Mark Rutland: Courage to be Healed

Mark Rutland, Courage to be Healed: Finding Hope to Restore Your Soul (Lake Mary, FL: Charisma House, 2019), 208 pages, ISBN 9781629996479.

Dr. Mark Rutland is the president of a ministry called Global Servants, this ministry has a base in Africa and in Asia. He is also the president of the National Institute of Christian Leadership. Previously he has served as a pastor and been the president of two Christian universities, Oral Roberts University and Southeastern University. In addition to these ministries he has written a number of books, Courage to be Healed is his latest.

At first glance, the title may fool you; the book is not about physical healing. The subtitle is helpful in clarifying the focus of the book. As the subtitle clearly states the book is about restoring your soul. Stated differently, this is a book about inner healing. The book is the fruit of some of the author’s counseling of others along with material supplied to him by other Christian counselors. Rutland takes care to conceal the identities of both the counselors and counselees. This is necessary because some of the stories in this book are truly disturbing. The fallen world in which we live produces some terrible results and no one has the assurance that they will escape unscathed. Many, if not all, of the people whose stories are told in this book are Christians, and they have each been deeply wounded.

One of the biblical passages used in this text is the portion of Scripture in which four men carry a paralyzed man up to the roof of a house, dig a hole in the roof, and then lower the paralyzed man down through the roof right in front of Jesus. This story demonstrates the truth that sometimes people need the help of others in order to get to Jesus so that they can to be healed. Jesus first met the man’s spiritual needs by forgiving his sins, and then He healed his body. The author calls our attention to the fact that the paralytic had to have courage in order go through with this plan to be healed.

In the pages of this book, Rutland deals with the wounds that many people carry. The things that have caused these wounds he calls “toxins.” He deals with five: shame, unforgiveness, rejection, condemnation, and fear. As he writes about each of these toxins he identifies the throne (that which gives the toxin its power), the therapy that will help cure the toxin, and the goal of the therapy (what the counselor is trying to accomplish through the counseling sessions).

In the course of dealing with each of the toxins mentioned above the author shares some of the dialogue that takes place between the counselor and the person being counseled. This part of the text helps the reader see the difficulty of the counseling task. One can see the struggle and the tension that takes place in the counseling session. This book demonstrates that it does indeed take courage to be healed. The first step for the counselee is to face the issue and call it what it truly is. That can be a very difficult thing for a person to do. This book may be of special interest to professional Christian counselors or those who are engaged in pastoral counseling.

Reviewed by John Lathrop

 

Preview Courage to Be Healed: https://books.google.com/books/about/Courage_to_Be_Healed.html?id=6uWmDwAAQBAJ

Author’s book page: https://drmarkrutland.com/store/books/courage-to-be-healed/

Tags: courage, healed, mark, rutland

Category: Ministry, Summer 2019