"Healing Our Hurts"

Healing Our Hurts

Illustration – Stepping barefoot on a nail means piercing pain. Having that nail removed means piercing pain. Would you ignore the nail to save yourself the pain of pulling out the nail? Not unless you want a gangrenous infection. The choice is obvious when it comes to our physical health. Yet most of us are guilty of burying emotional wounds, allowing them to fester into full-blown bitterness.

I want to encourage us to examine those tender places. Yes, it can be painful to do so, but it is ultimately worth it. Find courage to face your wounds and experience God’s healing touch.

The title of today’s message is Healing Our Hurts

Somebody hurt you a year ago, 10 years ago or a lifetime ago and somehow deep down inside, you can’t shake it. Sometimes you say it never happened, but you know deep down inside it did happen. So you try to deny it, but that doesn’t work. You suppress it, but somehow it keeps popping out. Sometimes it pops out in embarrassing fashion. You know that deep down inside something happened back there that you can really identify. In fact, you can point your finger toward the person or people.

What seemingly was merely a little hurt in the beginning, somehow has solidified like concrete in your mind. It’s just there. It lays there. It hangs there. The burden of it is there. You’d like to shake it. You’d like to get rid of it, but somehow you just can’t do it. You got hurt so badly that somehow you feel like you will never be able to overcome this. Well I want to tell you brothers and sisters…Yes You Can!

If you don’t overcome the hurts of the past, what you will find out is this… Those hurts can do great, great harm to your life.

Everyone gets hurt at one point or another. It’s just part of living in this fallen world. People say hurtful words, either thoughtlessly or deliberately. They abuse others, embarrass them, treat them unfairly, and may even inflict physical harm. There’s no way to avoid all possible hurts, but God wants us to respond to them in ways that honor Him, bring healing, and free us from anger, resentment, bitterness, and an unforgiving spirit.

When we don’t deal with the hurts that come our way, they’ll linger in our souls despite all attempts to deny or suppress them. In time they’ll solidify in minds, dominate our emotions, and enslave us.

This is a load God doesn’t want us to bear, and He’s provided the solution in Ephesians

Ephesians 4:30-32 (NLT)

And do not bring sorrow to God’s Holy Spirit by the way you live. Remember, he has identified you as his own, guaranteeing that you will be saved on the day of redemption. 31  Get rid of all bitterness, rage, anger, harsh words, and slander, as well as all types of evil behavior.  32  Instead, be kind to each other, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, just as God through Christ has forgiven you.

Some hurts in life are minor and can be easily overlooked and quickly forgiven, but others are deeply wounding, and those who suffer from them usually have a hard time letting them go. They go to church. They hear the gospel. They know the truth. They say, “I know that is what God says and that’s what I fell BUT. Oftentimes the person doesn’t realize that hanging on to hurts begins to do them great damage in every aspect of their life. Hanging on to hurts oftentimes may become a source of security and identity. The very idea of letting go seems more threatening to them than the danger to their souls that results from clinging to past hurts.

Thing is that you just don’t forget hurts. You have to deal hurts one way or another. Hurts that are not handled properly will harm us in every aspect of our life, leading to an unforgiving spirit.

God’s Solution

To handle lingering hurts properly, Scripture says to remove or put away sinful responses like bitterness, wrath, anger, clamor, slander, and malice. Instead of harboring these attitudes, we are to respond in the Spirit with kindness, compassion, and forgiveness. Unforgiveness is a natural response to offenses, but believers are called to live in the power of the Spirit, not in the naturalness of fallen humanity. When we refuse to forgive as the Lord commands, the hurt becomes a spiritual cancer deep within us. On the surface, things may appear fine, but poison is seeping into our souls. This means we must stop feeding our minds with the wrong done to us. Even when we pray, we may be guilty of this if we remind the Lord of how much we’ve been
hurt and how bad the person is who caused our pain. You must know that no one, no one can cause you and me to have an unforgiving spirit. Nobody can cause us to do that. No one can make me angry. No one can make me hostile. No one can make me have malice in my heart. We alone are accountable for our reactions. Anger and malice come from our heart. Those are responses that I have to agree in my own emotional being to accept or reject. So, if I allow these emotions to control me than it’s because I choose to.

