Episode 8: The Longest Distance
Season 1 · Episode 8
The Longest Distance: Bridging the Gap Between Head and Heart
Show Notes
Amy and Justin Howard explore one of the most common struggles in the life of faith: the gap between what we know to be true about God and what our hearts actually feel. Drawing on the wisdom of John of the Cross, the practice of healing prayer, and their own stories, they name the different sources of this disconnect, from the dark night of the soul to bad teaching, unprocessed trauma, and connections that were never formed. Warm, honest, and practical, this conversation is an invitation to become curious about your own heart and to begin a healing journey with Jesus and safe others.
In This Episode
- The longest distance in the world can feel like the 18 inches between the head and the heart, and closing that gap is a supernatural work of the Holy Spirit.
- The dark night of the soul is not a sign of failure but a season where God steps back so our faith can flex, grow, and mature, like a toddler learning to walk.
- Growth in God often does not feel good in the moment; spiritual maturity comes through a 'tear and repair' dynamic much like building muscle.
- Common blocks between head and heart include bad information or teaching, unprocessed painful experiences the enemy uses to accuse God, and connections that were malformed or never formed.
- Trauma, at its core, can leave us with the sense that God wasn't there; healing asks not 'who is the perpetrator?' but 'who does God want to be for me right here?'
- Healing travels on the bridge of love, so the heart needs compassion and safe, non-judgmental space rather than being preached at with more information.
- Ministry to the heart honors a person's agency, going through the gate of their 'yes,' and often calls for safe others, prayer, and practitioners trained in healing prayer and spiritual direction.
Going Deeper — Discussion Questions
- Where in your own life do you notice a gap between what you know to be true about God and what your heart actually feels?
- Have you ever experienced a 'dark night of the soul,' a season when God felt distant even though you kept pressing in? What did that stretch of faith produce in you?
- Justin and Amy describe growth as a 'tear and repair' process that doesn't feel good in the moment. Where might God be inviting you to grow through discomfort right now?
- The episode names bad teaching, unprocessed pain, and never-formed connections as blocks to the heart. Which of these resonates most with your story, and why?
- Justin shares how a prophetic word about being a friend rather than a slave opened a pathway to his heart. What 'bad idea' about God might you be carrying that needs to be healed?
- Instead of asking who caused a wound, the hosts suggest asking, 'Who does God want to be for me right here?' How might that question change the way you pray about a painful memory?
- Who is a safe person in your sphere of influence you could unburden your heart to, and what would it look like to begin a healing journey with them this week?
Full Transcript
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0:03Introduction
Welcome to Between Heaven and Earth. We're your hosts, Justin and Amy Howard. And together, we lead a mission agency right here in beautiful New England. We are thrilled that you've joined us. In each episode, we'll explore what it means to follow Jesus by bringing heaven and earth together in your family and community. Our goal is to empower you to thrive in the collision of kingdoms and courageously join with Jesus in his great project of healing and restoration. This podcast is brought to you by Encounter Culture Mission Collaborative, dedicated to working with ordinary followers of Jesus to mend, make, and multiply disciples right where they are. Let's dive in.
Welcome, welcome, welcome back, everyone. We are going to discuss something very wonderful, but it is an even more wonderful day. Because it's spring, and the long, cold march out of darkness has officially begun. I think the forsythia's blooming. It's beautiful outside. It's amazing how it really does sometimes impact your mood, your feelings. Yeah, it's like I woke up today, and we had actually cracked the window in our bedroom, and it smelled like spring. Yeah, it's better than how it sometimes smells. That's true. The whole house, like rotting sneakers. That's not great. It's true.
It's amazing how sometimes it feels like your salvation is connected to the—it's cloudy for the entire month of February and part of March. You're like, I don't know if I'm saved. Yeah, I'm pretty sure I'm not regenerated. And then you have a couple cups of coffee. You're like, no, I think maybe I'm saved. Right, right. We should have created that as a category for today's podcast. Other reasons why it feels like you're not saved sometimes. It's cloudy and you haven't had your coffee. That's right. Which actually is a great segue into our discussion today. We're talking about the disconnect between how you feel, oftentimes, and what you know to be true.
And so we're actually delving into this topic, and by the end of our discussion today, what are people going to have? They're going to have the ability to understand and heal, with the power of the Holy Spirit in partnership with God, the distance between the head and the heart. Ooh, I like that. And they're going to help others. They're going to be able to help others heal the distance between head and heart. That's right, that's right. Your healing is never just for you. Yeah. It's always to pay it forward. Yeah. To share with other people the good things that you've received. Yeah, amen, amen. So we're going to look at the healing of the distance between the head and heart.
I don't know where I heard this. Maybe it was Jack Frost, the guy back in the '90s who preached on the Father's love. Not the cartoon character. But there's little frost circles on the windows. Right. But he said something to the effect of, the longest distance in the world is the 18 inches between your head and your heart. And I have found that to be true in my own life in God, where I know something to be factually true about God, about myself, about the truth of God's word and his promises to me. But it doesn't always register in the heart. And sometimes it can't. Sometimes it's so far away that it just can't. Yeah.
So we're going to talk about what it looks like to remove those blocks, and they can only be removed supernaturally. Yeah, sometimes there are blocks, sometimes there is no connection. Sometimes—and I want to create a category as we go on—for even just the way that God grows us up. I mean, sometimes we don't feel what we think because God is allowing us to grow. Right. So that's kind of its own category. We'll talk about that a little bit. That's right. Yeah. Great. So, why do you think there's sometimes such a big difference between what I know to be true about God and what I feel? Yeah, we call this the head-heart difference. Your brain knows something.
