Brunch 2026: Wounds

 (As always please excuse any issues with formatting)

I have to tell you that this was not my original message. I was going to speak about how Christ is our true north, our fixed and sure constant. Well Wednesday night at about 10:30 I was scrolling through Facebook looking for silly dog videos to fall asleep to and the Lord brought true north to my mind and encouraged me to look it up.

I thought he was going to show me something really cool to include in the teaching. But what he showed me was that my teaching was based on the belief that true north was a constant fixed point. It is not. They have since discovered that the earth is spinning very slowly, which in turn affects true north.

I prayed and was like what do I do now?  Do I just share what I was going to share hoping you’d never find out the truth about true north? No. I didn’t want you to think that Christ was anything but our sure fixed Lord.

So to avoid confusion I started looking through old retreats on my laptop (thank God I brought my laptop) I could share and I found one from 2005. Not one I would normally share at a brunch but the more I read through it, the more I felt the Lord say to share it. so because I only had two days to read this over and adjust it please forgive if I depend on my notes even more than usual. Sh what am I going to share?

So our topic today is wounds.

I remember when the Lord began to speak to my heart about this. I was sitting on my deck back in Vermont, just hanging out with the Lord, enjoying the sun and his presence.

I wasn’t thinking about anything in particular, certainly nothing noteworthy, when all of a sudden his spirit impressed these words in my heart and set them in my mind. It was so clear: the wound that leads to death and the wound that leads to life. Weird right?

I was somewhat startled, but knew that it was important, so I went inside and wrote them down.

Throughout the years, I had been burdened by this idea because I knew that if I really understood the significance of what the Lord said about wounds, that my mind and my life would be transformed.

Remember this was way back in 2005. How many years ago was that? 21?

When I read over my notes I could see how the Lord has taken what he showed me back then and has transformed, transfigured my life.

Even at the time I knew deep in my heart that I had lived most of my life as one of the walking wounded and not in a good way. My wounds had compromised my spiritual health.

Whenever the topic of wounds comes up, it’s bound to get messy. It’s kind of like being in an operating room. Organs exposed, machines pumping, weird noises, infection being drained, and the blood, there is always blood in any operating room.

As Christians we must remember the blood. For us the blood is not an icky topic, it is the mediating agent of our healing.

So what do I mean by a wound? In the natural sense, it is a hurt or injury to a person by some type of violence rather than a disease.

In Scripture, a wound is translated as a blow, a split, a rut. It means to burn, to dash, smash, afflict, to starve, and to crush. What lovely images. Have another scone.

It is anywhere from a slight wound caused by a lapse or a slip to an injurious wound caused by a deviation or a turning aside.

 

When I refer to a wound today I am referring to any injury or hurt that has compromised the integrity, the wholeness of our emotions, our hearts and our spirits.

I’d like to look at the nature of two particular wounds, the effect these wounds have had on us and of course, the remedy and provision for these wounds.

I know that we are all at different stages of wound acknowledgment and wound repair, so I don’t want anyone to feel pressure or condemnation, but just allow the Holy Spirit to minister to you where you are at.

A long, long time ago in a beautiful paradise-like setting a violent wound was inflicted upon the human race. It was a death wound that would not only sever the relationship between God and man, but would lead to physical and emotional death as well.

This primary wound is original sin. We need to look back to the garden to understand the nature of all wounds because this is where it all started.

This was a spiritual wound that had physical and emotional implications and repercussions. So what was the legacy passed down to us? What flowed out of this wound into human history?

After sin entered the world, we begin to see its effect on human behavior. You see wounds not only inflict pain and affect behavior, they create need.

The first garden behavior after sin entered the world that reflected a need was when man created his own covering. (Gen. 3:7)

Why did he do this? Because of his nakedness, his shame, his inadequacies, his needs.

Now when I say Mankind remember I’m including us, too. This particular wound created the need to be covered.

The next thing that Adam and Eve did was in their shame they hid from God.

This tendency of all of us to run from God and hide whenever sin is present creates the need for revelation, transparency and for clarity.

Like a game of hide and seek, we close our eyes, but when we hide we become a kind of fugitive, giving up our freedom, hiding away creates a self-imposed prison. It creates the need to be set free.

It’s interesting that in the Middle Ages there was a prison, a small 4x4 room called the little ease where a prisoner could not even stand up and was left there to be forgotten.

