Holy Spirit Reveals to Heal

Welcome to my show, Self Talk. This is Dr. Ray Self. This is the show that promises to bring you healing and answers for tough issues led by the Holy Spirit, with a prophetic edge. The show is sponsored by my college, my heart, ICM, International College of Ministry, now enrolling at icmcollege.org. Check out my special offer this month, counseling victims to freedom. For only $35, you can download this six-lesson course. Learn how to handle addictions, boundaries, and so many other critical issues. Go to my website information and the link to purchase this course for only 35 dollars is in the show description.

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The Holy Spirit is alive and well and is revealing things because it's time for your healing. It's a tough thing, but the Holy Spirit will allow things to surface in your life when He knows, and God knows, you're able, you're capable and it's a season for your change. You know, as a Spirit-filled Christian, you've known for years, uh, most of your life that the Holy Spirit's always convicting us of things. You know, he gives us this conviction that we need to repent or we need to say I'm sorry or we need to, to make a change. We must never forget that the Holy Spirit is God and he's not limited. He's not ever just a feeling or um, just the anointing or just that goosebumps that you feel when there's good music going on, he's the Spirit of God and he's up to a lot of things, but what I wanted to focus on as a counselor, I have counseled maybe thousands of people over the years and dealt with some very, very difficult issues. Sometimes as a counselor, just when you think you've heard it all, you'll hear something that you cannot believe you've never heard before. I've often- I tell my students so many times you've got to learn to have a poker face because you'll hear things that will completely shock you but you have to stay calm and collected and not, excuse me, but freak out. But back to the Holy Spirit

What I think we need to realize is sometimes things will surface in our life that we need to deal with and that surfacing of it could be an old feeling, it could be a memory, it could be a sensation, behaviors that where did this come from and it, it's something that is surfacing, that God is saying “okay, my son, okay, my daughter, now is the time to take care of this. I am revealing it to heal it.” And it's- it can be painful. You know, I'm 71 years old. You would think after all these years that I've been through my issues, you know, I've, I've taken care of it all but I'm constantly finding more things that I need to deal with. Now when I say I need to deal with it, what I'm saying to you is we need to deal with it with the help of the Holy Spirit. He'll never give you more than you can handle. You've heard that cliche, you know, your whole, your whole life but what some people don't understand is there are things that will manifest in our life, manifest in our behavior, maybe in our emotions, in our thought life that seem to come out of nowhere that maybe it's a remnant from the past that all of a sudden comes to the surface and it is God saying “my son, my daughter, now is the time once and for all to get rid of this thing to receive your healing, to be made whole from this painful memory.”

Sometimes memories are locked away and we do not know where they come from. It can be something that we haven't thought about. It was a, maybe it's like a, a buried emotion that you haven't felt or a buried experience from your past that you haven't thought about, and all of a sudden, it appears again. It comes into your present day and when it comes into your present day, God is not trying to hurt you, he's trying to heal you. He wants to heal you. And so when these things are revealed in our life, in our emotions, in our psyche, in our behavior, and you're wondering “where did this come from, I didn't know this was still in me, I didn't realize I still had this,” this is a time for brutal honesty. It is a time to go thank you, Lord. Thank you for showing me this about myself.

It's painful, I don't want to look at it, and many people are afraid to look at themselves. You know, as a minister of the gospel, one of the huge traps that ministers have is this outward focus of ministry. There's an outward focus as a minister that keeps us from looking inward. Remember, Jesus warned us very simply. He said don’t look at the speck in your neighbor's eye, your brother's eye, when there's a log in your eye. But in ministry, I am very able to focus on taking care of other people. As a counselor, my focus can be completely on giving wise counsel to my counselees, helping people overcome depression and divorce recovery or crisis that they're going through, loss of a loved one, the there's the myriad of things that, that people struggle with but at the same time, I can use this and many- hear me if you're a minister, we can use ministry to avoid ourself but at some point the Holy Spirit's gonna go “enough is enough, it's time for you to deal with you. It's time for you to take care of that part of you that's never been healed”, and so the Holy Spirit will begin to reveal it to heal it and that's what I want to talk to you about.

He will bring something to the surface that you haven't thought about, you haven't felt, you didn't even know was in you and all of a sudden, there it is and it can be a little scary, it can be a little frustrating, but again warning, warning, warning. As ministers of the gospel, our temptation is “well, I'm, I'm not going to go there right now because I got to take care of this church member here, I've got to do this visitation, I need to teach this class, I've got to preach this sermon, I've got to prophesy, I've got to lay hands on the sick, I've got to do my ministry, I've got to write my blog, I've got to put my facebook post up, I've got to do all these things and therefore I can avoid myself”, but the Lord's not going to let you get away with it forever. At some point he's going to bring you back to yourself and go it's time. “I am revealing this within you because it's time for your healing?”

