Letting Go Of Your Past: Take Control of Your Future by Addressing the Habits, Hurts, and Attitudes that Remain from Previous Relationships

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LETTING GO OF YOUR PAST by John Loren and Paula Sandford

Published by Charisma House

Charisma Media/Charisma House Book Group

600 Rinehart Road

Lake Mary, Florida 32746

www.charismahouse.com

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Unless otherwise noted, all Scripture quotations are from the New American Standard Bible. Copyright © 1960, 1962, 1963, 1968, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1975, 1977 by the Lockman Foundation. Used by permission. (www.Lockman.org)

Scripture quotations marked AMP are from the Amplified Bible. Old Testament copyright © 1965, 1987 by the Zondervan Corporation. The Amplified New Testament copyright © 1954, 1958, 1987 by the Lockman Foundation. Used by permission.

Scripture quotations marked KJV are from the King James Version of the Bible.

Scripture quotations marked NIV are from the Holy Bible, New International Version of the Bible. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, International Bible Society. Used by permission.

Scripture quotations marked NRSV are from the New Revised Standard Version of the Bible. Copyright © 1989 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the USA. Used by permission.

Scripture quotations marked TLB are from The Living Bible. Copyright

© 1971. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc.,

Wheaton, IL 60189. All rights reserved.

Cover Designer: Justin Evans

Executive Design Director: Bill Johnson

Copyright © 2008 by John Loren and Paula Sandford

All rights reserved

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data:

Sandford, John Loren.

Letting go of your past / John Loren & Paula Sandford.

p. cm.

ISBN 978-1-59979-218-7

1. Spiritual healing. 2. Interpersonal relations--Religious aspects--Christianity. I. Sandford, Paula. II. Title.

BT732.5.S228 2008

248.4--dc22

2007034240

E-book ISBN: 978-1-59979-713-7

Portions of this book were previously published as The Transformation of the Inner Man by John and Paula Sandford, copyright © 1982 by Victory House, Inc., ISBN 0-932081-13-4; and Healing the Wounded Spirit by John and Paula Sandford, copyright © 1985 by Victory House, Inc., ISBN 0-932081-14-2.

CONTENTS

Introduction

1 Growing Up Again—in Christ

2 You Are Not Your Parents’ Father or Mother

3 Finding Identity and Calling

4 Becoming One Means Really Leaving Father and Mother

5 Strength in Oneness

6 Toward Sexual Wholeness: Becoming Christlike in Our Humanness

7 Healing Gender Identity Issues

8 He’s Not Heavy—He’s My Brother

9 Fitting In to the Body of Christ

Notes

INTRODUCTION

Throughout the world, in many nations and their cultures, two drastic mistakes are being made that did not happen so much in previous centuries. The first has to do with education and training. We rightly will not allow a medical doctor to practice without years of stringent training, passing tough tests, and undergoing further training in internships. That’s an interesting word—practice. Thank God physicians must become experts in their field before being allowed to practice on us! Lawyers must study for years and pass the bar. Architects must study until they understand stresses, lest buildings collapse. Dentists cannot fill or pull teeth until learning has made them capable and we acknowledge that is so. And so it goes for nearly every field of human endeavor. But for the most important occupations of all, being married and raising children, we demand no training whatsoever—and then wonder what went wrong!

This was not so in biblical days. The home was held in highest esteem as the center of training for all of life. One can see it throughout the Bible: These words, which I am commanding you today, shall be on your heart; and you shall teach them diligently to your sons (Deut. 6:6–7). Hear, O sons, the instruction of a father, and give attention that you may gain understanding, for I give you sound teaching; do not abandon my instruction. When I was a son to my father, tender and the only son in the sight of my mother, then he taught me and said to me, ‘Let your heart hold fast my words; keep my commandments and live’ (Prov. 4:1–4).

Observe that keeping our father’s commandments is to result in life, the inference being that failing to do so results in death, which we see all around us and in every morning newspaper. Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger; but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord (Eph. 6:4). In this book and in our other writings, you will learn how, since the Industrial Revolution of the 1840s, family roles, especially those of fathers, have been progressively more and more destroyed, with one of the most harmful results being that children becoming adults are no longer disciplined and trained by their fathers and mothers in the arts of marriage and child raising. So, though in every other field people are carefully prepared, young adults are cast woefully ignorant upon the two most critical occupations of all!

This book is one, among many, that attempts to address that lack. You will find teachings about how to reparent those who were not equipped in their childhood and how to be yourself reparented. This book provides lessons on what teenage problems are, cutting free from parents as adults in righteous and wholesome ways, what parental inversion and substitute spouse are, how to find the right spouse, how to find and become your destiny, and how to become one with others in unity in the body of Christ. No young adult should enter the fields of marriage and parenting without training, which he or she can get from this book and many others, such as our book Restoring the Christian Family.

