Over the years, an essential part of Word Based Counseling has been helping people deal with their hurts.  Hurt is a part of life; you can't live life without getting hurt.  Ideally, each time in our lives we=ve gotten hurt, we would have gone to the Lord and said, "God, I got hurt; I give it to you."  And God would have poured out grace and healed the hurt.  Then we would have left it behind and gone on in faith and obedience.

But for many of us, when hurts have come, we haven't known about the grace of God and how to receive it.  Or if we did, we were so hurt or angry that we didn't want to.  As a result, there are times we have a backlog of wounds in our lives, hurts that never got healed.  And that can provide fertile ground for unforgiveness, anger, rebellion, hopelessness, withdrawal, and self-protective (or destructive) defenses toward man and God.

God desires a people who will walk with Him.  Therefore, when the effects of sin and darkness in this dying world run over and flatten His people like A road-kill@ on the road of life, He is strongly moved to heal, restore, and raise up His people to walk with Him once again.  God= s heart of compassion for us is manifested in and through Jesus Christ.

The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me, because the Lord has anointed me to bring good news to the afflicted; He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to captives, and freedom to prisoners (Isaiah 61:1 NAS).

God sent Jesus (Isaiah 61:1; Luke 4:18) in the power of the Holy Spirit to heal the broken hearted; to set at liberty those who have been crushed and bruised through the emotional calamities of life.  Jesus was anointed to free those who through their afflictions had come into captivity and bondage to sin and the devil.  And A Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today, yes and forever@ (Hebrews 13:8).