Words for When I've Been Wounded by the Church

Devotional

This one's different.

When the world hurts you, it makes a terrible kind of sense. You expected it. But when the church hurts you, when the people who sang beside you and prayed over you and called you family turn on you or lie about you or just quietly let you fall, that's a wound with no category. It gets into the place where your faith lives.

And I've seen too many people walk away from Jesus because of what his people did to them. So I want to take this seriously. The Bible does.

Psalm 55. David is in agony, and listen to why. "It is not an enemy who taunts me, then I could bear it." He could handle an enemy. "But it is you, a man, my equal, my companion, my familiar friend. We used to take sweet counsel together; within God's house we walked in the throng." Church hurt. Three thousand years ago. The knife came from the person who sat next to him in worship. David doesn't spiritualize it. He doesn't say it's fine. He says it's the one thing he couldn't bear.

And then he does the only thing that kept him. "But I call to God, and the LORD will save me. Evening and morning and at noon I utter my complaint and moan, and he hears my voice." Three times a day. Complaining. Moaning. And God hears it. You're allowed to bring the whole ugly thing to him. He's not going to defend the people who hurt you. He's going to listen.

Paul had it too. At the end of his life, in prison, facing death: "At my first defense no one came to stand by me, but all deserted me." All. The churches he planted. The people he'd bled for. Nobody showed up. And then: "But the Lord stood by me and strengthened me." When the church emptied the room, the Lord of the church stayed in it.

Here's what I need you to see, because it's the thing that holds the whole wound.

Jesus was wounded by the church. Not the world. The religious establishment. The people who had the Bible and the temple and the right theology, they're the ones who arranged his death. His closest friend sold him for the price of a slave. His other closest friend swore he didn't know him. Everyone else ran. Jesus knows church hurt from the inside, and he knows it worse than you do. And he didn't walk away from his people. He died for them. For Peter. For the ones who ran.

And when he rose, the first thing he did was go find the ones who'd failed him and make them breakfast.

That doesn't erase what was done to you. Some things need confronting. Some need leaving. Wisdom matters here. But Paul's instruction in Colossians 3 is still for the wounded. "Put on... compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience... forgiving each other; as the Lord has forgiven you." And I'll tell you why that's not cruel. Forgiveness isn't saying it didn't matter. It's refusing to let the person who hurt you keep holding the pen on your story. Jesus holds it. He forgave you when you were the one doing the wounding.

So don't let what his people did become the reason you leave him. He's not them. He never was. He stood by Paul when all deserted him. He'll stand by you.

Evening and morning and at noon, tell him. He hears your voice.