Well, good morning, my friends, and welcome to the Heritage Hour. I’m Mark Gonzales, your pastoral and soul care encourager here in Southwest Florida. And I’m so delighted to be with you on air, online, and in media ministry for about 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’ve been with us, you know that we’ve been going through a marvelous series. I’m just enjoying this so much. I call it the Abiding Presence Portraits of God.

It’s following up one that I did earlier this year called the Soul Care Portraits of God. And we’re coming to number seven of eight broadcasts on this topic, this peak at how the Lord is indeed our abiding presence in all the different ways his manifest presence. Well, unfolds in our life.

And so I hope you’re enjoying this. We’re looking at these portraits and a lot of sub portraits. By the way, remember when Moses was at the burning bush and he asked the Lord what his name was. You remember what God said?

I am. what i am whatever you need is what he’s saying and so all of these portraits are all the different things all the different ways all the different hearts all the different dynamics about the reality of god in our lives that’s why i just love doing these broadcasts this way just to highlight his portraits which we see throughout the scripture to give us a picture of his heart, his ways, his character.

And so we’re looking at the abiding presence portraits of God. And if you’ve been with us, you know that we covered how he’s our inner presence. We unpacked that. He’s our holy presence in addition to being our comforting presence.

And then we had sub-portraits in each of those. And then we went to how he is our whispering presence. Oh, that was fun to talk about. Last time was how he is our transformative presence and a cousin to that is the portrait we’re looking at today.

Another way his abiding presence is manifested and that is that he is our healing presence. Can’t wait to unpack this and actually we covered some of this in the soul care series when we talked about how he is our soul care shepherd and our healing creator and our creative healer and constant conversation and deeper dive Oh that a powerful one And our wondrous mystery Oh that portrait powerful too Okay I love them all What can I tell you But anyway I just want you to know that I love doing this I love making them available to you on my website at markpg And by the way I been tweaking it the last several weeks making it crazy easy to navigate All you have to do, especially if you’re using your phone, is just go to markpg.org. Wait for it to load up with a little video background vertically. And then when you get ready to scroll, go horizontal because we created it to be much more readable and scrolling down.

And I have a quick start tools section right there in the first page. Quick start tools where you just see the flow of what Soul Care is all about. and you can just click on an article, click on a quick guide, click on a radio broadcast, click on the radio series notes. And I just uploaded the Abiding Presence portrait notes, including the one for next week when we finish up the series so you can follow along.

But it’s right there. You can print it out. It’s about three pages of the eight outlines or so of all of these broadcasts.

So, hey, yeah, I just wanted to let you know that we made it very, very easy to go to that landing page and just scroll down horizontally on your phone. And it’s very easy to follow along. And then all the other things that are on there as well.

But that’ll give you a quick start.

So that’s at markpg.org. And I hope you’ll check that out.

Now let’s get ready to go into the, oh, this marvelous portrait of how he is our healing presence. Yet another of many, many, many, many ways we can experience his abiding presence. deep within us. And as we get started, as is our custom, let’s just go before the Lord and ask him to speak, shall we? Lord, I love sitting at your feet.

I love listening for your heart. I love to sit down with my brothers and sisters and we can just share hearts and compare notes. And in this case, I get to do the talking, but you know what, Lord, ultimately you’re doing the talking. Oh, we want to hear your voice, Lord, especially as we’re going through what some will consider controversial.

I like to call it mysterious healing presence, healing ways that you give us throughout the scriptures.

So I pray you’ll help me be able to explain it well and encourage my brothers and sisters to take that deeper and deeper and deeper dive into you and today discover how you indeed are our healing presence oh thank you lord we love you lord and 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 and talking about the lord is our healing presence i’ve got five sub portraits for this one to just give us a glimpse of his heart and his ways. We’re going to go to 1 Peter chapter 2 24 and Jeremiah 17 14 if you’re a note taker or you can just again just download them and print them out at my website at markpg.org this abiding present portrait series but the first sub-portrait is how he is our great physician. I want to talk about His great physician presence because 1 Peter 2 24 makes it so clear that when the Lord came and did His work on the cross there was a ton of healing that was provided through that sacrificial death on the cross that we might become one with Him. 1 Peter 2 24 puts it this way He Himself brought our sins in His body up on the cross so that we might die to sin and live for righteousness.

