Be Still: Uncovering God's Solution for Achieving Happiness, Healing, and Wholeness

By Anita Marchesani, PhD

No one escapes this life without heartbreak, emotional pain, and suffering. God promises to heal your wounded, scarred, broken, and shattered heart. Sometimes, only a direct, intimate, specific, supernatural word from the Sovereign Creator of the universe can heal an emotional wound. We have a role and responsibility in our healing relationship with Jesus Christ. God will not heal us without our active participation. Being still, in the way God defines it, is the proper spiritual and emotional position to hear His healing voice. 

The rest of the world has a very different definition of "stillness," so it is important to explore what God means. Then the challenge comes in actually BEING still! 

 

You can learn how to pursue Biblical stillness. There are simple strategies and techniques. It's not a formula, or a step by step process, but rather a journey away from the hectic, racing mind our modern life creates. You can do it. 

 

Learn how, and why, and then claim the freedom Jesus has for you!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Anita Marchesani, PhD
• Release date: Aug 24, 2022
• ISBN: 9798201601645

Book preview

Be Still

Uncovering God’s Solution for Achieving Happiness, Healing, and Wholeness

Anita Marchesani, PhD

Note to reader: All names and identifying information about some of the people mentioned in this book have been altered to protect their privacy.

BE STILL: UNCOVERING GOD’S SOLUTION FOR ACHIEVING HAPPINESS, HEALING, AND WHOLENESS.

Copyright © 2019 by Anita R. Marchesani, PhD.

All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission from the author.

This publication contains the opinions and ideas of the author. It is intended for informational and educational purposes only. It is sold with the understanding that the author and publisher are not engaged in rendering psychological, mental health, or medical diagnosis, opinion, or treatment. If the reader experiences distress or upset while reading, a licensed professional should be immediately consulted.

The author and publisher specifically disclaim all responsibility for any liability, loss, or risk, personal or otherwise that is incurred as a consequence, directly or indirectly, of the use or application of any of the contents of this book.

All Bible verses use the New King James Version, unless otherwise noted.

ISBN 978-0-578-22675-0

This book is dedicated to my personal Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. I am forever grateful for His work in my life, and not giving up on pursuing my heart.

I could never accomplish anything in my life without my supportive, beautiful family.

Thank you, Frank, for so many incredibly wonderful years of marriage, and for always supporting my crazy ideas.

To Lucas and Alex – I love you more than I can possibly convey in words.

Mom and Dad – you could not have been more supportive and loving.

Finally, thank you, Yahweh, for the incredible blessings You have bestowed in my life, even when I was far from You.

Prologue

INTRODUCTION

The Healing Power of Biblical Stillness

Chapter One: The Epidemic of Emotional Pain

Chapter Two: What Is the Solution?

My Personal Encounter with Jehovah Rapha

Chapter Three: God Has a Plan for Your Life

Chapter Four: God’s Objective to Healing Your Wounds!

Biblical Examples of Healed Hearts

Chapter Five: What Is Stillness?

The Spirituality of Stillness

The Psychology of Stillness

What Does It Mean to Know God?

Chapter Six: Understanding the Problem

How Do We Get Emotionally Wounded?

Earthly Causes of Emotional Wounds

Spiritual Causes of Emotional Wounds

Chapter Seven: The Heart of the Matter

The Establishment of Core Beliefs and the Limitations of Psychology

Trying to Fix the Problem on Our Own – Keeping God at a Distance

Defense Mechanisms – Trying to Prevent More Pain by Relying on Our Defense

Coping Mechanisms

Chapter Eight: Was Jesus Wrong?

Chapter Nine: The Nuts and Bolts – How to Be Still

Ten Strategies for Achieving Stillness

Chapter Ten: Barriers to Healing

Unforgiveness

Repentance

Free Will

Chapter Eleven: The Healing Lifestyle

I Have Had Healing – Now What?

Prologue

BE STILL, AND KNOW that I am God.

I will be exalted among the nations,

I will be exalted in the earth!

Psalm 46:10 NKJV

These people draw near to Me with their mouth, And honor Me with their lips, but their heart is far from me.

Matthew 15:8 NKJV

INTRODUCTION

I’M JUST SO TIRED OF dealing with all of this!

Anna sat across from me, hunched over in a position reflecting the weight of the emotional burden she had been carrying for most of her 42 years on this earth. She held a tissue tightly in one hand and methodically picked apart pieces of it with the other, letting the ripped paper fall gently to the ground. I would pick it up after she left my office.

When will God take this from me? When will He break this crushing depression and anger? A distant cousin had molested Anna when they attended a family reunion when Anna was 6 years old. That was the only time she had been abused as a child, but it only takes one time for evil to insert lies and distortions into the human soul. After her cousin molested her, he left her in a small closet in a building at the park where the reunion was held. On his way out of the room, he turned and dismissively told her, You won’t tell anyone about this because now you’re dirty and used up. No one would believe someone like you, anyway. You’re useless.

