Healed People Heal People

1 - After this, Jesus traveled about from one town and village to another, proclaiming the good news of the kingdom of God. The Twelve were with him.

2 - and also some women who had been cured of evil spirits and diseases: Mary (called Magdalene) from whom seven demons had come out;

3 - Joanna the wife of Cuza, the mangager of Herod’s household; Susanna; and many others. These women were helping to support them out of their own means.

In her recent book, "Hurt People Hurt People", (Discovery House Publishers, 2001) Dr. Sandra D. Wilson talks about "hope and healing for you and your relationships."

If others have ever seriously hurt you this book comes heartily recommended. It would be especially beneficial for every parent to read, because parents who are unprepared for parenting can cause much hurt in the lives of their children. (It is a sad commentary on American life that most parents receive more instruction on learning to drive a car than they do learning how to parent.)

In her book Dr. Wilson even shares her own story of hurt growing up in a horribly dysfunctional family setting.

"When my mother married my father she did not know that he was a bigamist and an embezler, but he was. When he learned that my mother was pregnant with me, he tried repeatedly to prevent my birth by insisting that my mother abort me. When she refused, he tried to induce a miscarriage. When that failed, he tried several times to kill her (and me) in what would look like a gun-cleaning accident. Before he could succeed, God intervened, and federal authorities caught up with him and put him in prison."

"Consequently, I’ve never met, seen, spoken to, viewed a photo of, or seen even a scrap of handwriting from my biological father."

"Decades before single motherhood became fashionable, my mother had a fatherless infant to care for in a place thousands of miles from family and friends."

"At the hospital where I was born and where she worked as a physical therapist, rumors spread about my illegitimacy. Shortly before my mother’s death in 1990, I got a deeper understanding of her shame and humiliation when she told me about putting her marriage license on the main hospital bulletin board to silence the rumors."

"Two years later she married the alcoholic stepfather I believed was my birth father until Mother told me differently when I was ten. She divorced him three years later when his alcohol-related violence escalated to life-threatening levels."

"I’m still missing chunks of my chaotic childhood. For nearly three decades, I erased the horror and humiliation of sexual molestation at the hands of a stranger, family "friends", and, the worst, a step-uncle."

"How could those and many other awful experiences occur when I had an intelligent, well-educated, hard-working mom who loved me very much and loved God even more?"

"Perhaps part of the answer is that my mother herself was deeply wounded by shame. Her unseen wounds showed up most clearly in an inability to have a healthy, mutually respectful romantic relationship, resulting in five marriages to four husbands."

It is cause to rejoice that the person who experienced this pain is now involved full time in ministering to heal the hurts of others! Only by the grace of God and His truth is she whole and functioning today.

Hurt people hurt people.

When others hurt you it is sometimes because they have hidden hurts themselves that need to be healed.

All of us need to take inventory of how we have dealt with our hurts so we do not hurt others. We need the healing that Christ and His grace and truth offers. (John 1:14-17)

When Christ heals us another truth also becomes evident.

Just as it is true that hurt people hurt people, it is also true that healed people heal people!

This is one of the many exciting ventures of the Christian experience. If we have been hurt, Christ can heal us. Once we are healed, we can help Christ heal others!

The women in today’s scripture were healed women. Jesus cast demons out of them and healed them of other problems that aren’t named. Diseases that doctors could not heal no doubt, and problems man alone could not solve.

Once they were healed by Jesus they began to play a vital role in the healing process of others. They traveled with Jesus and the Twelve on the city-to-city tour of spreading the Good News.

One can hardly imagine that they did not share their personal testimony, if not publicly, then at least privately. News of their healing had probably preceded them - and their mere presence was a silent witness to the power and compassion of the Healer Himself.