The Church of The Wounded Healers

“Now we have this treasure in clay jars, so that this extraordinary power may be from God and not from us”
2 Cor. 4:7

He said to me, “My grace is enough for you, because power is made perfect in weakness.” So I’ll gladly spend my time bragging about my weaknesses so that Christ’s power can rest on me. Therefore, I’m all right with weaknesses, insults, disasters, harassments, and stressful situations for the sake of Christ, because when I’m weak, then I’m strong. 

2 Cor. 12:9-10

"The main question is not, 'how can we hide our wounds?', so that we don't have to be embarrassed, but, 'how can we put our woundedness in the service to others?'. When our wounds cease to be a cause of shame, and become a source of healing, we have become wounded healers."

"...it became very clear to me that I had totally misunderstood the Christian faith. I came to see that it was in my brokenness, in my powerlessness, in my weakness that Jesus was made strong. It was in the acceptance of my lack of faith that God could give me faith. It was in the embracing of my brokenness that could identify with others' brokenness. It was my role to identify with others' pain, not relieve it. Ministry was sharing, not dominating; understanding, not theologizing; caring, not fixing."

-Henri Nouwen

Jesus always calls and uses weak, broken people. We do grow up in Christ, but we don't have to wait until some level of maturity to do, to act, to live, and to be in Christ. New believers can do it all because it is God who does the heavy lifting.

God uses us despite our weaknesses and God uses us through our weaknesses. To deny your brokenness in a schizophrenic way is unhealthy. We journey with our painful broken selves, yes denying it and putting it to death. We don't wall off or deny the process of self-denial and death to self.

"Our self-absorption and self sufficiency keeps us from embracing brokenness." 

-Brennan Manning

Coming to Christ is not an "add-on" to our lives, but an absolute surrender with no conditions. He gets it all. The good and the bad. he takes possession of it. That's good news. he loves us, warts and all.

"In my deepest wound I saw your glory, and it dazzled me."

-Augustine

When we process our pain, when we yield to God's process; we lay hold of and come to posses real truth: heart knowledge. We become a person who has gone to the well and received living water from the Master and we can authentically point the way.  Then we gain authority to talk about painful things or deep things in God because we have paid a price.

There are many young psychologists and pastors that stand before a group and give a talk about growth, but their words ring hollow, because they have not been to the well at the foot of the cross. 

You must be willing to go through God’s wine press where the grapes are crushed...the time will come when that very expression will become God’s wine of strength to someone else.

 -Oswald Chambers, My Utmost For His highest, from Dec. 15 entry on 2 Tim. 2:15

The Christian life is where God calls and uses weak people. We have misunderstood this at times, thinking that we cannot fight or minister to others unless we are first healed. This is not true. We can fight and we can minister with great weaknesses in our lives. The key is that our woundedness or our brokenness needs to be open to the Lord.

He said to me, “My grace is enough for you, because power is made perfect in weakness.” -2 Cor. 12:9

That verse, "My grace is enough for you", was ministered to me by a group of older saints that I was sent to speak to, when I was feeling deep pain in my life and I was crying out to God for an escape hatch.  My heart was crying, "take it away, it is too painful".  God did not take it away, but invited me to take His hand and receive grace to walk through it.

We are meant to be a church of people who are i-n p-r-o-c-e-s-s. A few of us have been healed. Many (99.9%) of us need healing. Many of us are in a healing process.  Some of us have seen a miracle and some of us are miracles.

Having not been healed does not disqualify a person from ministering to others. God can use a deaf person to heal other's ears or a blind person to open people's eyes. God's wisdom defies logic and human reason. 

There are no side-lines, bench, or permanent anaesthetic condition for God's children.