To solve a marriage problem, you have to talk with each other about it, choosing wisely the time and place. But when accusations and lengthy speeches of defense fill the dialogue, the partners are not talking to each other but past each other. Take care to listen more than you speak. If you still can’t agree on a solution, consider asking a third party, without a vested interest, to mediate.
R.C. Sproul

The Owner Of Our Soul

The Owner Of Our Soul

The Owner Of Our Soul

The sin of Adam, choosing to be independent from God, made it possible to live without acknowledging our need for God. This is a life controlled by the self where God is blocked out as we seek our own solutions to our needs. The result being they are left unfulfilled, for God alone is the owner of our souls. “Behold all souls are Mine” says God in Ezekiel 18:4, who alone is able to fully satisfy our needs. “The Lord is my portion says my soul, ‘therefore I will hope in Him.’ The Lord is good to those who wait for Him, to the soul, that seeks Him.” (Lamentations 3:24-25).

On an unconscious level our unfulfilled needs supersede all our activities until they are met. They drive us to direct all our energies towards satisfying them. Only as we depend on God to fulfil these needs will we ever be satisfied. This frees us and allows us to look beyond ourselves directing others to God for fulfilment of their needs.

Moberly points out that all have needs for ‘love from,’ ‘dependency on,’ and ‘identification with the same sex parent.’ Infants depend on their parents, the only love source they know, to provide for every physical, emotional, spiritual need that they experience. Due to our parents’ humanness, who have their own unfulfilled needs, the child’s high expectations go unfulfilled. Reality is that the parent is able to meet the developmental needs of the child only to the extent that his own developmental needs have been met. The pain of reality is that our only love source, whom we have put our full dependence upon, has failed us.

Hurt, anger, resentment, and unforgiveness bring immense pain. It is at this point that God’s call to depend on Him to meet our needs is heard, allowing Him to bring restoration. “For I will satisfy the weary soul, and every languishing soul I will replenish.” (Jeremiah 31:25).

Yet many times for different reasons: too young, lack of understanding, lack of trust, lack of strength, self in control, etc., we search for our own solutions. We would rather cope by denying these feelings to prevent ourselves from being hurt like this again than to be healed by God. The denial increases as opportunity to freely express our “negative” feelings and our needs are seldom permitted. We resort to repressing this pain in our subconscious mind unable to know what our real needs are. Consciously, we grope around seeking satisfaction for our new presumed needs. Since the real needs have been buried along with the pain to protect us against reality, we settle for the less painful: the tension of being unreal.

We enter an eternal struggle when we place our hope of fulfilling real needs by satisfying presumed needs, like having a homosexual lover. There is no relationship that can provide fulfilment to real needs except the relationship with Jesus Christ the owner of our souls. This allows the Holy Spirit to reveal our true unmet needs and gives us the courage to experience the pain of reality that has been buried so deep within.

We learn to pursue assumed needs from our parents. The unfulfilled needs in the parents drives them to seek fulfilment through their children. This can happen in many ways. If a parent was humiliated a lot by her parents, she may expect undue respect and love from her children. If a parent, as a child, had to perform for love, he may expect his children to be nothing less that perfect, successful, productive and always good. If a parent was so protected growing up, he may expect his children to become adults prematurely, i.e., to “take care” of him. The unfulfilled needs of the parents take precedence over the child’s needs. The child then must repress and deny her own needs and feelings in order to try to satisfy the parent’s needs. When this happens the child is needed rather than loved, for the child is not accepted for her own personhood nor is her potential nourished and enhanced. As these times add up all kinds of hurt, anger, resentment and unforgiveness result. Being dependent on her parents the child is in a vulnerable position with the only option that she must act as she is expected to in order to gain their “love.” The child clings to the hope that if she meets her parents expectations, she will receive the love she yearns for. So she struggles to become another version of herself, sacrificing her real needs and feelings in order to deny the feeling of being unloved. The child hiding this pain escapes the reality of her neediness. This only shuts down her real feelings all the more. Becoming numb she further separates from her real self acting instead of being. Since the child is rarely able to have her own feelings, she believes love is found outside herself and with someone else. As the child becomes an adult, the unfulfilled needs drive her to seek substitute gratification through symbolic behaviour in hopes of finding someone to make her feel and let her know who she is.

Those who have struggled homosexually have been caught up in this denial of reality. We have denied our neediness for the same sex parent because of the immense pain we have felt when he/she failed us due to his/her own unfulfilled needs. Our unfulfilled needs drive us to unconsciously find that caring, interested, warm same sex parent in all our relationships. Aching to feel and to be our true selves has led to eroticisation of our needs Sex is the most potent emotional expression there is. Suddenly we finally feel alive! We finally have our own feelings. Having to act most of the time while growing up trying to meet our parents’ expectations rather than just being has confused our identity. We are searching to find ourselves. We can find our real selves in reality. Reality is in feeling the pain of our neediness, acknowledging that our same sex parent never did nor could meet our needs. Then we must acknowledge our hurt, anger, resentment, and unforgiveness. (See Confession: The Gateway To Wholeness.) We are admonished to let go of the garbage that is stored in our souls. “Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamour and slander be put away from you , with all malice, and be kind to one another, as God in Christ forgave you.” (Ephesians 4:31-32)

Asking God to reveal the garbage that we have buried begins the process to reality. He will reveal our hurts and our responses to us. We will begin to feel the pain and acknowledge our neediness for God. For we have dashed the hope that someone else can and will meet our needs. The search will be over, allowing God to come in and finally satisfy those unfulfilled needs. We will then be free to depend on God, embracing Him fully for fulfilment. Our identity will be found in Him for he will be the owner of our souls.

Sylvia Lidell

For further information about homosexuality or about other areas of sexual brokenness, please contact:

LOVE IN ACTION
G.P.O. Box 1115
ADELAIDE SA 5001
Phone (08) 371 0446

This article is reprinted
by permission from:

Metanoia Ministries
P O Box 33039
Seattle WA 98133-0039
U.S.A.