“Spiritual warfare often takes place in the realm of ideas, concepts, and thoughts.”[1] What do you reason away in your life as connected to some event or person who altered your daily joy? I can hear some of you chuckling over this idea. Some are thinking, “oh, man, the stories!” and others are more like, “pfft, whatever.” I get it. I have been in both of those places. It isn’t easy to consider this concept, I propose for several reasons, one being that we don’t really want to believe that spiritual influences have power over our reasoning abilities. I mean that is just an all-out odd thought. Secondly, we are prone to fall into a victim mentality. It is much more comfortable to accept that someone has wronged us and then to power through life pushing against this wrong.
I often say that we get caught up looking at the wrong part of a picture and miss the greater meaning. An artist once painted a picture of my daughter. The painting was almost a mirror image of her real person. It detailed her best features. It also added in the circles under her eyes and imperfections in her skin. To look at the painting as an online image was deceptive because nothing in the work of art suggested it was not a photograph. It was, however, most definitely oil paint on a canvas.
Our brain does not like deception. It likes to put things in nice, neat boxes. If something is difficult for us to understand in the psychological or emotional realm, we section it off into pieces and parts until it fits. At times we misinterpret the information and file it away in the wrong box. This is very true with trauma and crisis.
We just can’t fathom these things. Research has actually shown that our brain does not logically know how to file violent acts experienced by us. Instead, it continues to act in a response that is on high alert. https://youtu.be/a-ddSEHRWVg This video shows the various parts of the brain’s response. This is the logical side of things, but what of the spiritual side?
Is it spiritual warfare that goes on? Is it an unhealthy response or a common one to intense events in our lives? What if it is a sense of both? If you view life from a Christian viewpoint, is it not possible that the world of evil exists and if it does can it trap you in the vice of circular motion in which no real healing takes place?
The mind receives information constantly. I always use an apple analogy here. We either deflect that information, receive it and determine how it will influence our regular life, and/or we absorb it into our very core. If Satan desires to pull us away from life in Christ, then the push by him to infiltrate our core or soul is far more important than what we perceive as just being a daily reference for how to do life. When it is received at our core it is altered into unhealthy thoughts, confused thoughts, and ultimately wrong behaviors.
Trauma is a tool in which our minds can be distorted. There is no natural way to file the impact of it, at which point it is pushed away into what science calls, “disassociation” or it becomes super heightened. Either way it is the driving force behind our daily thoughts and actions.
Whichever category you place trauma or crisis into is not as important as how you approach the healing of it. Where are you today? Are you living with unresolved trauma? My friends it won’t go away. It will lay in waiting. Do not be fooled though, this does not mean it is inactive. It is regularly stealing the peace and joy that Jesus offers to us.
Today, is your chance to take the first steps towards this transformation into the life you were intended to live by God. Do not wait. I offer you several options. One is to contact me at contact@monicaswank.org for a free consultation. The other is through my workbook,True Dependence: Study Book Moving Deeper in Relationship With God – Kindle edition by Swank, Monica L. Religion & Spirituality Kindle eBooks @ Amazon.com. Please, gift yourself a sense of freedom that you have not experienced before.
– blessings
[1] David Kwadwo Okai, PhD, “The Kingdom of God is Spiritual Warfare,” (Xulon Press, 2014), 45.
Monica Swank 