I want to encourage you to have courage, to have to know that God has your best interest. I heard something years ago that made so much sense to me and it, it was very simple. It was in a meeting and the statement was made that not all pain is harmful. And I thought about that there are things that are painful but don't hurt us. There are things that are painful that need to happen. You may go to a doctor and you may have to stitch up a wound, well that hurts, but, but those stitches need to take place. You may go to a dentist, it may be the, the painkiller didn't take care of all those nerve endings but yet it needed to take place and so the same thing with our inner healing, there, it can be painful but it is necessary. Sometimes men, especially men, struggle or have difficulty relating to what's going on inside of them because in our culture as a man we're taught to, excuse the expression, suck it up, be a man, don't show your emotions, you know, cover it up, cover it up. The problem with that is that these undealt with wounds and healing and trauma from the past are coming out in unhealthy behavior. It's, it's manifesting in ways you don't want it to manifest because you've never dealt with it. It takes courage to deal with your hurts, it takes courage to deal with your pain, it takes courage to deal with the things that are keeping you from God's best.

So here comes the Holy Spirit and all of a sudden, something begins to manifest within your mind, within your spirit, within your heart, and you're thinking “what, what, what is this? Where did it come from?” and what I’m, the purpose of this show is, I just want to encourage you be still. Be still and just say “God, you're showing me this. Lord, help me. Lord, come. Lord, I don't want this, Lord, bring your healing, Lord, show me your truth, Lord, show me what I need to know. Holy Spirit, just help me here,” and maybe, listen to me closely, maybe it's something you need to confess. Maybe there's an open door from your past that you have not repented of and asked forgiveness for, to close the door. See, when you repent or renounce something from your past that you know is an open door for demons and you repent of this and you renounce this, you ask forgiveness of this, that door is shut. 

And maybe there's something the Holy Spirit wants to show you from your past that's never been taken care of. What do you need to do you say “Lord, thank you for reminding me of this. Okay Lord, I see this now. So heavenly, Father I renounce that, I renounce that connection. I renounce what I did. I repent of that and I ask you now in the name of Jesus Christ. And forgive me, forgive me, Lord, for those actions. Forgive me, Lord, for what I said. Forgive me, Lord, for what I did, Lord, and I receive, Father, I receive your healing right now. Holy Spirit, touch me right now in the name of Jesus Christ.” Maybe what the Holy Spirit has revealed to you is a memory, a trauma that your brain locked away and did not want to remember. 

Our brain has an amazing way of fragmenting and by that, I mean our brain will compartmentalize and break a painful memory into many pieces and that's why when you look back on a traumatic event so many times, you can only remember little pieces of it. Well, that's fragmentation, that's when our brain literally fragments the memory into a whole lot of pieces because the whole of that memory is too painful so the brain protects us by fragmenting and breaking the memory. It's like a- imagine a, a puzzle and the puzzle is not put together and, but if you were to see the whole puzzle put together that picture would be very, very painful so therefore the pieces are not all connected. But when you're able, when it is time, when it's the Lord's season, all of a sudden he takes that puzzle and he begins to put all those pieces together and you begin to see that picture from your past. You begin to see the impact upon your life and you know it's been affecting your present and hindering your future. 

Let me say that again. This pain from your past has been affecting your present and hindering your future and the Lord is saying “it's time. It's time now. I want you to deal with this”, and we deal with this by the help of the Lord. We deal with this not in our own flesh. We say “Lord, help me. Lord, I'm ready to, to confess my part. I'm ready to receive, I'm ready to believe. I open to you, I trust you, now I invite you to come. I surrender this part of my life, I surrender my past, I surrender this memory, I surrender this to you, Lord, and I ask for your healing, your blessing, your anointing, to come now, Father. I surrender it to you, Lord. Now, Lord, show me my part. Show me what you want me to do. Instruct me, Lord, teach me your ways, Father.”

You see, it's powerful. The Spirit of God is the Spirit of Truth, that's what he's called. Jesus called him in the gospel of John, the Spirit of Truth, and he's going to tell you the truth about yourself. So many times we want the truth about other people and the Lord's going “nope, I don't want to talk about other people, let's talk about you. What's the truth about you.” So the Spirit of God has a wonderful way, sometimes painful, but it's also very, very good for you, of revealing things from your past from your memories revealing emotions, maybe revealing a trauma- traumatic event, maybe revealing something that just needs to be taken care of, maybe revealing a character flaw within you that you thought you were okay at, maybe revealing something about your nature that's just fleshly. Whatever it is, I believe with all my heart this revealing is God saying “it's time now, let's work together and let's take care of it together.” The Lord has brought so many things up.

