WHAT SABOTAGES SPIRITUAL FORMATION? PAIN AND SUFFERING - PART TWO

May 30, 2024

A small group of us have been on the journey of spiritual formation using as our primary resource, John Mark Comer's book Practicing the Way: Be with Jesus, Become like him, Do as he did.

One of my favorite quotes from JMC: “You’re transforming and always transforming. You’re never ‘there.’ It’s a theology of journey not destination.”

Reflection is necessary for the spiritual formation journey - especially pausing to look at those things that can sabotage our formation and impede us from becoming persons of love. Just because someone is spiritually mature doesn't mean they are emotional mature. One thing that sabotages spiritual formation is pain, unhealed trauma and woundedness. Another formation sabotager is something called Self-Awareness. 

I am posting a few of my notes from in Session 5 of PTW Course - Meeting God in Pain & Suffering. 

"Emotional pain accumulates in our soul - we carry our history in our body and live our past in our present."

"Undigested emotional pain that we've pushed down in the busyness of life will often come up when we slow down and come to quiet before God."

"The practices create time and space for the unprocessed emotional pain - of a life time - childhood wounds - to something painful experienced a year ago, a week ago or ??" Pain comes out of the shadow and into the light where it can be healed. 

Soul Repair 

There are many resources to help one walk through past trauma, pain and woundedness. One of my suggestions would be to connect with a practitioner who is equipped in the listening prayer ministry of Immanuel Prayer. * Immanuel Prayer operates on the premise that the accumulation of life experiences and memories in which we are not aware of God's presence makes it increasingly difficult to be aware of God. We accumulate the most pain and confusion in memories where we have the least sense of relationship with God. The opposite is true. As we correct our memory omissions we perceive God's presence more often and recognie when God speaks to us. We then experience peace.

Another suggestion is to seek out and develop a relationship with a Spiritual Director or Mentor. 

Also, therapy can be very helpful to work through childhood trauma. A licensed psychologist who specialize in anxiety, depression, stress, trauma, and those overwhelming feelings in life. Find someone certified trauma and EMDR specialist who has a focus on integrating neuroscience with evidence-based approaches such as cognitive behavioral therapies, EMDR, somatic approaches.