The following guest post was authored by Matt Evans, a man who focuses his ministry on inner healing, and who coauthored a book with me and four other authors, Broken to Whole: Inner Healing for the Fragmented Soul.  His article is as follows:

Since authoring our new book on healing fragments/fractured parts through the work of the Spirit (Broken to Whole: Inner Healing for the Fragmented Soul), we’ve been asked by a few people for a biblical basis. We even ran into one keyboard crusader of orthodoxy who was publicly demanding more Bible verses.

As much as we would love to quote the verse, “Yea, verily, thus saith the Lord, thou shalt integrate thine fragments and thine alters and then thou shalt be every whit whole saith your God,” we also are having trouble finding the verse that says, “Thou shalt turn on thine computer when thou wakest, and thou shalt readeth thy brother’s blog post, and when thy brother publisheth his book on Amazon, thou shalt download it unto thy Kindle, and then thou shalt demand more Bible verses before thou readest, because surely thus saith the Lord, thou shalt do nothing unless it is expressly written in thine Bible.” Or, how about the verse that says, “Thou shalt getteth thee into thine car, and driveth unto Five Guys to buyeth thee a cheesburger with fries, then thou shalt come home and crusadeth against heretics on the internet unto the glory of the Mighty One of Israel?”

The truth is, if we could only do things that are explicitly mentioned in scripture, we would all need to smash our computers as instruments of the devil, then join the Amish for the rest of our days. I’ll share a bit more later about how the New Testament leaves things wide open for continual revelation beyond what is written, but I want to share various places where scripture does speak to the issue of fragmentation and integration, even in some exceptionally clear ways.

First, an excerpt from my own (Matt’s) writing in the book itself:

Ministry to fractured parts was a basic element of Jesus’ mission statement in Luke 4:18. There, he quoted Isaiah 61, “The Spirit of the Lord God is upon        me, because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor, he has sent me to bind up/heal the broken hearted…” The word for “broken hearted” there in the Hebrew is “shabar,” which means to be shattered into many pieces. Jesus came to heal and to bind together those who have been shattered into many pieces. We’ve found this to be literally true; most, if not all, people have been shattered into many fractured parts, and these parts need to be healed and joined back together for the person to experience wholeness.

Then, Diane Moyer wrote:

I started praying and seeking the Lord about it, and he showed me the Scriptures about double-mindedness in James 1:8 that says, “being a double-minded man, unstable in all his ways.” I looked up ‘double-minded,’ and the root of ‘minded’ is ‘psyche,’ which means soul. ‘Double’ means twice, so being double minded means you have two souls. Hmmm… how can that be? Two souls?

The Lord showed me that what I had been taught before about double-mindedness—one foot in him, one foot in the world—was not correct. ‘Double-mindedness’ means two souls or two minds. What I felt the Lord was revealing to me was that many people have a part or parts of their soul that was stuck in trauma while they were a child. This fractured-off part of ourselves speaks within us—an internal voice that wants its own way.

Also:

More recently, the Lord gave me a picture of what fragments/fractured parts are. He has been showing me that although our body is one, it has many parts—fingers, toes, arms, head, eyes, etc. Each part has its function and job (1 Corinthians 12:14-26). Our soul functions in a similar manner—it is one but has many parts, each with its own function. If you break an arm, you find ways to compensate, doing what you normally would do without using that arm. If you lose your eye-sight, then your other senses become more enhanced to help you function. Although this works to some degree, it is never the same or as effective as if you were not injured.

The soul works the same way. When we are wounded emotionally, a part of our soul is crippled. We developed defense and coping mechanisms to overcome the crippling in that part of the soul. These mechanisms remain in place until that part of the soul is healed.

You cannot talk or decide your way out of this kind of problem, and self-control only works for a short while. The Lord ministering to the wounded part of the soul is the best solution.

We can look a bit deeper into the major themes of scripture as a whole, the overall story of redemption, and the basic nature of God and man revealed throughout the Bible to get even more insight into fragmentation and integration:

From the beginning, God was a plurality within one person. Genesis 1:1 says that God(Elohim) created the heavens and the earth. That Hebrew word, “elohim,” is plural, and is translated elsewhere in scripture as “gods,” as in “you shall not worship other gods(elohim) or bow down before them.” Man was created in the image of this plural being. Could it be that from the very beginning of Genesis, we are being shown that our nature, in the image of God, is to contain multiple identities within one person? One might even think the ancient Israelites were polytheistic if it weren’t for verses such as Deuteronomy 6:4, “Hear O Israel, the LORD (adonai) our God (Eloheinu/Gods) is one,” used often to support the doctrine of the Trinity. According to the Old Testament, “The Lord our Gods is one.” Does this mean God has fractured parts? No, but he has various individual identities operating in unity (syncronization). This is different than fragmentation created through trauma, which is a survival mechanism with negative consequences until it’s healed, but speaks of our basic nature of being capable of forming more than one identity in healthy and unhealthy ways.

Jesus not only clarified some of how God is multiple persons in one (Father, Son, Spirit), but he was given to bring us into unity once again in Him. His prayer in John 17 was that “they may be one, Father, as you and I are one, that they may be one in us, that the world may know that you have sent me.” Jesus came to bring “many sons to glory” as the author of Hebrews writes, revealing that our design from the beginning was to be sons like Jesus, to be joined into the family of the Trinity, one with the Father like Jesus.

