Why You must Heal the Old Hurt (to Move Forward)

Trials, difficult seasons, hard roads, rocky paths, whatever you want to call them… they can make you bitter OR they can make you better. You get to decide.

On one hand, we become HARD and become unapproachable. Maybe even play the victim role. No one will learn anything from our story-- including ourselves-- except for “don’t cross me again.” We may even use pop psychology to defend our position or, even worse, put a spiritual halo atop the dysfunction.

That’s one way to handle it. A lot of people do.

And, in doing so, we often find that we continue “re-hurting” the same wound over and over.

An unhealed hurt, it seems, never heals. Furthermore, it continues getting re-hurt and hurting other things.

Unhealed hurts continue causing hurt, but healed hurts cause more wholeness

On the other hand, we can become soft, pliable, and ooze a tangible grace, the kind exhibited by Job, the very one who prayed and restored those who (self-righteously, but well-intentioned) opposed him in the ashes (Job 42:10).

Those are two RADICALLY different approaches.

The Israelites walked through the trial of their life. Then they disobeyed God’s tender voice (no doubt, some of them talking each other into it, excusing how “their unique situation” was different than what He meant, and how their circumstance warranted it).

Their hearts grew hard.

Then harder (see Hebrews 3:7-8).

To emphasize how strange it was, the author of Hebrews tells us this TWICE (see also Hebrews 13:15).

On the surface, it makes sense. They were in a desert. They ate manna every morning. They got water from a rock (2x), because there was no other source. Then there were giants in the land that was promised to them (Numbers 13:28).

(Oddly enough, we later read that those giants were quaking in fear of them- Joshua 2:11).

Sometimes our situations don’t make sense, either. They’re different, yet they’re just like the situation in which the Israelites found themselves.

Learn it, then live it

The good news is that those stories were all written for us (1 Corinthians 10:6f.), so that we can learn from their experience.

The very nature of a trial, of a dark night of the soul… it means that it’s something you DON’T WANT to endure. And, it’s most often something you can’t do on your own.

But in the end… harder or softer… bitter or better.

It’s up to us.

Easier said than done. Easier written than lived. For sure.

But it’s our choice.

Bitter. Or better. But not both.

This video comes from Lesson 5 of “Liberty,” course 2 in the Transformation School of Ministry “Core Four.”