Another grievous error is that people are let loose upon society—and their own lives—with little or no healing to the wounds in their past, from their own sins or parental failures and sins during their childhood. How strange it is that we will not let professional athletes become members of a team without careful medical exams, and if there are dangerous wounds yet unhealed, we disqualify them from playing, but we do not apply the same common sense to our young people before marriage and parenthood! There are no laws that require counsel and prayer before marriage. Jeremiah said, The heart is more deceitful than all else and is desperately sick (Jer. 17:9), and Jesus said, For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, slanders (Matt. 15:19). Yet we remain stubbornly ignorant of what is in our hearts and more unaware how to heal so that our marriages and child raising could have opportunity to produce blessing rather than harm. Divorce rates, violence, and murder run rampant in our society. This book is one of many Paula and I have written to instruct the body of Christ how to transform the heart from evil consequences to joyous living in Christ. You will learn how to let go of and be healed of the wounds from the past, how to crucify coping practices that bring harm, and then how to resurrect the heart to become whom God intended, until all become maturely one in the body of Christ.

In previous centuries, preaching and teaching called more directly and powerfully for repentance and change. People knew that if they received Jesus as their Lord and Savior, their lives had to change accordingly. The first and second Great Awakenings in America transformed lives and much of society, even the unbelieving. But we have feasted on cheap grace and what Jesus, like our own personal Santa Claus, will do for us. Previous generations heard the claims of Christ upon their lives. Our recent generations have been raised on what claims we have upon Him. The result has been too little real repentance and change. This book, along with others, calls for real repentance and for moral rectitude—not religiously or in condemnation, but letting go of the past—applying the blood, cross, and resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ to the depths of the heart, knowing that it is the kindness of God that leads to true repentance (Rom. 2:4).

We, the whole body of Christ, must learn how to be true physicians of the heart, one to another. Speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in all aspects into Him, who is the head, even Christ (Eph. 4:15).

CHAPTER 1

GROWING UP

AGAIN—IN CHRIST

Before she travailed, she brought forth; before her pain came, she gave birth to a boy. Who has heard such a thing? Who has seen such things? Can a land be born in one day? Can a nation be brought forth all at once? As soon as Zion travailed, she also brought forth her sons. Shall I bring to the point of birth, and not give delivery? says the LORD. Or shall I who gives delivery shut the womb? says your God. Be joyful with Jerusalem and rejoice for her, all you who love her; be exceedingly glad with her, all you who mourn over her, that you may nurse and be satisfied with her comforting breasts, that you may suck and be delighted with her bountiful bosom. For thus says the Lord, Behold I extend peace to her like a river, and the glory of the nations like an overflowing stream; and you shall be nursed, you shall be carried on the hip and fondled on the knees. As one whom his mother comforts, so I will comfort you; and you shall be comforted in Jerusalem.

—ISAIAH 66:7–13

Why can I progress only so far with you, John? I just know I can’t become any more whole with you. What’s missing? That drove me to see that so long as I lived too much for my image of myself as a prayer minister, no one could really become free (of me or self or anything else) because I needed that person to be sick so I could help him. But when the Holy Spirit revealed the many ego trips—that I needed to help someone, to be one up on someone by being more whole" than the other, to center on problems, to martyr myself for the other, and so on—then He revealed that none or all of those sinful propensities put together answered the question. Something else was missing.

He made me aware that it was not enough merely to bring the sinful side of man to the cross. The person to whom I ministered could discover every sinful deed and carry every practice to the cross and still remain a functionally incapable person! I knew then that more important than death to the negative is resurrection of the other to new life. The first must happen before the second, but without resurrection, a person is little helped. When we have forgiven those who failed us or have been forgiven of all judgments, but we have not received enough human love, we may still be unable to function wholesomely. Someone must love us back to life! Sometimes God sovereignly does so, by Himself, but most often human hands and hearts are needed to touch and draw us forward into life.

After being born anew, we are, in fact, babies again. As God did not design us like fish, to be hatched physically without natural father or mother, so He never intended that we should be reborn spiritually without the nurture of a family. That fact alone is sufficient reason for our being born anew within the Church, but it is also perhaps the least understood fact of our Christian existence. Somehow we have failed to understand our importance to one another.

JOHN’S STORY OF LETTING GO AND GROWING UP

There was a time during my ministry when people had a hard time becoming whole when I ministered to them. It never entered my head that they needed my personal love in any more special way than generally as a Christian or any more uniquely than as a friend and prayer minister. The Lord revealed to me that some people in my and Paula’s care needed us to give ourselves to them as a spiritual father or mother. Lacking this kind of relationship, they could not come to fullness of life.

I had puzzled, Why are people latching onto Paula and me inappropriately? Is there something in our flesh that wrongly attracts? The more we tried to avoid it, the more people drained our energies. Then the Lord spoke in His still, small voice: John, the reason they continue to latch onto you and Paula (after you have died to all the wrong things in you) is that your presence promises something you are withholding. Paradoxically, if you will open up and give all of yourselves, they will be satisfied, and they will not drain you anymore.

