Sermon Tone Analysis

Healing Our Hurts

Somebody hurt you a year ago, ten years ago, or a lifetime ago, and somehow deep down inside, you can't shake it.

Sometimes you say it never happened, but you know deep down inside, it did happen.

So, you try to deny it, and that doesn't work.

You suppress it and somehow it keeps popping out.

And sometimes it pops out in an embarrassing fashion.

You know that deep down inside something happened back there that you can really identify.

In fact, you can point your finger toward the person.

And what seemingly was merely a little hurt in the beginning, somehow it solidified like concrete in your mind.

It's just there.

It lays there, it hangs there, the burden of it is there.

You'd like to shake it, you'd like to get rid of it.

But somehow you just can't do it.

You got hurt so badly that somehow you feel like I will never be able to overcome this.

Well, I want to tell you, my friend: yes, you can!

Because you see, if you don't overcome the hurts of the past, what you'll find out is this: those hurts can do great, great harm to your life.

Everybody gets hurt at some point in life.

Children get hurt by their parents.

Parents hurt each other.

Friends hurt one another.

Hurt is just part of living in the society in which you and I live.

People say things they should not say to us, off the cuff.

Sometime it's very deliberate, sometime it is malicious gossip.

Sometimes it is physical injury.

Sometimes it is abuse, abuse of a child, of a teenager, or of another adult.

All kinds of things come into our life that causes hurt.

So what we have to do is we have to decide how we're gonna handle this hurt.

Am I going to handle this hurt in such a way that it harms me in every aspect of my life?

Or am I gonna learn how to handle this hurt in such a fashion that I can take it and I can handle it properly and be able to learn something from it, glean something from it, grow up as a result of it, and not allow it to hurt me.

Because God does not want us to respond to hurts in such a fashion that we are devastated in our life, lose our witness and our testimony, go through life bearing some kind of emotional baggage that we are never able to escape.

So I want you to turn, if you will, to Ephesians chapter four.

And in this fourth chapter of Ephesians, which is one of my favorite books of the scripture because Paul has jammed so much theology in the first three chapters and so much practical Christian living in these last three.

And in this fourth chapter, he's been talking about things that you and I have to deal with in our life, about renewing our mind and dealing with anger and so forth.

Then he says, if you'll notice in, coming down to the close of that in verse thirty, he says, "Do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption".

And we grieve Him in lots of ways, and he's just talked about some of those ways by our speech and so forth.

Then he says in verse thirty-one, "Let all," look at this, "let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you, along with all malice.

And be kind to one another, tender-hearted, forgiving each other, just as God in Christ has also forgiven you".

Now, I think all of us know that there are some hurts in life that we can forgive rather simply and say, "Well, okay, you know, you hurt me, but I'm gonna get over it, and I understand that you made a mistake, or I understood that at that time in your life you were going through something or whatever".

Then there are those hurts that are so deep in some people's lives that somehow they just can't seem to step out of it.

They go to church, they hear the gospel, they know the truth, and they say, "Well, you know, I know that's what God says and that's what I feel, but".

And somehow, oftentimes a person doesn't realize that hanging on to hurts, hanging on to hurts begins to do them great damage in every aspect of their life.

So, hanging on to a hurt oftentimes is a security for us.

When a person has hung on to a hurt for so long, after a while, the very idea of giving it up becomes more of a threat than the damage that hurt does to their life.

And when I think about little children who come along and they're abused by their parent, either sexually or physically or even verbally, and they grow up and they have to live with this baggage all of their lives.

And what happens is they grow up with anger toward their parents, for example.

And as a result of that, the relationship, of course, is never the way it ought to be.

And they go through life wondering: Why do I feel the way I feel?

Why do I feel toward my parents the way I feel, or toward someone else?

And so, oftentimes they can't identify it.

Because what they say is, "Oh, yes, I was hurt back yonder, but you know, everybody gets hurt, and therefore I've just sorta forgotten it".

No, you don't.

You see, you don't just forget hurt.

You have to deal with hurts in some fashion or the other.

Hurts that are not handled properly will harm us in every aspect of our life.

So I want us to look at this because here's what happens.

Those hurts in our life, unless they're handled properly, will develop into an unforgiving spirit.

And oftentimes that unforgiving spirit can be very subtle, and especially is this true if it is the result of something a parent has done because it is a natural, normal response for a person to say, "Well, you know, after all, she's my mother.

After all, he's my father.

Why, sure I love my dad.

Why, sure I love my mother".

And somehow this "I love my mother, I love my father, sure, they're my parents" is some form of verbal attempt to cover up and put layer after layer after layer of forgetfulness on what has happened back there.

But what I'm telling you is this, it doesn't disappear simply because you say, "I love my mother, love my father".

And oftentimes if there has been real hurt there, you don't really and truly love them.

You would like to love them.

You want to love them.

You're supposed to love them.

You should love them.

We say in our heart, and therefore we think we do, when deep down inside, that hurt is like a deep cancer down inside.

And while on the surface everything looks pretty well, deep down inside, it's never healed.

And so it's like leaky poison.

It's just poisoning our whole system.

And this is why oftentimes later on in life, parents and children come to great conflict and there's a blowup and someone says, "Well, I've been thinking this, or I've felt this for years and years and years".

And sometimes a person will say to their parent, "Twenty years ago, thirty years ago, forty years ago, here's what you did to me".

And sometimes it is something that a parent did not even realize that they had done, or something maybe a friend did a few years ago and they didn't even realize they did it.

And all the time it has been there.

And sometimes it reaches down so deep into the core of your heart and soul, you are shaken by it, maybe thrown off base by it and thrown off course.

And so, we have to back off and say, "Okay, how am I to respond to this"?

Now, listen carefully, no one, no one can cause you and me to have an unforgiving spirit.

Nobody can cause us to do that.

No one can make me have an unforgiving spirit.

No one can make me angry.

No one can make me hostile.

No one can make me have malice in my heart.

Those are responses that I have to agree in my own emotional being to accept or reject.

And so, if I allow these emotions to encompass me and allow them to overflow in my life and to control me, it is because I choose to be angry, I choose to have malice, I choose to be unforgiving, I choose to have that kind of an attitude.

Now, here's the thing that has helped me above everything else in my own personal life, and that is, when I think about the fact that when the Lord Jesus Christ went to the cross, He took all of my sin on the cross with Him.

No matter what I've done, will ever do, He has already forgiven me of every single solitary thing.

How can I hold against someone else, be unforgiving toward them, when He has not been unforgiving toward me?

Now, that person may be obnoxious.

They may be obstinate.

They might not want to be my friend or have anything to do with me.

Now, how they respond is one thing.

How the other person responds is one thing.

But the issue is: How am I gonna respond?

Am I going to allow an unforgiving spirit, a hurt in my life, become a harmful thing to me?

Or, am I gonna respond no matter how the other person responds?

When he says, "Put these things away from you," he says, "with all malice, and be kind one to another, tender-hearted, forgiving each other even as the Lord has forgiven us".

Well, what are the harms that you and I face?

The first thing is damaged emotions.

There are many, many people, in fact probably most people.