Heal Me and I Will Be Healed

Posted on by Jennifer Arimborgo

Old Treasures on Tuesdays 👑

Daddy's arms

“Heal me, O Lord, and I will be healed; save me and I will be saved, for you are the one I praise.” (Jer. 17:14, NIV).

Yesterday we talked about the beautiful heart of our Abba Father. If you read it and found yourself with a block keeping you from relating to God as Daddy, this post is for you. If your heart cannot yet see Him as a gentle Papa, then He wants to heal you so that you can.

When our earthly fathers have not modeled for us the tenderness of God, then it becomes extremely difficult for us to relate to that aspect of His nature. However we perceived our fathers as we grew up, is how we will naturally have come to perceive God, our ultimate paternal authority figure.

If your dad was impatient, harsh, and demanding, you will find yourself cringing when you try to draw close to your heavenly Father. You will imagine Him unhappy with your imperfect attempts to obey Him. This, dear one, is so immeasurably far from who He really is. He wants to restore you, so that you can see Him correctly.

Let’s revisit 1 John 4:18 as we look into this concept. “There is no fear in love; but perfect love casts out fear, because fear involves torment. But he who fears has not been made perfect in love” (NKJV). One way to measure how healed you are, is to evaluate how much fear still resides in your life. When the perfect love of God has completely permeated your being, there will be no fear left.

The phrase here, “not been made perfect in love” is not a chastising one. It does not refer to moral failure. Nor is it describing someone who struggles intensely with sin and therefore has fallen miserably short of being perfect. Rather, the word “perfect,” teleios in the Greek, means “mature or complete.” The person who lives in fear has not yet been made complete by love. She or he has not yet been restored to wholeness.

Similarly, the Old Testament word “restore,” shalam in Hebrew, means to make whole or complete. It comes from the well-known noun shalom, which in its most basic form means “peace.” Daddy longs to make us complete in His peace! However, we can dig even deeper, as shalom has a much more extensive translation. This exquisitely rich word includes the meanings, “completeness, wholeness, health, peace, wellbeing, safety, soundness, tranquility, prosperity, perfectness, fullness, rest, harmony, the absence of agitation or discord.”

Wow! Think on that! So when Holy Spirit tells us that Jesus is the Prince of Peace (Is. 9:6), this means that He is

  • The Prince of Completeness
  • The Prince of Wholeness
  • The Prince of Health
  • The Prince of Wellbeing
  • The Prince of Safety
  • The Prince of Soundness
  • The Prince of Tranquility
  • The Prince of Prosperity
  • The Prince of Fullness
  • The Prince of Rest
  • The Prince of Harmony
  • The Prince Who Eliminates Agitation and Discord!

And what wonderful news we find in the next verse! “Of the increase of His government and peace there will be no end…” (v. 7, NKJV). In other words, in every heart where King Jesus has established His government, shalom is going to be constantly on the increase! Wholeness, completeness, wellbeing, harmony, and all the rest, are going to be growing ceaselessly inside of that person!

My friend, if you have not yet been made complete in God’s love, you have come to the right place. If you were scarred by fathering that left your heart starved for affection and nurturing, the Prince of Peace is ready to restore you. He yearns to make you whole with His perfect love. He is pleading with you, Please, please do not resign yourself to living broken. He didn’t shed His precious blood for you to remain incomplete, hurting, and plagued by fear. He purchased wholeness for you, pouring out His everything to heal you. Run into His arms and ask Him to begin your restoration process today!

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Have you experienced life-changing emotional healing through the power of the Holy Spirit?

 

 

27 thoughts on “Heal Me and I Will Be Healed”

  1. I am feeling so much condemnation from this post. I experienced abuse in my home and the thought that Jesus sees me as incomplete – when His Word tells me I am already healed by His stripes- doesn’t make sense to me at all. Doesn’t He see me as complete in Him already and isn’t He unfolding piece by piece that perfect love (that casts out fear) in each of us: or are there complete children of God and incomplete children of God? My understanding (but maybe I am wrong?), is that this completion is revealed in us in heaven?:

    John 6:35-40 The Message version: […] My part is to put them on their feet alive and WHOLE at the COMPLETION of time.”

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  2. Thanks you for this. The focus scripture is what I used for my devotion this morning dealing with Overcoming Victim Mentality. I understand what you mean about completeness as the salvation experience does not make us perfect, but we are being renewed in God day by day. We become the righteousness of God as his blood covers all our sins and weaknesses and he makes us alive and well in him. 🙏🏾

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      2. Just now seeing this; my replies are extra slow currently because I am on a long ministry trip until the end of the year, but I always eagerly look forward to the opportunity to get on here and talk to my WordPress friends! I am going to read it now, excited to check it out 🙂 Thank you, Anneta!

