House of Healing

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Introduction

Being in the business world for so long, one of the things that you see that is really popular is the idea that every company should have a mission statement. This thinking has infiltrated all areas of business with oil change places, restaurants and Fortune 500 companies all desperately seeking to identify themselves with mission statements.

A good mission statement tells people what your purpose is…why do you exist as a business entity…what is important to you. I’ve seen some good ones and some bad ones. Bad mission statements are typically too vague, they are contradictory or have nothing to do with the business they associated with.

Here’s a bad one…

Here's the first sentence of Barnes & Noble's mission statement: "Our mission is to operate the best specialty retail business in America, regardless of the product we sell."

Here's the third sentence: "To say that our mission exists independent of the product we sell is to demean the importance and the distinction of being booksellers."

Here’s another one -

• ”To help make every brand more inspiring, and the world more intelligent," begins Avery Dennison's mission statement. That's a pretty lofty ambition for a company whose product is stick-on labels. A good mission statement should have some relationship to reality.

If the church had a mission statement what would it say? Have you ever thought of that?

Today we are finishing up our series called Foundation Stones where we are talking about our church and its mission. We’ve talked about how God is building us into a House of Prayer, Worship and Ministry. Today, we are going to look at the stone, which is God is building us into a House of Healing.

If the church, had a mission statement, I think you could make a good argument that it should come from Isaiah 61. Let’s read it together.

Isaiah 61:1 ESV

The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me, because the Lord has anointed me to bring good news to the poor; he has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to those who are bound;

Now, this is a mission statement. While there is a lot to unpack here, I’m going to tell you in advance, most of our time will be spend on what I believe the church’s mission is based on this prophecy from Isaiah - which is to bind up the brokenhearted.

There’s three aspects to this mission statement.

Bringing Good News

Binding Up The Brokenhearted

Breaking the Captives Free

There are three B’s, to help you remember it. All three of these are important. We’ve talked in the past extensively about how the Great Commission is our mission. It’s what the church does. We talked about it last week again when we talked about a House of Ministry. We are priests meant to praise and proclaim Jesus and how he has taken us from darkness into a marvelous light.

The third item, breaking the captives free, also known as deliverance, is incredibly important as well. The church should be a place that proclaims liberty to those that are captive to their sins and opens the prison doors to those that are bound.

In other words, this is a prison break! Churches exist to break people out of the prison of death and hell and set them free so they can enter into life everlasting.

That is our message…You are free! Christ has set you free from the sins that easily entangle you and whom the Son sets free, is free indeed!

The item we tend to overlook in this passage is the one I want to focus on in particular today. It’s the message of healing. The church should be a House of Healing. In other words, when people come here, they should leave here better than when they came. They should experience healing.

Let’s look at healing first and define what is meant by this. First, when we say healing, I want to put out there that this church does believe that God miraculously heals people. We believe that God heals people who are sick, diseased, riddled with cancer, and so on. We also believe that God can raise people up from the dead. We believe in a God who does the impossible. And as important as that is, that is not what we are talking about today in regards to healing.

The healing we are talking about today is a healing of the brokenhearted. It’s an internal healing. It’s something that happens on the inside that impacts every aspect of your life.

Inner healing is simply this: Jesus can take the memories of our past and heal them. And fill with his love all these places in us that have been empty for so long, once they have been healed and drained of the poison of past hates and resentment.

Francis MacNutt

Why is this important? Isaiah places this in between two big ticket items when it comes to church ministry, evangelization and deliverance, but most of us don’t even think about this. Why is that? I think that perhaps the biggest reason is that it requires us to admit something…which brings me to my first point…

The First Step To Healing Is To Admit You Are Broken

When it comes to healing, one of the first steps will always be admitting that you have a need! If you don’t admit that you have a need, no one can help you, but if you are honest, if you will raise your hand and say, yes that’s me, then you can start the journey towards healing.

The reason Isaiah and the Lord thinks this is important is a simple one…all of us have a need for this type of healing. Many of us won’t get AIDS or Cancer or even COVID, though some of us will, but all of us are broken. How do I know that? Well let’s define brokenhearted.

The International Standard Bible Encyclopedia, Revised Brokenhearted

BROKENHEARTED [Heb. šāḇar lēḇ (Ps. 34:18; 147:3; Isa. 61:1), nāḵeh lēḇ (Ps. 109:16)]; AV also “of a broken heart,” “broken in heart”; NEB also “whose courage is broken,” “broken in spirit.” The term is used with reference to people who feel their spiritual bankruptcy and helplessness, and who long for the help and salvation of God. Such people are in the right condition to be met and blessed by God. Cf. Isa. 66:2.

Jesus would come along and say this in the sermon on the mount, Matthew 5:3 ““Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” Here’s what I believe, if you are a Christian today, you had to be poor in spirit to enter into the kingdom of God. Poor of Spirit or brokenhearted is the entry point. You don’t get in without that card.

When the Bible says brokenhearted, it’s not really talking about how you felt when your 16 year old crush started dating someone else. Don’t get me wrong, God most certainly cares about your feelings and your minor hurts, but what’s really being referred to is much bigger than just that. It’s a brokenness in spirit that manufacturers that pervades your entire being.

The brokenness I’m referring to is a culmination of everything that you’ve ever suffered. Why is that? Because suffering is a major part of life.

John 16:33 CSB

I have told you these things so that in me you may have peace. You will have suffering in this world. Be courageous! I have conquered the world.”

In other words, Jesus says, you are going to suffer, I want you to have peace in the midst of your suffering, so be courageous. He went through the same thing and he conquered it, so we can have confidence that you can make it through as well.

