Freedom From Soul Pain (eBook)

Seeing the presence of God through pain

E.R. Hurtt (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2024 | 1. Auflage
276 Seiten
Bookbaby (Verlag)
979-8-9875453-3-1 (ISBN)

Pain is distinct and multifaceted. Physical pain can be acute, chronic, neuropathic, or radicular. These types of pain are identifiable and limited to affecting the human body. However, soul pain affects both the human body and the soul. Overlooked, misunderstood, and difficult to imagine, soul pain is often ignored and disregarded as a source of concern. Yet, soul pain can impact the physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual states of humanity. Soul pain should not be dismissed, ignored, or denied. It is as real as life itself. Human beings have fought against soul pain in many ways for many years. Not to be out done, humanity has created many counterfeit agents to slay the devastating effects of soul pain without success. The author describes in this book, her battle with soul pain, how she was delivered from soul pain; symptoms and conditions of soul pain in others, and how they too can be delivered. Because of God's grace, the sufferer of soul pain can be healed and brought to a place of wholeness to become a ray of light in this dark world through His Son, Jesus Christ. To achieve freedom from soul pain, various methods will always be sought, but the true conqueror of soul pain is Almighty God.

Freedom From Soul Pain Seeing the presence of God through pain?????????????????????????? Pain is distinct and multifaceted. Physical pain can be acute, chronic, neuropathic, or radicular. These types of pain are identifiable and limited to affecting the human body. However, soul pain affects both the human body and the soul. Overlooked, misunderstood, and difficult to imagine, soul pain is often ignored and disregarded as a source of concern. Yet, soul pain can impact the physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual states of humanity. Soul pain should not be dismissed, ignored, or denied. It is as real as life itself. Human beings have fought against soul pain in many ways for many years. Not to be out done, humanity has created many counterfeit agents to slay the devastating effects of soul pain without success. The author describes in this book, her battle with soul pain, how she was delivered from soul pain; symptoms and conditions of soul pain in others, and how they too can be delivered. Because of God's grace, the sufferer of soul pain can be healed and brought to a place of wholeness to become a ray of light in this dark world through His Son, Jesus Christ. To achieve freedom from soul pain, various methods will always be sought, but the true conqueror of soul pain is Almighty God. ?????????????????????????????# The Pain That Only God Can Heal

Chapter 1

The Silent Sufferer

“Though my father and mother forsake me,

the LORD will receive me”.

(Psalm 27:10)

My formative childhood years were the late 1950s and early 1960s. Life was quite different than it is today. People weren’t so volatile and angry. Back then, most households consisted of both a father and mother and children obeyed their parents without hesitation. Children were able to play safely outside without parental supervision. Parents were not overly concerned about the moment harm could come to their children because neighbors watched over neighborhood children. They watched to both protect them and discipline them. Doing something wrong was an embarrassment, not just to the parents, but to the entire family. For bringing such shame on the family, the child would be disciplined twice for their wrongdoing: once by the neighbor and then by their parents.

Part of me wondered if it was because the Blue Law prevented businesses from opening on Sundays giving people a true day of rest. In fact, we didn’t even shop at the mall after church. Jesus Christ was respected by business owners and so fervently worshipped in the home that most of the stores were not even open. Instead, Sundays were set aside for religious observance and spending time with the family. Prayer and the pledge of allegiance were recited every morning in school before class began. It was as if people knew prayer was a heavenly salve for the weary soul and communication with Almighty God. As a result, praying to God was the first choice to solve obstacles in life . . . not the last choice. There was broad acceptance to love and worship the God of heaven.

My immediate family was small and included my father, my mother, and myself. My many cousins substituted for the brothers or sisters I never had. Unfortunately, my parents were a dysfunctional couple who created an unstable home setting. They were not the kind of people I would deem “good role models.” My parents had secrets that I never uttered until much later in life. In 1960, I remember my family lived a short time in a public housing development called Flag House Court. Public Housing wasn’t the dangerous blight on the community it is considered today. I remember playing in the grassy area outside and running along the long clean hallways with my little friends. The neighborhood wasn’t perfect, but I felt safe there.

I was fortunate not to be a latchkey kid because my mother did not work outside the home and was always there when I returned from school. My mother was born in Durham, North Carolina and had eight siblings. She and five of her siblings eventually moved to Baltimore, MD. As I grew up, they all passed away and she was the last surviving sibling in Maryland (I never knew her other three siblings). After coming from such a large family, you would think my mother and I would be close. We were not. We never did those cute mother-daughter activities. She was my mother, and I was her responsibility. That’s where it began and ended.

My father was born in Baltimore, Maryland and had two step-brothers, and one stepsister. My father was the youngest and only biological child of my grandparents. I was not close to my father, but I obeyed him because he was my father, and it was the right thing to do. My parents were not affectionate people. I don’t remember my mother or father ever hugging me or telling me that they loved me. But I didn’t miss out on those things. I had secret weapons: grandparents.

