THAT IS MAY GO WELL WITH YOU | KAIROS GLOBAL | JUNE 2022

Author: Raifiel Cyril

Intro: Raifiel Cyril reminds us of the fourth commandment, as we dwell on the theme, healing.

Healing is a word that every human being can relate to and share personal experiences of. We are a broken people on our way to being put together at every stage of our lives. While physical wounds and illnesses are given highest priority and attention, it is our heart that suffers the greatest malaise. And yet while living in the physical world we can very easily get carried away by the tangible. 

The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Who can understand it? (Jeremiah 17:9).

So, in this article instead of talking about faith and healing and miracles I’d like to focus on matters of the heart. The beauty of this focus is that when we settle the matters of our heart, healing of every kind follows; emotional, relational, historical, and yes, even physical.

A few years ago, I read a book called, Transformation of the Inner Man. This book changed the way I understood human behaviour and what caused it, especially as a practising counsellor. I went on to pursue a course by the ministry that flowed out of the book, which literally transformed me from the inside. I will make no attempts to summarise the book as that would be impossible to achieve. But I would like to talk about some very important keys to experiencing a greater depth and dimension of healing in our lives. If you find yourself facing a recurring issue of any kind in your life or even if you don’t, please go online and order this book by the Sandfords.

Let me start by sharing a few verses.

Honour your father and your mother, as the Lord your God has commanded you, so that you may live long and that it may go well with you in the land the Lord your God is giving you (Deuteronomy 5:16).

Do not be deceived: God is not mocked, for whatever one sows that will he also reap. For the one who sows to his own flesh will from the flesh reap corruption, but the one who sows to the Spirit will from the Spirit reap eternal life (Galatians 6:7-9).

Therefore, you have no excuse, every one of you who passes judgement, for in that which you judge another, you condemn yourself; for you who judge practice the same things (Romans 2:1).

Do not judge, or you too will be judged. For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use. it will be measured to you (Matthew 7:1-2).

For they sow the wind, and they reap the whirlwind (Hosea 8:7).

Still other seed fell on good soil, where it produced a crop – a hundred, sixty or thirty times what was sown (Matthew 13:8).

To put that all together, the fourth commandment is the only one that has a promise attached to it. Honour your father and mother SO that you may live long and it may go well with you. In other words if you don’t honour them it’s not going to go well for you. There is only one judge and God never gave us the right to judge anyone, least of all people in authority like our parents. As little children when we sow bitter seeds of judgement about our parents, we continue to reap the same in our lives well into our adulthood and not just in the same measure but 30 times to 100 times over!

One can’t help wondering why little children must be held accountable, however this is not a personal decision that God makes with each of us but a natural outcome of the spiritual laws that are already set in motion at the time of creation.

So, then what does one do armed with this strange new information? Well, once I had finished reading this book, I wrote down every single judgment I passed on my parents and my siblings and other authority figures and took it to confession. A slightly bewildered priest patiently listened to the long list and absolved me. Mind you this list even had my judgments from the time I was in my mother’s womb, which the Spirit revealed to me. Our habits and personalities are formed by the time we are two-years-old. It is painfully remarkable how much is already set even before we begin to speak.

I strongly recommend that you reach out to your spiritual director/elder/trusted friend and start revisiting your heart towards your parents. Allow the Holy Spirit to bring into remembrance the buried and forgotten. Indeed, many of the actions of our parents may have been unjust and traumatic, however we are not permitted to judge. May the Lord help each one of us to repent of judging the actions of all in our lives, but especially our parents. So that it may go well with us.

Father God, I do not remember all my childhood, but you do. Please convict me of my wrongful judgmental attitudes towards my parents and remind me of all of them in the next few weeks. So, I may truly repent of my sin and be free Father from the clutches of reaping what I would like to have not sown. Raise me to new life in you Lord Jesus. Let the old be gone. Let the new arise. In Jesus’ name, Amen.