I remember so many years ago one of the changes the, biggest change in my life, one of the biggest changes in my life, was, the biggest change in my life was two things: it was when I was saved and baptized and then 25 years later, I got baptized again with the Holy Spirit and that's when my life changed for, for the dramatic- it changed, incredible, it's a whole nother story of the baptism of the Holy Spirit and I- I'm very passionate about the Holy Spirit because I know, you know, I know what he did. So years ago, I'll never- I can tell you the place. I was, I was walking down the hall of a church in East Memphis. I had been to a meeting and I was walking down the hall and the Lord told me, he said “Ray, because you're right, that does not give you a right.” Now, that sounded very simple because you're right, that doesn't give you a right and all of a sudden, all this revelation downloaded into my spirit that I had become a control freak. I believed because I was right that I had the right to enforce my right opinion, my right ideas, my right thinking, upon other people and I had become a controller.

I thought because I was right, that gave me a right to try to control other people and it turned out that I was doing nothing but creating a mess and I had become a controller. But the Spirit of God revealed this to me: “Ray, you have control issues.” Being right does not give me a right, those were the words he spoke to me and I knew exactly what he was talking about and I repented and I asked the Lord to forgive me and it made a huge change in my life, and I'm sure my friends probably were very grateful and my family members. You know, it takes humility. You know, humility says Lord, I cannot do this without you. Pride says Lord, I don't need you, I've got this.” Pride comes sometimes out of fear, pride comes out of self-protection, humility takes courage. Humility is not weakness, humility, it takes more courage to be humble than to be prideful. Prideful is a cover-up and that's not hard to do. 

Most prideful people are complete fakes, they're faking it, they're covering up self. So many super confident people- it’s nothing but a cover-up. A humble person is honest, he's transparent, and he's real and you see, God works with humility, God works with reality. See, pride is fake, super confidence, it's fake. It's fake. It's not real, it's fake. It's self-produced and man doesn't produce anything that's alive. Man makes dead stuff and so this, this prideful image that so many people have and this super self-confident image that so many people have, it's fake folks. It's not real, it's a cover-up. Humility, openness, honesty, being real with God, that's where the growth takes place. The Holy Spirit will never grow something that's fake, he's not going to grow a persona that you produced, he's not going to heal a persona that you produced. He may take that mask off of you and uncover you completely and go “now, let the real person be seen”. But he works with openness, honesty and humility and if you can do this, and if you can do this, I commend you because it takes more courage, it takes more guts, more conviction to be humble than to be prideful. Pridefulness is easy compared to humility and I'm challenging you today. What's the Holy Spirit revealing in your life that it's time for you to get humble about? 

Maybe make a renouncement, maybe repent, maybe ask forgiveness, but allow the Holy Spirit, but surrender and allow the Holy Spirit to come into your heart and make the change he wants to make and heal you where he wants to heal you because it's time for your promised land. You know, I'm big about this promised land thing. I want to pray for you.

Heavenly Father, I thank you for each person listening to this podcast. Holy Spirit, I ask you to reveal yourself to each person listening here. Have your way with this man, with this woman, have your way, Father, with them. Whatever it is, Father, that you want to show them, Father, show them now, Father. Convict us, heal us, restore us, whatever you want to do, Lord, you know what's best, Father. And I thank you, Father, in Jesus' name. Prophetically, I'm seeing the name Joanne and Joanne, if you're listening, the Holy Spirit's going to heal your heart from all that terrible trauma you went through when you were 10, 11, 12, 13 years old. What she went through was, was not God, it was, it was horrible and the Lord said “I'm going to heal you. I'm healing those memories, I'm restoring you, I'm renewing you. Surrender now, trust me now, I have you.” In Jesus' name.

I want to thank you for listening, you know, thank you so much and this has been Self Talk.

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Thank you for listening to today's show. Again, this show is brought to you by the International College of Ministry, a Holy Spirit-filled seminary now enrolling at icmcollege.org. Please uh, go to my, my website, my podcast website. And the best way to get to it is go, use icmcollege.org/selftalk. icmcollege.org/selftalk. I think there's links in the show notes there, you can subscribe, you could donate, boy that'd be wonderful, you can give me a review, you can also see all the past shows. I have some articles, some blogs there, lots of cool stuff. You can get on my email list, that would be wonderful. Don't forget this month's offer. I have a course called Counseling Victims to Freedom. It's a, it's an ICM college course that I'm offering to you for $35. You make a $35 donation and I will literally give you the download to an accredited, Spirit-filled college counseling course, Counseling Victims to Freedom. This is Dr Ray Self, thank you and God bless you as we continue on this journey of healing. Amen, amen.