HEALING TROUBLED HEARTS BY DR. BILL DAY

Dr Bill day is an inner healing practitioner. When I first got this book and realized it was about inner healing I was skeptical. I have come to associate the words with two things:

1.      New Age Religion and 

2.      Ultra spooky charismatic Christianity

I find neither of these two very palatable so I prepared myself for a very annoying read. Much to my surprise, it’s not bad at all. It is counseling, psychology and psychiatry from a Christ centered point of view. In this book, Dr. Day uses his personal life experiences and the testimonies of his patients to highlight some very important points

·        We all have baggage and are damaged because we have come to believe lies about ourselves and about God

·        These lies are so embedded in our subconscious that we sometimes don’t even realize it

·        Conventional counseling techniques, which majority of Church counselors also adopt can neither reveal nor dislodge those lies from our minds

·        It takes the HOLY SPIRIT to not only reveal them, but to shine the light of Jesus into the darkness and replace the lies with the truth of Jesus

As I read the book, I realized the very salient point he is making. Christian counseling and psychology should be just as Christ-centered as every other aspect of the Christian life. The most beautiful part of this is that he has seen it all; been through different types of religions and all forms of spirituality. In his quest for personal fulfillment and emotional stability, he went from Secular Humanism to learning New Age spirituality in San Diego and here’s what he has to say:

“In San Diego I had learned that self-actualization could be achieved without much conflict, that the intrinsic goodness of the human self would come through once people saw the truth and light of innate human goodness.”

“In this system of thought (and I ran across many expressions and varieties) there was no need for a Savior. Suffering and evil were seen as resulting from ignorance, avoidable by learning and applying true knowledge”

In hindsight, he shares with his conclusion on these schools of thought:

“Reflecting on this time in my life, I think it was a robust round of whistling in the dark. After all my study, striving, practicing meditation, and other spiritual exercises that promised enlightenment, no significant transformation had taken place”

I must be honest, I really like this book and I would recommend it for anyone who is being led by the lord into the ministry of counselling and therapy. I would also recommend it to all people in general. He gives practical tools to inviting Jesus into our baggage to heal and transform us himself.

Dr. Bill points out that we cannot relegate God to just the opening and closing of therapy sessions; We pray to at the beginning of the session and then use our educational and professional skills for the whole session, and when we’re done we pray to him again. He believes that God must be allowed to actively run the session; directing, speaking and healing. The counselors job should be to facilitate this engagement and make the client aware of the great physician’s presence.

“The finished work of Christ will be finished when these ultimate intentions of God are realized. Redemption is God’s story; it is about His ultimate intentions. The whole panorama is about Him, for Him, by Him, and in Him…and especially in Jesus”

Selah