Our wounds leave us feeling frail, broken, desperately unwhole. It seems like everyone around us must be living the abundant life, but with our wounds, that kind of life feels like an impossibility. We feel helpless. Hopeless.
I felt that way too, for most of my life. I never dreamed that God’s healing could be for me. I had prayed so many times. I had hoped —only to see my hopes dashed when the healing I longed for never materialized. Then I discovered how God could use my wounds to make me not only healed, but whole.
If you’ve ever felt hopeless, hurt, and wounded, too, God has so much more in store for you! God longs for you to experience peace. “Peace” in Hebrew refers to wholeness, completeness, safety, soundness, and fullness. God wants us to be whole —physically, spiritually, and emotionally. I Thessalonians 5:23-24 (NLT) states, Now may the God of peace make you holy in every way, and may your whole spirit and soul and body be kept blameless until our Lord Jesus Christ comes again.
Here is an excerpt from my new book, Peace For a Lifetime, that shares how God can use your wounds to make you whole so that you can embrace a life of hope, wholeness, and harmony.
God created us as physical, emotional, and spiritual beings. All three are necessary and important components to understand if we want to build peace into our lives and relationships. At the time we received Christ as our Lord and Savior; He healed us uniquely and completely. Yet, some of our wounds, burdens, and infirmities remain. How can that be? Because as humans living in a fallen world, though we are healed in the spiritual realm, we may not see the fullness or completion of that healing until we reach heaven.
While at the time of conversion, some individuals experience immediate freedom or healing in certain areas, all of us spend our Christian lives “work[ing] out [y]our salvation with fear and trembling.” (Philippians 2:12 NIV) [Additions mine] In other words, we take the salve of God’s healing and apply that salve to our physical, spiritual, and emotional wounds so we can find freedom and peace in areas of our lives we never thought possible. If we were all completely healed at the time of conversion, we would all be perfect then, wouldn’t we? I find great comfort in hearing Paul describe his affliction in 2 Corinthians 12:7–10 (NIV):
“...because of these surpassingly great revelations. Therefore, in order to keep me from becoming conceited, I was given a thorn in my flesh, a messenger of Satan, to torment me. Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take it away from me. But he said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.’ Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me. That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong.”
I wish for the church to be more gentle and compassionate with the weaker, more broken parts of the body so we can experience healing and wholeness too. Sometimes our wounds are the safest place we know. If the church can create a safe place for the broken to uncover and acknowledge their wounds, we, the body, can begin applying the salve of compassion and understanding. The broken can then start to heal.
You don’t have to spend the rest of your life limping along. You don’t have to carry the weight of your wounds one day longer. God desires to take your wounds and give you a life of healing and abundance.
I share simple, practical life steps in my book, Peace For a Lifetime, that can help you understand the life God desires for you. This material can help you create and experience an indestructible peace – not just for today, not just for tomorrow, you can experience peace…for a lifetime!