In Romans 5, Paul explains how all of mankind fell in Adam but was to be restored in Christ. Basically, the Father lost his son (Adam/mankind) who was created in his own image, meant to partake in oneness with the Trinity. God became alienated from parts of his own image and identity through broken relationship (division) and lost/separated identity (dissociation). Jesus, the exact image of God and the core identity of humanity, would be born on earth to restore all the fractured parts of mankind (individual people dissociated from their original source and purpose) back into one again.

Jesus came to heal us, to deliver us, and to restore us into, not only relationship with the Trinity, but oneness with the Trinity. When scripture says that we are “in Christ” and that he is in us, what could this mean but that we are one with him? Paul writes in 1 Corinthians, “he who is joined to the Lord is one spirit with him,” relating that to the union between a man and a woman, where the two are tied together in spirit, soul, and flesh, becoming one. We are the body of Christ on earth, meaning that even our flesh has been joined to him through redemption. We have been given the mind of Christ as well.

The work of redemption is not only restoring mankind from fragmentation on this macro-scale, but is restoring God’s fragmented parts back to himself, since he identifies so intimately with us, declaring our experiences to be his experiences when he said, “as you have done it to the least of these, you have done it unto me.” On a micro-scale, the individual person made in his image, why would this be any different? We have found that, just as Isaiah 61 tells us that messiah would come to heal and bind together those who have been fractured into many pieces, restoration of fragmentation within individuals is a huge key to healing.

Finally, I want to share an excerpt of my writing from an upcoming book Diane and I are nearly ready to publish, which covers a more broad array of healing topics, focusing on the heart behind it all, “Divine Healing for Spirit, Soul, and Body”:

A common objection to this sort of ministry is that there isn’t a model for every part of it in scripture. I mean, where do you see Jesus having someone revisit their memories and hand over their emotions, or ministering to their fractured parts? Although we will be including scripture references and sometimes scriptural examples, it is true that more of what you typically see in the Bible are stories of someone saying, “Be healed!” and that’s all there is to it.

My response to this objection is that scripture was never meant to contain examples of everything we are to do. John 21:25 tells us “And there are also many other things which Jesus did, which if they were written in detail, I suppose that even the world itself would not contain the books that would be written.” The gospel accounts of Jesus’ healing ministry are only generalized representations; they don’t reveal everything he did. They say he healed multitudes in this place and that. They usually don’t say how.

Jesus commissioned his disciples to teach people to do everything he had done and taught (Matthew 28:20). He also said in John 16:12, near the end of his earthly ministry, that he had many more things to teach them which they weren’t yet ready for. He said that Holy Spirit would continue to lead them into all truth, to teach them beyond what Jesus himself had taught them. This means we can expect Holy Spirit to lead us into things beyond what is in the book.

Jesus said in John 14:12 that believers would do greater works than he. What if that means doing more complete healing than he did?

In Matthew 12:43, Jesus spoke of the generation of people he had healed and delivered in large numbers, saying that when an unclean spirit departs from a man it searches through dry places seeking rest and finding none, returns to the person it came out of with seven other spirits more wicked than itself, and so the last state of the man is worse than at first. He then said, “So shall it also be with this wicked generation” (KJV). His prediction came true about many of those he had healed and delivered. The same multitudes who Jesus had healed and delivered on a surface level soon turned on him and participated in the murderous work of the principalities and powers of darkness, shouting as one, “Crucify him!”

Even those Jesus poured into most during his time on earth (Peter and the other apostles) failed miserably in his final hours, revealing that they still had much healing and transformation to receive. Apparently, Jesus didn’t “totally heal and deliver” anybody in a five-second prayer, nor even through three years of discipleship.

What if one of the promised “greater works” is leading people into deeper healing, not just temporary relief of an issue on the surface such as a demon or a disease? What if literally removing the sins and driving woundedness from the hearts of the masses was one of the things Jesus had in mind for us, but which he didn’t have time to thoroughly accomplish in his own mission?

He was just getting the ball rolling in the right direction, showing a taste of what was possible, but not showing everything. It would then be our job to search out the wisdom of God and move into progressive revelation and experience over the ages. We have a living relationship with God, not just a closed book.

All these things we are talking about, healing emotions in memories, healing fractured parts, etc., are really only a matter of allowing the Lord access to the authentic content of our hearts so that he can help us where we truly are.

-Matt Evans-

Keys to Healing and Transformation

“I’m in my late 30’s, and possibly not what you expect a “minister” to be. I’m not interested in having a ceremonial hat or fancy title. I’m very much into organic relationships and not so much into big organizations. I relate to people in a low-key manner and on equal footing. I’m not obsessed with “avoiding the appearance of evil.” (That’s an inaccurate translation anyway.)  I’m most at home with those who religion ostracizes, who don’t buy into every last line of the doctrine statements, who may be a little rough around the edges, who can be comfortable in their own skin, who aren’t paranoid of going to hell if they hear a cuss word or if they give someone “license” to stumble through a journey of discovery. Actually, I call that love.

Jesus has been very real in my life since a young age, and I could never be satisfied with a “normal” life that would make sense to most people. After all I’ve seen and been a part of, I must spend my life in his presence and for his cause. Nothing else compares. God has shown me that he IS love (as opposed to being that sometimes but becoming something else if his kids misbehave). He has met me and worked in my life despite my not having it all together in so many ways, so I also meet people where they are and simply bring life to them, without requiring them to conform to a standard.  I’ve always been a bit outside the box, and have struggled sometimes with not fitting into church and ministry crowds. While feeling like the unlikely one and the misfit far too often, I’ve found the Lord faithful to miraculously open doors for me and to accomplish many significant things beyond my wildest expectations.  I’ve come to love being a part of this journey.”