405. Celebrating God's Grace, God Can Heal the Trauma that Fractures Your Soul

Are there areas in your soul in desperate need of God's grace in relation to trauma? Learn, with Robin Kirby-Gatto, how Jesus Christ came to heal us in the fractured places of the soul.

***

Welcome to Celebrating God’s Grace, A Women World Leader’s Podcast, I’m your host Robin Kirby-Gatto.

Thank you for joining us today as we celebrate God’s grace, in our lives, in our ministry, and around the world.

Today’s Title is: “God can heal the trauma that fractures your soul.”

17 “This was in fulfillment of what was spoken by the prophet Isaiah, 18 Behold, My Servant Whom I have chosen, My Beloved in and with Whom My soul is well pleased and has found its delight. I will put My Spirit upon Him, and He shall proclaim and show forth justice to the nations. 19 He will not strive or wrangle or cry out loudly; nor will anyone hear His voice in the streets; 20 A bruised reed He will not break, and a smoldering (dimly burning) wick He will not quench, till He brings justice and a just cause to victory.” (Matthew 12:17-20 AMPC)

Jesus Christ, the Son of God, gives us Eternal Life, delivering us from sin. Not only does He deliver us from sin, He heals us of the trauma that is the result of sin. This prophecy from Isaiah 42:1-3, is recorded in the Gospel of Matthew. God has literal meaning of His word, as well as revelation richly applicable to our individual lives, of which this passage is one.

I get into detail greatly on the issue of trauma in my upcoming book “The Forbidden Fruit, The Spiritual Disease,” where God reveals that the effects of sin are the impression of trauma. The acronym God gave me for “traumas” is Terror, Rejection, Abandonment, and Unloved Massively Announcing Shame. As a former psychotherapist, I saw the symptoms of trauma overabundantly in outpatient psychiatry. Presently, in my ministry work of health and wellness coaching, this is the most prevalent issue, in which I navigate my clients.

We don’t realize that even in the smallest way, we have an undercurrent of emotion, generally in those four areas, of terror, rejection, abandonment, and unloved, speaking within our body, causing us to react to things we’ve misinterpreted in life. Two symptoms of trauma I want to address are hypervigilance and being paranoid. Hypervigilance means that your super aware of things in your environment and you’re getting ready to fend off a perceived violation that might come through a circumstance or through another person verbally, passive aggressively or physically.

No one is immune from trauma in this fallen world. Adam and Eve were the first ones to experience this, as they were banished from the Garden of Eden as a result of eating from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, bringing about spiritual death, where sin entered mankind. (See Genesis 3:1-24) Sin separated mankind from God. From this act, sprang emotions unfelt before, reeling through Adam and Eve’s bodies, of terror, rejection, abandonment and unloved cloaking them in shame. They tried desperately to cover themselves in fig leaves, hyper aware that something had changed. God hadn’t changed, He still loved them. What changed was that sin separated mankind from God, where Adam and Eve now felt terror, rejection, abandonment and being unloved.

Because of Christ Jesus and the power of Grace, we are freed from the impression of trauma. This is what the prophecy from Isaiah, recorded in the Gospel of Matthew is about.

“20 A bruised reed He will not break, and a smoldering (dimly burning) wick He will not quench, till He brings justice and a just cause to victory.” (Matthew 12:20 AMPC)

The bruised reed and smoldering wick, represents the soul that’s experienced trauma. God provides a backdrop in which we can view the bruised reed and smoldering wick and its meaning, through the Hebrew words, which compose it.

Bruised comes from the Hebrew word râtsats pronounced raw-tsats' meaning, “TO CRACK IN PIECES, break, bruise, crush, discourage, and oppress.” [i] Thus, the bruised reed represents the person whose life seems to be falling apart or is at the point of a nervous breakdown. I don’t know about you, but I’ve had many opportunities in life, where I’ve felt like this. You must realize when this comes upon your person, it is only the “cracked” or fragmented parts of your soul, speaking and bleeding over into your entire body, overtaking you for the moment. You must stop and breathe, acknowledging GRACE!

To provide an analogy I want to use the spelling of the Hebrew word for bruised, which is r.a.t.s.a.t.s. Let me say it one more time, R.A.T.S.A.T.S. Now I’m not a wordsmith by any means, but I cannot help but to see things in the Hebrew words, which my husband, Rich, calls “Robinisms.” I couldn’t help but see RAT-SATS. This might not mean anything now but just wait.

