Healing Spiritual Wounds

(Heb 12:14-15 NKJV) "Pursue peace with all people, and holiness, without which no one will see the Lord: {15} looking carefully lest anyone fall short of the grace of God; lest any root of bitterness springing up cause trouble, and by this many become defiled;"

(Mark 11:25-26 NKJV) ""And whenever you stand praying, if you have anything against anyone, forgive him, that your Father in heaven may also forgive you your trespasses. {26} "But if you do not forgive, neither will your Father in heaven forgive your trespasses.""

     For most of us, one of the most difficult things to do is forgive someone who has damaged our heart spiritually and emotionally.  Our instinctive, human, nature is to fight back, defend ourselves, or to get even.  Actually, the Father has already made all grievances and claims of abuse void, as far as His children are concerned. He did this by first forgiving our debt of wrong against Himself that we could never have rectified.  Jesus paid the price in full when He laid down His life for us as the only sacrifice for sin.  By this one act He removed our right to take vengeance upon those who wrong us.  When we accept what Jesus did with His cross, we forfeit our claim to vengeance or revenge.  Instead, we are supposed to take all such matters before the Lord and leave them with Him.

     Most mature Christians know this already, so the abused souls who do not want to transgress God's word, yet have deep spiritual wounds that are repeatedly infected with bitterness, try to find subtle ways to justify revenge.  In this article I want to lay out a plan for recovery from spiritual wounds.  In order to do this properly, I have to list the pitfalls that await each wounded spirit who heads down the path toward recovery.  But first, just so everyone will recognize that I write from experience, I want to give my testimony of recovery from spiritual wounds.

     I guess I was a perfect victim with all the ingredients necessary for the inevitable clash with spiritual authorities.  First of all, I am stubborn by nature.  I have a strong will and do not like being lorded over by people in authority.  I also have a strong sense of right and wrong and cannot stand hypocrisy.  Finally, I have a strong desire for acceptance and love being around people, doing things for people, giving of myself without thinking about it until I am drained out.  I can sometimes empathize with Paul's words in Philippians 2:17 (NKJV) "Yes, and if I am being poured out as a drink offering on the sacrifice and service of your faith, I am glad and rejoice with you all."  All of these ingredients cause me to expect love, integrity and acceptance from those who I give myself to in ministry as well as those I work with and those who are over me in the Lord. 

     It is not wrong to have those qualities I listed and I certainly do not mean to suggest that we should avoid having them.  However, if you are going to love people, you are going to be hurt.  Spiritual wounds is one of the side effects of loving people unconditionally.  Spiritual wounds tend to make us place conditions on our love, and that would be a tragic result of not dealing properly with spiritual wounds.

     My first blow came when I agreed to build a church building for a small fellowship.  I was very young in the Lord at the time and should have prayed more about the situation.  The idea of building a church building overwhelmed my spiritual senses.  I longed for the opportunity to achieve and the thought of such a project had me consenting to be the contractor before I even though of praying.   The short of it was that they used me, broke their promises to take care of my family, and the pastor became jealous and begin inflicting abuse on me.  The pain was enormous.  When I was in the world, I would have simply took my anger out on them with violence, but the Holy Spirit restrained me.  All I could do was cry before the Lord God and ask "Why."

     Then came my first pastorate.  I involved myself in evangelism after the first major wound and it seemed I healed fairly rapidly, but after three years of traveling, God called me to my first pastorate.  It was a small church with a history of trouble.  I had preached several revivals there before and knew most of the people, so I felt comfortable coming in as their pastor.  It didn't take long for me to realize what was going on in the church.  One man had assumed control and had managed to force everyone else out the door or under his will, including the last two pastors.  He wanted me as pastor because I was young and had never pastored before.  He reasoned that he could train me to do his will and he would have a nice setup for his ego to operate in.

    We clashed in less than two months when he tried to force his will on me concerning the pastoral ministry of the church.  The resulting conflict escalated into open aggression.  Not only did he rally his group to oppose me, which was about half the congregation, but he kicked my wife in the back.  The anger boiled in me and I determined to revenge myself on him with my fists.  I remember kneeling on the floor in my office praying about the situation when God spoke to my spirit.   He said, "If you fight this battle, it will be your fight with your resources.   If I fight it, it will by My battle with My resources."  Although I turned it over to Him and the man and his group eventually left the church, I retained bitterness for about a year.  I couldn't seem to get over the pain and lack of satisfaction that the matter had been successfully avenged.  When I heard that the same man split the next church he attended, I felt even less satisfied that the matter had been dealt with fairly.  I didn't outright blame God, but I had a hint of accusation in my spirit that He had not corrected the man strongly enough.  That must have been how Jonah felt under the plant that God prepared for him.

(Jonah 4:1-6 NKJV) "But it displeased Jonah exceedingly, and he became angry. {2} So he prayed to the LORD, and said, "Ah, LORD, was not this what I said when I was still in my country? Therefore I fled previously to Tarshish; for I know that You are a gracious and merciful God, slow to anger and abundant in lovingkindness, One who relents from doing harm. {3} "Therefore now, O LORD, please take my life from me, for it is better for me to die than to live!" {4} Then the LORD said, "Is it right for you to be angry?" {5} So Jonah went out of the city and sat on the east side of the city. There he made himself a shelter and sat under it in the shade, till he might see what would become of the city. {6} And the LORD God prepared a plant and made it come up over Jonah, that it might be shade for his head to deliver him from his misery. So Jonah was very grateful for the plant."

