Prophet Montserrat Bogaert talks with Prophet Jo Naughton on the healing of the heart, the identity in Christ Jesus and how to be a woman after God’s own heart.

• God loves women and He ensures that the Word is fulfilled in each one.
• The woman after God’s own heart must run after Him and pour out her heart to Him.
• When we forgive and are healed, we can continue to walk in love toward anyone.

Prophet Montserrat Bogaert: Many women today pretend to have it all together with a successful life; they are professionals and married with children. However, they just have a shattered heart that is full of wounds. God has done a wonderful work in your life; I would like to know more about both your experience and testimony on how got your heart healed.

Prophet Jo Naughton: I have been married and in ministry for twenty-four years. In the first ten years, I thought I was fine since I was saved in my teens. Then, I went through inner healing and I experienced God’s deliverance; I thought my life was well. In fact, I not only ministered in church along with my husband, our church also grew, and the people were healthy and whole and were saved.

I worked in the secular and God’s favor was over my life. I was promoted many times until I got at the top of my career. And there I was, a successful Christian woman. Although I had some problems that I did not realize I had; I was very insecure. If I was in a place full of people that I did not know, I was self-conscious, nervous and I worried a lot about what other people would think of me.

I asked God to do two things, first, I wanted to become the woman that my husband deserved and second, that He raised me up and use me all over the world. God made of my request, an invitation to perform a deep work in my heart.

After ten years doing ministry, I was at a Pastor’s Conference, it was lunchtime and I was sitting in front of a prophet and suddenly, she said these words to me: “The problem with you, Jo, is that it’s all about positions”. I was in shock by what she said, and I said nothing; I knew I should not. I could have denied it because I knew that I loved God with all my heart, but there was some truth in what she said that I could not refute…  in every position I was in, back then, came a sense of validation.

When people called me “pastor”, I felt important. Then, the prophet continued: “The truth is that you have never faced some deep wounds from your childhood”. At that moment, I did argue because I had gone through inner healing, but then the Holy Spirit broke in, and literally, suddenly – during this lunch – the truth broke into my heart. For the first time, I faced my truth.

My truth was that if you had taken all my job titles, left me without ministry, if my husband had been taken away from me (because being married was a proof that at least someone loved me); if I would have been taken off that my role as a mother… to be simply Jo…”.

It was at that moment that I realized how I felt, that I was not enough and began to cry, cry and cry. Over the next year, God began to bring back to my memory all kind of childhood memories, things that I never thought would affect my life; suddenly, only then, I was able to see the mark they had left on my heart. Week after week, God brought these pains back to my memory, and He began to heal my heart.

¡What a beautiful testimony of how God has worked in your heart! Inner healing reflects having made the decision of becoming aware on how to be conscious about the condition of our heart, and then, give to God every opportunity and authority to restore it. 

According to your experience, how can women be free from their traumas and wounds of the past once they have recognized that their heart has been broken and that they have problems underneath?

I would like to suggest two things:

1. The first one is based on that prayer Rebekah did in the book of Genesis. She had been married to Isaac for twenty years and all that time she believed God for a baby. Then, she got pregnant, but something was not right. We do not know if she was actually in pain or stirring inside or her. But we do see that she went before God and prayed this way: “If everything is well, then why do I feel this way?” This is a very powerful prayer for us to do too. If we see that we feel hypersensitive, we need to say, “God, if everything is well, why did I react like that?” If we are very worried and feel rejected, we need to ask God, “If everything is fine, then why am I reacting this way?” Moreover, when we ask Him to tell us what the root is, God will bring memories back that He is willing to heal at that specific moment. For some women, they know what had hurt them. However, for others, they simply feel sad and disappointed and do not know why. This prayer is to understand the why behind that feeling. If they already know when and where they got the trauma, perhaps during their childhood, if they know when that pain came in, then they need to take some time and enter the presence of God.
2. On the other hand, the Bible says we need to come to Jesus as children. When a child has pain, he would run to his parent’s arms and will tell them what happened and how he feels. When we say the things we never said before, we release the pain. This is how God showed it to me, if you imagine a bottle with a cork and we remove that cork, the liquid will spill; here the cork represents the words we never said. When we tell God what had hurt us, then we can cast out the pain and the tears will flow.

Because of all those situations in our heart, our identity in Christ is affected. Many women are in the world without identity and this is the fruit of a destroyed heart. How can we reclaim the value of our identity in Christ Jesus in order to walk in confidence and authority to pursue the call that God has entrusted to us?

God showed me the damage to our identity as a blank canvas. Hard words and cruel things that happen daily, bullying at school, screaming at home, humiliation … every experience we live, tells us a story about our value. The book of Proverbs says, “…for as he thinks in his heart, so is he”. The word ‘think’ in the original Hebrew means ‘calculation, estimation’. We calculate our hearts based on the way others treat us.

God wants to heal all the wounds that have made us believe we have no value. For years I tried to convince myself that I was made with a purpose, I tried to convince myself of that because I doubted of my value. When God healed me of all the wounds that made me feel worthless, it was so easy for me to believe the truth. For our identity to be truly restored, we need to be healed first and then, allow the truth of God’s word to fill us from the inside out.