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  3. Hmm: God brought this verse to mind-

    James 1:4
    And let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.

    I see this as occurring in each trial we face: that Jesus reveals His perfection in us, piece by piece, as He takes us through new trials. We never stop growing is how I saw it.

    This fits for me with Corrie ten Boom’s humble example also, where her repeated trials (even up to her death) kept revealing her weakness and need for Jesus and she (in her fears) turned to Him to become her completion in that new trial.

    I remember asking for prayer in my fears (in wanting to obey God’s prompting to serve someone) and my pastor and a visiting teacher told me: oh don’t worry, when you get mature in your faith you won’t fear anymore – as if they had reached that point. Not long later I saw both of them become afraid and act on those fears.

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  5. And don’t trusting children come to their Papa in their fears? Aren’t we to be like little children to enter the Kingdom of God? Like King David who said not “if” but “WHEN I am afraid, I will trust in you” (and it’s that trust that admits when we are afraid – again and again- that we need Jesus to BE our Perfection in each new trial).

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  6. Could that “maturity” be in fact that we go to Jesus (our perfection) right away when fear flares? I know I don’t yet do so. That is something I see God is growing in me – to come up onto His lap right away when fears attack me. So maturity isn’t that that kid is perfect and the less mature one isn’t: it’s that the one has learnt to trust (go to) his/her perfection (Jesus) before anything(coping mechanism)/anyone else?

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  7. And BTW God rebuked me in the anger that flared as I began to reply to you. The verse be slow to anger and quick to listen came to my heart. And it’s then I paused to turn to God directly and He reminded me by His Spirit of what He has been showing me about having a heart of humility being the one to openly confess her weakness and sins. So: Jennifer, I apologize for the tone in my first messages that were written in fear and not in love toward you or myself or others. Praise Jesus for His humbling and the Way He teaches us to come to Him in that fear. Keep humbling me, Papa. I love Your meek and humble Spirit.

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  9. Wow wow wow! Incredible what unfolded next. My daughter got angry, so angry and this time my response: oh Mummy gets that anger. You are afraid, Sweety. Let’s come to Jesus with that. And I sung the made-up song I always sing to my girls in their fear but changed “trust” to “come to”. “When I am afraid I will come to You” x 3 and then “cause You’ve got me in the palm of Your hands hands hands and wow! She melted, apologized and leant into my hug, whole-heartedly and asked me to repeat the song till she could sing it herself. Only Jesus! Boast in our weakness and He comes!!!!

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  10. And another really cool thing is that yesterday my Prodigal elderly friend confessed she was judging her friend and I said: “you I have been convicted of the same thing the past few days.” And so as she talked about how to stop doing so, I said: maybe this is one of those moments we can ask God to help us. Let’s lay it at His feet in prayer. And we did so. Well, today I woke up with the verse to forgive one another so God can forgive us also. And it hurt my heart as I connected the dots. But as I got afraid, I invited Jesus to uncover that unforgiveness in me and to help me to forgive. Well, then in an email support group I am in that same verse is one a member sighted for someone she knew who had just confessed bitterness and unforgiveness in her heart and asked us to pray that she would realize God couldn’t forgive her if she didn’t forgive these other people. Well, I listened to her heart and prayerfully replied: saying to her that it is incredible that this woman came into the light with her sin and that this told me the member of our group was shining so much love upon her for that to have happened. And then I said: you know Corrie ten Boom realized she couldn’t forgive the guard who had beaten her sister in the concentration camp but then God gave her a verse: that He had shed HIS love abroad in her heart by the Holy Spirit. She realized that yes, she couldn’t in her own strength but God could through her in that love HE had placed inside her (Jesus). And Jesus did help her as His Holy Spirit filled her with love for that man so she could forgive him whole heartedly.

    And now as this all unfolded through your post, my eyes opened to what God was uncovering that I had confessed to my email support group: that I was afraid of them rejecting me because they are believers. I told them that I expected them to hurt me and I hated that. Well, through this God showed me why I am so afraid of that: because I haven’t fully forgiven the abuse done to me in the Name of God through believers in my life (including my parents). I thought I had fully forgiven it all because I feel like I understand why they acted as they did and that it wasn’t intended to hurt me (just as I didn’t intend to hurt them in my reaction) – it’s like a generational pattern of abuse (that I have cried out to God to stop with me).