4:43When Head Belief Outpaces the Heart
So I believe that Jesus loves me, but your heart just can't seem to get in line. And I want to distinguish—I'm not talking about, like, the weather. Like, I'm having a bad day. I messed a bunch of stuff up, or I yelled at my kids, or, you know, I've had a bad week. I just don't feel good. I'm having a hard time feeling the presence of the Lord in my life. I want to distinguish between the short term. There's a distance, a difference, between what I'm thinking about God and how I think about God and what I feel. I mean, the short-term stuff that you're like, ah, this is a rough day. Oh, I can't feel God. I haven't had my coffee yet. Is God real?
Not that kind of thing. My shower was cold. Oh, right. Right. God doesn't love me. Those feelings that are the product of our immaturity. They're the product of our transient circumstances. Life is full of changes, and that sense of instability creates in us fear—fear of abandonment, fear of not being seen and loved by God. Those kinds of things. I want to create a different category for those. And we'll just call that maturity and immaturity in the Lord. And we'll touch on that a little bit.
But what we want to look at is that difference between what my head—the long term, over a long period of time—the difference between my head believing things to be true about God and about myself and about the world God has created, and how my heart experiences those things. And there's a really big distance sometimes. Sometimes it feels insurmountable. Sometimes it feels like, truly, like what Jack Frost said, that that is the longest distance in the world. It's long. And I think there are different sources for that. And there is that one that I want to offload first off. And that is what is traditionally in Christian teaching referred to as the dark night of the soul.
6:49John of the Cross and the Dark Night
This idea that God himself—yeah, a 16th-century mystic and theologian. That's right. And if you've never read him, it's great reading. And it's not, you know, found in Romans somewhere. This is just wise teachers over the years reflecting on the way that humans grow up in God. John of the Cross and Teresa of Avila, some of these guys—they spent time reflecting and thinking about how we move from a place of what Peter would have called drinking milk in the gospel and scriptures, with, you know, those early days of needing to be sort of nursed or spoon-fed, into a place of maturity where, even in dark places, our hearts are fixed on the love of God.
And we are confident of the things that we know even in the dark. Right. And God himself plays a part in growing us up. So there are—when we're really young in the Lord, you'll meet Christians, maybe you've had the experience, that like everything seems alive in God. And you first come to faith, or you have a new experience in the Lord, everything seems just full of the presence of God. And an immature heart, an immature soul, will often think that has something to do with us. Yeah. Like, I'm doing a good job in prayer, and that's why I can feel the Lord. And I mean, I've found the truth, and this is what this is always gonna sound like and feel like.
And John of the Cross would say, an immature soul thinks that now is the way it always has been and the way that it always will be. Or always should be. And always should be. What does that mean? That looks more like, you know, if I'm sad right now, I've always been sad. If I'm happy right now, I will always be happy. It's like when you pack for a trip and you have a really hard time packing for weather that you're not currently experiencing. You know, I have an almost impossible time shopping when I'm not hungry. I know it's a bad idea to shop when you're hungry. But when I'm not hungry, I can't think about the things that I'd like to eat eventually.
So it's hard for me to come up with cool meal plans. Yeah. It's like we can't see past the end of our nose. Yeah, yeah. And God himself helps us to grow up. You had this wonderful image one time—we were on this extended fast and you wanted to quit. You were just done. And you went to pray and you had this really beautiful picture. Do you remember it, when you were like a toddler? You had this picture being taught to walk by God. Can you share that? Well, I don't remember this. For real? It really stayed with me. Was this like 15 years ago? Yeah, our kids were young, and you went up into the attic to pray, and you were ready to be done. And you were like, I don't think this fast matters.
This isn't making any difference. I don't feel God, blah, blah, blah. And you went up to pray, and you said you felt like the Lord gave you this picture in your mind of you with our boys who were learning how to walk. And that way that, like, when they first learn how to walk, you kind of hold their hands and you walk with them. Right. And then there's that moment where you are facing them and you let go. And then you back up. You back up. And you beckon them to walk to you. Yeah, and it's scary for them. And we've had some real perfectionist kids who just, like, won't do it until they know they can do it. And then other ones that don't mind just plopping down on the ground multiple times.
Right. They actually think it's kind of fun. Right. So John of the Cross—his idea about the dark night of the soul was that what it really is is the moment where God beckons you forward without making it so very easy that you don't actually have to use any of your own muscles. So that your faith is actually flexing and growing. There's a tear-and-repair dynamic happening with your faith, just like muscles growing. Right, right. Well, you know, an argument can be made for—and I think most theologians would agree with this—that Adam and Eve in the garden, they weren't perfect in the sense that they were complete. They were perfect in the sense that they were pristine, and they were meant to grow.
That they weren't fully mature. They were meant to grow and mature and experience God in this sort of ongoing revelation. There's a Greek word for that that I absolutely love, and I'm gonna butcher it. Epektasis—did I say that correctly? Yeah, you did, that's good. Yeah, it's this really riveting concept, that like the knowledge of God, as it is encountered by the human will, there will always be more. So it's just this ongoing, perpetual—it creates yearning and satisfaction all at the same time. Right, discontented, contented.
Yes, and Christian thinkers have—the people who have just, like, gone deep in this reality with the Lord have said, that's gonna continue through eternity, because there's always more of God. Yes, yeah. So that hunger and that longing is in itself a satisfaction and a desire. Yes. And it will always increase and be more and more fulfilled by God. Right. Throughout all ages and all that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So let's create— Well, well, no, no, let's—no, I, I, I think we need to stay in that vein. That's really good, because I think that that blows apart a lot of our paradigms.