I personally lived quite a few years in a self-imposed little ease and the growth and posture of my soul was stunted and malformed until the Lord released the stiffness that my wounds had created and He set me free.

The last consequence of sin was that man blamed. After the first wound was inflicted on the human race defensiveness entered the world along with victimization and self-sufficiency. This created the need for righteous perception and Holy Spirit conviction.

In this first wound we also see deception about God’s will, his nature and his purpose being unleashed into the world. Satan lied about God, twisted his word, planted doubt about God’s love in the collective subconscious of the world.

Now because the enemy knows what works, we need to be aware of these original deceptions and the effects this primary wound has on us.

Why? Because it has always been and still is the essence of the battle between the flesh and the spirit and is the undercurrent of our wounds.  What started in the Garden, tempts and hinders us still.

1.    First, Satan’s purpose is to destroy man’s rightful place and relationship with God. He will try to destroy your relationship and interfere with your spiritual growth. In this the need for a mediator was created.

2.    Next, Satan will always distort not only God’s word, but his character as well. He will tell you that God doesn’t understand, he doesn’t care, that he didn’t mean what he said. In this the need for a written standard was created. The Bible.

3.    Third, Man’s and women’s relationship carries this primary taint of dysfunction and animosity. Man will have a tendency to blame woman and woman will have a tendency to blame others. This creates the need for a change in how we relate to each other, to have peace brought into those relationships.

4.    When we sin, we will want to run and hide from God. In this the need to be found was created.

5.    Satan took God’s word out of context of his love and distorted his divine purpose for mankind. Man was now lost to his original destiny. Because of this the need for a savior was created.

6.    Last, while in the midst of temptation if we are not grounded, our perception of right and wrong will be affected. In this the need for holy discernment was created.

We need to be aware of the severity of the first wound. We died. Spiritually, and eventually physically. Col. 2:13 says we were dead in our sins and in the uncircumcision of our sinful natures. KJ says it more strongly: “and you being a corpse in your sins and unregenerated nature of your humanness.” Doesn’t get any worse than being a corpse. Without intervention, there is no hope for emotional, spiritual and very often physical health.

Here we are the walking wounded, just surviving. So what do we do? We allow God to perform Holy Spirit surgery. Put on the paddles of Holy Spirit power and revive the corpse. To open up those infected places, clean out our wounds, and cover them for healing.

So why is it necessary to get so messy? To dig deep. Ask hard questions about the health of our inner man? Because we live in messy times. The world is a very wounded place. The pain that surrounds us is getting more intense every day, in the lives of those around us and in our own lives.

We are surrounded by wounds caused by hate, by fear, by intimidation, by injustice, by physical, emotional, mental and spiritual sickness.

There is a plague and as Christians standing and living in the middle of it, we are not immune. We are affected by it and sad to say in many cases, we are the cause of it. The church in America is sick.

Living a compromised and ineffective life only adds to the world’s pain. This is not to condemn but to give you a message of hope. Because as Dr. Phil says we cannot change what we do not acknowledge.

The Lord desires us to be whole, to be healthy so that we can bring health to others. We are children of the great physician. We have been forgiven, we have been cleansed, and we have been covered with the balm of Gilead.

What is this balm? Jer. 8:22 the prophet asks the question: is there no balm in Gilead? The people of Israel were sick, sick of heart, sick of spirit.

Matthew Henry, wrote. “Is there no balm in Gilead? No medicine proper for a sick and dying kingdom? Is there no physician there? No skillful hand to apply the medicine? Yes, there certainly is. God is able to heal…The blood of Christ is our balm of Gilead, his spirit is the physician, both sufficient, all sufficient.”

So what do we do? We look to another wound.

1 Peter 2:24: “He bore our sins in his body, so we might die to sin and live for righteousness. By his wounds we have been healed.”

Unlike the first wound, these wounds were physical wounds that had spiritual implications and repercussions. When Christ was wounded for our transgressions, he carried the weight of the first wound, making it possible for us to receive healing and to be reconciled to God.

