Healing the Wounded Soul: Taking Every Thought Captive Volume 3

By Arline Westmeier

Many people are plagued with thoughts they cannot control such as, "Did I really turn that gas off all the way? Maybe I should go back and check it one more time, just to be sure." "You need to repent from that sin again. You really weren't sorry enough when you asked forgiveness. You are much sorrier now than when you asked for forgiveness the

• Language: English
• Publisher: ReadersMagnet LLC
• Release date: Jul 22, 2020
• ISBN: 9781952896002

Arline Westmeier

Dr. Arline (Maust) Westmeier was born into a very dedicated Mennonite home. From the time of her first commitment to Jesus at 3½ years of age, she felt called to be a missionary. Dr. Westmeier went to language school in Costa Rica where another student, Karl W. Westmeier, from Germany was preparing to go to Colombia, SA. They were married and spent the next 21 years in Colombia where their two children were born. She is a speaker, author and counselor who has helped men and women around the globe find healing for their past hurts. A registered nurse, certified Christian Counselor and Traumatologist, she holds undergraduate and graduate degrees in Bible, Psychology and Theology and a doctorate in Psychology and Religion (Drew University, Madison, NJ). She has presented seminars on healing and counseling in the United States, Europe, Africa, and Central and South America. She continued ministering until her death on November 11, 2021.

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Healing the Wounded Soul: Taking Every Thought Captive–Volume 3

Copyright © 2020 by Arline Westmeier

Published in the United States of America

ISBN Paperback: 978-1-951775-99-5

ISBN eBook: 978-1-952896-00-2

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any way by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording or otherwise without the prior permission of the author except as provided by USA copyright law.

Unless otherwise indicated as KJV (King James, Version), Biblical quotations are taken from the New International Version of the Bible. Copyright © 1986 by Holman Bible Publishers.

The opinions expressed by the author are not necessarily those of ReadersMagnet, LLC.

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Dedicated to those who, with the authority of the Name of Jesus, have entered into His freedom.

Table of Contents

Introduction

1The Raging Mind

2Integral Healing

3Hearing the Voice of Jesus

4God’s Landing Lights

5More Landing Lights

6Conviction or Temptation

7Choosing to Choose

8Rules of Thumb

9Prayer Guides for Decision-Making

10Prayer Guides for Convicting Thoughts

11Prayer Guides for Obsessive Thoughts

12Taking Every Thought Captive

13Living a Life of Freedom

About the Author

Introduction

Many people are plagued with thoughts they cannot control. Some repent time and again for the same wrongs they have been confessing for years, trying with each confession to feel more and more repentant. Their thoughts keep telling them that they had not repented deeply enough. Other people’s thoughts condemn them for the most insignificant errors. They can’t see how God could possibly put up with them and all their failures. Other people’s thoughts make them repeat certain rituals.

How can we know if what we are thinking comes from God, or if we are simply listening to our own thoughts and desires? Or, worse yet, could this be a temptation coming from the enemy, appearing as an angel of light? How can we distinguish between God trying to convict us of sin, and a temptation to get down on ourselves and become depressed?

Almost daily, Christian counselors and psychotherapists find Christians who suffer from the bewildering effects of these questions in one form or another. This series on Healing the Wounded Soul would not be complete without dealing with this subject.

As children born of God through Jesus Christ, we know that God wants to communicate with us. Yet many sincere believers have little idea of how God communicates with us as individuals. We know that He speaks through his Word, but how do we know what He is trying to say to us as individuals? How can we know that we’re not just imagining what we think He is saying?

Jesus said that his sheep hear his voice. He calls them by name. His sheep do not listen to a stranger’s voice, but they hear His voice and follow Him (John, chapter 10).

Examining our thought life automatically involves trying to distinguish three kinds of voices. We use our minds to think our own thoughts. When God communicates with us, His thoughts must register in our minds if we are to become aware of what He is telling us. Our temptations must also register in our minds, or they would never become real temptations. It would be so easy if God were to communicate to us through the right side of our brains, we would use the left side to think our own thoughts, and all our temptations would come in at the back. Then we could readily distinguish the origin of our thoughts. This, however, does not happen. We must learn how to discern the origins of our thoughts.

Besides receiving the assurance of his love, discerning God’s voice falls into two general areas: (1) perceiving his leading in making decisions and (2) discerning between convicting and obsessive thoughts. When making decisions, we need God’s guidance. But how do we know if what we are feeling and thinking is God directing us, or are these our own desires and wishes? In chapters four and five I give six landing lights that must be lit if God is directing us.

In chapters six to eight, I lay some ground rules to help us separate our condemning thoughts into two categories: convicting thoughts, which originate in God, and obsessive thoughts, which come like temptations and, if carried out, bind us ever more tightly into our problems and despair.