Anna had sought therapy many times during her teenage and young adult years. Because of the impact of her childhood abuse, she developed chronic anxiety that made her withdraw from meeting life’s challenges, under-achieve in her career, and plagued her with self-doubt and fear in her marriage. Usually, the therapy helped take the edge off her emotional pain, giving her enough strength to keep going for a year or two. Then she would find herself needing therapy again to address the same stuff that just kept repeatedly arising. Each time, she thought she dealt with it, but it was an illusion – healing never really happened. Anna got just enough of a boost to hide the pain a little longer.

By the time she came to me, Anna was depressed. She was despondent over realizing that, despite all her hard work in therapy over the years, it seemed nothing really changed. She still coped with periods of intense overwhelm and stress, and then it would morph into helplessness. Anna was sick of dealing with this. And so was her husband, who was losing patience with her as each year passed by. She was referred to me by a family friend who knew I had a process to work with emotionally wounded people by fusing the healing power of Jesus Christ with clinical psychology.

Anna, when you pray, what does God tell you? I asked. She responded in a way that many people respond – with Bible verses:

He says that I can do all things through Christ, who strengthens me. And that He will never leave me or forsake me, Anna responded, with her perfectly rehearsed verses meant to combat the bone-rattling things she actually believed about herself – that she was unlovable, dirty, and worthless.

The problem was that Anna was a good Christian, raised in a good Christian home. She memorized and recited Bible verses to encourage her each day. She honored God with her lips. However, she did not believe these verses to be true, or at least true for her. She wanted them to be true and reciting them renewed her hope that they would somehow finally sink in and take root inside her soul.

Deep down in the very core of her being, Anna failed to believe what God said about her. Instead, she believed what the spiritual enemy said about her. Blessedly, God has given us a solution to bridge this seemingly canyon-sized gap between knowing Scripture in our minds but not believing it in our hearts. Anna received the healing she desperately needed but would never find in traditional counseling.

Anna knew in her brain what God believes about her – she was skilled at memorizing Bible verses but believed the complete opposite about herself in her heart. She needed to close that gap. Anna needed to somehow translate the truth of who God says she is from her brain down into her heart.

This is the crucial level of healing that never happened during previous therapy sessions. Some emotional wounds cut so deep that only a supernatural encounter with God Almighty Himself can convince a person that the lies they believe are, in fact, lies. Secular therapists will never invite God into a therapy session, although it is the only thing that can help.

That was going to change on this particular day.

Anna, what is it you want from God? I asked her, intending to direct her attention away from reliving her daily pain and instead toward a solution.

Well, I want Him to take away my pain. I was hurt so badly that day; that boy branded me for the rest of my life. I can’t have a fulfilling relationship with my husband, I know I’m angrier with my kids than I have to be, and I just can’t get out of bed in the mornings...... Anna continued with the long list of how devastated her life has been since that fateful day. But she never answered my question – she still did not articulate what she wanted from God. I think she did not even know what she wanted or needed because she had spent so much of her life rehearsing and reliving her pain.

It was time to interrupt her. Repeating pain over and over again is damaging and only legitimizes and solidifies the lies she believed about herself. There was too much mental chatter going on in her head and I was getting access to it via her lengthy explanations. I had to take firmer control of the session and lead Anna to quiet her mind.

ANNA! Stop talking and look at me! I said emphatically, knowing I was coming across as borderline rude.

Slightly shocked, Anna lifted her head and met my gaze. As most people in pain do, she looked away rather quickly. Steadily looking at another person in the eyes can be quite intense. It forces both people’s attention to the present moment, rather than continuing to talk about the past and how it makes us feel. It forces the people involved to be still. That feels intimidating to someone who keeps their minds active to avoid silence and stillness. Mental chatter prevents us from thinking about painful things.

When she started to look away, I said, No, Anna, LOOK at me and keep looking at me.

This time, she met my eyes and stared at me for a few seconds. Once I knew she was locked into me and no longer thinking about her past, I asked, Anna, can we go into prayer right now and ask God what He thinks?

She nodded her head yes, sniffled a bit, and then closed her eyes and bowed her head as I prayed:

Heavenly Father, the Maker of heaven and earth, the grand Creator, the One who knew Anna before You established the foundation of the earth, who knows the end from the beginning, who loves Anna with an everlasting love and has Anna’s name written on the palm of Your hand – Father, this is your daughter. She is Your princess. She is Your heir. And she is hurting deeply. She has come to believe lies about herself – that she is dirty and unlovable. She knows they are lies, but Father, they feel true to her. Lord God, please speak to Anna right now and tell her what You want her to know about this situation."

Then, we sat in still silence. After about five or six seconds, Anna started to weep again. But this weeping had a different quality to it. I knew she was crying from release and relief, not from pain and agony anymore.

