies and activities. And we don’t take time to deal with the heart. That’s what soul care is. so let me give you a quick definition this is the developing one we have together as we’re going along soul care is simply about two things our dramatically different heart wiring and heart wounds which we talked about last time but we’re going to go deeper today are dramatically different heart wiring and heart wounds which the lord lovingly yearns to gradually reveal and heal to the degree we abide in him to bear much fruit.

And of course, that’s John 15, 5. The more we abide in him, the more he gradually reveals and heals how he gave us the specific heart wiring he planned for us and how he wants to heal us of all the heart wounds that we accumulate in this brutal planet of ours. As, well, things happen. Jesus said, you will have tribulation in this world, but take heart for I’ve overcome the world.

So soul care portraits of God and we started with he is our soul care shepherd out of Psalm 23 how he is our rest giving shepherd in Matthew 11 and then the second broadcast is how he is our healing creator this was last time and under that we saw two dynamics there he’s our creative designer he gave us gifts according to the grace given to us We have gifts that differ according to the grace given to us And then not only is he our creative designer he our creative healer And we ran out of time There only so much you can say in 27 minutes So we’re going to pick it up there. And the Lord just put it on my heart to make the next theme, a main theme rather than a sub point theme. We talked about him as our creative healer a little bit last time today, the whole time, we’re going to talk about how he is our creative healer. As I I want to expand on that a little bit more and point you to some tools at my website at markpg.org. markpg.org.

That’s helping you hear God. I provide printable quick guides, printable quick guides on different topics that help you have the conversations in your quiet times with the Lord about these heart level things. And also use it as a tool to chat with others at the heart level, the soul care level. in this case about heart wiring and heart wounds and uh so can’t wait to share it with you he is our creative healer our topic for today and uh and as we get started there is our our custom let’s just go before the lord and ask him to speak shall we well lord i am so so blessed to be able to come together with my brothers and sisters to sit at your feet. No better place to be.

So Lord, we simply just seek to hear your heart. We really want our hearts to be touched.

So we want to be open in spirit. I know that the subject of healing can be controversial as we think we know the biblical model, but boy, we’re going to see today there’s so many variables. That’s why we need you. That’s why we need to abide in you that’s why we need to consistently regularly listen for your whispers so thank you lord for being that kind of god oh we are so ready to hear from you lord as scripture tells us in psalm 23 that you make us lie down in green pastures and you lead us beside still waters and you restore our souls so may that be our experience today as we walk through your love letters to see how you are our creative healer oh thank you lord we love you lord we pray this in the powerful name of the lord jesus christ and by his precious cleansing and healing transforming empowering and forgiving blood amen amen and amen all right my friends well to set the table just a quick reminder that the lord our creative healer we get these themes all over the place but I highlighted Jeremiah 17 The heart is more deceitful than all else and is desperately sick Who can understand it I, the Lord, search the heart.

Oh, I love that. It’s good to know the Lord loves to talk to us about heart things, and he knows us way better than we know ourselves. we also went to first peter 2 24 to pick up this theme passage he himself brought our sins in his body up on the cross so that we might die to sin and live for righteousness for by his wounds you were healed and often we hear that talked about in christian circles about physical healing sometimes even saying it guarantees healing in this world well yes and no you see it’s not just about physical healing. It’s actually about our tri-part being. We are spirit, soul, and body.

And last time, as we do this brief review, just a reminder that our spirits were dead, and they had to be made alive to become, when we became saved. Our spirits became resurrected. It’s because they were dead because of original sin passed down from Adam and Eve.

So when we We get the first and most important kind of healing. It’s our spirit being healed, even made alive when it had been dead. That’s why we must be saved. There is no salvation apart from the Lord Jesus Christ.

But our souls, which are comprised of our mind, our will, and our emotions, oh, it has ongoing wounds and things that need to be healed, which we’re going to talk about today. and that often has an impact on our bodies but there are many reasons why our bodies may have physical infirmity one of them is the soul is sick damaged and wounded so we’re going to try to cover that today because he is our creative healer and as we saw last time he uses his own triage sequence right you know the emergency the ambulance the people that come you know those professionals, medical professionals, they do triage on these traffic accidents on the interstate and elsewhere. And then inside the hospital, once they get to the emergency room, more triage so they can decide what’s the most important thing in this particular case. And Jesus does that with us every day of our lives regarding the struggles that we are going through in spirit, soul, and body because he is our creative healer Hey by the way before I forget it one of the best books about this I read in a long time I read it once a year and I given away more copies of this book than any other in my decades of ministry It’s called The Cure. What if God isn’t who you think he is and neither are you?

