“Where was God when I was going through that?”
I want to talk about the bruises, wounds and scars and disappointments that we all accumulate over a lifetime and the question that we all have from time to time (or maybe most of the time)... “Where was God when I was going through that?”
Scripture Reading
Hosea 1:1-3
1:1 The word of the Lord that came to Hosea, the son of Beeri, in the days of Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah, kings of Judah, and in the days of Jeroboam the son of Joash, king of Israel.
2 When the Lord first spoke through Hosea, the Lord said to Hosea, "Go, take to yourself a wife of whoredom and have children of whoredom, for the land commits great whoredom by forsaking the Lord." 3 So he went and took Gomer, the daughter of Diblaim, and she conceived and bore him a son. ESV
The time period is about 793-753 B.C.
The place is the Northern Kingdom/Tribe of Israel.
The problem—Israel has walked away from the 1st, 2nd and 3rd commandments and all the others commandments have fallen with them like dominos.
When you routinely work outside the laws of God you open the door for every imaginable form of self-deception and confusion to come through it.
And that is what is going on in Israel—a moral collapse that has filled the land with self-deception.
Result?
Well, strange as it may seem, Israel is enjoying a period of increased power and influence and prosperity and both the king and the people feel quite invulnerable.
And what was Hosea’s job? To tell them that collapse and captivity are on their way. It is hard (very hard), to tell a proud people who are prospering that they are about to lose everything, but that is what Hosea was called to do
And even stranger yet as it may the Lord has directed Hosea to marry a prostitute named Gomer. Hosea made a legally married woman of her, brought her to his home and provided for all her needs. Hosea is not her lover, he is a good and godly husband who loves her. And yet still her desire to form “profitable relationships” with other men continued unabated. There is reason to believe that Hosea’s children were born of these born out of these other relationships. See Hosea 1:2 …“Children of whoredom.”
Why would God direct Hosea in such a way as this?
We are told why. Hosea’s marriage to Gomer, says God, will be a prophetic picture (sign) of His relationship with Israel whom He often refers to as His bride, a bride that has gone whoring after other gods.
But I think there is another reason, and it is this, that from the point of his marriage to Gomer and onward, when Hosea speaks of how Israel has betrayed God’s goodness again and again by her affairs with false gods Hosea will feel every word he is speaking. He will be speaking of God’s woundedness through his own woundedness. This is very important!
God did not and does not want a spokesman who addresses His people by rote or from a repertoire of well polished clichés. When Hosea stood before Israel to speak the word of the Lord, God made sure that he (Hosea) felt every word that He (God) was saying.
The truth is it is very easy to speak in broad general terms about how bad the society, the government, or the church is when you feel little to nothing of God’s wound. You can make all kinds of sweeping observations and statements about these things and actually enjoy doing it skillfully but still feel no compassion for God’s wound.
Compassion means to be with the wounded person while they sorrow.
Pity is different than compassion.
Pity allows you to stand at a distance. At its worst pity can be quite elitist as when the wealthy decide to reach down from their world to give something to those in need. Pity (in the sense I am using the word) has no desire to be near or with the wounded person.[1]
God made it impossible for Hosea to speak from an ivory tower of separation. Hosea was speaking about God’s pain as one standing with God in that pain. He spoke from the place of compassion.
Swiss psychologist Carl Jung[2] (1875-1961), used the phrase wounded healer. That is a very strong and powerful phrase.
Henri Nouwen (1932–1996) wrote a widely read 1979 book entitled; The Wounded Healer.
Wounded Healer, as Jung and Nouwen used the term means that a great deal of our ability to bring healing to others is tied up in coming to grips with our own woundedness. By coming to grips with it I mean crossing the very difficult tarrain of accepting the suffering as a part of what God is using to make you complete.
Jung said this; “...it is [the counselors] own hurt that gives a measure of his power to heal.” Not just that the counselor knows what it means to be wounded, but she has embraced the wound in such a way as to benefit from it.
Hebrews repeatedly points to Jesus as THE consummate Wounded Healer— wounded in order to heal us. Peter said that His wounds make it possible for Him to heal us.
1 Peter 2:24 He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, that we might die to sin and live to righteousness. By his wounds you have been healed. ESV
Paul says the reason Jesus is so available to us is because Hebrews 13:12 So Jesus also suffered outside the gate in order to sanctify the people through his own blood. 13 Therefore let us go to him outside the camp and bear the reproach he endured. ESV
What does it mean that Jesus suffered outside the city gate? First it means dishonor and reproach. He was the perfect Son of God treated as a criminal. It means His suffering was not fair. He didn't deserve it.