By his wounds you were healed. And then I wanted to add Jeremiah 17, 14 as the scriptural basis for this particular portrait where it says, Heal me, Lord, I will be healed. Save me and I will be saved for you are my praise. well my friend this particular passage in first peter and it’s also mentioned elsewhere how by his wounds we are healed sometimes gets co-opted to focus on just the physical healing thing and all the different controversies that revolve around that but this is so much deeper than that and simply put let me just share this there are three types of healing that the lord is talking about here. His salvation work on the cross, his atoning work on the cross, his spilling his blood for us, making it possible to come into a personal covenant relationship with him, does bring about healing.

Three types of healing of our spirit, of our soul, and our body. It’s not just about physical healing. That’s just one of the three. And simply put, the most important one, obviously is how our spirits need to be healed In fact it needs to be resurrected because as we seen in previous broadcasts scripture tells us we dead in our trespasses and sin That the original sin Adam and Eve passed on to us when they ate of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and God warned them in that day you shall surely die and their spirits died.

Soul and body didn’t die immediately but their spirits did and that got passed down to all the generations to us.

So our spirits are being healed, in fact, resurrected and all when we get saved because of the work on the cross.

But there are other parts of you that still need a lot of work, which brings us to the second portrait. We’ve just seen that he is our great physician presence. That’s part of his healing presence.

Now, another sub-portrait is how, what I, this is, I love this one. It’s going to be a Priority presence. When the Lord does his healing in our lives, once we get saved and we’re still on this earth, our spirits have been saved, totally healed, done deal.

But our souls are in progress. Our mind and will and emotions, that’s the soul, the mind, will and emotions. That’s in progress. It’s always in progress of being healed.

And then our bodies, there’s some physical healing while we’re on this earth to be sure, but sometimes he’ll delay it or he’ll say, you’ll be totally healed in glory in heaven.

So our spirits are immediately and totally healed. We saw that in the transformative presence of God last week, and we see it again here. Our spirit, that’s a done deal. Our soul is in progress though.

We are still having to work out what the Lord has worked in. We still have some leftover sin patterns and all like cesspools.

Now we’re not creating. We’re not sinners anymore. We’re not like a fire hydrant spewing out sin like we were when we were unsaved. When we got saved, that fire hydrant was replaced.

And now we gush out rivers of living water because the living water lives within us.

But we have all these cesspools left over from the old days like envy and strife and lust and these are the things. It’s a stinky, sometimes a deep cesspool. We get tempted by the enemy to go back in there convinced that we’re not really saved, we’re not really healed, but we are. And we swim around those cesspools.

No, we don’t have to. We’re just being duped to. And the Lord’s healing is helping us discover that and believe that and receive that and walk in the power over sin. And He does the cleaning up of the cesspools to the degree. abide in him to bear much fruit.

Now, the Lord in his triage priority, when we’re praying for physical healing, because that’s the thing that seems to be the most pressing to us, he says, you know what, there’s something more important here. I’m doing triage. This is like a highway pileup and the EMS people come and they survey the situation. They decide who’s most seriously injured and what those injuries are and how serious they are.

And the Lord does the same thing with us when we’re praying for healing. The spirit’s already done, but now mind, will, and emotions. Are your thought processes askew? Are you got emotional issues going on, psychological issues going on, and they’re impacting your body?

The Lord makes a decision about what he wants to tackle first in you, what he wants to heal first in you, to open your eyes, to see, and to receive it. Is that cool or what?

So sometimes he’ll do instantaneous bodily healing. We don’t see that all that often. Usually he takes more of a gradual approach because it is an inner healing, an integrated healing of our tripart being that is involved here.

So I just want you to be at peace, my friends. When you’re thinking about the Lord and you’re appealing to him for healing, He is our great physician. We saw that. He did his work on the cross, but there’s three types of healing going on.

But there’s a triage priority that he’s selecting as he works with you. And it’s irrelevant what he’s doing with the person next to you or across the hallway or whatever it is. He works with us differently depending upon what’s most important for you and your well-being. And that’s triage.

All right.

So, he is our healing presence. our great physician presence, our triage priority presence. Let me give you a third one. It’s our soul restoring presence, our soul restoring presence. This is weaving in the previous series and other things I’ve said by going back to Psalm 23.

By the way, come to think of it, I don’t know that I gave you the passages for the triage priority presence. It’s 1 Thessalonians 5.23 where it says, now may the God of peace sanctify you entirely. That’s progressive sanctification, progressive healing right there. And may your spirit and soul and body be kept complete without blame at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.

So that’s our tripart being, 1 Thessalonians 5.23. And then John 16 tells us in this world Jesus said in this world you will have tribulation but take courage I have overcome the world You going to have tribulation You going to have illness and sickness You going to have emotional issues. You’re going to have wounds and heart wounds and all that stuff. It’s a brutal world.