You know, when God has to be rationally apprehended for salvation, to go to heaven someday. I mean, I can't tell you how many believers—it's just so sad—that I've met that have been in the same place for 30 years. You know, and a lot of it has to do with these blocks we're going to talk about today. Yeah, it really does. Yeah. And so we're going to address some of these blocks, because you were meant to grow for eternity. Yeah. And growing doesn't always mean you feel good. It actually—in a heart that's growing, even in the dark night of the soul, the main conversation is God.
12:28Growth Through Holy Discomfort
Yeah. So not much that causes us to grow or to build strength feels good at the moment. It's a really good point. I mean, you know, you run—I don't know how many miles a week, you know, 10 or so. Oh, it's more. And I can't bring myself to run, because it's just absolute—I'm just allergic to running. I maybe—you know, some of you are runners listening to this, and you're like, you just, you know, you just need to get out there, couch to 5K, you know, whatever. But the way that you grow muscle—I mean, you work out. Yeah. I'm at the gym almost every day, and it doesn't feel good. And I don't want to get out of bed. Right.
And when your muscles aren't used to being worked, the way that your muscles actually grow is little tiny—as you work out, little tiny tears in the muscle, which hurts. Yeah. It doesn't feel good. And then it repairs, and then you tear it again, and then it repairs. And that action causes muscles to grow. That's right. And it's the same thing in our spiritual life. There are, you know, a million different tears and repairs. There are kairos moments. Yeah. Where God is speaking, he's near, he's moving, and we respond to him. Yeah. And that might look like, you know, in your marriage, tension in your marriage where you have to die many deaths and you say, I'm sorry. Oof.
You know, and then you need to choose to be okay. And you're saying that changes you, and it changes you. That's not just a one-and-done. That is part of the tear and repair that actually grows spiritual muscle. Yeah. It's like when someone asks you for money, right? And you dig into your pocket and you pull out, you know, money, and you give it to them without, you know, considering it at all, you know—it just, you just give it generously and freely. That's a little tear. A little tear, because you're actually losing something. You're losing something, and you're believing God to repair it, to strengthen that place of faith. So you're writing a story in God. Right. Yeah.
So let's create that story in God as the main category, as like—so, that involves the dark night of the soul, God stepping back a little bit and letting us kind of feel what it feels like to walk forward and feel our own weakness and not always be able to feel God. And we go through seasons. Most Christians go through seasons where, you know, at the beginning of things, God makes it really easy and we feel him everywhere. And then he steps back a little bit and allows some of the pain in our own hearts, allows our unfaithfulness, allows our weakness to come to the surface. So that we then can see it more clearly.
It's not just sort of medicated by all the good feelings in God and our sense of self-satisfaction that our prayer life rocks. Actually, our prayer life rocked because God was filling us with the sensory experience of his presence. Right. Yeah. But when he steps back a little bit and we're invited to press in in new kinds of ways—even when reading the scripture is like eating sand, and when saying sorry feels like death, and when it just doesn't look really good on the surface, it doesn't look polished. It's gritty. It's hard. And there's not that positive feedback of every time I pray, I have an ecstatic experience and I feel the Lord. Okay.
And every time I humble myself, people recognize it. Right. And the Lord allows us to even experience extended periods of time where our feelings are not in line with the revelation of God. And John of the Cross would have called that the dark night of the soul. And you can picture it like a toddler learning how to walk with a parent right there, but stepping back so that there's no hand-to-hand contact. You're stepping forward. So that's the dark night of the soul. And it might be really cool to bring in someone who is kind of an expert on St. John of the Cross. Yeah, that would be cool. And we could talk about what a dark night looks like.
If this is you, could you email our podcast at podcast@encounterculturene.com? And I have a few people in mind that we might be able to reach out to. Not just someone who's been depressed for a long time. Yeah, no, that's not dark night. So that's a category. Right, that's a category, but that's not what we're talking about. Well, it is what we just talked about. Right. But it is not what we're looking to heal today. Yes, the blocks. The blocks between the head and heart. So let's talk about the blocks. So what do you see as the first source of the block between what I know to be true and what I feel to be true? Yeah, I think the first block is just bad information.
So it's like eating bad food. Your body knows better than to eat it, and you're gonna reject it somehow. So you're gonna throw up, you're gonna have an upset stomach. If you're trying to feed your heart—if you are saved, if you are full of the knowledge of God on something, you've been regenerated—if you're trying to eat bad information about God, you're gonna reject it on a heart level. So if you're in a really legalistic environment and there's just a lot of shame in the atmosphere, and your heart is like, that doesn't feel like God. That's a normal, sort of, let's say, block. So you may be trying to get stuff into your heart that doesn't belong there.
17:49Bad Ideas That Block the Heart
So you may have bad teaching about God, or bad ideas about God that were formed from childhood or whatever that is. That stuff—it may not be sinking in because it's a bad idea. So let's call that the first block. Moving from the head to the heart, there's something blocking that, and it's actually your inner witness of the Holy Spirit saying, you don't want that in your heart. So that sometimes can feel like a really confusing block. Like, why can't I just get on board? Why don't I feel this particular thing? So that's maybe—that's category one—because bad information, the direction is moving from your head to your heart, and it's just not getting there because it's actually not true.
So that's—okay, so that is— One reason something might not be getting to your heart. Oh, okay, but you're saying that that is a good block. That's kind of like a good block, but we don't re-experience it that way. A lot of times we're just thinking, why am I not filled with joy at this particular
false teaching? Why can't I quite wrap my arms around this? So that's just kind of one category. I think the second category and the third are the ones that we really wanna address in healing prayer. So the first one's more about teaching. Like, you need to get in the way of—you sit with the scriptures, get in the way of some really quality teaching. You know, the early church fathers, they didn't think about reading the scriptures the way that we do at all. So, like, the first couple hundred years of people reading the scriptures—when we now approach the scriptures, we kind of start with us and then we wanna mine out the truths in scriptures.