We live in an old apartment, which we love, built in the early 1900s in downtown Birmingham, Alabama in the historic garden district. We have three parks in the area, where many more old buildings stand, occupied by tenants who can appreciate the character of the old architecture. I feel like I’m living the HGTV House Hunters International life, except nationally.

We’ve lived here for six years, and it wasn’t until just a month ago, that we experienced a mouse issue in the place. Thank goodness it was a mouse and not a rat. Well, that mouse had a friend later, so it became mice. Although they were cute, they were unnerving as from time to time, they would come out and run across the kitchen floor, and eventually one was in our bedroom. Me being the wife that I am and knowing my husband, I tried to keep it on the down low as much as possible.

Because of my work, I couldn’t help but hear the mice in the apartment. I am a proficient writer, having written 70 plus workbooks, and now 14 books. My father jokingly says, years from now that he’ll ask me what I’m doing and I’ll respond, “I’m writing a new book.” Along with being a writer, I minister and do health and wellness coaching, all from our apartment. While writing, I could hear something moving in the kitchen for a few days and would get up and down over and over to see if I could find what it might be. Eventually, I discovered a mouse, and contacted the property management to deal with the issue. One was caught, and I let out a sigh of relief, only to find out two days later there was another one. The second one I saw scurrying across our bedroom floor, which was caught later.

I cleaned our kitchen as though we were moving out, dismantling little boroughs of collected paper bags which might seem inviting for a critter. As well as getting into the nook and crannies, where I moved all the items in the kitchen, and then swept and mopped the floor.

I’m grateful it was mice and not rats. Rats are bigger and very aggressive, compared to mice. I’ve heard stories of people that had to deal with rat infested homes, and it’s not good. So, imagine if you had a rat sitting in your house and refusing to leave. No matter what, you couldn’t get it out. That’s what the effects of sin do, by leaving the impression of trauma. You might not have committed an act, but someone else committed an act against you. Regardless of who committed the act of sin, for which you’ve forgiven, you still have its impression in the form of trauma, which has made you hypervigilant on a matter or even paranoid.

God’s grace delivers us from this issue. He brings the power of His Word of Truth, where His Spirit of Truth, reveals His love, driving out the fear that was brought on by it. We see this in 1 John 4:18.

18 “There is no fear in love [dread does not exist], but full-grown (complete, perfect) love turns fear out of doors and EXPELS EVERY TRACE OF TERROR! For fear brings with it the thought of punishment, and [so] he who is afraid has not reached the full maturity of love [is not yet grown into love’s complete perfection].” (1 John 4:18 AMPC)

The bruise of the enemy, inflicted by sin, is trauma, the rat in our soul, gnawing at places in which we feel we’ll never be healed. God’s love makes us whole driving all terror out! The Greek word for fear is phóbos pronounced fob'-os meaning, “to be put in fear, alarm or fright, be afraid, and terror.” [ii] This is also where the word phobia comes from. Thus, God deals with the bruises on our soul, where we’ve acquired phobias.

The dim wick represents a little flicker of a flame on a candle, barely burning. The Hebrew primary root word for dim is kâhâh pronounced kaw-haw' meaning, “to be weak, to despond, to grow dull, darken, be dim, fail, and faint.” [iii] This gives the picture of someone barely hanging onto life, who’s hopeless. Jesus brings hope to the hopeless through His love, which is grace, lifting the weary traveler up onto the Highway of Holiness in Isaiah 35:8, where no unclean thing or beast can walk. No terror can tread on Love’s path. The saint is bathed in the pure love of the Cross of Christ Jesus and what He has done, to know the power of His resurrection. That power is our inheritance. (See Ephesians 1:17-20)

There is a process in working out our salvation as in Philippians 2:12, in fear and in trembling. That process is to know the grace of God that has come through Christ Jesus, so that although we’ve asked for forgiveness and have forgiven others, we must address our issue in getting past some things. The effects of sin have traumatized us in some fashion, which has left us feeling stuck, and possibly hopeless.

The first step in addressing the area of trauma, is recognizing that you’re feeling it in some form, whether it be terror, rejection, abandonment or unloved. This is prominent at times, where you might be triggered by what some says or does. You feel like a little girl lifting her hands, who longs to be picked up by her daddy and kept in his long embrace. This fractured part of the soul is where trauma dwells and needs to be healed by grace.