Second it means that His suffering was in fellowship with thieves and murders and people like us whose sins are just as great as murderers and thieves but lesser known to the public. He is with us - the definition of compassion.
Suffering made Christ perfect.
Hebrews 5:8 Although he was a son, he learned obedience through what he suffered . 9 And being made perfect, he became the source of eternal salvation to all who obey him, 10 being designated by God a high priest after the order of Melchizedek. ESV
Suffering made Christ perfect, what does that mean? It means that in order to arrived at the full stature of his maturity as our Savor He had to pass through suffering. It was necessary. It could not be avoided.
As Hebrews 2 tells us, it was;
…because he himself has suffered when tempted, he is able to help those who are being tempted. Hebrews 2:18 ESV
His own infinite suffering and resurrection is exactly what makes Jesus THE Wounded Healer—able to help us. Suffering made Him a real and complete Salvation.
So if Jesus wants us to take His message of healing to our families, to our neighbors and into the world, can we do it without suffering? The answer is (and know we don't want to hear this), NO!
But it isn’t just suffering that makes us wounded healers.
It is in embracing any and all suffering as a true part of what is making us complete.
Wounds that leave me bitter and angry are wounds that I will pass along anywhere and everywhere I go. Wounded and bitter does not make a wounded healer.
Jesus was very clear in saying that His disciples would suffer the same wounds as He (Matt 10:24-25). They would be dishonoring wounds, unfair wounds, outside the city-gate-type wounds.
We know the Apostles embraced His words very early on after Jesus ascension.
They were publicly beaten by the religious establishment, and then what? Acts 5: 41 After leaving; the presence of the council, rejoicing that they were counted worthy to suffer dishonor for the name. ESV
Try doing that— "rejoicing in unfair treatment" —in the power of your own flesh.
And you can understand Peter telling his brothers and sisters; 1 Peter 4:13 rejoice, inasmuch as ye are partakers of Christ's sufferings; KJV
Paul to the Corinthian believers;
2 Cor 1:5 For as we share abundantly in Christ's sufferings, so through Christ we share abundantly in comfort too. ESV
Here is how suffering with bitterness short circuits our becoming wounded healers.
Bitterness in unfair suffering shuts us up receiving the comforting grace of God. We travel about as uncomforted sufferers. What that means is that we have no comfort or healing to pass along. We simply pass our wounded-ness on to others. It isn’t the wounded who are able to heal and it isn’t the person who has never been wounded who is able to heal. It is the comforted sufferers who are able to comfort and bring healing to others.
This is the very reason why the most patient and useful servants of God are those who have gone through deep pain and hurtful experiences. I can hardly say those words without thinking of Bill and Sandy Orf, and of their great usefulness to God as well as thinking of the suffering that came to all when their beautiful daughter Jessie was born with the umbilical chord around her neck. She was still-born, but revived to life, but suffered damage to her brain and a life of seizures. By her thirties these seizures became multiple seizures each day. I recently talked to Bill about this. He emailed me saying;
“Although Jessie never was given a normal healthy brain, as you know, she and we have been blessed mightily by all the things she can do and the life God has given her. That God [many years later] intervened with a perfect conclusion to a doctor’s brain surgery brought about the end of 25 years of seizures. The specialty surgeon’s results over many experiences was to reduce the seizures with the continued help of medication. Jessie’s seizures stopped completely and she never took any medication!
AND it was this problem birth that eventually God used to turn our entire family to Christ!
We often say to one another – “Our life is good!” God has used all things to work together for good to those who love Him and are called for His purpose.”
For Bill and Sandy and Jessie, they are a family of wounded healers. Some notable miracles have taken place when they have prayed for others.
Paul called this the fellowship of Christ’s sufferings (Philippians 3:10) This is say that we need not run from suffering which is exactly what we want to do when the suffering seems unfair, which it always does. We need not run form it as if it had no place or benefit in the life of Christian people. In the same way that Jesus' pain connects Him to us, our pain also connects us to Him. We are not suffering alone. We are partakers of Christ and His suffering. We may (in the days of our flesh) cry out with Jesus, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?", but still know in our spirits that He is with us in our pain and sorrow, and will use it all for good. It will not be wasted.
A Chinese Christian college student tells of her friend’s experience at Tiananmen Square in 1989
. She held in her arms a boy who was dying. She came out traumatized, and she was angry with God. Every year she asked God, "Where were you? Why didn't you save the people there?"