And the early church fathers, they would have been thinking, like, God is behind all of everything in the scriptures, and I'm putting myself before the scriptures and they are changing me. Like, the revelation is coming. And so as a result, the deeper I go, the deeper I'm able to go. So yeah, so the written word is revealing the living word who is changing me. Yeah, who is changing me. Yeah, so we're not approaching the scriptures as a scientist. That's right. To analyze and construct— To analyze it, and if I really, really analyze it, then I'm gonna have a spark of revelation. Right, so for them, encounter with the scripture, or engaging the scripture, was to be an encounter with God.
That's right, and really exclusively. Yeah, yeah. Created some really weird exegesis models. Well, yeah, of course—I mean, look at Origen and some of these other guys. But anyway— Reinterpreting events metaphorically that we would feel very uncomfortable with. Yeah, today. They were very free with their interpretation, but it's because they were looking for the revelation of God, not just information. Right, so what are some of these bad ideas about God? You know, 'cause I think that we all have bad ideas about God. And one of the tasks that we have as being Jesus followers is to know him, right? Yeah. Jesus said, "This is eternal life, that they might know you." Yeah.
20:59Healing Our Image of God
"And Jesus Christ, whom you've sent." That there's this intimate knowing. So what are some of the bad ideas about God that we often see in ministry? Well, I can tell a personal story. Please. When I was 18, I went to Mexico with a little missions group. And it's probably generous to call what we did missions. However, we went to a prayer meeting while we were there, and the person who was leading the prayer meeting—I had had a throat condition for a long time. I was going to study music that fall, and my throat just hurt all the time. And I'd gone to the doctor, and there was no clear reason why my throat hurt all the time.
And the person leading this prayer meeting—this guy came over, and he didn't know. And he put his hand on the—I was kind of, you know, sitting with my elbows on my knees, so my head was bowed. And he put his hand on the back of my neck, and he just stood there for a minute in the middle of this prayer and worship meeting. And the Lord—I could—I mean, I felt power go through my throat, and whatever it was that was hurting my throat left, and just the warmth of the presence of God spread through my throat. And this was a very novel experience for me. I mean, up till that point, I had wanted God.
But the idea that God was interacting with me in that intimate a way, that he really cared about what hurt—that I hadn't had real experiences of that nature with my physical body. And so I was really stunned, and I went to try to talk to the leader afterward that had prayed for me, and I don't think he knew what had gone on. But he again started to minister to me, and he looks me right in the eyes and he said, "The Lord doesn't want to be your slave driver, your task master. He wants to cause you to lie down." And in reference to Psalm 23: "He makes me lie down in green pastures." And I was undone. I was just wrecked. It made a pathway to my heart that had never existed before.
Yeah, that prophetic word and that feeling. Because I had lived like a slave up to that point—and not that I don't cycle back regularly and do that. But my primary ideas about God had been formed reading passages of scripture that had to do with obedience, without revelation of my own identity and the love of God, and how he had completed—how he was faithfully completing his good works through me, and that I wasn't a slave, that he wanted to grow me up to be a friend. And so my obedience came from a heart of servitude and fear of getting in trouble and the idea. So the revelation of God and obedience could never really hit my heart, because obedience was just slavery.
My heart didn't want to just be a slave. My heart wanted to be beloved. My heart wanted to be a friend. My heart wanted to know it was safe to mess up. And in that moment, the Lord—it was like a revelation of God dropped from my head down to my heart. You've believed the wrong things about God. Here's what's really true. He's your good shepherd, and he's gonna lead you in ways that are peaceful and fulfilling to your soul. Like, he actually cares about your heart. So that would be my—like, an example. I had a bad idea about God, and that idea was changed, and then the revelation had access to my heart. And at our encounter weekends, we talk about where a lot of our bad ideas come from.
So we have a session at encounter weekend called Healing Our Image of God. Yeah. Because the ideas that we have about God come from authority figures in our lives. Yeah. And I mean, let's face it, even if you had the best Christian parents around, you still don't leave childhood without some bad ideas. Yeah. Parents, teachers, pastors, life, traumatic life experiences—they form our image of God, and it's a broken image. Right. And a part of our salvation—and I'm not talking about the moment we're saved, I'm talking about our healing, our sanctification, the ongoing—you know, you have been saved, you will be saved, classically known as sanctification. Yeah.
That a part of your salvation is having those ideas healed. Yeah. Because that is where the quote-unquote personal relationship with Jesus happens. Yeah. It happens when those bad ideas are healed. And he heals them by personally coming to you as a friend, as a lover, and romancing your heart to the place where you love God. You love God because he's first loved you. Yeah. That's so good. Hey listeners, are you ready to become fully alive? Life can feel overwhelming, and many of us struggle to feel fully alive. Perhaps you feel stuck in your marriage or career. You might be struggling with anxiety or depression, or you really want to take your relationship with God to the next level.
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27:06When Old Wounds Keep Love Out
Okay, so that would be an example of bad advice. I think the second category is bad experiences that your heart has had, that your brain and body have never processed. So what ends up happening here? The enemy uses those experiences to accuse God. That can be subtle, or it can be very blatant. What does this look like? This looks like—this is the real classic. I believe God loves me, but my heart actually is telling a story that I may or may not be aware of. And what my heart is saying is, I've been injured numerous times. And so my experience—and I'm holding these experiences in my body and my memories.