He’s telling you it is, but I’ve overcome it because I’m your great physician and I’m your triage priority. And now we’re seeing how he is our soul restoring presence. Psalm 23. This is the theme passage for the whole website about soul care.

The Lord is my shepherd. I will not want or be in need. He lets me or makes me lie down in green pastures. He leads me beside quiet waters.

He restores my soul.

Now, I’ve been talking about that throughout the two series that I’ve done most recently about soul care. He restores our soul. He’s our soul care shepherd. He’s soul restoring.

In Psalm 147, Psalm 147 verse 3, he puts it this way. He heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds. My friends, we are brokenhearted. We do have wounds.

It’s a brutal world, as I mentioned. A lot of things are going on. It’s not because he’s not taking care of you. He is.

He’s just letting sin play out because free will must be at play. He’s not going to trump your free will.

But boy, do we get ourselves in trouble and others who sin against us hurt us. That’s just part of how this world is set up.

But take heart. He has overcome it. my presence, my presence, my presence is the thing that will keep you, that will heal you. Our great physician presence, our triage priority presence, soul restoring presence. Then listen to this in Ephesians 3, 16 through 17.

I love this one. That he would grant you, according to the riches of his glory to be strengthened with power through his spirit in the inner self so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. There it is, my friends. Healing is not so much about him changing the circumstances in your body or magically changing your emotional state.

He says, no, live in my presence. Commune with me. Listen for my whispers. I will speak to you.

I will encourage you I will do the work Just abide in me Immerse yourself in me Be absolutely saturated in me I dwell in you You dwell in me i abide in you you abide in me and guess what these things get healed and sometimes they trigger out trigger out to the bodily part but he’s certainly doing the soul part in addition to the spirit part that he’s already done is that cool now if you want some specifics there’s actually a tool on that front landing page of the website because I talk about how the Lord wants to heal our heart wounds. And there’s a tool there you can click on. It says seven things that blind and bind our hearts. All right.

Seven things that blind and binds our hearts. And it takes you through a journey of our own inner self, our own inner hearts. Just here’s the overview. And again, you can see it.

You can just a two page, you know, fold over thing, like a little booklet. You can just look at the diagram because first it starts with wounded, broken hearts and all the ways that that happens. We have non-sinful responses. Then there’s Satan’s seduction to get bitter about it.

And those are the sinful reactions we have to guard against.

But what happens is when we have wounded, broken hearts, we get triggered so easily. And then this is way below the surface that you can’t see. Then that’s where it starts. wounded, broken hearts. Then we come up with these reflexive defense mechanisms like denial, distortion, projection, rationalization, and so forth.

Then in addition to that, we have a third of the seven things, personal coping strategies to deal with all the wounds and pains and frustrations and hurts. Isolationism, perfectionism, romanticism, materialism, etc. It lists a lot. Then above the surface, we resort to public role-playing. We become the overachiever or the cool dude or the perfect parent or the sensitive friend or the joyful Christian and we portray these things rather than letting them actually being born by the spirit within us and we bear the fruit of these very same things.

But we do public role playing in the flesh. It’s like wax fruit, a wax apple. It looks good on the outside, but take a bite, it’s not real. A real apple is juicy.

You take a bite of that, it’s wonderful.

So public role-playing is when we portray real fruit, but it’s actually wax fruit. And it takes an enormous amount of energy to portray on the outside what’s not happening on the inside.

And so again, this goes into it all. When we do that, with all that pain and all that effort, then we start resorting and being seduced into soothing but binding addictions That what the enemy does It about addictions are about dealing with our pain Drugs and alcohol sex smoking porn anorexia etc But even things like approval addictions, winning addictions, flirting addictions and stuff. Yeah, we’re a red hot mess. And to round off the seven, there are cognitive biases.

How we blind ourselves in so many ways. Empathy gap, selection biases, confirmation biases. bandwagon effects, all that. And then number seven, logical fallacies. And this messes with our interpretation of scripture and interpretation of people and interpretation of what’s happening at work and stuff.

Ad hominem arguments, straw man fallacies, red herring, and so forth. It’s a great tool. It gives you a great picture of the struggle of the heart, the wounds of the heart, but the reality that the Lord is our healing presence and healing comes through broken prayer with community and counsel and confession at the cross where his blood only cleanses sin not excuses and also heals wounds that we may be burying and just playing the games and the public role-playing and all the different things I just mentioned to survive. The Lord wants to clean your heart, heal your heart, my friend.

