Lesson 14 Heartwork
On this spiritual journey of healing transformation we are joining God as he aligns our lives with his design. Through this journey we will identify negative thoughts, emotions and actions that have been destructive in our lives. Our programs, the world’s programs. Through the discovery of those destructive elements you will access the power to change & God will be with you as these elements are destroyed, loving and comforting you along the way.
GTYS Step 4. I choose to join God in my transformation by doing the heart work required of me.
What does this heart work look like?
Let us examine our ways and test them, and let us return to the Lord. (Lam. 3:4)
Digging deep and exploring the hurt, resentments and fear in our lives. The places that have torn holes in our hearts.
Connecting the holes in our hearts to the destructive “stuff” in our lives.
Confessing the destructive “stuff” to ourselves, God and another person.
Acknowledging but eventually looking past our pain to the heart wounds we have created in others.
Confession the wounds we have inflicted.
AA Step 4 Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.
AA Step 5 Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.
AA Step 6 Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.
AA Step 7 Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings.
AA uses moral inventory because the endpoint of this processing is seeing your own sin without excusing it.
Blessed are the pure in heart for they shall see God. Matthew 5:8
Blessed = God given joy, contentment
Pure=Used to describe a PROCESS & to purify by fire or pruning. A process that is marked by transparency.
Heart=spiritual center of life, where our thoughts, desires, sense of purpose, will and character reside.
We know what blessed means from our studies of the previous beatitudes.
Pure in interesting. It can be descriptive as in pure heart or clean, blameless, unstained from guilt heart. It also is used to describe the PROCESS of purifying by fire or pruning a tree. It is also used to describe something marked by transparency.
Now hold onto that.
Heart is describes as the spiritual center of life, where thoughts, desires, sense of purpose, will, understanding and character reside.
I had always understood this to be saying when you have arrived and pure then you will see God.
But… if you look a little deeper it’s actually saying that you will be blessed if you join God in the refining of your heart.
What is located in the heart? Your thoughts, desires, see of purpose, your will and your character.
WE DON’T HAVE TO ARRIVE WE JUST HAVE TO BE PERSEVERING AND WALKING IN THAT DIRECTION WITH TRANSPARENCY.
What do we get when we direct ourselves towards purity by openly, transparently looking at our hearts? We get to see God!! It’s the great reward.
As I am opening myself up and looking at myself and recognizing and exploring my sin God will reveal himself to me.
It is like a spiritual sighting. He could show you himself in scripture, a sermon, in someone’s reaction to you, in a supernatural feeling of peace, a revelation, a song, a sunset,, a dream, a vision, in the eyes of someone you decide to forgive or make amends too.
We see confirmation of the pure of heart’s promise of seeing God in other scripture. The pure of heart will stand in a holy place near to God.
Psalm 24:3-4
Who may climb the mountain of the Lord?
Who may stand in his holy place?
Only those whose hands and hearts are pure…
Remember pure is an action, it’s moving towards.
Even clearer in James 4:8
Come close to God, and God will come close to you.
Just be open to seeing your flaws and sins in every situation and you open up the blessing of seeing God’s face.
Ways to aid you in entering into the process of becoming pure.
Pray to God and ask for it. Search me, O God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts. Point out anything in me that offends you and lead me along the path of everlasting life.
Agree with God and recognize your condition.
Look away from yourself and look to Jesus for the plumb line for your behavior.
Trust God with what you see.
Study the word.
Act in faith.
Wash yourself in tears of mourning and the blood of Christ.
Seek the Holy Spirit. You know we often talk of the Holy Spirit as wind or fire or water. Wind blows away the pollution, fire burns off the elements of gold that make it impure, water washes away the dirt and stains.
Work and cooperate with God and begin to weed out the things that pollute your tree. Anger, worry, resentment, negativity.
Don’t try to purify your heart alone.
To help you in your heart work we are going to use our character defects, who hurt us, destructive behaviors, destructive thoughts, who we hurt lists to search out the junk obscuring the path to God’s peace. We will also be processing hurts, resentments, fear to get them out of our sight line so we can see clearly what we can work on with God.
This process is played out over Steps 4. But continues in 5 as well. Next week you will be asked to evaluate your resentments, anger, fears or hurt.