And so what I feel is actually that God wasn't there, that he didn't show up, that he doesn't love me. And so I can say all day long to my heart, God loves you. But what your heart is saying is, but my experience is he doesn't care. Right. God wasn't there. He wasn't there. He didn't care. And I truly believe that this is the heart of trauma. I think that trauma, at its core—they say that trauma is powerlessness, like genuine powerlessness. I think at its core, trauma is atheistic. Yeah. I think that the word trauma is a word that is used often these days, maybe overused, maybe overused by some people. Yeah.
And, like, for example, oh, someone said something to me that hurt me, I'm traumatized. I didn't just have my feelings hurt, I was harmed. What do you think is, you know, what is legitimate trauma? Do you know what's interesting? I actually think we're a lot of times having the wrong conversation with trauma. I think we're looking for the perpetrator a lot of times. And in healing prayer, what we're actually looking for is, who does God want to be for me right here? So I love that question. That's a really good question. Who does God want to be for me right here and right here.
And my negative experience may be very, very loud, even with something as simple as someone said something mean to me. But that's a reflection, actually, of lack of tear and repair in the Lord, and traumatic experiences that have built up over time where a heart then just shouts loudly, I am abandoned. So at the end of the day, your response is up to you and where you are in your healing journey. Oh, yeah. Yeah. I mean, there are actions that we are called to take. And that's—I think that's material for maybe another podcast. And maybe people that are more expert in some things than we are.
But that feeling of trauma is an indication that we ourselves aren't secure in God in those areas of our lives. That someone else is able to topple our sense of self and well-being. And it's an invitation to actually become curious about our own heart history and say, has my heart encountered God in such a way that there's witness—there's tear and repair over time, witness that God actually is my protector and my savior, and that he is my healer and my friend, and that he's got it, and that in this world I will have trouble, but take heart because Jesus has overcome the world. Instead of looking externally for all of the solutions. That's right.
Now, that doesn't mean that there aren't really good signals that go through your body—get out of here—when someone's, like, looking to do bad things. I mean, that's a different conversation, and we can talk about that with codependency and emotional idolatry another time. But at its core, those places of trauma—and it's not a condemnatory thing, we all have them. We all have incidents that trigger those places in us that need to experience more of God, either because there's a backlog of trauma. Remember, if you define trauma as, like, that atheistic, or at best agnostic, sense in us that God wasn't there—like, that hurts so bad. If there is a God, he's not good.
And probably there isn't one, because that still happened to me. So I haven't seen those experiences through the lens of the love and power of God. And as a result, the enemy's allowed to traffic in those areas, through those areas, for accusation. And the louder that gets, the more kind of insane it becomes. So then you start—not only was God not there, but those things start to get hotter and hotter, and they hurt more and more, and we stay in a place of image. So that even a small, unintentional insult registers to us as trauma. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I find that a lot of— And we may be speaking a little out of our—above our pay grade here, but this is—we're talking through the lens of healing prayer and spiritual direction. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And being informed by therapist friends and books that we've read, and almost 20 years of ministry. That's my Enneagram Five kicking in. I'm like, there's definitely more to this conversation. Yeah, you have to be an expert. But, you know, so trauma being a block—I think that, I mean, just a number of people, I can just, you know, remember now that they told me something that was extremely traumatizing for them, but they're like, yeah, it wasn't that, it wasn't that bad.
And they don't even know how— How significant that was. And how significant it was in their life and how it's playing out in their life right now. Yeah. 'Cause they had to survive. Yeah, people whose parents died in front of them and they're trying to bring them back to life. And they're like, yeah, well, you know—but it's actually—it felt deep in that, control. Literally, you're not speaking figuratively. Like, we've prayed—you know, people that— Oh, prayed with people, yeah. Parents were— And finally it clicks and they're like, oh, I've been locked up after that. Yeah. You know. Yeah.
And so it's—yeah, and I think also what contributes to the block is people feel bad feeling like an atheist in that moment. Like, we're— There's a lot of judgment, a lot of self-judgment. They judge themselves for even being curious or asking the question, like, God, why? Right, if you were a good Christian, you would just quote these Bible verses and paste them on top of this bad experience, instead of curiously welcoming God, wondering, God, where were you? And then welcoming other believers, like we've been talking about, to serve as priests in that place. That's right.
And because the cycle—your own experience, I mean, your imaginative experience oftentimes is limited by the pain that you've experienced, and you need someone who didn't have that same experience to help break down the trauma by the power of the Holy Spirit and generate something new. And you know who talks about this better than anybody I've listened to is Curt Thompson. He talks—in The Deepest Place—he talks about, there's a book of his, about the repackaging of trauma through the lens of hope and the need for another person on the other end of that conversation. So I'll defer to his expertise in that. Maybe you can put a link to his book in the chat.
Yeah, The Deepest Place is the current one. In the—at the bottom of this episode. So, bad experiences that your heart has had, that your brain or body have never processed. Yeah, what we tend to do in Christian circles, unfortunately, is we tend to just say, here are these passages of scripture, now just believe them harder. And there's nothing wrong with repeating those passages of scripture. But if there's a genuine block between your head and your heart, and if the demonic—if the enemy has taken up residence somehow in that conversation—it's not a fair fight.
And just adding more information to your brain isn't necessarily—I mean, the Lord can do whatever the Lord wants to do, but generally speaking, the thing that hurts is your heart. So that's like saying, I just whacked my hand with a hammer, I'm gonna go get ice and put it on my foot. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's not gonna help. Right, it doesn't tend to help. Yeah, so the enemy uses those things to accuse God in us. That's right, and then it becomes not a fair fight anymore, because there's a free agent, a thinking, demonic entity reinforcing those ideas, those bad ideas. So another block would be malformed or never-formed connections. Speak a little bit about that. Malformed or never-formed. Yeah.