Anna, what did God say to you? I asked, knowing with 100 percent certainty that God had just spoken directly, intimately, and personally to Anna. He always shows up when people learn to be still and pray like this.

Gathering herself together, and with a sense of semi-bewilderment, Anna said, He told me He loves me and that I belong to Him. She gave a watery smile and a short chuckle. Again, Anna started to cry, but with tears of joy and belonging, with tears of knowing the truth and having her lies corrected, replaced, and permanently healed.

I reached over to hug her, tears filling my own eyes at one of the most beautiful experiences in the world – watching the exact moment of true, intense, deep, and personal healing after hearing an intimate word from God Himself. This is a privilege every time I have the honor of working with someone in this way.

But Anna never would have heard from God as long as she insisted on mental busyness and chatter. Accepting stillness, as we are all commanded, allows us to know He is God. He is sovereign and in control, even when we feel out of control.

The Healing Power of Biblical Stillness

I WANT TO INTRODUCE you to a concept that is not new or revolutionary: stillness. It is simple and profound; indeed, it is the key to unlocking the healing that God promises us in Scripture, the healing and relief to which we have access through His Son, Jesus Christ, and His finished work on the cross.

This book will delve into emotional pain – where it comes from, why it sticks around, how it impacts us, and, of course, how we can learn to allow healing from God. The central feature involves this idea that God tells us is so important – stillness.

When I use the word still or stillness, I refer primarily to mental stillness. When you hear the term stillness, you may immediately think of being physically still. I would imagine God wants us to do that too! In fact, in many places in His Word, he tells us to stand strong, to stand or to be steadfast. This indicates a position of power but not of action.

Emotional stillness also puts us in this same position. Stillness is powerful because it demands that we restrain our own action. It forces us to dial back our own striving tendencies and allow God to go first and act on our behalf. If we insist on motion – whether physical or mental/emotional chatter – then we crowd out God.

Sometimes people need to achieve physical stillness in order to facilitate emotional and mental stillness. It is important to always keep in mind that being physically still does not automatically mean you are mentally still. In fact, most of us are experts at maintaining mental activity, chatter, and clutter when we lay down to try to sleep at night. We are physically still in bed, but our minds keep going.

Mental stillness can feel like an elusive goal. But I promise that as you read this book and understand how powerful God says stillness is, you will learn how to increase stillness in your mind. Stillness is so powerful, in fact, that it is the only position in which we can place ourselves to receive God’s emotionally healing words through the Holy Spirit.

While you may be eager to learn more about this concept and know the steps of how all of this works, part of you may also consider this a scary topic. After all, you have spent a lifetime carefully crafting ways of managing your emotional pain and stresses. Upsetting your emotional balancing act by doing the one thing that practically guarantees you will connect with painful wounds might make you want to run for the proverbial hills.

I urge you to stick with this book! God wants you to be healed. He would not have sent His Son to live, be brutally tortured, die, and then conquer death for you if this were not true. Consider what Jesus declared in Luke 4:18b (NKJV) as a fulfillment of a prophecy in Isaiah: He has sent Me to heal the brokenhearted.

This is a promise directly from God Himself. What God promises, He will fulfill: God is not a man, that He should lie, Nor a son of man, that He should repent. Has He said, and will He not do? Or has He spoken, and will He not make it good? (Num 23:19).

Maybe you feel like Anna felt. Maybe at times you even feel worse. Emotional struggles hinder us. They keep us psychologically crippled. Just like a physical injury hampers our ability to move and function properly, emotional injury – in the form of childhood wounds, hurts, abuse, or tension-filled households – keeps us from moving forward in the will and purpose that God has established for us.

We keep ourselves distracted just trying to make it through the day. We use huge quantities of mental energy protecting our hearts from being hurt again. We live small because we have come to believe that we are nobody special, we are useless, we are unimportant, we are unlovable, and maybe even invisible. It is these false beliefs that form the wounds on our hearts. Those old wounds have a profound impact on what you choose to do every single day.

Connecting with even a portion of that wound may sound about as tempting as a root canal. But I promise if you mindfully and prayerfully make your way through this book, understand why you have your struggles, and why they do not disappear so easily, you will feel more empowered and equipped to claim God’s healing through stilling your mind.

Chapter One: The Epidemic of Emotional Pain

ACCORDING TO THE CENTERS for Disease Control, over one in twenty Americans over the age of 12 experience an episode of depression (meaning it lasts for at least two weeks) at least once in a one-year period. Some research shows it affects around 19 million adults each year. These statistics do not even include children.

Anxiety is the largest mental health problem in the United States. According to the Anxiety and Depression Association of America (ADAA https://adaa.org/about-adaa/press-room/facts-statistics), a whopping 40 million adults over the age of 18 experience an anxiety disorder. That represents over 18% of the adult population in our country.

These numbers are growing and expanding into some concerning and alarming territory. The rate of suicide is