Attitudes of anger, resentment, bitterness, and malice cannot be contained. They spill internal poison, which overflows even on the innocent. The only solution is to deal with them as God says. If we do this immediately, healing can come quickly, but if we delay, there’s a progression downward.

The Cause Of Our Responses

Bitterness, resentment, anger, and malice do not fit our identity as children of God. Our lives are to be characterized by love. We can’t claim to love God if we hate others.

1 John 4:20-21 (NIV)

Whoever claims to love God yet hates a brother or sister is a liar. For whoever does not love their brother and sister, whom they have seen, cannot love God, whom they have not seen.  21  And he has given us this command: Anyone who loves God must also love their brother and sister.

This command doesn’t only apply to those people who are lovable, but even to those who hurt or wrong us at times.

This isn’t something we can do in our own strength but only by the power of the Holy Spirit within us. He’s the one who enables us to lay aside negative emotions and forgive the one who hurt us so that healing can come. When we walk in the Spirit and not in the flesh, we’re able to overlook offenses, remove sinful attitudes, and respond with kindness, compassion, and forgiveness.
The greatest motivator for forgiveness is Christ. He took all our sins upon Himself, suffered the punishment we deserved, and offers us full forgiveness. How can we hold anything against anyone else, knowing that our offenses against God are so much greater, yet He forgave us?

The Consequences of an Unforgiving Spirit

Damages Emotions And Relationships – Healing comes with forgiveness, but when we hold onto our hurts, it steals joy and contentment and replaces them with bitterness, anger, and resentment. Good emotions are frozen, and we can’t love or accept love from others or God.

 We begin to nurture the hurt by replaying it in our minds and emotions. That creates conflict

 Where there is conflict, there is no peace

 Your emotions freeze

 You can’t have hurts in your life that causes you to become bitter, have resentment or unforgiveness because it freezes you emotions

 You can’t love; you may try to, but you can’t

 You can’t love; you can’t be free; you can’t be giving; you can’t be generous because something has frozen you up. It has hung you up. It is holding you captive

 Not only can you not genuinely love someone, you can’t even accept it.

 Oftentimes in relationships, one can’t accept the others love

 They say “love me” while pushing the person away

 Because something is frozen deep down inside that needs to melt away. Those hurts need to melt away

 God needs to bring some healing in their life because they can’t TRULY and FREELY love or receive love no matter how hard they try.

 If you are that person, please ask yourself the question…What is there inside of me that I have never dealt with, that I need to lay down, that I need to face, that I need healing in my spirit, healing in my soul, healing in my damaged emotions

Erodes Fellowship With the Lord – You can’t hold onto sinful attitudes and be right with God. Your prayers will feel useless, your love for Him grows cold, gratitude dries up, and your praise is empty. The only way to be set free is through the healing of forgiveness.

 We can’t praise or worship the Lord because we’re miserable inside. Truths from God’s Word can’t sink into our minds and hearts, and we know something is wrong deep inside us.

Harms Health – The attitudes and emotions we carry affect us physically in a variety of ways. Sometimes we seek relief from doctors, but they can never fix the root of the problem.

 If you think you can have hurts in your life that are undealt with and it’s not going to affect you, you better think again

 There is going to be a fuse blown physically in your body, somewhere, somehow unless you deal with the hurts that are there

 Oftentimes, the aches and pain that our body experiences on a chronic bases is the result of some hurt going on inside of us

 God wants to get our attention one way or the other

 He rather us just listen to the Holy Spirit, trust the Holy Spirit and obey the Holy Spirit and move on

 But instead of dealing with the hurt, it is easier to go to the doctor

 The doctor writes you a prescription to help alleviate your pain; not heal your problem

 When that prescription runs out, you have to go get another one

 There are people that have been on drugs for years because they will not deal with the hurt deep down inside that may have happened many years ago

 It’s easier to take a pill than deal with the hurt

Forgiveness Is Not

 Justifying the other persons actions

 Forgetting it

 Tolerating behavior; saying everyone makes mistakes

 Denying wrongdoing

 Excusing sin

 Saying “time will heal this”; no it won’t

Forgiveness Is

 Choosing to cancel the debt of wrong-doing

 Laying aside your “right” to hold them accountable; that doesn’t mean that everything is good and I have to accept them in my life

 You’re only responsible for your actions to obey God by forgiving; not others people’s actions