Malformed or never-formed connections. Yeah. Like, you just grew up in a super non-emotional environment, or the emotions around you were really unhealthy. And so you never learned how to create a good conversation between your head and your heart. And I've prayed with people that I believe those connections just never formed. It wasn't just trauma. It was, like, parenting and— Can you give me an example? New England. Emotionally frozen. Yeah. Like, we're just kind of proud a lot of times of not having a lot of feelings, and it's not always rooted in trauma. It's just, you do the hard thing. You move on. You don't, you know, you don't want to get soft. Yeah. And if I can't eat it or heat my house with it, it doesn't matter. Yeah.
Okay. And so in that way, it's even kind of an offense to us to think about wanting to feel something, or to allow our hearts to become part of the conversation, because we never have known they even should have a seat at the table. Okay, so New England—but you must have some stories of praying with people where the head-heart connection—they just—it was never formed because of environments where emotions weren't acceptable. You want a story? Okay, I have a story. And as always, I'm changing some essential defining features of the story so that no one can identify their own personal story in this. But I had been doing healing prayer with a gentleman for a fairly long—over a long period of time.
37:46Praying for the Head-Heart Connection
So we'd been meeting regularly for spiritual direction. And when we would—when this individual would feel threatened or fearful, a very sort of young person—like, they're a really young aspect of their personality—would show up. So a young part. Yeah. However you want to picture that—their face would contort and cry like they were two or three. And, you know, in a way that wasn't an adult way. Right. So they're, like, reverting back. Yeah, they would sort of revert back when they felt—and it came up—it came up a lot. I mean, you know, sort of pretty regularly.
So we were praying through a whole bunch of, you know, a series of different things about childhood and different places where pain resided, and then also praying for their development—like, the development that had been missed in those places. But that little feature kept showing up, that, like, there's a dramatic need, an intense need that keeps kind of coming to the surface, but it never felt satisfied. They never felt like they—and it wasn't demonic, as far as we could tell. It was just this, like, deep unmet need would come to the top every time we were, you know, every time I was ministering to them. In group settings sometimes, it would just sort of rocket to the top and show up.
And it was intense. And the Lord kind of had them on their own journey of healing. And at one point, we felt really led to pray for the healing of the head-heart connection. So this idea that, like, you can have all the information in the world about how God loves you, but there's this place in your heart that's stuck. That needs your adult brain and your adult self to be able to, like, process this past space and to digest it, for lack of a better term. It's just stuck.
It's just every time the need comes up to the top and it goes back down, because there's no—because once you're a grown-up, that ship has kind of sailed. Like, you're not—you're not two, you're not two anymore. That's right. You're not in that developmental stage. And so the Lord can minister to those places, but there was something that this person was trying to get met in their adult life that was actually a two-year-old me, that, right, of a season that had ended. So we prayed for the healing of the head and the heart, and I've described on a different podcast episode—sometimes what I experience when I'm praying for people for that.
Yeah, why don't you say that again? So how can we pray for the healing of the connection between— Well, I'll get to the how, but I just want to finish the story. So I experienced it the way that I often do, which is I can kind of feel in my own body as I'm praying for—something between your head and—yeah, yeah, it's like something starts to sort of, like, a plant, like a flower, like a connection sort of growing up from the heart. And what's fascinating is oftentimes when I feel it reach their brain, like the base of their brain, that's almost immediately when I'll see a release of emotion or a— In them. Yeah, in them. Okay.
So you're feeling—you have, like, a sympathetic—you know, what John Wimber used to call a sympathetic pain—but for you, it's not necessarily a pain. Sometimes it can be—sometimes it can be, but this is just bearing witness, like the Lord's—my body is sort of bearing witness to what he's doing in them. Okay. Yeah, absolutely. And it is extremely helpful. And yeah. So what's fascinating is, after I prayed for this guy, it's like you have a Holy Spirit CT scan. Yes. Yeah. Whereas a doctor would have, like, an actual CT or an MRI. I mean, like, you're seeing it in the spirit. Yes. God is the wonderful counselor. Yeah. He's capable of seeing things that we can't.
So when we invite the ministry of the Holy Spirit, he shares with us, like, the knots—how to untie knots that—you're like an X-Man. That's kind of like the X-Men. Like, you have, like, X-ray powers or something. Oh, it's just the Holy Spirit. No, of course it is. It's not just the Holy Spirit, but I mean, these are spiritual gifts. Like, you know, when we look at—yeah, I'm not going down a bunny trail here, but you look at, you know, the list of spiritual gifts in the New Testament. X-Men was one of them. X-Men. No, but they're—what I'm saying is that, you know, it's not an exhaustive list. Yeah. And we, like, yeah.
And I think that oftentimes, because we don't want to be spooked, or we don't want people to go down weird trails that then become heretical—which is true, which is true, we really don't want to— Stay tuned. Stay tuned. Yeah, we're going to talk more about that. But we kind of—we're like, oh, well, those are the only spiritual gifts, and that kind of sounds weird. But it's leading to healing and Jesus loving. Yeah. So continue with your story. Yeah. And I just want to say something about that, because I feel like, throwing that out there, we need a little bit of closure.
When we do receive prophetic information, or information that we think might be prophetic, the generous and gracious way to welcome someone else into what you believe you may or may not be feeling is to ask, hey, as I'm praying, I'm experiencing this. Does this resonate with you? Yeah. Would it be okay if we prayed in this direction right now? I think the church a lot of times, in immature spaces, has oftentimes really hijacked other people's agency by, like, oh my gosh, if the Lord's showing this to me, or I think the Lord might be showing this to me, I'm a bad steward
if I don't just say it with gusto and confidence in this place, instead of welcoming the other person's yes. We've talked before about how God primarily goes through the gate of our yes. And that can be experienced on the receiver's end as a transgression against their agency. Yeah, that's going over the fence, not through the gate of the yes. Yeah. So there's a level of manipulation in that. So anyway, we want to cultivate trust and loving relationships and mutual discernment. Amen. And us listening to the Lord. Yeah. By asking good questions. Okay. So I've cultivated a long-standing relationship with this person—of trust with this guy—before I begin to pray in this direction.