My father’s parents lived on a small alley street in Baltimore City. They lived in a petite two-story end-of-row rowhome. If you looked out of my grandparent’s dining room window, you could see rear yards of neighboring homes. Dogs ran along the fences and barked as people walked by. In the winter months, my grandfather kept the entire house warm with a black potbelly wood stove located in the dining room. When the stove got hot, it radiated a warm glow throughout the room. In the summer, Saturday mornings were routinely the days neighbors swept their front sidewalks, cleaned gutters of trash, and cleaned trash that collected in the backyards of their homes. With pride, neighbors meticulously cleaned their marble steps. Baltimore City was known for those gleaming white marble steps. The Afro Newspaper held a yearly Clean Block Campaign Competition and invited community leaders and residents to participate to win monetary prizes for keeping neighborhoods free of trash and garbage. The block leaders on my grandmother’s street would join the competition yearly. I don’t know if our block ever won an award, but it was fun seeing everyone outside on Saturdays.

The block on which my grandparents lived was a beautiful picture of who they were. My grandfather was a very nice man from Tennessee. I don’t recall him ever working. He was always home when we visited. He would always give me big hugs when I came around. Those hugs more than compensated for the ones I wasn’t receiving at home. My grandfather died on January 28, 1986. He loved me, but it was my sweet grandmother who had the most meaningful impact on my life. She was a domestic worker who worked until she was in her early 80s. At that point she was mostly a companion who swapped stories of times past with her employer.

I fully understand why her employer desired her company. She was a righteous woman of faith with a quiet and gentle spirit. I never heard her raise her voice, swear, or say a negative word about anyone. In fact, my earliest memory of God comes from the time I spent watching and learning from her. I still have visions of my grandmother reading her Bible. There was always an open Bible on my grandparents’ kitchen table. It is because of my grandmother’s influence that I submitted my life to Jesus Christ at an early age. She told me about Jesus Christ and that He would always love me. Believing her was easy because I always felt loved when I was with her. Even when her father, my great-grandfather, would visit from Virginia would be so loving and kind to me. You notice these things when they are missing from your home. That love and kindness may have been missing from my home but, because of my grandparents, it was never missing from my life. That beautiful soul found her rest February 13, 2000.

As a very young child, I vividly remember one warm spring evening during the Easter holiday, my mother and I visited my mother’s sister. My aunt and young cousins were sitting in the living room watching the movie, The Greatest Story Ever Told on a black and white floor model TV. There was a scene in the movie that impacted my life forever. The scene was when Jesus Christ was nailed to the cross by his executioners. That scene overwhelmed me so dramatically it struck a chord in my soul. The image of Jesus Christ’s hand being nailed to the wooden cross disturbed my spirit tremendously. I began to quietly cry and with every bang of the hammer, the harder and louder I cried. I saw Jesus Christ – the one my grandmother said would always love me – being placed between two men also on wooden crosses. Jesus Christ asked His father to forgive His executioners. “Father forgive them” Jesus said, “For they do not know what they are doing” (Luke 23:34). What love?

At that point, I was crying uncontrollably. My cousins were snickering at me because I was crying. My mother grabbed me and took me into the rear kitchen. She began shaking me and yelling at me to stop crying. I replied, “But Mom you don’t understand. They are killing Jesus.” My heart ached for Jesus Christ that evening. I was so heartbroken to see Him being nailed to the cross. I couldn’t finish watching the movie. I didn’t understand why the rest of my family did not feel the way I did. Jesus Christ was being nailed to the cross and he did nothing wrong. I felt confused, angry, hurt, and distraught. I wondered why people could be so cruel.

From that day on, Jesus Christ was real to me. The vision of the executioners nailing Jesus Christ to the cross was permanently etched into my memory. Thinking back, I wondered if I was too young to have watched that part of the movie. Or maybe my grandmother’s influence, which had already resulted in me accepting Jesus Christ as my savior, was the linchpin for my emotional response. Afterall, I was watching someone who I loved and who loved me succumb to the vile experience of crucifixion. Only God knows the answer. What I did know for sure was that what I saw was horrific.

When I was nine years old, my father lost his job and our family moved in with his parents. We lived with my grandparents for one year. The memories of living with my grandparents were the happiest times of my childhood. Grandparents’ love is a special type of love. The love I felt from my grandparents will never be forgotten. While living there, on summer afternoons, girls and boys rode their bikes, roller skated, and played hopscotch in the street where we lived. Neighboring adults watched children play while they sat on their marble steps.

One day my grandmother took me to the neighborhood public market to do some shopping. As we walked inside, I noticed an elderly woman with gray hair sitting at the counter drinking beer and smoking a cigarette. I was shocked to see a woman of her age doing such a horrible thing. I turned to my grandmother and said, “Grandma that old lady is drinking and smoking.” My grandmother looked down at me with a smile and said in her soft voice, “Honey she can...

Erscheint lt. Verlag	29.2.2024
Sprache	englisch
Themenwelt	Geisteswissenschaften ► Religion / Theologie ► Christentum
ISBN-13	979-8-9875453-3-1 / 9798987545331

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