He went on to explain that what they wanted was not something they should not want; even in the cases in which some would try to seduce us sexually if they thought they could, that was not actually what they wanted. What some people actually were seeking was what they had never received—the wholesome love of parents by which to come to life. If we would offer ourselves (as in Romans 12:1) to the Father as a vehicle for His love, He would so satisfy their hearts that not only would they not drain us, but also they would become whole.

When I finally realized this was something the Father God wanted to do and that He needed willing human hearts to accomplish it, Paula and I moved past the fear of doing something scripturally wrong and saw that the work is indeed scriptural. (See 1 Thessalonians 2:11–12; 1 Timothy 1:2.) The Holy Spirit then overcame our fears of risking ourselves too much, showing us that the work is really that of the Father, so we began to let Him do it in and through us. We opened up and began to say in prayer aloud with the people to whom we ministered:

Insofar as [the person needing ministry] needs a father and mother to bring him to life, and will accept us for a while as parents in Christ, we will be that, dear Lord. We will carry [name of person] in our hearts and let You love him [or her] to life.

Results were immediate and astonishing. People began to be able to take hold of their lives and grow up more quickly. Because we let go of our need to be needed and began to trust God to make them whole through us, the burden was easier for us to bear, not heavier as we had feared. Perhaps consciously accepting the burden helped. Or maybe the ending of our resistance made us more transparent (not less as we had feared), and people could obtain what they needed from God more easily and quickly through us.

I began to see then that here was another key to the kingdom that had been lost to God’s people. We need to be more aware of our need for one another. We must not become so lost from what church is that we become confined to what is only the temple— the location where individuals come to worship as individuals and go home the same way, minus the corporate life of the Church. We had been afraid of the verse, And do not call anyone on earth your father; for One is your Father, He who is in heaven (Matt. 23:9). Those words were mainly to keep the Jews from idolizing ancestors, specifically Abraham. (See John 8:39.) (Christians do need to remember this verse as a warning against idolizing those who love us to life.) Consequently, we missed, or were blinded, to those scriptures that appear many times in the writings of St. Paul.

For in Christ Jesus I became your father through the gospel.

—1 CORINTHIANS 4:15

For although you may have ten thousand others to teach you about Christ, remember that you have only me as your father.

—1 CORINTHIANS 4:15, TLB

But you know of his proven worth that he served with me in the furtherance of the gospel like a child serving his father.

—PHILIPPIANS 2:22

Just as you know how we were exhorting and encouraging and imploring each one of you as a father would his own children, so that you may walk in a manner worthy of the God who calls you into His own kingdom and glory.

—1 THESSALONIANS 2:11–12

The Church must be strong in its ability to rise to its glory (Isa. 60:1–2). We have to first let go of the negative and take it to the cross. Then we need to resurrect one another to life. First Thessalonians 2:7–8 says, But we proved to be gentle among you, as a nursing mother tenderly cares for her own children. Having thus a fond affection for you, we were well-pleased to impart to you not only the gospel of God but also our own lives, because you had become very dear to us.

That text does not speak of the children of our physical wombs but of the womb of Christ: My children, with whom I am again in labor until Christ is formed in you (Gal. 4:19). St. Paul is speaking of labor pains; he is pregnant with their spiritual life, because I have you in my heart (Phil. 1:7).

Once we have been birthed, we need to be raised as sons and daughters in Christ. Whosoever shall not [become willing to] receive the kingdom of God as a little child, he shall not enter therein (Mark 10:15, KJV). Some, not knowing, have unconsciously reached out of hearts of love and accomplished that rearing for one another without naming it as such. People say, My, what a loving church. You can feel it when you walk in. But how much better would it be if we could recognize the need to be raised and to raise one another and respond knowingly, aware of the pitfalls, trained in the artistry of it? Truly, My people go into exile for their lack of knowledge; and their honorable men are famished, and their multitude is parched with thirst (Isa. 5:13). Successful spiritual parenting is a key to helping us grow up in Christ. It is also a key in helping us to let go of past inclinations, strongholds, and besetting sins. As new foundations are built through spiritual parenting, many countless Christians can be kept from leading faltering lives.

FOR THOSE CALLED TO BE SPIRITUAL PARENTS

Not everyone needs spiritual parenting. Some, usually those whose parents were affectionate, attentive, and wise, received so much naturally that when they were born anew, God the Father was able to immediately and easily parent them to fullness in their new lives because of that blessed relationship they had with their earthly parents. Such people easily drink from their pastor and from more mature friends in the body and grow from them, without having to enter more specifically and consciously into spiritual parenting.

We cannot parent everyone we meet. How do we know when God calls us specifically to this or that person either to parent or to be parented? First, one learns to recognize it in the heart. Somehow a person knows this one is in my bag. One comes to recognize that the feelings of the spirit and the position granted are not merely as a friend or as a brother or sister, but that of a father or mother. We need then to talk about it openly and directly. We never insist where the relationship is unwanted—even if we know that is what the other actually needs. The other must welcome the relationship, whether to be the one to parent or to be parented.

We can learn by experience to recognize the signs of need and, by more experience, to question whether someone