A young man I walked alongside for a season of discipleship and healing prayer once posed this question to me, “What do I do with the pain?”  He was making progress in connecting the emotional upheaval of a recent breakup and perceived betrayal by his peers to deeper wounds.  The childhood trauma of paternal neglect and abandonment, once thought to be relegated to the distant past, had come roaring back to the present as grave depression.  He was discovering that unresolved wounds of the past can trigger unexpectedly strong emotions when fresh wounding occurs.  He was also realizing that mere intellectual assent to Scriptural truth is not a fast and easy fix to such troubles.

We know this kind of emotional pain is resolved over time by honestly addressing root issues, walking out forgiveness, embracing truth, and welcoming new, trustworthy sources of genuine love.  This young man was on that journey, but the Lord’s promise to “heal the brokenhearted and bind up their wounds” could not come fast enough.  (Psalm 147:3 New International Version)

Paul instructed the believers in Rome to be “transformed by the renewing of your mind.”  (Romans 12:2 NIV).  Today this verse is often misunderstood to be talking only about that intellectual agreement with biblical truth.  However, the Greek word translated into English as the word “mind” conveys a much broader meaning.  Far beyond the brain simply memorizing a few facts and verses, Paul is talking about a full transformation of being, from spirit through the soul to outward action, and that requires spiritual encounter with the living Christ.  The healing of emotional pain is one outcome of supernatural encounters with Love.    

          

When discussing our sin or cares, we often hear people say to “bring it to Jesus.”  Blithely repeating that phrase and truly experiencing it are two different things.  To describe what that means in practice, I began my reply to this young man’s question by offering a short story, taking great liberty with John Bunyan’s religious allegory, Pilgrim’s Progress.

There was a man, let us call him Christian, who carried around two large heavy bags, one slung over each shoulder.  Over time, these bags became increasingly burdensome to carry.  One of the bags, the heaviest by far, was full of his many grievous sins. All of his guilt and shame.  One day Christian came to the cross, understood the gospel, laid down his heaviest bag at the feet of Jesus, and gave Him the contents.  He knew that Jesus bore the punishment on the cross for the remission of all the sins in his heavy bag.  Jesus had been sent by the Father to be rejected so Christian could be accepted, to be cursed so he could be blessed, to become sin so he could become righteous.  Quickened to new life by the Spirit, Christian willingly dumped the contents of his bag at the cross and let Jesus bear it all.  He accepted the Lord’s forgiveness and joyfully rose up without that bag in hand to follow Jesus on the road to the Celestial Kingdom.

Christian’s load was much lighter, but he was not completely free for he still carried the second bag that kept getting larger in size.  This bag was full of his pain and sorrows, his disappointments and losses, his wounds caused by the sins of others committed against him, and his own sinful reactions to them.  Christian would occasionally bring this bag to Jesus, sit down with Him, and tell Him all about the contents.  He shared intimate memories and feelings about individual items and hoped for a release of the emotional burden.  Not knowing what else to do, nor that he was welcomed by the One promised in Isaiah 53 who would also bear his suffering, Christian rose-up, put everything back in the bag, slung it over his shoulder again, and walked on in sorrow.

The point to this version of the story was to begin to answer the young man’s question, “What do I do with the pain?”   While on his longer journey of discovery and obedience by which the Lord would fully resolve this young man’s pain, I offered a few insights and prayerful actions he could take that would bring short-term relief.   Dedicated attention to them in the long-term would certainly contribute to his full, spiritual transformation of being.

Jesus came to bring shalom.  Shalom means “peaceful” in Hebrew, but that word carries the connotation of “completeness, wholeness & health.”  For example, someone who suffers chronic depression instead of abiding in peace is “incomplete” in their thinking and beliefs.  This is why I often challenge people to carefully consider and pray for insight into what they believe in the deepest place of the heart, where emotional memories also reside, knowing that those beliefs are near to the root of all emotional problems.  While on the journey of unpacking these beliefs and honestly looking at the impact they have had in life, we can simultaneously come to Jesus with our pain.  We come with a purpose of releasing the pain to Him, much like Christian did with his sins.  We come to exchange our pain, even if only temporarily in the beginning, with something peaceful. 

We know that emotional pain from family brokenness is the most complex and deeply rooted kind of pain.  It has been around the longest.  We all experience the loss of love and friendships somewhere along the way in life, but when the pain of a recent experience is stubbornly resistant to being resolved and healed when brought to Jesus, then that pain is likely tied to something deeply rooted within the soul.  Deeply rooted pain requires on-going encounters with Jesus for the one suffering to be made complete, whole, and healthy. 

I suggested a personalized, Spirit-led prayer session, using the following steps as one immediate thing to do when experiencing emotional pain:

• I so often hear people pray, “Jesus, take this away from me.”  Unfortunately, that prayer usually ends with the person putting their pain, sin, or shame back in one of their bags, and slinging the bag over their shoulder again as they walk away.  That is not a prayer of faith, but rather a prayer of unbelief.  We are naturally inclined to pray this way, but a prayer of faith believes what God has revealed, speaks it out, and acts on it.  Such faith powerfully activates something both inside us and in the heavens on our behalf.  We can also unwittingly become a caretaker over our wound, or the habitual sin we have been hesitant to relinquish, when we really want to be free from it.  So, when you are ready to take a step of faith to release a wound or sin, offer it to Jesus.  You must give it to Him, and He then takes it.