This five-part series explores five stages of healing, restoration and freedom in Christ. When we talk about how we BUILD more room for God, so often we refer to the sacrifice and letting go of our good stuff – our time, our energy, our finances. But God doesn’t just want our good stuff. He wants our brokenness too. And sometimes we want to hold onto our brokenness and not give it over. We at CSC are in a journey of sacrifice and BUILDing as we raise funds and expand our physical space to accommodate growth in our discipling ministries to children, youth, young adults, seniors and marginalized communities. But we also want this to be a church-wide journey of spiritual growth and healing.
CSC offers many healing discipleship ministries and courses to help people walk in freedom from the things that are holding us back from living life to the full in Christ (John 10:10). Construction of NW Campus and expansion of Central Campus will allow for the various sized multi-purpose spaces needed to optimize the ministry environment for people walking on journeys of spiritual growth and healing. In the spirit of James 5:16, the new spaces will provide discrete and confidential places for people to work in safe community through spiritual barriers like addiction, deep emotional wounds and trauma.
Part 3: Filling our rooms with the Holy Spirit
The healing discipleship journey can be compared to renovating a house. We all have different forms of brokenness that God wants to restore and heal. In Part 1 we learned about how we need to bring Jesus beyond the “welcome mat” and give Him access to all the rooms in our house – all the areas of our lives, body, mind, soul and spirit. In Part 2 we learned about the role we each play in identifying and purging the clutter, chaos and history that is contributing to our brokenness and blocking healing and fullness in Christ. It is our role to bring God through the house, to seek His voice and guidance as we observe each room, and then start to purge and remove the clutter, providing Him the space to move and fix. “It is ultimately God who does the renovation though,” says Greg Grunau, Pastor of Spiritual Development. “He is the primary Builder and Project Manager.”
Much has been written about this metaphor of the house, which symbolically represents our lives and our souls. Even the Bible refers to the body as the house in which His Spirit lives (2 Corinthians 5). Pastor Greg notes how renowned Christian author C.S. Lewis uses this metaphor in his writing about Jesus as the renovator. “At first, perhaps, you can understand what He is doing. He is getting the drains right and stopping the leaks in the roof and so on; you knew that those jobs needed doing and so you are not surprised. But presently He starts knocking the house about in a way that hurts abominably and does not seem to make any sense. What on earth is He up to? The explanation is that He is building quite a different house from the one you thought of – throwing out a new wing here, putting on an extra floor there, running up towers, making courtyards. You thought you were being made into a decent little cottage: but He is building a palace. He intends to come and live in it Himself.”
Brent is an example of one person who let Jesus do a master renovation in his life. A huge perfectionist, high achiever and people pleaser, Brent struggled his whole life with fear of rejection, fear of failure and fear of what others think of him. “I felt like I had to be perfect; and if I made a mistake, I would beat myself up with negative talk,” Brent recalls. He also wanted to be the best Christian possible to earn God’s favour and also to look good to others. As his success grew, Brent’s pride did too. “I looked down on people who didn’t have life as together as I did,” says Brent. He had never said a swear word, never drank, never smoked or did drugs. On the outside, he was immaculate. “I was a slave to religion and the performance Christianity mindset.”
Brent’s prayer life became boring and lifeless. It became a list of requests. But soon Brent became tired of just going through the motions of powerless “Churchianity.” God was giving me a hunger for deeper intimacy with Him and to experience His power working through the supernatural gifts of the Spirit,” recalls Brent. “But I felt powerless to change my situation. I did not truly know and experience God’s love and my identity in Jesus, so I felt distant from God.”
In February of 2014, Brent attended Encounter God, which helped Brent gain freedom in Christ from sinful attitudes, actions, generational sins and unforgiveness. “I was so hungry to experience the Holy Spirit in greater ways,” says Brent. “We also learned a lot about spiritual warfare and the power and authority that we have in Christ. This opened up my eyes to see the spiritual realm as so much more real than before; and I started reading books about our authority in Christ over the spiritual realm, the gifts of the Holy Spirit and the power of prayer in the believer’s life.”
Then through a message by Francis Chan, God revealed to Brent how far he had drifted from desiring an intimate relationship with Him. “He revealed that I had settled for lesser things, such as money, a nice house, investments and security in my work,” recalls Brent. “Even my relationship with my family had stopped me from being willing to give up all to follow Him. I had been afraid of what they would say if I didn’t follow the expected normal life.”
In May 2015 Brent brought his wife with him to Encounter God where Deanna Oelke spoke about how to hear God’s voice on a daily and moment by moment basis. From there, Brent began to read and learn more about hearing God’s voice, and he discovered that God is speaking to us all the time, if we are listening. Authors like Mark Virkler helped him learn to have a two-way intimate relationship with God. “He would speak to me and tell me how He feels about me. Now I could ask Him questions and He would answer me. It was awesome! And I was so excited!” said Brent. By filtering everything through the Bible, God’s character, and the counsel of mature followers of Jesus, Brent is learning to hear and discern God’s voice and grow stronger in a truly personal relationship with Him.
Ultimately, healing discipleship ministries at CSC serve to help people clear the “rooms” and their “desks” significantly (part 2), so God can start to really move and dwell in their house for the rest of their lives. “But it’s still always messy,” notes Pastor Greg. “Nobody has a squeaky clean house, but after we go through the process of letting Jesus take control, there is a massive change that starts to happen and an authority that begins to rise within us.”
The key is, that once we purge and clean our rooms, we can’t just leave them empty. “We need to fill them with the Holy Spirit,” adds Cam Harris, Pastor of Healing Discipleship, noting Matthew 12:45. “Once the enemy has vacated, we need to fill them with God’s Spirit so the enemy doesn’t have an empty space to return to. We must leave no space for squatters. We clear everything out that is not of God so we can fill them up with the Holy Spirit and live a full abundant life.”
So what does this look like?
For Brent it means developing daily habits of spending time being with and talking with the Father, Jesus and the Holy Spirit – whom Brent refers to as his Heavenly Family and closest friends. “I wake up early nearly every morning excited to hear what they want to say to me and to experience their love for me,” says Brent. “I am constantly meditating on Scripture, reading or listening to books, podcasts, videos from various different teachers to learn more about the fullness of Holy Spirit in me and walking in His power.”
Today, Brent has a strong desire to live “naturally supernatural.” He has experienced God’s power working through him as he has prayed for people’s healing. “In some cases, people have experienced immediate pain relief and their issue has been healed. “God’s power has miraculously flowed through me,” says Brent, pointing to John 7:38. “He who believes in Me, as the Scripture said, ‘From his innermost being will flow rivers of living water.'”