We must run toward Him and pour out our hearts. It is there where we will find healing and we will recover what the enemy has wanted to take away from us; he has tried to abort God’s divine plan. Many women are bombarded with negative thoughts, thoughts that say, they are ugly, that nobody wants them, that they are useless … thoughts that are constantly attacking them. What is your formula for eradicating the battle of the mind so we could concentrate on a single thought, that of Christ Jesus, without give rise to those thoughts that damage our esteem and our value?

The more we heal the structural wounds inside of us, the less the other things will hurt. The more we let God go deep, the less damage the little things that come to us will cause and the more we will be able to ignore the devil’s little attacks. The word of God says that it is very important that we know what it says about us, because even when we have been healed, the devil will constantly try to lie to us. We need to know the difference between what the devil says and what the truth of God’s word says, so that we could say: “No, I’m not going to hear that”!

In one of my books, I talk about the fact that we all have the armor of God. But there is also the enemy’s armor, since he copies everything God does. So, the sword of the spirit is the word of God, and we need to let His word enter our hearts. But Satan’s sword are the cruel words people say to us. When those cruel words come, we must raise the shield of faith and say to ourselves: “I will not listen to those words and I will meditate on the word of God”.

This is the secret: to have a deep relationship with God and be grounded in the Word, so no weapon can attack our mind and the darts of the enemy will not find a target in us. I know that God has allowed you to see many women be healed in their hearts and take their position as wives, mothers and women of God; I would like you to share how is a woman after God’s own heart?

David is the only person that the Bible refers to as a man after God’s own heart, and he had such an intimate relationship with the Lord. This is exactly what we need. Every time David was hurting, he healed quickly, and he did so because he promptly used to go to the presence of God. When he was betrayed by his leaders, the book of Psalms says that he went directly to the Lord. He said: “I can’t stand it. If he was someone I didn’t know, I could have handled it. But he was my intimate friend, someone I used to go to the temple with”.

Even when he was betrayed within the ministry, he went directly to his heavenly Father and told Him exactly how he felt. When we are quick to go and tell God every time something hurts within us and we release that pain, we will be able to see the next day to that same person and walk in love toward them.

In marriage, it doesn’t matter if we are married to the best man in the world, our husbands will hurt us. Our children will hurt us too. Our friends will hurt us. How can I continue to love my husband after he had hurt me? It is in that moment when we have to go to God and say: “That hurt, he is supposed to know me! Why he would think that?” I tell God, I am healed, I forgive and then, I can be a helpmate because I no longer bear any pain.

¿Can you tell me three basic tips to keep our hearts whole and healthy, full of God’s love without having to look for external sources?

Of course:

1. If people’s words of affirmation and praise elevate you, then their criticisms will bring you down as well. We must learn to not let people’s praises feed us. When someone praises us, we must give it to God: “Wao! You preached very well!”, “You are very good at your job!”, “You look fantastic!”; for all of those, we have to say: Praise be to God! When we stop feeding from those praises, will be easier to reject the criticisms.

2. When we are reeling inside, we feel insecure and we must refuse to seek a human solution and go directly to God instead. Colossians 2:10 says “you are complete in Him”. We have to get away from people and go directly to God, and say to Him: “Thank you Lord, because You make me feel I am enough”.

3. Each day we need to learn to spend time with the Lord, to approach Jesus because, when we consume that daily bread, we will be built. It will be less likely we feel defeated. These are my three tips.

Prayer to heal the wounds of your heart

Prophet Jo Nauhton: Heavenly Father, I pray for each woman. There are many of you who need to become aware of the pain they are carrying. There are some of you right now who have been through so much rejection (rejection in childhood, rejection in school, rejection in relationships) that they feel like they are a waste. But the Lord is telling you right now: “Daughter, I am about to begin a new work in your life”.

Right where you are, I want you to start praying, to start telling God how you feel, to shed your heart before the Lord because He is now telling you: “When it seemed that others didn’t care, or they were not interested, when they left you alone …”, He says: “Daughter, I never left you. And the things that shattered your heart also hurt mine.

God is saying: “I am here to heal you. I am able to take away all the pain”. I release right now your healing love over your daughters. The Lord says: “Even if others have abandoned you, I will never leave you, I will never let you down, I will never leave you or forsake you”. I release the love of the Lord in your heart right now and He says: “I love you more than you can imagine, I love you completely. I know you completely, and yet I love you completely”.

To the extent that you allow God to heal your heart, you will also begin to walk in your purpose… in the name of Jesus. Amen, amen!

God sets you free you and fills you with joy

Prophet Montserrat Bogaert: ¡How much wisdom you have shared with us! I know that if women apply these tips, they will have a whole and healed heart, full of joy and a prosperous life to fulfill their purpose.

Woman, after reading this wise counsel, there is no reason to continue in that condition because there is a God who heals and sets you free. When you feel sad, frustrated or alone… just turn to Him because He is always there for the one who seeks Him. Share with us, starting now, what was your reaction and the decisions you have made. Then tell us your testimony of a healed heart. God bless you!