This went on until the tenth anniversary. Then she had to give a testimony for her church. She said she quieted herself and asked gently, "God, where were you?" She went back to the image of the boy dying in her arms. Immediately there was another figure walking toward her from far away. That figure walked with such peace and dignity—she instantly recognized him. He merged into the dying boy. This dying boy was saying, "Persevere until the very end. My blood comes from this place." That figure was Jesus. The Holy Spirit overpowered her. She just cried and cried. Jesus was there.[3]
Do you see how this vision changed the way this girl saw the suffering of the dying boy as well as how she saw her own woundedness? In an instant she saw the truth of the Scripture made clear. We are in Christ and Christ is in us. Nothing can happen to us that does not happen to Him. She saw Jesus totally immersed in the suffering of the young man.
There was this razor sharp God-given diagnosis of her condition, her thinking was transformed, and the burden of bitterness, the burden of (thinking that God had not showed up, and that the suffering was all pointless now appeared to all be a part of her fellowship in the suffering of Jesus.
Never assume that suffering (and suffering always seems unfair or you wouldn’t suffer so)—never assume that Jesus is somewhere else. He is with you and you can receive comfort.
Us in Christ and Christ in us; it’s the only way to understand how Jesus was able to ask Saul of Tarsus, “Why are you persecuting me?” Acts 26:14 I heard a voice saying to me in the Hebrew language, 'Saul , Saul , why are you persecuting me? …' 15 And I [Paul] said, 'Who are you, Lord?' And the Lord said, 'I am Jesus whom you are persecuting. ESV
Paul didn’t even know who was speaking to him, so how could he have been persecuting this person? The answer is, Matthew 25:40 Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brothers, you did it to me. ESV
But here is the hard question. Can you see the value of the suffering and hardships and pain that you personally have experience and may yet experience again? The great trick of the enemy is to plant the notion in your mind that your suffering, your kind of pain, your kind of disappointment is different. Yours is empty, useless and senseless. That simply is not the case. Christ is not somewhere else. His indwelling presence is in you and your are in Him and He is feeling everything you are feeling.
As surely as the Chinese girl saw Jesus immersing Himself in the pain and death of the young man in Tiananmen, Christ in you is also immersed in your suffering, your sorrow, your disappointment. And He is the one who can transform your thinking to where you can see the redemptive value of your wounds, where you can stop calling them meaningless wounds, unfair and a waste wounds. If wounds are happening to you they are happening to Him and He would not have you waste tin unending self-pity the very things that will make of you one who walks in the the company of wounded healers.
Why does this matter?
It matters because we are in dark days, dark as far as the world is concerned, dark, unsure and difficult for our nation, as well as our flood devastated region and the last thing bruised and unsure people who are in need of healing want to hear some soul untouched by pain utter a cheery jingle. We will push back with bitterness against clichés and pat answers, but there is something that draws us to a wounded healer.
Henri Nouwen puts it like this;
“When we honestly ask ourselves which persons in our lives mean the most to us, we often find that it is those who, instead of giving advice, solutions, or cures, have chosen rather to share our pain and touch our wounds with a warm presence and a tender silence. The friend who can be silent with us in a time of deep despair and confusion, who can stay with us through a period of grief and bereavement, who can tolerate not knowing, not curing, not healing, tolerate having no immediate answers, and face with us the reality of our powerlessness, that is a friend who cares and heals us by helping us see our suffering in the light of Christ’s presence.” (The Road to Daybreak;)
And yet very often our flesh drives us away from such quiet and comforting friends because we are looking for people with answers, or we can't have them seeing us in our helplessness. We don't have to pour out our pain in detail to every friend we have. It is enough to be with them and them be with us when they know we are covering hard and thorny ground.
Last word...
It isn’t that wounded healers have no desire for our healing. They do, but they desire for us to be healed for the glory of God far more than they desire to give you surface solutions.
Can you understand what I mean in saying that the un-wounded healer has his own reputation on the line each time a wounded person comes for a solution?
If his answer doesn't heal you it's your fault. You don't have faith. That is very often the unwounded-healers jaunty approach to you suffering.
Any of us who have been in the ministry for any length of time, have seen the unwounded-healers do their work with no result and then blame the wounded person for the lack of success. They can’t set down in long enduring compassion next to a wounded person and wait for God’s grace to help them by any means God chooses.
Thank God Jesus did not approach the dead body of Lazarus with that point of view—that if Lazarus did not come out of the tomb it would be all Lazarus’ fault. He saw the tomb and wept, and then spoke the living, active and sharp Word of God that brought Lazarus hopping out o the open tomb toward the sound of Jesus’ voice, still in bound up in his grave clothes.
John 11:44 The man who had died came out, his hands and feet bound with linen strips, and his face wrapped with a cloth. Jesus said to them, "Unbind him, and let him go." ESV
May God unbind and set us all free from those things that stand in the way to block the overflowing and abundant comfort that God has for all of us in any situation, and His desire that we fellowship with Him in the company of many wounded-healers who have gone before us.