One of my favorite stories, which I’ve taught in my books, is about the ruby. I teach God’s scriptures with all the sciences, unfolding understanding of truth. When I taught on precious stones, in the series of God’s Fire Wall Healing of the Soul, I taught on Job 28 and on the precious stone, the ruby.

In Job 28, the prophet is grappling with his own trauma, which he’s felt during his trial, where he’s crying out for wisdom in the dark (dim) place, inside of a mountain. Sitting in darkness, Job’s led to pull back a piece of the mountain, allowing the light to shine in, and he discovers himself sitting amid sapphires and other precious stones. How beautiful is that? We don’t realize the precious blessings of God’s truth that’s made known to us in the darkest trials in our lives.

When I studied and taught on rubies during the gemology and archeology I employed with scripture, it blew my mind. Did you know that a perfect ruby is rare. That’s right. Isn’t that surprising? Most rubies have what gemologist call “fractures.” Little fractures make their paths through the stone, which might cause a regular person to discard it.

Fortunately, there’s a process to make the imperfect fractured ruby, perfect. Oil is poured into the fractured parts of the ruby, that’s then put into an oven heated at 500 degrees. Once done, the ruby is brought out, where the oil has baked into the fractures, and it is then made perfect. This process is called “healing,” where the fractured places in the ruby have now been healed. 500 represents grace for us, and is such a testament to the trials, which expose the areas of trauma in which we need healing. Our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, doesn’t discard us or break us, He sweeps us up in the Love of God, bringing the display of the Father’s love for us.

Where is it you need healing from past trauma? Let the Lord’s love pour into your heart, overflowing within your mind, as you know the power of healing, grace.

[i] Strong J. (1890) Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance of the Bible, Abingdon Press. Strong’s Concordance Hebrew word # 7533 “bruised”

[ii] Strong J. (1890) Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance of the Bible, Abingdon Press. Strong’s Concordance Greek word # 5401 “terror”

[iii] Strong J. (1890) Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance of the Bible, Abingdon Press. Strong’s Concordance Hebrew word # 3544 “dim”

Are there areas in your soul in desperate need of God's grace in relation to trauma? Learn, with Robin Kirby-Gatto, how Jesus Christ came to heal us in the fractured places of the soul.

***

Welcome to Celebrating God’s Grace, A Women World Leader’s Podcast, I’m your host Robin Kirby-Gatto.

Thank you for joining us today as we celebrate God’s grace, in our lives, in our ministry, and around the world.

Today’s Title is: “God can heal the trauma that fractures your soul.”

17 “This was in fulfillment of what was spoken by the prophet Isaiah, 18 Behold, My Servant Whom I have chosen, My Beloved in and with Whom My soul is well pleased and has found its delight. I will put My Spirit upon Him, and He shall proclaim and show forth justice to the nations. 19 He will not strive or wrangle or cry out loudly; nor will anyone hear His voice in the streets; 20 A bruised reed He will not break, and a smoldering (dimly burning) wick He will not quench, till He brings justice and a just cause to victory.” (Matthew 12:17-20 AMPC)

Jesus Christ, the Son of God, gives us Eternal Life, delivering us from sin. Not only does He deliver us from sin, He heals us of the trauma that is the result of sin. This prophecy from Isaiah 42:1-3, is recorded in the Gospel of Matthew. God has literal meaning of His word, as well as revelation richly applicable to our individual lives, of which this passage is one.

I get into detail greatly on the issue of trauma in my upcoming book “The Forbidden Fruit, The Spiritual Disease,” where God reveals that the effects of sin are the impression of trauma. The acronym God gave me for “traumas” is Terror, Rejection, Abandonment, and Unloved Massively Announcing Shame. As a former psychotherapist, I saw the symptoms of trauma overabundantly in outpatient psychiatry. Presently, in my ministry work of health and wellness coaching, this is the most prevalent issue, in which I navigate my clients.

We don’t realize that even in the smallest way, we have an undercurrent of emotion, generally in those four areas, of terror, rejection, abandonment, and unloved, speaking within our body, causing us to react to things we’ve misinterpreted in life. Two symptoms of trauma I want to address are hypervigilance and being paranoid. Hypervigilance means that your super aware of things in your environment and you’re getting ready to fend off a perceived violation that might come through a circumstance or through another person verbally, passive aggressively or physically.