And it’s kind of it’s a short book, easy to read. Half of it a story about a guy’s journey. And then the other half is talking about and it’s intermixed. the authors talk about the dynamics and the biblical truths that are being revealed in the story so it’s a good read and it goes through the side doors of your heart to show you areas this is what happened to me anyway man it went through the side doors of my heart my defenses were not up and i discovered places where i needed needed to be healed some wounds i didn’t even realize because this book has a lot of wisdom in it and God uses it to speak and heal you where you don’t even think you need to be healed and so I encourage you to get the cure what if God isn’t who you think he is and neither are you and I’m going to give you glimpses of some not the book but the principles from the book and from the scripture mostly today as we continue our journey together.

So last time then we ended up by briefly going through seven hidden things that blind and bind our hearts. We saw that in the Jeremiah passage and this little tool and these are usually one or two pages and if they’re two pages you can fold them up like a little booklet when you print them out front and back again at my website at markpg.org. It’s entitled Creating Me a Clean heart based on Psalm 51 and Jeremiah 17, 14. Behold, you desire truth in the innermost being and in the hidden part, you will make me know wisdom.

Heal me, O Lord, and I will be healed for you are my praise.

So this little handout then has these seven different types of things that we reflexively experience in this life that will blind and bind our hearts. As it said in Jeremiah 17, 9, it’s deceitful and we’re sick and the Lord wants to heal us with that.

So this little tool, basically it’s a season of heart level prayer you have with the Lord in your one-on-one time where we just praise the Lord for who he is. We thank the Lord for what he’s done. And then we ask the Lord to search our hearts. And the seven things are kind of like a little checklist of ideas, things for you to say, Lord, just touch my heart when I come across one of these bullet points that’s, yeah, that’s what I do, right?

So we’re going to walk through the seven things diagrammed on the inside of this. Ask the Lord to reveal the things that we tend to do. Circle those bullet points of the things he reveals. And then consider counsel to help you see those blind spots, the things you’re circling to confirm them and help you with them.

Number five, also confessing and leaving these things before the Lord as you work through them. And then receive these truths and these revelations about yourself and these confessions that you’re led to receive and walk in your cleansing and healing and thank the Lord continually for his work in you.

So you open up this little two-page thing and the first of seven things is diagrammed here. The very bottom is kind of like this is at the subterranean level. Before we get to the surface level that everybody sees, that’s number four. We’re going to go to these first three things.

And here’s the thing. Have you come to the place where you come to peace, though the heartbreak of the reality that we all have wounded, broken hearts? That’s number one, wounded, broken hearts. We just read this passage just dealing with that.

We are going to experience wounded, broken hearts from our own sin, from other people’s sin in our lives, because that’s the tragedy of sin. It impacts others around us. And then just general life trials. There’s no sin involved.

It’s just life is ridiculously hard and brutal. A lot of things going on, right?

So we are going to experience neglect and humiliation and rejection and betrayal and discouragement and all that. And non-sinful responses to all of this impactful things. Hurt. We’ll get hurt.

Grieve. Jesus grieved in Gethsemane so we know it’s not a sin it says he was deeply distressed so that’s okay it’s non-sinful but this enemy wants to seduce us with lies deception and a spirit of distrust that those hurts grieves and feeling deep distress can turn to bitterness and unforgiveness and that’s sinful and that the Lord says he’ll let you be handed over to the torturers for that But he wants to heal you from that.

But until we are healed, here’s what happens. Number two, we adopt reflexive defense mechanisms. How to cope with our pain. Reflexive defense mechanisms.

Denial, like denying our own sin and struggles to avoid the pain. Or distortion. Distorting reality to suit our own inner needs. And it goes on to list things like projection rationalization repression suppression Phariseeism devaluation withdrawal idealization compensation all these kinds of things And as you go through that before the Lord, He’ll let you, He’ll reveal to you what are the things you’re doing in the way of defense mechanisms just to deal with your pain apart from being healed by coming to him.

Well, we also adopt personal coping strategies. Number one, wounded broken hearts. Number two, reflexive defense mechanisms. And number three, personal coping strategies to not be hurt again.