He is our creative healer. In fact, that’s a whole other series I did a couple of years ago, how he is our creative healer who cannot be formalized. And I give you these 20 biblical reasons why he allows physical infirmity, and it’s a marvelous journey.

But know this, he is our great physician our triage priority presence our soul restoring presence and he also is our sovereign protective presence wow now wait a minute you may think what about 9-11 weren’t there Christians up there how come they died he wasn’t there he didn’t protect them all the other tragedies around the world where is God when you need him it seems like he’s not there and a lot of people suffer good questions So let me take you to Psalm 23. We’re going to go back there. We saw in the first few verses how he is our soul care shepherd.

But in the next few verses, four and five, we see how he is our sovereign protective presence. listen to this even though i walk through the valley of the shadow of death i fear no evil you are with me you rod and your staff they comfort me you prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies look at that language valleys and shadows well guess what normal.

But the Lord is with you and his rod and his staff protect you. And he prepares a table, even the presence of enemies. Don’t worry about them. The Lord is with you.

In fact, the psalmist also puts it this way in Psalm 18 too. The Lord is my rock, my fortress, my savior, my God, my rock in whom I take refuge, my shield and the horn of my salvation, my stronghold. Mark that one down, my friends. Psalm 18.2.

Well, how does that answer the question about whoever’s got a 9-11 when good Christians died or got maimed and all of that? Well, he was right there. He was right there, my friends. You see, no matter what valley you’re in, what shadows you’re experiencing, what hurricanes you’re enduring, hurricanes will come, tornadoes will come, fires will happen, tragedies will happen.

Jesus again said, you will have tribulation.

But you see, when you enveloped with my presence, I will help you deal with it. I couldn get this for a while but when Hurricane Charlie came through about 2000 I think it was four or five here in Florida my wife wanted us to board up and it was a little one out in the Gulf and it was going up to Tampa, and I thought she was being overreactive, and I was complaining to the Lord Aradett, and he said, he began to talk to me, and he said, son, I never promised to protect you from the hurricanes. I promised to be with you through the hurricanes, but you don’t know which way it’s going to go. boy did that hit me my whining turned into repentance said lord you’re right you never promise i’m just assuming it’s going to bypass us it may not and so i was on my way to work when that conversation was going in the road and instead of turning left to go to work i turned right and went to the lumber company started getting boards and all the stuff i needed to board up and a good thing I did because Hurricane Charlie took a hard right totally unexpectedly before it got to Tampa and it came to Fort Myers and we were hit hard but the Lord was with us and he was with me in that day when I was being a jerk and he said part of my protection is you to prepare. Don’t presume about tomorrow you will have tribulation and it could get rough and people are living very rough things But the presence of the Lord The sovereign protection of the Lord Is his presence with us To deal with those things.

And by the way. When hurricanes are roaring up above the water. The safest place to be. Is the deepest.

Deepest part of the gulf. Or the ocean. You won’t even feel it. Hence the deeper dive.

That’s message 150. I did a long time ago. you can look at my website. We take a deeper dive into Christ. The deeper you go into Christ, the more he protects you from being overwhelmed emotionally or spiritually or psychologically because he’s with you.

He says, I got you. We’re going to make it through this. I never promise to protect you from the storms, the hurricanes, the fires, the tribulations. I promise to be with you with my sovereign protective presence and soul restoring presence and triage, praxority, presence, and great physician presence.

And the last one, this bondage-breaking presence. The one we’re covering today is the last one, but there’s so many more. 2 Timothy 2, 25 through 26. By the way earlier broadcast I think I said 2 Corinthians Mistake will be inciting this one But this is where it says God may grant you repentance leading to the knowledge of the truth that you can come to their senses and escape from the snare of the devil, having been held captive by him to do his will.

It’s spiritual warfare. There’s bondage going on. Then 2 Corinthians 10, 4 through 6 says, the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh, but divinely powerful for the destruction of fortresses or strongholds. Isn’t that powerful?

We are destroying arguments and vain speculations raised against the knowledge of God and taking every thought captive in obedience to Christ. Don’t fall to the deception and the arguments and speculations that the enemy puts into your mind to deny God, to distrust God. It becomes a stronghold of thought that keeps you trapped. And the Lord wants to free you up.

Oh, my friend, He is our healing presence. Lord, we thank You for that. We receive that in Jesus’ name. Amen.

Well, I’m Mark Gonzales, and I hope you’ll check out my website at markpg.org for more. Until next time, fall in love with Jesus, our healing presence.