No one is immune from trauma in this fallen world. Adam and Eve were the first ones to experience this, as they were banished from the Garden of Eden as a result of eating from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, bringing about spiritual death, where sin entered mankind. (See Genesis 3:1-24) Sin separated mankind from God. From this act, sprang emotions unfelt before, reeling through Adam and Eve’s bodies, of terror, rejection, abandonment and unloved cloaking them in shame. They tried desperately to cover themselves in fig leaves, hyper aware that something had changed. God hadn’t changed, He still loved them. What changed was that sin separated mankind from God, where Adam and Eve now felt terror, rejection, abandonment and being unloved.

Because of Christ Jesus and the power of Grace, we are freed from the impression of trauma. This is what the prophecy from Isaiah, recorded in the Gospel of Matthew is about.

“20 A bruised reed He will not break, and a smoldering (dimly burning) wick He will not quench, till He brings justice and a just cause to victory.” (Matthew 12:20 AMPC)

The bruised reed and smoldering wick, represents the soul that’s experienced trauma. God provides a backdrop in which we can view the bruised reed and smoldering wick and its meaning, through the Hebrew words, which compose it.

Bruised comes from the Hebrew word râtsats pronounced raw-tsats' meaning, “TO CRACK IN PIECES, break, bruise, crush, discourage, and oppress.” [i] Thus, the bruised reed represents the person whose life seems to be falling apart or is at the point of a nervous breakdown. I don’t know about you, but I’ve had many opportunities in life, where I’ve felt like this. You must realize when this comes upon your person, it is only the “cracked” or fragmented parts of your soul, speaking and bleeding over into your entire body, overtaking you for the moment. You must stop and breathe, acknowledging GRACE!

To provide an analogy I want to use the spelling of the Hebrew word for bruised, which is r.a.t.s.a.t.s. Let me say it one more time, R.A.T.S.A.T.S. Now I’m not a wordsmith by any means, but I cannot help but to see things in the Hebrew words, which my husband, Rich, calls “Robinisms.” I couldn’t help but see RAT-SATS. This might not mean anything now but just wait.

We live in an old apartment, which we love, built in the early 1900s in downtown Birmingham, Alabama in the historic garden district. We have three parks in the area, where many more old buildings stand, occupied by tenants who can appreciate the character of the old architecture. I feel like I’m living the HGTV House Hunters International life, except nationally.

We’ve lived here for six years, and it wasn’t until just a month ago, that we experienced a mouse issue in the place. Thank goodness it was a mouse and not a rat. Well, that mouse had a friend later, so it became mice. Although they were cute, they were unnerving as from time to time, they would come out and run across the kitchen floor, and eventually one was in our bedroom. Me being the wife that I am and knowing my husband, I tried to keep it on the down low as much as possible.

Because of my work, I couldn’t help but hear the mice in the apartment. I am a proficient writer, having written 70 plus workbooks, and now 14 books. My father jokingly says, years from now that he’ll ask me what I’m doing and I’ll respond, “I’m writing a new book.” Along with being a writer, I minister and do health and wellness coaching, all from our apartment. While writing, I could hear something moving in the kitchen for a few days and would get up and down over and over to see if I could find what it might be. Eventually, I discovered a mouse, and contacted the property management to deal with the issue. One was caught, and I let out a sigh of relief, only to find out two days later there was another one. The second one I saw scurrying across our bedroom floor, which was caught later.

I cleaned our kitchen as though we were moving out, dismantling little boroughs of collected paper bags which might seem inviting for a critter. As well as getting into the nook and crannies, where I moved all the items in the kitchen, and then swept and mopped the floor.

I’m grateful it was mice and not rats. Rats are bigger and very aggressive, compared to mice. I’ve heard stories of people that had to deal with rat infested homes, and it’s not good. So, imagine if you had a rat sitting in your house and refusing to leave. No matter what, you couldn’t get it out. That’s what the effects of sin do, by leaving the impression of trauma. You might not have committed an act, but someone else committed an act against you. Regardless of who committed the act of sin, for which you’ve forgiven, you still have its impression in the form of trauma, which has made you hypervigilant on a matter or even paranoid.

