Do you want to be healed?
Do you have unhealed wounds from your past?
Do you want to be healed?
Do you have anger issues?
Do you want to be healed?
Do you have an addiction?
Do you want to be healed?
This is the premise is Stephen Arterburn's book, Do You Want to be Healed?
As I found when in the counseling office, many people don't want to be healed. Oh, they say they want a better life, but when offered the tools, they don't take them. To do so would be to lose an identity they aren't quite ready to part with. But like the crippled man at the pool of Bethseda, Jesus stands there, asking, "Do you want to be healed?"
Healing is a choice, and it begins with a choice to surrender to God's way rather than our own. (page 39For those who answer, "yes" Stephen's book is a useful manual for the journey.
This book builds upon itself. The reader can't really pick and choose without losing basic concepts and building blocks. All the chapters build on the very first concept: We all need to be connected in some way to other people. This in itself is a risky first step because unhealed people often gravitate towards unhealthy connections! But it's necessary despite the risk involved.
Once connection is established, Stephen outlines the following steps as:
Feel life. Feel then heal. "Pain is never buried dead. It is buried alive. We must die to self, not kill our feelings."
Investigate your Life in Search of the Truth. How did you get to this place?
Grieve so you Can Heal the Future. You heal the future by healing the pain of your past.
Hlep your life--with God help not self-help.
Embrace your life--face it, accept it, embrace it. God says, "I can work with what happened if you will embrace it and allow me to handle it."
Choose to forgive. Justifiavle anger is dangerous--to the person carrying it!
Risk your life. Don't do all you can to avoid more pain. That's not living.
Serve God by serving others.
Persevere. Keep on keeping on. Keep moving forward.
Did I like the book? Yes. I didn't love it, but I found it useful. Would I use it in the counseling office? Yes, I would. The workbook, I found, is exceptionally beneficial. It can't just be blown through. It is very time intensive and full of soul searching. Those who take the time to use it in depth will more than likely find it to be a very valuable resource tool for healing.
The only thing that really bothered me, is I felt that at times, the author was convincing himself he's "ok" despite his divorce. As if he had to write to convince me he was ok and himself he was ok. As if there are still some raw wounds there concerning this area of his life and writing this book was his own healing process. While this is not a completely negative thing, it stood out enough to me to mention it. It however, does not take away from the main message of the book and workbook and in the end, I can give this a 4.5 rating for those looking for a godly manual on healing heart wounds.
