Wednesday, November 3, 2021 Some material taken from God’s Got This
I will give thanks to You, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made; Wonderful are Your works, and my soul knows it very well. Psalm 139:14
Healing Emotional and Spiritual Wounds
Trauma, of any kind, physical, emotional, or spiritual, has to heal, and heal properly for us to be free from it. God has principles that apply across the three parts of our lives – Body – Soul – Spirit. There are specific steps to healing a physical wound such as: recognize the severity of the wound, take action to stop the bleeding, cleanse the wound, protect the wound, and treat the wound until healed.
All wounds heal from the inside out, and while there may be a scar that forms with a top layer over a wound, the deeper the wound, the longer it takes to fully heal. Healing for emotional and spiritual wounds is similar to healing a physical wound. You can’t really hide a physical wound, but you can hide an emotional and spiritual wound for a long time, leaving it to fester and grow into a much bigger problem.
There are many things in life that cause emotional wounds such as broken relationships, abuse, betrayal, hurt feelings and much more. Spiritual wounds are caused by Satan attacking us, causing sin, and a hindered relationship with God.
God’s principles for healing in all three areas of our lives are basically the same.
Steps To Heal A Soul (emotional) Wound:
Recognize the Severity of the Wound – Admit the pain is there. Admit what caused the pain and how it has affected your life. How deeply are you affected? Does it consume your thoughts? If you have a hard time thinking about anything else, you might have a pretty severe wound.
Take Action to Stop the Bleeding - Admit you need help to heal. However, you can ignore a soul wound by masking, it will eventually eat through like a cancer to destroy your peace and life. Listen - is your heart calling out for help in some way? What needs attention?
Cleanse the Wound - talk it out. Sometimes simply just talking with someone about what is going on and what your are feeling can make you feel so much better. Not being honest about our feelings will cause us to be anxious. Anxiety is repressing a truth, and emotional wounds untreated lead to anger, hate, and bitterness.
Protect the Wound - Whatever or whoever it is that has caused the trauma, protect the wound by setting up a protective barrier, or boundary to keep the wound from getting damaged again and again. Avoid whatever or whoever it is that caused the wound if you can. Give yourself permission to say no - I am not going to allow this to happen again.
Change the way you think so your soul can rejoice - No matter what the circumstances are in our lives, we can always rejoice, and rejoicing will make any circumstance so much more bearable. A bird still sings even though they are locked in a cage. A sacrifice of praise is a sweet sound in our Heavenly Father’s ears.
Treat the Wound Until Healed - Learn the power of forgiveness! If we cannot forgive the person that wounded us, healing is impossible. Forgiveness is the key that unlocks the healing process.
Emotional wounds rest deep in your emotional brain and are hard to destroy. You must take every thought captive to your newfound freedom from the wound. Don’t stop talking until you feel your soul has been healed, and remember that since wounds heal from the inside out, masking your pain will never resolve your wound.
We look to so many other things to heal - or numb - the pain from our wounds. Healing is not something that happens quickly. We have a quick fix mentality and when something is not fixed quickly, we struggle with the process. Healing is a choice, and if we choose to heal, we choose to be okay with the process. We must be willing to open ourselves up to God and allow Him to heal us in His way and in His time.
God knows us, inside and out. He made us. He sees our wounds and hears our cries, we are wonderful in His eyes. We see nothing but our failures and He sees us as redeemed, chosen, healed, and whole. He alone has the power to heal our deepest hurts. Make the choice to open your heart to Him to heal.