And I would have, I hope most likely, asked before, you know, before I prayed that. So as soon as that thing hit—same kind of thing, release—what's wild is it was like that allowed that little two-year-old space to be processed. And I've continued to work with this guy for the—you know, I continued to work with that guy for a chunk of time following that. And what's so crazy is that two-year-old was just resolved, and I never saw it again. Yeah. No, that's interesting. So it never showed up—it showed up every single time we prayed. Yeah. But as soon as that head-heart connection had been reestablished by the Lord, it's like their body was then able to integrate. Yeah.
Well, that's—I mean, that's beautiful. I love that. And the Lord is so kind to be able to resolve those early childhood needs that were not met that are manifesting in self-protection and other, you know, in other ways. He binds up the broken heart. He does. Not a one-and-done. He's not, like, well, you're safe. But a lot of them. He doesn't say, be uptight and wait for heaven and then you'll see me. But you know what this reminds me of? It reminds me of—the head-heart connection reminds me of internal family systems. Yeah. That a lot of our therapist friends utilize. It's a modality that they utilize in therapy.
And we also use in healing prayer—which is that what oftentimes that younger person needs is compassion. Yeah. They need understanding. They need to be listened to. Come on. That's codependency. That's, you know, we're talking about family systems. Push, push, pause. We'll get to that. We'll get to that one. But that's also church systems too. Right. Yeah. Right. Can be any kind of community system. Okay. So we're bringing the part—we're bringing all the parts. We're bringing the pain to Jesus for healing. Right. Not expecting everyone else to cater to those parts and experiences. Okay.
So let's say you're ministering to someone, and they know what's true about God, but their heart—it hasn't really dropped from the head to the heart. So, diagnosis. So how do we pray? Right. So there are a couple of different steps to how to pray for this. The first one is, yeah, diagnosis. So when I'm praying for someone for healing, sometimes I can get at this by asking something like, well, what do you know or believe to be true? And then I'll ask, what does your heart say about that? Or how do you feel about that? And give space and time for those two things to kind of distill and gel.
And then I get kind of a sense, like, well, do you just have a really rotten idea in your head that's not true at all? And is it based in a bad experience, or is it just based in really bad teaching? And you just need the relief of knowing, actually, that's just not true. Often our hearts are telling different stories than our heads. So giving our hearts a safe, non-judgmental place to tell their own stories is critical to healing. So you're not looking for a heart to communicate, well, actually, I feel like God doesn't show up, and he didn't show up for me, so that you can then preach at the heart. Right. Like, giving logic to that situation is actually to the brain. Right.
So what that part needs is compassion. What your heart needs. Yes. And then to be healed. So to be welcomed in woundedness to Jesus, to be ministered to. But it's only healed by being loved. That's right. We say healing travels on the bridge of love. Yeah. Okay. So then I listen to my body's responses and their body's responses. So if the Lord has called you into the ministry where your body responds—he's kind of gifted you to do it that way, great—otherwise, and always, invite the other person that you're praying for to listen to their body's response. You know, notice—sometimes bodies give a lot of information about stuck pain and anxiety and trauma. And I'd love to throw on
Aundi Kolber's book in the notes of this session. She just does a great job welcoming your body into the conversation of—it's a great book. I think she reads her own audiobook, if you want to do it on Audible. If I did have advice, if this is—if you're taking this for your own healing journey, don't just read—binge-read the whole thing in one night and think that you did it, because at that point, that was your brain. Actually practice it. Take it slow. Yeah. Like a chapter a month. Yeah. And put each chapter into practice and give it time. Okay. And then we pray through the healing of any blocks.
So if there is unresolved trauma, if there are bad memories, if there's accusation or shame that's been lodged in the heart, we invite the Lord to come and tenderly minister to those places. So we invite him back into those memories, and we process those together before the Lord, and invite him—ask the Lord to receive the trauma and the pain himself, because truly by his wounds we're healed. Now when you ask the Lord into those memories, what I've experienced when I'm praying for people is I will ask them, where do you see Jesus in that memory? Like, can you see him? And then we wait on the Lord to show them where he is. And sometimes they'll say, no, I can't see him. Yeah.
So then we just wait longer. Or sometimes I've found that that's a place of offense and anger toward Jesus. Unbelief, demonic accusation. So then what do you do? A real feeling. Well, so I think there are a couple of different tracks that can be taken. I think that if you're praying for this—maybe it's its own whole podcast. No, I think it's important, because we're talking about the healing of the head and heart. Yeah. And this is the huge healing piece. This is a huge healing piece.
So, if someone is not comfortable with Jesus being in the room, because the injury has been spiritual, or they believe that God wasn't there, that he doesn't love them, that he didn't show up—there are a couple of different things. If it was a childhood thing, and that child themselves is feeling that way, if as they're remembering it, you know, you're like, how did your old self feel about Jesus? And, well, he didn't show up, he wasn't there. If the adult person loves and has experienced Jesus, I have found that sometimes they're willing and able to introduce their younger self to Jesus. Like, would you like to know the Jesus that I know?
And to talk to their younger self about the Jesus that they've found, and introduce him. Like, I've found him to be kind, and, you know, these things. I've also, in healing prayer, sometimes had that earlier self give the painful things to the older self that knows Jesus, so that then the older self can hand things to Jesus, and to kind of clear the decks, as it were. I don't know if I'm being super clear in this. I think it probably does need to be its own podcast. However, in that—so if Jesus is—and there may be a need to forgive Jesus, and what do I mean by that? That doesn't mean Jesus sinned. Right.