That’s a big deal because some of you are suffering right now. Suffering through sickness. Suffering from family problems. Suffering from financial issues. Suffering from broken relationships and marriages. Suffering takes many forms, and Jesus knows you will suffer. In fact, he invites you to walk with him, follow him as you do.

1 Peter 2:20–21 ESV

For what credit is it if, when you sin and are beaten for it, you endure? But if when you do good and suffer for it you endure, this is a gracious thing in the sight of God. For to this you have been called, because Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example, so that you might follow in his steps.

How did Christ suffer? With a gracious spirit, mercy, love and kindness. He suffered well and that’s what he is calling us into. He’s not likely going to deliver you from your suffering, he will however, walk with you through it and teach you how to handle it.

So if everyone gets hurt, where does this lead us? Unfortunately it leads us to an old saying that rings true. When we are hurting, we tend to hurt others. That should not be the case in the church and I don’t want it to be the case for this church in particular.

My heart for Cornerstone in found in this next point.

Hurt Churches Hurt People, Healed Churches Heal People

I don’t want us to be a hurt church, I wanted us to be a healed church. I want us to be able to minister to others, rather than to be a place where we hurt one another.

The old saying is this…

Hurt people hurt people

Healed people heal people

I adapted this to our church because I want us to understand the power of us being together and working through our hurts and wounds and helping others to find that same healing.

I want us to be a church of healed people. I want us to have a heart to see others healed. We should desire healing for people just as much as we want to see them evangelized and delivered.

Isaiah lists all three together. This is the message of the messiah. Jesus quotes this passage in the NT. We would be wise to value what it says because it is a sign that the Spirit is at work in our church.

Those who bind up the broken-hearted and set free the captives must have the Spirit of the Lord upon them.

Charles Spurgeon

Another way of putting this, is that the Spirit empowers us to receive wounds from others and not to inflict them.

Too many times in church, we have been the ones to inflict pain onto others rather than to see them healed and restored before the Lord. And this goes both ways, if you have been in the church for any length of time, you have been wounded by people in the church.

The ask is this, because we are dealing with hurting people, expect to get wounded, but be resolved not to wound others. Our goal should be not to inflict wounds on other people, regardless of what they have done to us. Jesus says we should love our enemies and bless those that persecute us.

Most often we hurt others because we’ve never dealt with our own wounds. We have covered them rather than confessing them, which is my next point.

Healing Comes From Confession, Not Covering

The point in all of this is that we would be made whole. That we wouldn’t be broken anymore and be able to help others find healing. In order to get there, we have to be healed. Healing comes from confession, not covering.

A major sign we haven’t dealt with our wounds and hurts is when we seek to cover them, rather than expose them. When we can’t speak freely about our weaknesses or failures or sins, we are showing that we haven’t healed from those things.

In order to receiving healing we have to be willing to confess those things. Again, the first step is to ADMIT you are broken. That brokenness includes both things done to you and things that you have done. You have to admit that. Our typical reaction is to cover it up. That’s like putting a bandaid on an amputation. You are bleeding out everywhere and we can all see it. You can’t hide it. You might think you are, but you aren’t. Rip the bandaid off and ask for help!

This is really what the church is about, it’s supposed to be a hospital for the hurting. It’s supposed to be Rescue Squad for the wounded. If you’ve got it all together, you are in the wrong place. This is a place for broken people to seek restoration and love in the kingdom of God. That’s the point. And it all starts with confession.

James 5:15–16 ESV

And the prayer of faith will save the one who is sick, and the Lord will raise him up. And if he has committed sins, he will be forgiven. Therefore, confess your sins to one another and pray for one another, that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous person has great power as it is working.

James says confess so that you may be healed. The word translated sick here means weakness. It’s any type of wounding and weak point in your life. That’s what James is saying the prayer of faith will heal. This is a theme in the New Testament. Jesus didn’t come only to heal major issues, he came to handle mental problems and demonic spirits and generational curses.

Christ has been called our Wounded Healer - Christ was wounded for our transgressions, bruised for our iniquities and by his stripes we are healed. That’s one complete thought. He took the beating to heal us from the beatings we take. And the invitation is to go and do likewise. To be like Christ means to take your wounds and heal others with them.

This is my main point and what I want you to take home today.

Cornerstone Church exists to see broken people restored to wholeness in Jesus Christ.

This is why our church exists. We exist, our purpose, is to see people healed and made whole again. That’s the point. It’s not just about the “sweet-by-and-by”, it’s about the “ugly here-and-now”. Jesus cares about both. We preach a gospel that will not only save you from hell in the afterlife, but hell in the current life. And I’m sorry if that offends you, but that’s the mission. God cares about your life here. He cares about you now. And his heart desire, the reason he sent his son, was to see you healed.

Closing

So I want to move into a time of prayer and journaling. You received journals last week and hopefully you are bringing them back. If you didn’t receive one, we have extra and if you will raise your hand, I will get someone to bring you one.

I plan for this to be a regular thing here. The goal is that you would take in seriously what God is saying to you and you would capture it on paper. Here are our prompts for today. With this being such a powerful subject and because God’s heart is toward you being healed, after a time of silent reflection, I will open it up for a time of prayer ministry. But first let’s spend some time individually seeking the lord.

Prayer & Journaling Prompts

Lord, reveal to me one area in my heart that I’m still needing healing from.

Father, I know that I’ve hurt others and caused pain to them. Please forgive me. In what ways can I work toward reconciliation?

Lord, where do you want me to use my hurts and wounds to help heal others?

END NOTE - PROMOTE MARRIAGE SERIES