God’s grace delivers us from this issue. He brings the power of His Word of Truth, where His Spirit of Truth, reveals His love, driving out the fear that was brought on by it. We see this in 1 John 4:18.

18 “There is no fear in love [dread does not exist], but full-grown (complete, perfect) love turns fear out of doors and EXPELS EVERY TRACE OF TERROR! For fear brings with it the thought of punishment, and [so] he who is afraid has not reached the full maturity of love [is not yet grown into love’s complete perfection].” (1 John 4:18 AMPC)

The bruise of the enemy, inflicted by sin, is trauma, the rat in our soul, gnawing at places in which we feel we’ll never be healed. God’s love makes us whole driving all terror out! The Greek word for fear is phóbos pronounced fob'-os meaning, “to be put in fear, alarm or fright, be afraid, and terror.” [ii] This is also where the word phobia comes from. Thus, God deals with the bruises on our soul, where we’ve acquired phobias.

The dim wick represents a little flicker of a flame on a candle, barely burning. The Hebrew primary root word for dim is kâhâh pronounced kaw-haw' meaning, “to be weak, to despond, to grow dull, darken, be dim, fail, and faint.” [iii] This gives the picture of someone barely hanging onto life, who’s hopeless. Jesus brings hope to the hopeless through His love, which is grace, lifting the weary traveler up onto the Highway of Holiness in Isaiah 35:8, where no unclean thing or beast can walk. No terror can tread on Love’s path. The saint is bathed in the pure love of the Cross of Christ Jesus and what He has done, to know the power of His resurrection. That power is our inheritance. (See Ephesians 1:17-20)

There is a process in working out our salvation as in Philippians 2:12, in fear and in trembling. That process is to know the grace of God that has come through Christ Jesus, so that although we’ve asked for forgiveness and have forgiven others, we must address our issue in getting past some things. The effects of sin have traumatized us in some fashion, which has left us feeling stuck, and possibly hopeless.

The first step in addressing the area of trauma, is recognizing that you’re feeling it in some form, whether it be terror, rejection, abandonment or unloved. This is prominent at times, where you might be triggered by what some says or does. You feel like a little girl lifting her hands, who longs to be picked up by her daddy and kept in his long embrace. This fractured part of the soul is where trauma dwells and needs to be healed by grace.

One of my favorite stories, which I’ve taught in my books, is about the ruby. I teach God’s scriptures with all the sciences, unfolding understanding of truth. When I taught on precious stones, in the series of God’s Fire Wall Healing of the Soul, I taught on Job 28 and on the precious stone, the ruby.

In Job 28, the prophet is grappling with his own trauma, which he’s felt during his trial, where he’s crying out for wisdom in the dark (dim) place, inside of a mountain. Sitting in darkness, Job’s led to pull back a piece of the mountain, allowing the light to shine in, and he discovers himself sitting amid sapphires and other precious stones. How beautiful is that? We don’t realize the precious blessings of God’s truth that’s made known to us in the darkest trials in our lives.

When I studied and taught on rubies during the gemology and archeology I employed with scripture, it blew my mind. Did you know that a perfect ruby is rare. That’s right. Isn’t that surprising? Most rubies have what gemologist call “fractures.” Little fractures make their paths through the stone, which might cause a regular person to discard it.

Fortunately, there’s a process to make the imperfect fractured ruby, perfect. Oil is poured into the fractured parts of the ruby, that’s then put into an oven heated at 500 degrees. Once done, the ruby is brought out, where the oil has baked into the fractures, and it is then made perfect. This process is called “healing,” where the fractured places in the ruby have now been healed. 500 represents grace for us, and is such a testament to the trials, which expose the areas of trauma in which we need healing. Our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, doesn’t discard us or break us, He sweeps us up in the Love of God, bringing the display of the Father’s love for us.

Where is it you need healing from past trauma? Let the Lord’s love pour into your heart, overflowing within your mind, as you know the power of healing, grace.

[i] Strong J. (1890) Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance of the Bible, Abingdon Press. Strong’s Concordance Hebrew word # 7533 “bruised”

[ii] Strong J. (1890) Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance of the Bible, Abingdon Press. Strong’s Concordance Greek word # 5401 “terror”

[iii] Strong J. (1890) Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance of the Bible, Abingdon Press. Strong’s Concordance Hebrew word # 3544 “dim”