Things like isolationism, narrowing your borders to seemingly stay in control. Or perfectionism, having things done right to feel right. Or romanticism, dreaming of ideals to escape reality or materialism, getting nice things to soothe your heart and on and on to asceticism and workaholics and becoming funaholics and fightaholics and flightaholics and peopleaholics as I coined these phrases. There’s pride in posturing and misdirection and busyness and resorting to productivity and busyness, finishing more stuff to feel more satisfied and religiosity, using search ministry to escape responsibilities.

We do so many reflective personal coping strategies to deal with our pains and wounds. And then to cover all that up, we go above the surface, because all those things were below the surface, above the surface, public role-playing, where we portray being a godly person, being the overachiever, the cool dude, or the gracious hostess, or the submissive wife, or the providing husband, or the deeper counselor, or the fearless leader, or the impressive theologian. all kinds of role-playing things that we’re doing it from the outside in rather than the inside out.

Because these things can be good, but only if they come from the inside out. We bear fruit. We abide in Jesus to bear fruit. And we’re abiding in Jesus and he’s healing all of these things.

The fruit comes out the same way, but it’s the real deal. You can spot when somebody’s portraying kindness and goodness and faithfulness and loyalty and godliness, you can tell when it’s a real deal. It’s the difference between real juicy fruit and wax fruit that a gifted artist can create. And from a distance, that apple can look real, but all you got to do is take a bite in it and it’s wax.

And that’s the public role playing rather than the juicy version of abiding in Christ and letting us heal us and bring us to these types of things above the surface that are real in Him from the inside out And if we don and we continue the role playing then we fall into soothing but binding addictions They soothe our pain, seemingly, but it’s only for the moment and we actually get sicker. It’s like taking morphine to try to heal cancer. No, it just makes you feel better.

Soothing but binding, that’s number five, soothing but binding addictions. Binding our heart, ensnaring us, seduced into the snare and the fortress of the devil addicted and enslaved to sin you know of course drugs, sex and alcohol smoking, medications, pornography anorexia, bulimia, cutting things that don’t seem like addictions like flirting and approval seeking approval addictions we have approval addictions spending, winning we’re addicted to winning or else we’re miserable even addicted to leisure and become lazy these are soothing but binding addictions that the Lord wants to reveal and heal, my friends. Isn’t that cool? Again, he is our soul care shepherd.

He wants to creatively heal us of all of these inner heart level wounds. I got two more types, cognitive biases.

Now this kind of wounds come up and stay in place because of cognitive biases, how we blind ourselves in so many ways, like the empathy gap, believing we are mostly directed and driven by reason, not emotion. Not true. We’re emotional beings even if we don’t want to admit it. Selection bias.

Reflexively seeking out only the information that affirms our beliefs. Wow. Yeah, we do that a lot. Then there’s confirmation bias.

Interpreting and remember only the information that confirms what we already believe while ignoring or belittling alternative views. And there’s many others, hindsight bias, the bandwagon effect, the overconfidence effect, the third person effect, the illusion of control, the hostile attribution, the attitude polarization. And these will give you ideas of how we continually blind ourselves without realizing it. And then number seven, logical fallacies.

We had cognitive biases at number six.

Now, logical fallacies, how our perceptions and conclusions get skewed. the ad hominem fallacy attacking a person’s character rather than addressing their views the straw man fallacy exaggerating other person’s views to make it easier to attack the red herring fallacy changing or redirecting an argument away from your vulnerable position and there are others false dilemma hasty generalization isogesis cherry picking anecdotal evidence appeal to authority appeal to tradition appeal to emotions begging the questions slippery slope circular reasoning correlation proves causation the ecological fallacy and of course there are many others.

But I’m just giving you a glimpse of this in this little document that you can just sit before the Lord besides still waters and say, Lord, which of these are blinding and binding my heart? And honestly, I go through it periodically in my own life. And there’s 20 or 25 of those that I end up circling. Man, I’m doing that.

Oh, I did this in that situation. I didn’t even realize that. And it just draws us to himself. Draws us to himself.

Because we get to that point where I am dead tired and sick of all this stuff. I’m going nuts. I’m burning out. I just want to get off this merry-go-round.

I’m ready to quit. I’m just exhausted. exhausted. I’m frustrated. All right.

Hallelujah. Praise God. Why are you saying that, Brother Mark?

Because it’s when we come to the end of ourselves that we hear him saying, come to me, all who are weary laden, weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me for I am gentle and humble in heart and you will find rest for your souls. My burden is easy. It’s light.

