Robin Pasley - The Healing Path: Overcoming the Wounds of Orphanhood and Slavery

Copyright 2010 by Robin Pasley

www.robinpasley.com

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored, or transmitted in any way without express permission of the publisher with this exception: if you are an individual and you want to excerpt a part of the book for the purpose of helping others, you may do so given you also prominently note the book title, the author, and her website (hyperlinked where possible) at www.robinpasley.com in the excerpt.

Published by Blue Renaissance Publishing, Part of the Blue Renaissance Creative Group, 743 Gold Hill Place, Woodland Park, CO 80866

Unless otherwise indicated, all scripture quotations are from the Holy Bible, New International Version . Copyright 1973, 1978, 1984 International Bible Society. Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved.

The "NIV" and "New International Version" trademarks are registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office by International Bible Society. Use of either trademark requires the permission of International Bible Society.

Cover Design: Kyle Steed

ISBN: 978-0-9825434-3-6

Library of Congress Control Number: 2010908295

Dedicated to my parents who did the hard labor of tilling the ground of my soul (especially through the teen years). Thank you for always pointing me to Jesus and for planting the seeds that grew confidence, passion, and a belief that God would bring me the man of my dreams.

To my best friend, partner, and that very man of my dreams, Ben. You remind me of who I really am and make room for me to continue to blossom into the destiny the Father has for me. Thank you.

And lastly, to Doug and Rita Roberts whove watered, weeded, and fortified the garden of my soul. You called forth my daughterhood. Thank you for your wisdom which laid the foundations for my soul and for this book.

I know it might be clich to start any talk with a note from the dictionary, but hopefully since Im making the confession up front you will cut me some slack. The word recovery was in the working title of The Healing Path back in the early draft stages of writing. I thought this word really pointed to the central idea of this book. My early attachment to the word drove me to the Google machine and I discovered these entries for recover in the Merriam-Webster online dictionary:

• 1. to get back, regain,
• 2. to bring back to normal position or condition.

This book is about recovering our souls to their normal position. I believe our normal position with God is to be immersed in his consuming love and to live in the regular confidence of our position with him as his sons. I use the word sons here not as a gender specific term, but as a term of family endearment, family position, and family favor. We can all be our Fathers sons, regardless of gender, because we are dear to his heart, placed in his family as carriers of his DNA, and we are destined to inherit his favor both in this life and the life to come. To walk in the joy and confidence of sonship is normal once we have received our adoption into our heavenly family. This adoption is a miracle gift from Jesus, and the subsequent restoration of our relationship to God the Father is one of being restored to sonship. The question this book asksand then seeks to answeris, If I am my heavenly Fathers son, then why dont I act like it all the time?

This question goes right to the heart of our problem. We know that we dont always act like the favored sons that we are. We know that we dont always act like we are free to really be ourselves. We could have all the knowledge in the world about sonship and adoption and Gods love, but if that knowledge doesnt affect the way we live and act, then it doesnt matter much, does it?

This book is different from other books that seek to teach kingdom ways, truth, or values from a more intellectual perspective. It is different because I have come to these kingdom insights not only by God loving and teaching me, but I have also come to it by failure, frustration, and by finding myself acting like an orphan and a slave long after thinking I had conquered those mindsets. This book is full of my own confessions of weakness, flaws, and imperfections. My hope in sharing such intimate stories of deficiency is that it may bring us together as people who really do need to reach out for help. I know I need to reach out for help. And I know I am not alone in that need.

Clearly, the word recover is perfect for us to consider because it points to the fact that we have lost our normal position with the Father and we are in desperate need to get back to our place of confidence with him. But this word recover is also filled with hope! We really can recover. I dont just hope we can recover from our lack of confidence in Gods love, I know we can. I want to share my confidence with you and I want to inspire you to believe that you can recover to sonship as well.

This book will begin with a series of personal confessions. In these confessions I am going to be honest about my own struggles with walking in my sonship. The second section of the book will hold up key truths that have come out of these struggles for me which, simply put, are ways to find God more beautiful and receive him more fully. These encounters with a more beautiful God lay the groundwork for recovering to our normal position of sonship, which we do in amazingly practical steps in the third and final section of the book. In the last section I will invite you to invest in your own confessions and engage your own healing process through a series of practical questions, challenges, and investigations into your heart in a workbook format. We will go on a hike together and see our process of recovery as a journey that we walk together. I invite you write all over this book, dog ear the pages that you need, and let it become a helpful guidebook on your journey to sonship.

It had been years since I had seen most of the people in the room. They had arrived at the largish home near Dallas, Texas for a house concert that my husband and I would be playing. I was busy greeting most of them, enjoying the mix of friends and family who had come. For most, I learned, this was their first house concert experience. A house concert is a very unique environment for both playing and enjoying music. Usually, anywhere from twenty to forty people pack into a home that can accommodate them, the musicians, and the food, and everyone enjoys a casual evening of together-time that spills into an up-close-and-personal concert experience. For the artist, the event is either inspiring because of the proximity of the audience or terrifying because there is no separation between the artist and the audience at all.

That night there was a low hum of conversation with intermittent cackles of laughter. The clink of glassware and dishes filled the air as everyone buzzed around the table of appetizers like bees in a hive. The small crowd was made up of a mixture of family friends that I see at least annually and high school pals who I probably hadnt seen or talked to since my wedding day almost fifteen years ago.