Healing Spiritual Wounds

Healing Spiritual Wounds

1Th 5:23 ¶ Now may the God of peace Himself sanctify you entirely; and may your spirit and soul and body be preserved complete, without blame at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.

What is the difference between soul and spirit? Hard to define the scriptures go both ways on it. Some places in the word they are indistinguishable and in other places they are quite different.

Today I hope to show the difference and to talk about the healing of spiritual wounds.

Intro: Several years ago I was asked to conduct a funeral, and the family of the deceased placed me under two injunctions: 1. I was not allowed to talk about God. 2. There would be no prayer allowed at the funeral. As crazy as it may seem I agreed to do the funeral, the main reason of which is that the funeral was for my brother-in-law, my sisters husband. I decided I needed to show my sister my love for her was more important than having a church type funeral. It was the most difficult funeral I have ever done, as you may well imagine. Now for the kicker: the reason my brother-in-law wanted no prayer and no talk of God at his funeral was because he had been sexually abused as a young boy by a priest. This was a spiritual wound he carried with him his whole life, to the point it even defined how his death should be handled.

That preacher put a stumbling block from which he never was able to overcome. That preacher caused a young boy to close his heart to God for the whole of his life. This leads to my next point:

The people we are closest to have the potential to wound us the most spiritually. You see it is the people we let our guard down around that have the greatest ability to hurt us. When you are wary of someone, you close up, when you trust them you open up. That is why pastors, teachers, doctors, policemen, and other "trusted" people can be the best people we ever meet or the worst.

Husbands the person who can hurt you the most is your wife, wives the person who can hurt you the most is your husband. The same is true with kids/parents, cousins, grandparents etc.

Illustrate: Amasa and Joab. 2 Sam 20:9,10 Cousins. Their mothers were sisters, and David was uncle to both of them. Joab greets Amasa and holds his beard, (a custom of intimacy) Amasa did not pay any attention to the sword Joab had. Joab took the sword and smote Amasa under the fifth rib so that he died. He attacked him in his most vulnerable place, because Amasa let his guard down with someone he trusted. These type of wounds go past the soul, and into the spirit part of man.

Some people it seems have a gift of stabbing people where it really hurts, Joab was one of those type of people. 2 Sam 3:27 Just when you let your guard down, is when they let their sword out.

We let our guard down around people we trust, thus they are able to sometimes smite us below the fifth rib, in the deepest part of our being, wounding us spiritually.

David speaks of this truth in Psalms 55:12-14

Ahithophel was someone David really trusted, so his betrayal struck deep into David, and so to speak smote him under the fifth rib.

Pastors, family members, friends, these are the people who have the greatest ability to hurt us in the deepest part of who we are, because we bare our inner souls to them, and often do so letting all our guards down.

Today I want to talk about the fact that spiritual wounds, Hurt, Hinder, and can be Healed.

The spirit can be wounded just like our physical body can be wounded. If you have a broken leg it will impact your comfort level, your mobility, your activity level, many aspects of your life. A spiritual wound will also affect you on a multidimensional level, let me share some scriptures in that regard:

Pr 18:14 ¶ A man’s spirit sustains him in sickness, but a crushed spirit who can bear?

Physical body and spirit are different. The spirit will pick you up when the body is down. If the spirit is wounded and you are suffering a serious sickness, you then have a double whammy. Not only are you physically sick, but you don’t have the spiritual side of you properly functioning to "encourage you in the Lord," with your suffering. You may start wishing to die, or think about suicide. It can impact you ability to cope, to trust God, to believe Him for healing, it will affect you in many ways.