    But I realized: if I am afraid, I feel judged, but if I feel condemnation I am NOT abiding in Jesus but in the enemy’s accusations. And lo and behold I am of course accusing complete strangers (just because they are believers) of intending and desiring to hurt me. Dear God forgive me. That is so awful. But I also realize I can’t “get rid” of my unforgiveness and bitterness. So Jesus: I lay it at Your feet and just as Corrie did, I now take ahold of that love You have shed abroad in my heart. I nestle up into the palms of Jesus, where I am safe, and in that love Papa I forgive all the believers who have ever hurt me, intentionally or unintentionally. Now flood me with that perfect love to complete that forgiveness in me. Amen.

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  11. And now it all makes sense! I read your first message when you headed out as a missionary as a young woman and I was like: wow! That was me when I came home – when Jesus picked me up and carried me home in 2014 and I asked myself why I started to believe that my confidence (in blessing others much older than me) in Jesus was “prideful”? And I realized it’s because I saw that reflected back to me in the eyes of those I blessed in full confidence with the Words God gave me. But they couldn’t receive it from this unexpected messenger of God: a returned Prodigal and a woman recovering from PTSD. They saw my past and they saw my weakness as proof I wasn’t to be trusted. But now I remember what God showed me: every place we accuse others falsely (like I did), it comes because we haven’t received His forgiveness for those very things (so these believers hadn’t received Jesus in their past and in their weakness). But instead of abiding in the confidence God had given me that He had covered my past in His grace and that He was my perfect power in my weakness, I began to believe those accusing looks, as those childhood wounds were triggered when I spoke up as a little girl and was not received by my parents and had to watch as they continued to harm the one I spoke up for. Twenty years later God led my Mama to repentance, right before she went to heaven for what I had spoken up for: exactly when God opened my eyes to see His love for me.

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  12. I wish I could give you a big huge hug, Jennifer!! You have been God’s love to me again and again and it’s just floored me. I get why people feel Jesus in your church: I feel Him in you from afar. Thank you so much for being you – what a gift you have been to me

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    1. Dear Anna, I am just now once again catching up on my blog comments. My brother was here visiting until last night, such a special privilege, as it had been twenty years since the last time he was here!

      I am so sorry that you initially felt triggered when reading my post. But also so glad that in the end Holy Spirit used the process of going through it with Him to deepen everything He has been teaching you.

      I wholeheartedly agree with you that none of us have “arrived,” and none of us fully will until we get to heaven! When I was passionately sharing a desire for hurting people to allow Jesus to heal them, it was not at all from a place of seeing broken or hurting people as any less valuable or virtuous. I just have experience such deep, deep healing and know that Jesus our Healer wants to heal everyone that comes to Him, and I long for more and more people to experience that aspect of who He is. It seems that so many people don’t know Him that way yet. I know that the longing I feel for them (and all of us) to experience His healing nature is His own longing that He is sharing with me.

      It would be analogous to me seeing someone with a broken bone who didn’t know that there was a medical center just half a block away where they could receive care and get their bone set and healing. If I had my bone set and healed there, of course I would want to share with them that they could receive the same wonderful care. That doesn’t mean I think less of them because their bone is broken. On the contrary! It’s precisely because of how precious and valuable they are that I want them to know they can be healed, that they don’t have to put up with a broken bone for the rest of their life.

      I also observe, in my personal journey, that healing has happened to me both in specific moments of encounter with His presence, and over a lifetime. More and more and more and more each month and year, His perfect love drives out fear. Of course fear still attacks, being the enemy’s number one weapon together with lies. But the deeper Jesus reveals His love to me, the less effective those attacks become. Doesn’t mean I don’t have to “fight the good fight” against attacks. I sure do! I am pretty sure none of us ever outgrows the need to do so, to put on the armor every day and take our stand.

      Maturity in His love is not a specific point that we get to at some moment after years of journey. It’s something that just keeps on growing and growing in us, as Holy Spirit transforms us from glory to glory into the image of Jesus. Meanwhile, amen! He does see us as perfect and complete through His precious blood! We are growing and healing into that which He already purchased for us at Calvary. May His love take us daily deeper into what is already ours.

      You are exceedingly precious to Jesus, my beautiful sister. I am so proud of you and your yearning to keep on growing and knowing Him more.

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      1. Dear Jennifer,

        Wow! 20 years! Cannot imagine how amazing that reunion was! I didn’t see my family for 4.5 years and it was INCREDIBLE!! Thank You, Jesus, for this overflow of Your kindness toward Jennifer and toward her brother and their families. Continue to shower them all in even more kindness in the coming weeks.