In the book, Healing for Damaged Emotions, David Seamands writes:

“Thank God he doesn’t leave us alone; we are not abandoned to our paltry resources to somehow struggle through all this mess, to live defeated lives. No! For our wounded Healer, our High Priest, Jesus Christ, is ‘touched with the feelings of our infirmities.’ Jesus, the Son of God, identified with us humans when He became the Son of Man. He not only knows our infirmities, but also our feelings. He understands the pain of rejection, the anxiety of separation, the terror of loneliness and abandonment, the dark clouds of depression. These infirmities, these cripplings and weaknesses, he knows, he understands, he feels. He is our wounded healer.”

Jesus: the healing provision for our wounds. Think about it. Who came to Jesus? Not the well, but the sick, the lame and the dying.

Mathew 15:30- it literally means “great crowds came to him, bringing the lame and limping, the blind, those who did not permit light to pass through, and those who were inflated with self-conceit, those who were dumb and blunted, those who were maimed in feet and hands; those who were crippled, handicapped by bodily injury, disabled and moving in a circle, and many others, and cast them down at Jesus’ feet, and he healed them, he waited upon them, and cherished them.”

In Is. 61:1-3 we are told about the ministry of healing that the Savior would have. He has given us freedom, release, and health.

     In the song by Bob Bennet “Man of the Tombs” he sings: “In only a moment, and with only a word, the evil departs like a thundering herd.”  Jesus heals with just a word

We know that Christ’s sacrifice made provision for the first wound of original sin. Jesus took our infirmities and carried our sorrows.

Heb. 4:15 “For we have not a high priest which cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities.”

The provision has been made, we have access to the great physician through his blood, through his sacrifice.

So here we are at a brunch, most of us are saved, hopefully filled with the spirit and I’m talking about wounds. What wounds? I’m as healthy as the next person. Don’t tell me I’m wounded. Aren’t we new creations in Christ?

However, unless we have intentionally allowed Christ into our inner man and allowed him continuous access, chances are we still carry the weight of at least some of our old wounds.

So how do we heal? If we look at the natural stages of the healing process there are some interesting spiritual parallels.

In the natural, there are three stages to the healing process:

1.    defensive

2.    reconstructive

3.    and maturation

Now I’m not going to go deep into the medical applications because it’s too weighty and well, I don’t have a medical background to understand it. So I’d like to share my insights on these three stages of natural healing from a spiritual perspective.

     First, the defensive stage. When I think of the word defensive, I think of something that is designed to protect or guard. To defend. If I am a healthy Christian, when I am wounded, my spirit should naturally begin the healing process.

          If I have taken on the full armor of God, the shield of faith, the belt of truth and so on, then it follows that when I am wounded, my holy defenses engage and begin to fortify me.

If I am responding in a healthy way when wounded, my hurts will drive me deeper in Christ for him to heal the need that the wound created. How will I know if I’ve responded in this way? Look at my behavior and my attitude.

But say I’m wounded before I became a Christian and had no armor, no healthy defenses or if I’m a new believer? Then I will use whatever self-defenses I have. I will become defensive in the worse sense of the word.

For the Christian who has accessed the full range of the Father’s protective arsenal, this phase of the healing process can be a positive and empowering experience.

How many times have you heard that if you cover a wound with a bandage it will heal faster? It will keep out bacteria that can infect the wound. The covering of God does the same for our emotional wounds. But for those who are unable or unwilling to rely on the Lord’s defenses for healing, this phase may be the beginning of a stronghold.

Remember one of the meanings for wound is rut. Hard to get out of a rut once we’re in it.

Also the Lord reminded me that it is very important for the success of this first stage of healing to have proper cleansing of the wound or it may become infected.

     What cleanses us and allows God’s healing process to flow unhindered? Nothing but the blood of Jesus.

The second phase of healing: reconstructive. I like the sound of that. Sounds positive. Reconstruct: when something is restored or rebuilt.

In the natural, it is when the tissues of a wound begin to repair themselves.

In the spiritual, it is a time of the healing process for the Lord to rebuild the breech, to reconstitute us, to reform and put us together again. An opportunity to revive us.

If we have allowed him access to our wound, this phase will be a time of strengthening and of purposeful restructuring. Building on a firm foundation to the glory of God in our lives.

The reconstruction phase may not be fun. I remember a time when I fell off by bike and badly scraped both of my palms on the sidewalk.

They became very infected and when I went to the doctor you know what he did? No, he didn’t just put a bandage over the wound, because if he did, the infection would have gotten worse. No, he had to scrape away the infected tissue before he could cleanse and bandage the wound. Did that hurt? Unbelievably so. But it was necessary.

