Taking our wounds to Christ for healing is not necessarily to make our pain go away but to free us from being enslaved to the pain and able to serve Christ in freedom and power and in love. We admit we are wounded, not trusting Christ and living freely in these areas of brokenness, and that Christ alone can heal us.

God’s healing in our lives releases us to trust again. Significantly wounded people do not trust well, which hinders us from receiving love; and people who don’t feel loved have grave difficulty loving others. So, trust regained through healing is essential. Trust is the essence of Christian faith, loving relationships, and personal health. Christ’s healing enables us to trust which leads to deep relationship with God and others.

God’s healing enables us to receive truth again. When we are wounded we do not trust therefore we have a difficult time accepting truth (God’s love, God’s power, our identity). We lose perspective. Wounded people often trust only what we feel; our hurt emotions take charge. But Christ’s healing restores our ability to trust God and trustworthy others so that God can speak truth into our hearts and give us His perspective.

So healing releases us into intimacy with God where we honor Him and receive from Him grace upon grace. Healing thus enables us to live and relate and respond to life out of the fullness of “Christ in me” rather than the sin in me, rather than the pain and shame that reign through our wounds. As God heals us, we can abide in Christ and then choose to forgive, to love, and to live by the Spirit rather than react out of the flesh.

Pastor Steve Behlke is at Grace United Church in Northampton, Massachusetts.