        Yes: I agree He wants to heal us and I believe that healing continues until heaven. I am still watching Him heal Grandma friends of mine, who are so much more mature in their faith – I praise God for their open sharing and humility.

        It’s interesting reading you explain things in your comment and you pointing out that fear still assails the mature also. I think that’s something your post was lacking, that admission of continued weakness in which Christ’s power arises more quickly, as we learn to lean into Him more quickly. I think it is SO important to admit that when sharing with those who are not as far along in their healing: it’s that admission of your weakness that helps us feel less alone, better understood and invites the compassion and nearness of Christ to flow into our hearts.

        I have had so much fear lifted, and have experienced such deep deep healing already, but I also know God is still healing me – but I also believe He is still healing more mature Christians also.

        I have watched my confessions of weakness and sin and God’s compassion for me give an older friend of mine new sight and lift so much fear in her relationship with a Prodigal and it has helped her and her husband to love this woman more deeply, as they have turned to God’s Word and my life story that proves the Word as true, rather than what they see. I am seeing that love of Jesus growing in them, also transform their loved one, who is now walking out of sin into God’s grace more and more, as my friend and her husband have claimed God’s Promises for their loved one in prayer.

        A few days after responding to your post, God led me to this Scripture below and reminded me how fear has assailed me every time He has called me to speak up, but how He has been teaching me to confess that fear and come to Him for help in that fear. I really believe that perfection unfolding in us is ALL Jesus, not us – and that that perfection is revealed in our admission/confession of imperfection and weakness.

        Here is the Scripture:

         Galatians 2 MSG

        17-18 Have some of you noticed that we are not yet perfect? (No great surprise, right?) And are you ready to make the accusation that since people like me, who go through Christ in order to get things right with God, aren’t perfectly virtuous, Christ must therefore be an accessory to sin? The accusation is frivolous. If I was “trying to be good,” I would be rebuilding the same old barn that I tore down. I would be acting as a pretender.
        19-21 What actually took place is this: I tried keeping rules and working my head off to please God, and it didn’t work. So I quit being a “law man” so that I could be God’s man. Christ’s life showed me how, and enabled me to do it. I identified myself completely with him. Indeed, I have been crucified with Christ. My ego is no longer central. It is no longer important that I appear righteous before you or have your good opinion, and I am no longer driven to impress God. Christ lives in me. The life you see me living is not “mine,” but it is lived by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. I am not going to go back on that.
        21 Is it not clear to you that to go back to that old rule-keeping, peer-pleasing religion would be an abandonment of everything personal and free in my relationship with God? I refuse to do that, to repudiate God’s grace. If a living relationship with God could come by rule-keeping, then Christ died unnecessarily.

        So, I still don’t completely agree with your post, if I am honest, but it was so helpful to root me deeper in the truth God has been grounding me in through the fear assailing me. So: for that I am so thankful to you xoxo

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      2. All good, we can “agree to disagree,” flowing in wonderful unity and harmony as His sisters. One of the difficulties of a blog post meant as a quick devo is that it’s not possible to include every angle of a subject. But I certainly do use some of my posts to share about my imperfections and growth process. Thanks so much for sharing your further thoughts, my treasured sister. Sending you lots of love and a hug!

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      3. Amen. And maybe those triggers for me and others (who have been through spiritual abuse) are divinely purposed anyway. I don’t always cover every angle either when I write. A friend once said to me something to the effect of: but Anna, what if one side being overemphasized at the expense of another serves the purpose of having us take notice and do something with that side / take into account, which we wouldn’t have if it wasn’t put as it was. God works through everything we do.

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      4. Just now getting my first open space on this trip to hop on here :). I so agree, sweet sister, about the Lord using triggers in His amazing, redemptive way. On my own journey of healing, I remember specific instances where circumstances pricked at a raw nerve in me, and caused a strong emotional reaction, and how Holy Spirit gently and lovingly but firmly moved in and used that moment and emotional open place to take His healing deeper in me. And they ended up being some of the most amazing healing moments in my process. He is just so good, so faithful!

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  13. Surrender at the Cross of everything from the past and be completely ‘born again” into His Kingdom, this enables Him as Abba access to your very deepest soul hurts and needs. The past without Him has been covered by the blood. I thank you Jennifer for your faithful blogging. Utube has a video clip about my memoir I never wanted to write. Truth about WHO God really is changed my life. Blessings!

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    1. Amen and amen! I am unspeakable grateful for how patient, tender, and persistent He is to get to those deepest hurts and needs and heal them with His love! How wonderful about the video clip, do you have the link to share here?

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