After that we will explore how it effected us and look for the lies embedded in our stories.
Looking to the future..
Eventually we will explore how our hurts have hurt others. We will share our sin with one another, learn from it and forgive ourselves.
We will explore forgiveness of others and amends in the steps to come.
Then we will learn how to keep this train moving, how grace and truth and transformation become a lifestyle.
We will go on a hunt for all the grace & love we missed along the way.
Finally we will figure out what parts of your story you can use to minister to others.
Step 4 - Joining God in our transformation
In this step we begin to engage our stories on a deep level and bear witness to the stories of others. Why do we even need to do this? Because the extent to which we dig down, is the extent to which we can rise above and be free. It is your choice on how much you want to give to this process and how far you dig.
We will be here to encourage you and walk with you, but this something you have to want to do. This is where you join God in your transformation.
This is a huge step and we would be wise to start with a disclaimer of sorts. Engaging your story can be so beautiful and life- giving but also very tough to go back to some hard places. It is important to honor the harm that was done. To move slowly and gently with ourselves. We don’t stomp through a story, but gingerly walk into with reverence. This step can stir up a lot of stuff, so we need to set in place ways we can take care of ourselves and others. We need to set up a safety net around ourselves and the other ladies we have the honor to walk beside. This could look like scheduling fewer things for yourself. Making a lunch date with a friend. Making a list of scripture or positive affirmations about yourself that you read over everyday. This would be checking in on each other more than usual through the week.
Without care and honor for a story, we can unknowingly create more trauma. When someone trusts enough to tell her story and it is not met with care, consistency, and honor, it can hurt doubly. Remember trauma= overwhelm + alone. We don’t want to leave any alone in her story. Likewise, we don’t want to engage our stories alone. Stop to ask yourself the following questions:
Do you have a person who you trust to talk to about deep things in your life? Who is this person? It can be someone at your table, or someone outside this group. This step also heavily relies on your relationship with Jesus. Another question to ask yourself is: Where are you in your relationship with the Jesus? If you don’t have an answer for these questions, please talk to us after class or through the week and we will help.
Step 4 is all about assessing our hearts. The beatitude tells us: blessed are the pure of heart. What process do we move into to become pure? For this step it could look like exploring your thoughts about someone, do you feel pure toward them - do you carry negative feelings toward them? Why? Is there a pit or a heaviness when you think of this person. When we have been hurt by someone, it leaves something like a black hole, this negative feeling toward the person. Is there someone who you feel this way about? Whether it is a lot or the teeniest bit of negativity, it is worth looking at. I think most of us could - if we truly take an honest look at our heart - create a long list of people we feel this way about. And it makes sense why you have these feelings about someone! This is where we explore where these feelings came from. In Step 4, we come to the reality that there was a hurt, it did damage, it was a big deal. No more denial. No more making oneself small or hiding something. There is nothing too small or too big to explore here. Or maybe you don’t know why you feel this way toward someone, this is a place to try to figure that out.
It’s especially hard to look at the people that are still in your life. Your parents, your husband, your friend. Processing hurt or anger with these people does not mean you hate them or don’t love them or think they are bad people. You are just processing reality.
This can be scary, but remember who you are entering into this with - the God of the universe, the God that saw it all, the God who felt every hurt alongside you, the God that turned what man meant for evil and harm, into good and the symbol of our salvation.
Do you have hurt, resentment, fear, or anger toward someone in your life?
Prompt questions to help you find the person you need to process.
Have you been holding a grudge against someone?
Do you desire revenge for someone?
Do you hold bitterness in your heart toward someone?
Do you feel like someone has mistreated you?
Did you ever feel pressure to do something you did not want to do?
Do you have someone that you do not speak to?
Do you withhold love from someone in your life?
Do you have daily struggles that you can’t forgive?
Do you wake up angry at someone?
Do you view someone in your daily life in a constant negative light?
Are you secretly or outwardly jealous of someone?
Do you feel someone has been critical or judgmental of you?
Are you aggressive or passive - aggressive toward anyone?
Next week, Anita is going to share her testimony and in so give you a great example of this process of purifying your heart played out over a lifetime. What joining God in her transformation and deep heart work looks like for her.