Healing the Wounded Soul: Closing Open Doors volume 2

By Arline Westmeier

After reading the first volume of Healing the Wounded Soul, many people found deep healing for their inner pain. They were so thankful the memories that had plagued had lost their pain. The concept that Jesus carried our emotional pain to the cross for our healing had been completely new to them. Yet for some, their pain continued or the memory

• Language: English
• Publisher: ReadersMagnet LLC
• Release date: Jul 22, 2020
• ISBN: 9781951775803

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: Closing Open Doors–Volume 2

Copyright © 2020 by Arline Westmeier

Published in the United States of America

ISBN Paperback: 978-1-951775-79-7

ISBN eBook: 978-1-951775-80-3

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.

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

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Dedicated to the One Who came to set the captives free.

Table of Contents

Introduction

1Weak Spots and Open Doors

2Healing in Jesus

3Open Doors in the Spirit

4Open Doors in the Psyche

5Open Doors in the Body

6Open Doors in the Social Life

7More Open Doors in the Social Life

8Sources of Contact

9Prayer Guides

10The Follow-up Time

11Some Precautions

12The Praise of His Glory

About the Author

Introduction

A

fter the publication

of Healing the Wounded Soul, Vol. I: Ways to Inner Wholeness, many people told me of the deep healing God had brought about in their lives. The concept that Jesus carried our emotional wounds to the cross was completely new to them. What a relief they experienced when they realized they could express their deepest emotions without fear of sinning and being condemned, or of making God angry. This brought them new freedom and intimacy with God. I praise God for His love and compassion for His wounded children. For those who may not have read the first volume of Healing the Wounded Soul, some of these concepts are included in this volume in chapters two and eight.

As those who found new freedom in Christ reached out to others who were hurting, new questions came up. What about the hard or difficult cases? How could they help these people? The hard cases brought out such problems as: When I’ve thrown everything into the bag (see chapter 2), why is the pain still there when I look back? Why doesn’t all the pain go into the bag? When Jesus has carried my bag of pain, why doesn’t the bag go away? (One woman saw her bag caught on a nail and wouldn’t move.) If I have given all my pain to Jesus, why can’t I feel love?

I, too, had encountered these difficult cases. As the seminary students graduated and entered the ministry, they sent their hard cases back to their teacher, and I had to seek the Lord for answers. Jesus said He came to set the captives free. Why weren’t these captives set free?

As I read the Scriptures, waited before the Lord, and read of the experiences of others, God led me to a new awareness of the footholds psychological wounds give to the enemy of our souls. I had always known this, and used deliverance to some degree, but it was these difficult cases that God used to show me how intricately the two are intertwined.

At first I bound and cast out specific problems, such as fear, hate, self mutilation, etc. But this could go on forever. It reminded me of trying to empty a lake full of fish with a line and tackle. We took out lots of fish, but how many more were there? Why did they seem to come back again?

As time went by and my experience increased, I became increasingly aware of the importance of closing off every area of one’s life to the Kingdom of Darkness, and of asking Jesus to come into the affected areas with his light. As I did this, the rapidity with which these difficult cases progressed toward healing and freedom amazed me. It seemed as though we had plugged up the rivers that fed the lake and were now fishing with a net.

Later, in the follow-up period, it might be necessary to use the line and tackle for some leftover fish, such as a specific fear or other trouble spots that had been missed, but that was minor compared to what had already been cleaned out. Vows such as, I’ll never love anyone again, had to be broken in the name of Jesus, before the individuals could love again. They had to learn how to pray, how to trust, how to love, how to get in touch with the part of themselves that had stopped growing when they were hurt.

As these people entered into the new life in Jesus, they needed to learn how to live in a fallen world. They experienced their new freedom as something so beautiful that at times it seemed they had forgotten that they were not yet in heaven. They thought all problems were solved or solvable. Everyone should be one hundred percent healed. They should never need any medicine again. If anyone needed medication, they felt it could only be because something in their lives had not been taken care of; something must still be repressed. However, all problems will not be solved until Jesus returns and restores all things. Someday our bodies will stop functioning, and we will die. We will have griefs and sorrows as long as we live in this world.

The last four chapters of this book are directed to those who are counseling or praying for another person. The prayers in chapter nine can be used as prayer guides to close doors in one’s own life or to help others. People who have been very traumatized usually need someone to lead them in their time of healing. This is discussed in chapter ten. Chapters eleven and twelve answer questions asked by those who have been used by God to bring others into His freedom.