What it means is, I'm actually holding him accountable for a bad thing that's happened to me, and I need to release my judgment to God, and release my disappointment that he didn't behave the way that I wanted him to. And this can take time. This is not just a— You know, one of the things that I've found is that sometimes in my own life, if I have bad ideas about God, or I don't believe something that is true about him in my heart, or, like, you know, I invite him into a memory or into a situation—I might think that, because I've attached so many motives to God over the years, it might not be so helpful for me to say, "God, you know, come to this memory." I've actually found that it's helpful to call God love, like, capital L.
Like, where is love in this memory? You know, where is the one who is love? Oh, I love that. And so that's been kind of helpful for me. That's been helpful for you. Yeah. Yeah, I love the imagination in healing prayer. So what we've talked about here is, like, the tip of the tip of the tip of the iceberg. Right. But we have hundreds of episodes. Oh. And we're going to have practitioners, some from OneLife, which is our counseling arm and coaching and spiritual direction arm, who are going to come and talk to us about internal family systems and healing prayer. Yeah. I can't wait for that. Oh, I can't wait to hear that one. That's going to be great. Okay.
So pray through the healing of those blocks as they surface. Like, so, you know, what's going on with your heart? What are the memories that are there, stuck? What are the emotions that come up? And I do want to do a deeper dive in kind of unpacking that, because we need to bring some closure to the session. And then finally, ask the Lord specifically to heal, or even create, a connection between the head and the heart, so that the head is able to process and experience and grow. And that's a supernatural—that is a supernatural thing. And he does it. He's so good for it. He really, really does do it. He wants to heal. He binds up the broken heart. Yeah. Amen.
54:18Practical Steps for the Healing Journey
So what are some of those blocks? So you were talking—you wanted to bring closure to that. No, I want to bring closure to the podcast. I feel like we've been rambling. We've just given so much—it's such a fire hose session. Well, you know, it's wonderful. It's a fire hose session, but if you want to begin your process. It's a place to start. And if something is—if your curiosity is piqued—reach out. Yeah. Reach out at encounterculturene.com, and come to an encounter weekend. Come to an EncounterEquip. We are on the cusp of rolling out our—well, our EncounterEquip teaching virtual. Yeah. Which is, you know, we're hoping to do a soft launch very soon.
And then a hard launch in fall. Yeah, it's a—of 2025. And also OneLife Group. So, youronelife.co. Yeah. Go grab a counselor or a spiritual director that's trained in this. If you feel like some curiosity, or some longing, some hunger, some anger in you as you're listening—that's a really great invitation to—yeah, some shame—to reach out and begin a healing journey. Right. 'Cause today's the day of salvation. Yeah. Come on. Okay. So, call to action. What do we do? I mean, yes, we just kind of gave a call to action. Reach out. Yeah. Start your own journey. Let's do this. Be curious about what the Lord is saying and doing. Write a different script. Write a different story for you.
Your marriage, your kids, your friendships. Let's do something differently today. Yeah. And if—in lieu of that, or alongside that—a couple of things that you can do today: start noticing when your head and your heart are telling different stories. Or when the people around you, their heads and hearts are telling different stories. And instead of just needing to medicate that and try to preach at it, or paste another true thing on top of a bad feeling, find a safe person to unburden your heart to. Begin to ask the Lord, God, is there someone in my sphere of influence that would be a safe person to let those stories that my heart is telling come to the top?
Like, you notice it coming up in your everyday life, that you're walking through life and something bad happens, and immediately, instead of just, oh yeah, the Lord loves me, I'm good—you're like, ah, you're terrible and everything's awful. That's your head and your heart telling two different stories, 'cause your head knows you're loved by God. Maybe—I mean, if your head knows you're loved by God, but your heart is suddenly saying, no, I'm rotten, I'm no good, or the world is gonna end. Or, if you don't obey, everything's gonna fall apart. Notice that, and then find a safe person to begin a healing journey with. And that can be a OneLife counselor. That's all virtual, online.
Spiritual director. A spiritual director that would love to begin a healing journey with you. Come to an encounter. And then, if you just have that safe person, pray for the removal of any demonic accusations or blocks that you find that are coming up for you, and ask God to heal, or even create, a safe pathway for you from your head to your heart, and your heart to your head. Yeah, yeah. And praying for the removal of any demonic accusations or blocks looks like the four R's. Yeah, do the four R's. Do the four R's with those demonic accusations or blocks, and unburden your heart to someone. Have them pray with you.
Yeah, and we've just distilled something that is an art, not a science. Right. And a beautiful journey with the Lord. Yeah, that's right. So just be open to the Lord's leading, and to studying the scriptures for encounter, for a place of meeting him, instead of just getting more head information. Right, right. And you know, as always, all of these podcasts are about you. They're about our listeners being healed themselves and then becoming practitioners within their spheres of influence, to hear Jesus and to join him in his great project of restoration. Yeah. Amen. We'll see you next time. Bye. Thank you for joining us on this episode of Between Heaven and Earth.
We hope that you are stirred to curiosity and courage as we explored bringing heaven and earth together right where you are. Remember, you're not alone on this journey. We're here to support you in understanding what the Spirit of God is doing in your life and responding in obedience to his good leadership. If you enjoyed today's conversation, please take a moment to like, share, subscribe, and leave a review. We'd love to hear from you. Share your thoughts and questions with us on our Facebook page, or by email, podcast@encounterculturene.com. Your support helps us reach more people who are eager to join Jesus in his great project of restoration.
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