Chapters nine to twelve contain questions and prayer guides that can help the readers distinguish the origin of their thoughts. Other prayer guides help those with obsessive thoughts begin to use their authority in Jesus to demolish arguments and pretensions that lift themselves up against the knowledge of God (II Corinthians 10:3-6). These are questions and prayer guides that have helped many people take their raging thoughts captive and bring them into obedience to Christ Jesus.

One of the biggest obstacles in understanding where and how God wants us to serve Him is a blockage that arises from unresolved painful memories and obsessive thinking. When this blockage is removed, God begins to bring people and situations into our lives where we can help others with the same comfort and healing that He has brought to us. When this happens, questions begin to emerge about how to discern and use the spiritual gifts that God gives to us. Chapter thirteen deals with these questions.

This third volume in the Healing the Wounded Soul series is built on the first two volumes of the series. Chapter two of this volume deals briefly with the thoughts contained in volumes I and II for the benefit of those who may not have had access to the other two books.

For more information on Obsessive Compulsive Dysfunction, see Jerry Schwartz, Brain Lock: Free Yourself from Obsessive-Compulsive Behavior, (Regan Books,1997).

All names and many places have been changed in order to guard the anonymity of those who have trusted me with the stories of their lives.

I thank Louise Maust and my brother, Rev. Elmer H. Maust (now deceased), for reading the manuscript and their many helpful observations, and my husband, Dr. Karl W. Westmeier, for his loving support and help throughout this whole project.

This book is dedicated to those brave ones who have dared to face their obsessive thoughts and use their authority in Jesus to fight their way to victory.

Chapter I

The Raging Mind

I ’m simply not concerned enough about the lost, groaned Marcos with his head in his hands. "Imagine! They are going to hell and I’m thinking about other things. I really must not be saved. If I were saved, I would be out there preaching and pouring out my life for them.

And there are the poor. What am I doing for them? I’m living here comfortably while people are starving. I really mustn’t be a Christian. I’m hardly doing anything. I’m just not OK.

What is God asking you to do that you aren’t doing? I asked Marcos.

I don’t know. I keep asking Him. But I just can’t believe that He can hear me because I’m not concerned enough. If I were truly concerned, I would be doing something more.

Marcos sat on the sofa in my office in complete dejection. "I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I’ve gone to a psychologist and I’m still the same. I have gone to someone who delivers people from demons and he didn’t think it was demons. Everything just continues the same.

My poor wife is suffering. When I’m feeling like this I can hardly relate to her. She has suffered so much. Why am I not more concerned about her? I simply don’t feel for others what I should feel.

Marcos, I asked, How much time do you spend watching television? Oh, hardly any, he replied.

Why not?

Because I have so many classes there’s hardly any time left for anything else. But I would like to. You see that’s part of the problem, I would like to simply watch television and not be concerned about anything else. And sometimes I do watch a program or two and just forget about everything. How much time do you spend with your children? I continued.

Well, I try to give them some time every day. But when I’m feeling like this, all I can do is cry out to God for hours asking for forgiveness for my hardness of heart. At that time I get so concerned about how far my feelings are from what God wants them to be that I even get snappy with my wife and children.

In other words, you are so busy repenting from not having enough caring feelings for your family that you become even less caring for them.

Yes. That’s just it! The more time I spend repenting, the worse I get, Marcos groaned.

Marcos had always been a sensitive child, trying to earn his parents praise and approval. His parents had been very strict. Especially his father made Marcos feel the weight of his displeasure when he didn’t come up to his expectations. As a small child, Marcos remembered having been hugged and kissed by his father, but this had all changed around his sixth birthday. From that time, his father became more and more removed from the family. The drinking and fighting between his parents became worse until, when he was eighteen, they divorced and soon both remarried. Later his father and his new wife accepted Jesus as their Savior, but even in his new found faith his father was very strict and rigid.

Marcos’ father and three brothers excelled in sports. He believed his father expected the same from him, but Marcos hated competition. He liked to read and think. He tried to make his father proud by getting good grades in school.

When Marcos entered adolescence, his emotional ties with his mother were crushed when, in front of his brothers, she accused him of having immoral practices with one of his friends. He knew her accusations weren’t true, but he couldn’t convince her of her error. As a teenager, Marcos turned to alcohol and marijuana to quiet his feelings of self disgust that constantly plagued him.

Soon after his marriage, he and his wife heard of Jesus’ love and both accepted him as their Savior. Then followed what Marcos called his Golden Year. He remembered that year as being the one time in his life when he was free of self condemnation. Yet when I questioned him a little closer, he remembered that even during that Golden Year he had several panic attacks.