When we allow the Lord to scrape away what has infected us it can be a time when we can lean ever closer to God’s healing embrace and be repaired. It may not have been pleasant but it was necessary.

The last phase of the healing process is called maturation. A maturing phase.

In the natural, the maturation phase can last for a year or longer, depending on the size of the wound and whether it was initially closed or left open.

To be mature in the Lord, to understand that the Lord can take a horrific wound and use it not only for his glory but for our spiritual growth as well.

Paul writes in Colossians 4:12: that he desires them to stand firm in all of the will of God, mature and fully assured. Mature here literally means the conclusion of. Maturity the last phase of spiritual healing.

Spiritual maturation is when we are willing to fully integrate the healing power of God, accepting healing and everything that goes along with it and become one of the wounded healers.

We may still bear the scar of our wounds (being in very good company), but we have allowed them to be:

-        refined in the fire

-        purified and

-        laid down before the throne of grace

-        buried in the tomb

-        drenched in the blood, and

-        subjected to the resurrection power of Jesus Christ

In the healing process for wounds this will be the natural last stage. But what if this phase is reached without the Lord? What happens?

This person’s wound will have taken root and become part of who they are, how they react. Those unhealed wounds will affect their attitudes, their behavior, their mind-set and perspective.

Those unhealed wounds will also influence their life choices and their willingness to accept the consequence for those choices.

As our healing passes through these phases, we need to lay ourselves before the Lord.

The cry of the wounded heart says: “heal, mend and cure me O Lord and I will be healed.” (Jer. 17:14)

As a patient, our posture is to cry out for help to the only One who can truly help. Think about going to the doctor’s office: would you go to the people sitting in the waiting room to be healed of a serious wound? How about to the nurse behind the desk? Some people won’t even go to a physician assistant because they feel that they’re not quite as qualified.

But we do things like that all the time with our wounds. We carry the depth of our wounds to others for healing. We expect others to supply the healing balm needed to become whole and healthy.

We will always be disappointed. We may get some temporary relief, but there will be no permanent healing and certainly no maturing.

But we have been delivered; we have access to the great physician. To stand healed is much more than having a healthy physical body.

In Ez. 33:6 we are told that the Lord will bring health and healing to his people.

What do these words literally mean? It means He will bring abundant peace and security and cleanse from our sins. That is true health. And it takes a healthy Christian to bring health to others: Heb. 12:12-13: “Therefore, strengthen your feeble arms and weak knees. Make level paths for your feet, so that the lame may not be disabled, but rather healed.”

It is only when we are open to healing we can strengthen others’ the feeble hands and steady their knees that give way. We cannot give what we do not have.

For it to be authentic it needs to be more than just doctrine. It needs to be the very living word of God that has poured itself into our inner man and changed and healed us.

Out of the first wound flowed death, destruction, a legacy of secondary wounds that lead to dysfunction and defeat. Out of Christ’s wounds flow freedom, health and life.

He heals blindness, our lack of sight and vision, our garden game of hide and seek.

He heals our deafness, our inability to hear and listen.

He heals our crippled and damaged bodies and emotions.

He heals our wounded, afflicted souls.

He heals the weak, he heals the transitory

He heals the inconsistent

He heals the unidentified weaknesses that plague us.

He heals our restlessness

He died for us

He was raised for us

He is coming back for us

We are his pearl of great price

He enables us and restores us

He opens our eyes

He frees our chains

He heals our wounds.

 

I’d like to end with something the Lord showed me this morning:

Psalm 30: 2,11:

“O Lord my God I called on you for help and you healed me. O Lord you brought me up from the grave. You spared me from going down into the pit…You turned my wailing into dancing. You removed my sackcloth and clothed me with joy that me heart may sing to you and not be silent. O Lord my God I will give you thanks for ever.”

Let’s pray

Father, you are the great physician. Lord, we offer up our lives to your now. Our scattered disconnected wounded lives.

Reach your hand deep down into our inner places and release the chains we have wrapped around ourselves, open the eyes that we have kept covered, restore the years that the locus have eaten.

Father, the work is just beginning. The door is cracked and we see your light streaming into our dark places.

Continue to reveal, continue to convict, continue to encourage.

Grant voice to our silent wounds.

We stand in your grace and ask all in your name. Amen.