Healing, and the Need of Relationships

“I suppose that since most of our hurts come through relationships so will our healing, and I know that grace rarely makes sense for those looking in from the outside.”

— Wm. Paul Young

It may be so that we cannot be truly healed without relationships. Certainly within supportive and encouraging relationships, those that push us toward wisdom in dealing with our hurts, there is great potential for growth.

As I consider my own process through healing, when my world was swept away on a torrent of tormented grief, the success factor was connection with others. Little did I know at the time my need of others, just to get around me and help me feel loved.

God works through other people in order to heal us. I’m not sure if there can be the fullness of healing otherwise. Enters, now, does one of the central purposes of the church.

Church and Healing

Of course, the primary purpose of the church is to bring humankind to salvation in Jesus Christ. But once people are there, and even if they are not, the church exists as a platform for healing through loving fellowship and discipleship.

When we consider that grace within godly people is sufficient to heal the hurt, God working through them, we understand the church exists as a place where hurt people may come to rest and be revived in their own time and in their own way.

The challenge for the church, in any day, is tolerance—to be able to love the hurt person, who may be so hurt that they hurt others, in ways to be Jesus to them.

Trusting People Again, or for The First Time

The church must be able to operate in such expansiveness of grace that they understand trust is a major issue for many people; especially those who seek emotional healing. Trust must never be demanded. People are the ones who, individually, must decide if they will trust or not.

But tolerance begets trust, because tolerance is about patience; it’s about the other person’s agenda, not our own. When we are tolerant grace exudes from us. We are, for that person and situation, the consummate wounded healer.

Such a wounded healer knows in their heart of hearts that the person before them needing healing needs relationships; people who accept and love them.

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Because relationships got us into the mess of hurt, they are the very thing to provide healing from those hurts. We look for tolerant people, exuding grace. It’s how they make us feel in their presence that makes all the difference to healing. They help us grow through the pain of dealing with our hurts. They are Godsends.

© 2013 S. J. Wickham.