     Then came my only job as an associate pastor.  I had just resigned my second pastorate when I was offered a job as an associate pastor in a large church with a well known pastor.  At first everything went smoothly, but jealousy crept into the pastors heart.  I was warned by friends that I should not take the job because I was not the associate type.  I didn't understand what they meant until I took the job.  An associate pastor, in most cases, is expected to be less spiritual, less visible, and certainly less powerful in the pulpit.  My tendency is to do the best I can at all times, so when I was asked to preach one Wednesday night, I did the best I could.  The service was tremendous and people asked the pastor if he would allow me to continue preaching for the rest of the week.  He did not permit me to do so and from that moment on he applied as much pressure as he could to force me to resign.  I lasted three months and was forced to leave the church while my wife was almost nine months pregnant with our second child.  In a few months, I took the first available pastorate in order to provide a home for my family.  The pastor didn't quit with forcing me to resign, but tried to have me charged with improprieties and either excommunicated from the denomination or at the least placed on probation.  Although he was a powerful man, his aggression was unfruitful.

    His unsuccessful in staining my reputation through proper channels did not stop him.  He went about the country speaking at conference after conference and used me as an example of what was wrong with associate ministers.  In private, he told pastors that I quit because I did not want to clean the twelve toilets in the church.   He is right about me not wanting to clean those toilets since my wife and I cleaned the small church we pastured before coming to work for him, but he was wrong about it being the reason.  Next, he contacted people in the state I moved to, not only the leadership in that district, but key individuals that had contacts in my new pastorate.   It wasn't long before I started experiencing problems in the church.  Though we had grown from a small congregation of about 70 souls to over 250 in attendance, many saved and various programs started, improvements made on the building itself, several of the leaders were unsatisfied.  Though they had no valid complaint, they begin to spread the words they did not approve of my ministry.

     The wicked activity that they began read like a bad movie.   They spread lies and slandered me to everyone who would listen.  One old man even yelled out loud, "No!" during my sermon.  They broke through the door during a closed meeting between the church board and district officials, threatening and slamming the youth pastor against a rock wall.  Finally, they formed a gantlet, two lines of angry people that those attending the services had to walk through to be seated.   When people passed through the gantlet, they hurled angry words and insults.   Many people started leaving the church and finally I couldn't take it anymore of it either.  There were so many who wanted me to remain as pastor that we found another building and kept having services.

At first, the district officials allowed us to meet in the other building.  They were faced with a legal quandary.  Since most of the leadership, members, and pastoral staff left with us, we contended that we were still the same church in a different location.  Though we took a new name, we did not yield our right to be the established denominational church we were before in good standing with the district.   Some of the officials met with me and tried to get me to acquiesce to the demands of the people who forced us out of the building.  When I refused, I also complained about the district leader who had repeatedly lied to us and was part of the reason why the conflict escalated.  The next thing I knew I was charged with speaking negatively against he denomination and being uncooperative.  In a few weeks I appeared in my first denomination tribunal.  I was found guilty of the first charge and innocent of the second.  In a few months, after appearing before a second tribunal, they dropped the second charge as well.

This did not end the matter.  I did not realize the forces that were at work to drive me from that town.  We contended that the church was not the building, but the people.  Since most of the people and leadership were with us, we were still the first church, only with a new name.  We were there legally and were abiding by denominational guidelines and there was nothing they could do unless we admitted we were not the first church.  They tricked me into applying for a charter and when I did it removed the legal obstacles.  It seems that by applying for a charter we were admitting that we were a new church and abdicated all our rights to be in that town.   I received a letter a few days later ordering me to shut down the church that we established in the new location and leave town immediately.  The betrayal was heartbreaking.  During the year time we were in the new location, I had a mild heart attack and our house caught on fire mysteriously.  We almost died at the front door because of the smoke, but managed to stumble out with the children into the bitter cold.   Our little family of four spent the next three months in a 15 foot travel trailer in the dead of winter while I built back the house the church had bought for a parsonage.   Now with no money, no place to go, and a broken spirit, we were turned out into the cold like we were the guilty ones in the fiasco created by wicked leaders.

I managed to preach two revivals and save enough money to move across the country over a 1,000 miles to the east coast.  We found a town on the map that looked good, called the district office in that state and asked them if there was a denominational church in that town.  When they told us there was not, we applied to begin one there.   Somehow, we had it in our minds that we were heading into a season of relaxation and that our difficulties would be over for a period of time.  Nothing could be further from the truth.  Instead of having it easier, our life became more difficult and we went from battle to battle.  When we came into the town that we were suppose to start a new church in, we both felt such a spirit of depression that we began to weep.   Over the following weeks the reason for that depressing feeling became clearer.   The townfolk were divided into several factions that despised each other and all of them were suspicious of "outsiders."  That's what we were and we realized that we would always be considered "outsiders."   

(To be continued)