This Golden Year ended when Marcos read several books about the many suffering people in the world and the Christian’s responsibility to help these neighbors. Suddenly Marcos realized that the world was more complicated than he had known. Its very complexity scared him. When things were simple and straight forward he could handle them, but complicated things escaped his control. He hated himself for being so weak that he couldn’t handle things.

Marcos was preparing for the ministry. He believed that God wanted him to serve as an evangelist, telling others of the love of Jesus. But Marcos was angry with most churches and pastors. He felt that most sermons were meant to make people feel guilty. Every Sunday he left his church feeling so guilty that it took him all week to get himself out of his depression. He had to spend hours and hours on his knees begging God to forgive him for not caring enough for others. By that time the next weekend had come and the time to return to church to listen to another sermon that condemned him.

Now that he was in seminary, Marcos felt accused by all his professors, in all his classes and by all the books he had to read. The final straw that brought him for counseling was his experience in the class on evangelizing the poor.

I can’t take it anymore! Marcos cried. What do they want from me? I have given all that I can. I have a family. I have my tuition to pay. I’m working hard for as many hours as possible. Yet they seem to say that if I’m not doing something about the poor I’m probably not even a real Christian.

Have you ever done anything at all for the poor? I asked Marcos.

Yes, he answered. We gave ninety dollars in an offering to help. But what is that with so much poverty? I wanted to do more, but we didn’t have any more to give.

Wasn’t that exactly the poor widow’s condition in the Bible? I asked. Yet Jesus said she gave more than all the rest.

Yes, I know that. That’s not the problem. The problem is that I am not concerned about them like I should be. I’m not thinking of them and feeling concerned. If I would really be like Jesus, I’d be feeling compassion for them. And I’m not! I’m thinking of other things.

What kind of things are you thinking about?

Well, such things as my classes or my family. Or sometimes I just don’t want to think at all! he exclaimed.

And, as a Christian, that’s not allowed? I asked with a smile.

No, I know its not that, he answered back.. It’s that my concern just doesn’t go deep enough.

Oh. So it’s the degree of your feelings that’s wrong?

Yes, that’s it. I don’t feel deeply enough. I’m not overcome with compassion. I’m too easily distracted. Why, sometimes I go to the store to buy something and when I look into my emotions I have to admit that at that time I’m not feeling any compassion at all for the people around me that are going to hell. All that I’m thinking about is to buy what I need and get home. I just don’t know how God puts up with me!

But if you are looking into yourself to see if you are feeling compassion for others, how could you be focusing on others in order to have compassion for them? I asked. One can’t look at others and at oneself at the same time. We can only focus on one or the other at a time.

That’s true, Marcos acknowledged. But the Bible says that we should examine our selves to see if we are in the faith. That’s what I was doing. And at that time I simply wasn’t filled with compassion. I wasn’t doing what I should’ve. I was just not OK.

Then, if I understand you right, I said slowly, what you are saying is that to be a real child of God a person must, under all circumstances, be filled with the deepest compassion for all people at all times, without any let up whatsoever.

Oh, no, Marcos replied. I know that’s not true. That’s not possible.

And yet, I prodded him, isn’t that exactly what you are expecting of yourself? And not only must you at every moment be filled with compassion, but with the most deeply felt compassion. Isn’t that what you are asking of yourself?

Hm-m-m, Marcos said, remaining quiet for some time. Maybe that is what I am asking. But why am I so hard on myself? I shouldn’t be looking at myself like that. I should be thinking of others, and I’m not. I’m always thinking about myself. If I were really a true Christian, I would think of others. How can God put up with me? I’m such a terrible person. And so his thoughts ran back into the same circle again.

For someone who has never been caught in a circle of obsessive, selfcondemning thoughts, it may be hard to imagine how destructive such thoughts can be and how nearly impossible it is to break out of such thinking patterns.

One reason it is so hard to break out of these thought patterns is that, to the people caught up in them, the thoughts seem so logical. The little truth contained in them holds their attention so completely that they do not experience the thoughts as being circular. They do not detect the lie that has been added to the truth in the thought, nor do they realize that most of the truth has been taken out of the thought. Their thoughts mesmerize them to such a degree that every other possible way of thinking seems illogical.

When I drew Marcos’ attention to his circular thinking, he was shocked. But everyone says I have such clear thinking. I get very good grades on all my papers. I have a 3.9 grade point average. They tell me I’m a very good preacher.

Yes, that may be true, I assured him, "but in this area, your thinking is definitely circular. You know all the right answers and they apply to everyone but yourself. Could you possibly imagine yourself talking to your four-year-old son in the way you talk to yourself?

"Suppose you come into the room where Joey is busy playing with his toys. Imagine saying to him, ‘Joey, look at your feelings. You aren’t thinking at all of loving your mother. All you’re thinking about is playing with your toys. You don’t love your mother at all. If you would really love her, you