He’s calling us to abide in him. Fall at his feet. Say, I can’t. I’m frustrated.

Yeah, I know, son. I know, honey. You’ve been white-knuckling it for a long time.

But look at all this stuff that’s going on. Just divide in me. And I’ll be healing those things in you because I am your creative healer. Well, the second dimension, and I know it’s one that people are very interested in.

We tend to neglect our heart. That’s why we need to focus on soul care. soul care is focusing on these things of the heart and a lot of your physical healing will come from dealing with these things not all of them but some of them which brings me to another handout you can find on my website and i’ll put these together towards the top of the section that says printable guides um the uh uh seven hidden things that blind and bind our hearts will be on there, but then you’ll see this one that’s called How He Is Our Creative Healer. And in it, I talk about 20 reasons why he allows physical infirmities, and then on the inside, a biblical journey about how Jesus healed. And it’s just a marvelous journey through many, many, many scriptures to see what a mosaic of healing stories.

And there’s no one particular pattern. We cannot formulize the Lord. He is our creative healer who cannot be formulized.

So when you go get this tool, the inside two-page spread is the biblical journey about how Jesus healed. And it gives you examples and the text references throughout the Gospels about when Jesus saw personal faith, many stories of how he healed people because of personal faith.

But sometimes it wasn’t the personal faith. Another array of examples are when Jesus saw faith for another, like the centurion had the faith for his servant to be healed. or the woman and the father who would go and ask for their daughter and son respectively to be healed and Jesus honored their faith or the friends who brought the paralytic and lowered them in front of Jesus It was by their faith that he healed them So sometimes Jesus heals when he saw personal faith sometimes another faith Sometimes he just healed in so many different ways we don’t have a category for him.

Sometimes he rebuked the fever, like in Peter’s mother-in-law.

Sometimes with a word he spoke, they were healed.

Sometimes he would lay on of hands.

Sometimes he would use spit. Actually, several times he used spit, and a finger and spit, and all kinds of different things.

Sometimes his cloak healed, even when somebody just touched it and he didn’t even know it, but he felt it go out of him. I mean, he did that. And then he healed the multitudes. And this will give you all the different texts for that and the stories.

And then when he healed through deliverance, a lot of healing through deliverance, but not all of them. And then how he healed through his disciples and we get stories in the Gospels and Acts, how he used his disciples to speak his healing.

So that’s a marvelous journey of how our creative healer works and also should give you a clue we can’t formulize divine healing. We can’t, but we can be aware and listen for his whispers about what’s the situation in our case. Which brings me to 20 biblical reasons why he allows physical infirmity. And here the quick list to gift us with priority healing That that triage thing I mentioned To gift us with timely healing Again it that triage thing I mentioned To gift us with ultimate healing Sometimes our healing is when we go to heaven.

That’s when we’ll get, and all of us will get our final healing there. Number four is to gift us with shareable comfort. Second Corinthians talked about how we can comfort others with the comfort he gives us. Number five is to gift us with prevailing grace.

That’s why we’re sick, to show us that my grace is sufficient for you, saith the Lord. He also does it to remind us of our temporary issued bodies, our temporary bodies. They were built to wear out. Our outer man decays, the inner man being renewed day by day.

Sometimes he’s prompting us toward nutritional lifestyles.

But then, Numbers 8 through 17 talks about he allows us to be physically ill to reveal and heal broken hearts. That’s number eight. Wayward hearts. that’s different than broken hearts, stressful anxiety, unforgiving bitterness, self-sufficient pride, fragile faith, quenched confession, willful disobedience, rebellious ways. And then he wants to, number 17, reveal and heal generational impacts, toxic soul ties he wants to heal demonic dynamics he wants to heal us from those and finally to glorify himself through all kinds of healing Now I know I just gave you a quick list of those things.

I know that there’s no way for you to grasp it. We can only do so much in 27 minutes on a given broadcast.

But I wanted to give you a glimpse of how it is crazily complex. It is multi-layered. It’s a mosaic thing. There’s no one formula, no one magic prayer or ointment or practice.

It’s going to automatically be physical healing or inner healing. It’s a process. It’s a journey. Most importantly, it is an intimate relationship with our creative healer, who is our soul care shepherd. because the Lord wants to lovingly and gradually reveal and heal our heart wiring, how he uniquely designed to center our heart wounds, my friends, who use these tools and enjoy them in Jesus’ name.

Thank you, Lord. Until next time, fall in love with Jesus, our creative healer.