It would be impossible to list all the people who, over the many years, have contributed both personally and in their writings to the ideas that have taken shape in this book. However, I thank Gladys, whose story of her on-going healing is drawn out through several chapters, for permitting me to tell her story. I grateful for the experiences the late Rev. Judson Cornwall related in a seminar when we first came to the mission field and are found in chapter twelve. I thank Dr. John Ellenberger for his conversations and guidance. I thank my brother, Rev. Elmer H. Maust (now deceased), Naomi Yoder and Louise Maust for reading the manuscript and Joyce Sauder for her help with the preparation of the final copy. I also thank my husband, Dr. Karl W. Westmeier (now deceased), for his insights and encouragement throughout my counseling ministry, for his help to better understand the dangerous, subtle implications of the occult, and the devastating consequences of socio-political oppression on the psyche of individual persons.

In order to insure the people’s anonymity, all names, identifying data and many places have been changed. All scripture quotations are taken from the New International Version unless indicated as KJV (King James’ Version). This book is dedicated to Jesus: The One who came to set the captives free.

Arline Westmeier, PhD

Chapter I

Weak Spots and Open Doors

C

arlos was scared.

The law had finally caught up with him. Dealing drugs and stealing cars had made him extremely rich for a time, but that was all lost. Now he faced a stiff jail sentence; possibly up to fifty-three years.

Mrs. Westmeier, I want to be healed, Carlos told me after a lecture series on emotional healing. My life has been changed. All I want to do is serve God. I know He has saved me, but I am not healed. My heart is broken. I need to talk with you.

The next day in my office, Carlos told me the story of his life. When he was five years old, his father died from a heart attack. He was the only boy; the youngest of five children. His mother had schizophrenia.

Carlos had been deeply attached to his father. Then, one day, his father did not return. No one told him where his father was, or that he had died. He was not permitted to see his father’s body in the coffin, nor was he taken to the funeral. His mother was so devastated by her husband’s sudden death that she remained in bed for weeks and could not pay attention to any of the children.

Carlos remembers how his tears ran down his cheeks and mixed with his cereal every morning for over a year. His uncle tried to comfort him, but he wanted his Daddy.

When he was eight years old Carlos decided he would never trust anyone again. I hardened my heart, he said. I decided I would never be hurt again. I would always punch first. I would hurt other people before they could hurt me.

As the years passed, his heart became harder and harder. By the time he was thirteen, Carlos was using drugs of every kind. Later he became a drug dealer.

I decided if I couldn’t have love, I’d get everything else I wanted. I’d get rich and have all the money and girls and cars I wanted. No one was going to stop me.

Cars fascinated Carlos. Stealing cars brought him thousands of dollars every week. He stole only the best: Mercedes Benz, Cadillacs, BMWs, and Lincolns. Soon he had more than $6,000.00 coming in weekly. Now he could have the best–nothing but the best: the best apartment, the best girls, the best food, the best drugs. Money could buy him anything, and there was always plenty more. But it couldn’t mend his broken heart. He was only eighteen years old.

Several times, Carlos deliberately tried to overdose on drugs to end it all, but someone always found him before he was beyond help. Then one day the police caught up with him, and he lost everything. In his despair, Carlos turned to God. God heard him and saved him. Now, while he waited for his trial, he was trying to get his life in order.

I know now that God is all that’s worth while, continued Carlos. I have had everything the world has to offer, and it isn’t worth a thing. Nothing has been able to heal me. My body is breaking down. My teeth have been smashed from all my fights. I need to be healed. Please help me.

Carlos believed the Lord was calling him into the ministry. He wanted to study and prepare himself, but he was afraid to try. He had never really studied. In the reform schools where he had been placed over the years, he had finally received a high school equivalent diploma, but he did not know if he could study. But above and beyond all else, Carlos needed healing for his broken heart.

I could only pray briefly with him at that time. I saw him once more before his trial. Miraculously, his sentence was reduced to eighteen months in jail. We corresponded several times during his incarceration. After serving six months of his term, he was freed for good conduct.

Carlos, I told him when he returned after serving his time in jail, you will need to take Jesus back through all those years of hurts and give them to Him. Slowly he recalled scene after painful scene and brought them to the Lord for healing.

But I just can’t trust God! Carlos cried out, time after time, in agony. Something keeps me from trusting Him.

Then let’s ask Him to show us what that obstacle is, I finally answered. During this week pray this prayer several times every day: `Lord, show me what keeps me from trusting you. I choose to open myself to you, so that you can show me what it is.’

The next week Carlos told me about the vow he had made never to trust anyone again.

Carlos, we are going to have to break that vow. You will never be able to trust God or anyone else until you undo it. Are you willing to break it?

Mrs. Westmeier, he replied, there is nothing else left that I can do. Yes, I am willing.

We prayed together, I leading him, and Carlos praying after me. "Lord God, here and now, I make this declaration before the visible and invisible world: ‘In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, I take back the vow that I would never trust anyone again. I renounce it in His name. I now turn over every part of my life that was affected by that vow to Jesus. I declare you, Lord Jesus,