We had a very touching Women’s Pure Heart Weekend this past weekend. The women were quite diverse in their place in life today, but they shared similar stories of the negligence in a father’s love, the abuse from peers and siblings, and for some of them, the pain of how this played out in divorce. Lots of tears were shared. Both kinds. There were the tears from the pain, as old memories stirred in the heart. But there were the tears of joy, in the presence of Christ, as He relayed the love and comfort of The Father. One of them called me as I was writing this blog, telling me that when she got home from the retreat she ran to her husband, hugged him and kissed him, and apologized for her hurtful ways over the years. He wept. She said, too, that every time she prays now, she feels her heart being washed and cleansed even more.
We see a common thread at many Pure Heart Weekends. As our stories become more apparent to us, it’s not that one parent judged you, criticized your choices or your identity; it’s not that peers piled on top of that and also judged you, mocked you and made fun of who you were. It’s that you did it to yourself, too. You gave in to their judgments. You agreed silently with their criticisms, and you judged yourself with the same words. A seed was buried in the soil of your heart. But it wasn’t from the Sower with the word of God. No, it was the word of the enemy. Then, that seed grew a bitter root in your heart. It grew to include a judgment against God for making you the way He did. This spiritual darkness growing in your heart is called the bitter, root judgment of self.
Before forgiving your parents, before forgiving your siblings and your old friends, you have to do something else. Before you deal with the anger and hatred you have toward them, you have to heal your pain, for the pain is the source of your anger. (That’s why we say that anger is a secondary emotion; it appears second. What’s first? The pain.)
You have to come to the God of all comfort (2 Cor 1:3-6), and make an exchange. In His healing presence you must exchange that bitter judgment for His loving affirmation. You need His love and acceptance to enter into this place in your soul where the bitterness dwells. For, do you realize, this bitterness is built around your own self-rejection. And if you reject yourself, then you are judging yourself as unworthy of the Love of God. Only the Lord Jesus, entering into this place in your soul, can heal you. Again, by agreeing in your soul with the judgments and criticisms of others, you have convinced yourself that you are unworthy of His love and acceptance. Therefore, there is a place in your soul that has not yielded to the Gospel of Love, and in that place you are still hardened in self-judgment.
Pray. In the presence of the Lord Jesus, give Him permission to pull this bitter root out of your soul. Confess your agreement with it. Renounce your agreement with it. Go back in your memory bank to a hurtful memory of when that judgment flew into your heart, and renounce your agreement on that day. Invite the Lord Jesus into the memory (since He was actually there that day, too!) and turn to Him and release that sin of self-judgment with this prayer:
Dear Lord Jesus, I have been unable to live before you and accept myself as your child. I have been a slave in bondage to my toxic critical agreements about myself. I release these judgments to Your cross. I now agree that you have taken it away, for You bore my sorrow and my grief, as well as my sin. In the past I have rejected Your truth, and built my life around protecting and reacting out of these hurt emotions. As you train me in grace, I will walk away from this hurtful way of believing. As I live in your forever state of forgiveness, and as I release this self-hatred, I proclaim: IN THE NAME OF THE LORD JESUS CHRIST, BY THE POWER OF MY CO-CRUCIFIXION WITH HIM, I RENOUNCE THE SIN OF SELF-HATRED, and I receive the Love of the Father, the Grace of the Lord Jesus, in companionship with The Holy Spirit. Amen.
And God will change you at the level of Identity.
-Carter