forgiveness

Growing Wiser While You Wait (Part 2)

It’s very important to choose movies that will help you grow wiser. The following is a short summary of some of the most uplifting movies that you and your family could ever watch, and you may find yourselves enjoying them over and over as you share them with others.

My favorite movies are all of the Sherwood Picture movies produced by the Kendrick brothers, but I will include a few other favorites, too.

Flywheel is about a car salesman, who changes his dishonest ways of selling cars, and sees the fruit of doing things God’s way.

Facing the Giants is a great movie for football enthusiasts that teaches lessons on perseverance, faith, and patience.

Fireproof encourages us to value the marriage covenant more, and to get rid of things that may destroy that relationship.

Courageous shows how a godly father can have an incredible impact on a family.

War Room is a film about prayer, and how God rewards our diligence of spending time with Him.

Overcomer, their newest film, begins by showing the consequences that negatively affect a child when parents make selfish choices; and then shows how God can heal relationships when a parent repents, still leaving a lasting legacy for his child.

Faith Like Potatoes is the true story of Angus Buchan, a Scottish-born African farmer who trusts God completely even when the odds are against him.

Second Chance is about a church that is ministering to the needs in an inner city along with its sister church that has grown into a mega-church and is focused on its own agenda rather than on the needs of people.

Treasures of the Snow teaches the lesson of forgiveness, whether we need to forgive ourself or someone who has terribly hurt us.

A Prayer for Healing Memories

As I was sorting through some old papers, and looking for things to recycle and throw away, I came across this prayer by Agnes Sanford. I had copied this into my journaling notebook when I was in college (and really struggling with our dysfunctional family situation). I thought it may be helpful to someone who is reading my blogs:

“Lord Jesus, I ask you to enter into this person who has need of your healing in the depths of the mind. I ask you to come, Lord, as a careful housekeeper might come into a house that has long been closed and neglected. Open all the windows and let in the fresh wind of your Spirit. Raise the shades, that the sunlight of Your love may fill this house of the soul. Where there is sunlight, there cannot be darkness. Therefore, I rejoice that as the light of Your love now fills this mansion of the soul, all darkness shall flee away. And indeed in Your Name I speak to that darkness gently telling it that it cannot abide here in this one whom you have redeemed upon your cross. Look and see, O Lord, whether there be any ugly pictures, take them down and give to this memory-house pictures of beauty and joy; so out of all the ugliness of the past make beauty. Transform old sorrows into the power to comfort others who have sorrowed. Heal old wounds by your redemptive love, and turn them mysteriously into a love that heals the wounds of others.

Go back, O Lord, through all the rooms of this memory-house. Open every closed door and look into every closet and bureau drawer and see if there be any dirty and broken things that are no longer needed in one’s present life, and if so, O Lord take them completely away. I give thanks! for this is the promise of the Scriptures: As far as the east is from the west, so far has He removed our transgressions from us. (Psalm103:12) Look, O Lord, upon any memories that may come up from the deep mind as those words are meditated upon, and in Thy mercy fulfill in this thy servant that forgiveness accomplished long ago on Calvary.

Go back even to the nursery in this memory-house — even to the years of childhood. Here, also, open windows long sealed and let in the gentle sunlight of Your love. Here, more than anywhere, Lord, make everything clean and beautiful within. Take a broom of mercy and sweep away all dirt from the floor of this memory-room, even the confusion and horror and the shame of ancient memories, perhaps of childish and uncomprehended sins, perhaps of the sins of the parents, those parents who should have been as God to this child, and were not.

Take a clean cloth, O Lord, and wash away all dust and wipe away every stain from the walls and from the furniture. Purge this Your child with hyssop, O Lord that the heart may be clean. Wash this one, that the soul (which was created in your own image and after your own likeness), may be whiter than snow. Look within the closets and under the furniture and see whether there be any broken and dirty toys, and old unclean rags of memory that are surely not needed any more at all in the adult life. And if so, O Lord, take them entirely away; gather them into your own redemptive love , that the burden of them may rest upon the soul no more.

Follow the soul of this Your child all the way back to the hour of birth and heal the soul even of the pain and the fear of being born into this darksome world. Restore in the soul that bright memory of your eternal being, that is not exactly memory, but which is rather an emanation, an unconscious infilling of the eternal radiance from which this one was born. And if even before birth the soul was shadowed by this human life and was darkened by the fears or sorrow of the human parents, then I pray that even those memories and impressions may be healed, so that this one may be restored to your original  pattern, the soul as free and as clean as though nothing had ever dimmed its shining. Thus, I pray, O Lord, that you will restore the soul as You made it to be and will quicken and awaken in it all those creative impulses and ideas that you have placed therein, so that whatever your purpose may be for its human pilgrimage, that purpose may be fulfilled.

‘He restores my soul,’ so said David long ago. ‘He leads me in the paths of righteousness for His Name’s sake.’ (Psalm 23:3) I give thanks, O Lord, knowing that this healing of the soul is Your will and is the very purpose of the giving of Your life for us, and therefore, it is now being accomplished, and by faith, I set the seal upon it. Amen.”