|
Wrong ways to handle hurt:
1. Hurt first. Be mean first, and that makes you tough, you think.
2. Quit, end the relationship. Get a divorce, quit the job, or move away!
3. Retaliate, get even. Hurt them worse than they hurt you. People are in jail or mental institutions for lashing out as a result of hurt.
4. Internalize it. Feel sorry for yourself and become very quiet. This brings on depression, and if it’s not stopped, will lead to thoughts of suicide. I know! This is what I was doing for many years! Satan works this way. If you don’t control your thoughts, they will lead to worse and worse mental images.
5. Psychologists will tell you to take out those feelings on something else, like a pillow, or a picture of the person you want to hurt. The trouble with this is that you are practicing giving hurt. Never practice anger on your pet, or inanimate objects, like your car, your computer, etc. If you do this, you are building a stronghold in your mind of anger. It will be very close to the surface all the time, and eventually, if you keep yielding to it, you will get a demon of rage, and these people end up in mental institutions or in jail.
Psychologists will also tell you that it’s important to be true to yourself. That means to let your feelings out. They know there’s danger in holding it in, but this way is wrong too. Most of the world handles hurts these wrong ways!
Right ways to handle hurt:
1. Take up the shield of faith. Faith is believing what God says over what anyone else says, or how you feel. (I Cor 5:7) Faith is a shield. Faith spoken is protection from the devil’s darts, (Eph. 6:16). Read my brochure, How to use your sword and shield for more explanation. If you don’t read your Bible, you won’t know what God says about you, so you have no shield. If you believe what others say about you, you’ve lowered your shield.
2. Forgive them ~ just between you and God. If you require them to change, or be sorry, or ask for forgiveness, you are not giving forgiveness; you’re requiring them to pay for it. It may never happen, and in the meantime you are the one who is drinking the poison of unforgiveness. That leads to many diseases. Some people have been healed as soon as they forgave!
Forgiving is a decision, not a feeling. You decide to do what’s right, and the Holy Spirit will help you. And then begin praying good things for anyone who has hurt you. This will heal your heart. This is what God led me to do when I was getting over the hurts I received in my childhood.
3. Stop reliving it. Stop rehearsing it in your mind, or telling people about it. Don’t bring it up, or think it anymore. It’s like a sore. It’ll get well if you leave it alone. How to not think about it is also covered in that brochure, How to use your sword and shield. And get busy showing love to other people who have been hurt.
4. Stop making excuses why you are so easily hurt. People who do this also never get well. Phil. 4:13, “I can do everything with the help of Christ who gives me the strength I need.”
5. Every pressure is an opportunity for development. You can develop to the place where people can’t hurt you anymore!
Does this sound impossible? It is, if you are not born again or saved. You don’t have the supernatural help of the Holy Spirit living inside of you. Take care of that first and then read this brochure again.
My story:
I was saved at age nine. I accepted Jesus as my personal Savior and was baptized. That’s what I was taught. After being married but still childless, I received some other teaching and asked Jesus to come into my heart and lead me and help me live for Him. In retrospect, that’s when I began growing spiritually.
But it was many years later that we were going to our first Charismatic church. I attended a women’s group at this church and they provided babysitting for our two little boys. I remember being very depressed at those meetings! I was so sad I wanted to cry, but didn’t know why. They sang a peppy little song, “He has made me glad” But that made me even more sad. He hadn’t made me glad! I am sure the leaders noticed, for I was soon set up to see a group that was experienced in handling demons. That story is in my brochure, Can a Christian have a Demon?
It was at this time that our group leader got a vision of many closed clam shells on a beach. She said, “It means that many of you girls are closed up very tightly because you’ve been hurt and are afraid of being hurt again. If this is you, raise your hand, I will come and pray for each of you.”
I raised my hand and she prayed the most beautiful things for me. She said (from God) “I am your new Daddy now, and I am going to give you My traits. You have many gifts that are useful to me, but you must learn to do warfare with your thoughts, or police your thoughts.”
I went home and cried, “I’m not a fighter!” But slowly over the next few weeks, God showed me that it’s just knowing what to do, like I explain in that brochure Sword and Shield. And by spending time with God daily, in the Word and in prayer, I continued to grow and develop, becoming stronger and less easily hurt! |
