Woundedness: Life Out of Death

Unless a grain of wheat falls into the ground and dies,
it remains alone; but if it dies,
it produces much grain.
He who loves his life will lose it,
and he who hates his life in this world
will keep it for eternal life.

- John 12:24-25

Today is Holy Thursday. The whole of Christiandom commemorates the last day before Jesus went to His crucifixion.

Jesus came to die in our place, to take upon Himself the death penalty that the whole human race deserved. And because He was willing to die, He made a way for eternal life to be available to us.


This is another of the many striking paradoxes in the Word of God -- life flows out out of death. He who seeks to save his life will lose it, but he who "hates" his life will keep it for eternity.

One quality stands out in the life of Jesus and His disciples: they did not love their lives to the death (Revelation 12:11)



Reading through the Hall of Faith chapter in Hebrews 11:32-39, I realize that the blood shed by those people for their faith still speaks to us today.

They suffered ridicule, persecutions, reviling, false accusations, even untimely death.

They were stoned, tempted, sawn in two, slain with the sword.

They wandered about in sheepskin, destitute, afflicted, tormented...

And then comes the last line which I love so much:

the world was not worthy of them.

The life they lived had a non-protective quality about it, and once again, Jesus is the greatest example we have:

he was obedient unto death, even death on a cross.

What a far cry from the way most people look at their lives today. Many of us have rigid standards for personal comfort and protection as we go through life. Daily we are given opportunities to experience a kind of dying, yet we resist them, we avoid them. Often, these are not even the major things... just the interruptions, the delays, the inconvenience, the minor irritations.

How does this compare with the Hebrews 11 disciples who wandered about in sheepskin, destitute, afflicted, tormented, stoned, tortured, flogged, put in prison, sawn in half, slain with the sword, had trial of mockings and scourgings, yes, of chains and imprisonment?


Last Sunday, my friend Mario spoke of how Christians were fed to the lions and burned at stake during the time of the Roman Empire. He couldn't hold back the tears as he spoke.

Modern day stories of the underground church where Christians are persecuted and tortured are not new to us.

One story that has touched me deeply is that of Minka and Margaret. Serving as Christian missionary nurses in a leper colony in southern Thailand during the 1970s, they were kidnapped by Thai bandits and eventually murdered.

Faith under trial.

Obedience being proven in a fiery crucible.

And Jesus is our pioneer. He went through deep wounding, to the point of death, out of His obedience to the Father.

Paul is another model for us. He considered all things as loss for the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ as Lord. His goal was to know Him, and the power of His resurrection, and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death (Philippians 2:8-10).

No ordinary person, Paul was a high ranking Roman citizen who used to persecute and kill Christians for Rome. After meeting Christ, he was dramatically changed.

No longer aspiring for the things men usually aspire for, he writes that his desire was to know the "fellowship of His suffering," being conformed to the death of Jesus.

Just like Jesus, Paul learned obedience in the things he suffered.

So must we.

We all have a self-protective nature around our hearts. A "pre-set" limit that determines how far we will go... and how much we are willing to suffer.

How did those protective structures get there in the first place? Through rejection, lies, the hurts and blows that people and events have thrown at us, our wrong perceptions, the consequences of our sinful choices.

Life in general, has not been kind to us. We go through wounding experiences time and again.

There are literal physical wounds.

But there are emotional ones as well. We get rejected, criticized, shamed, abused, taken advantage of. We are betrayed, maligned, accused of wrong motives. Our honest intentions are sometimes misinterpreted.

We are doing good things, not bad things... and yet somewhere along the way, our expectation of receiving something good in return is reversed. Disappointment and bitterness set in.

Disappointment is such a great weight upon the soul. There are people who never recover or get over the emotional wounding of a disappointment.

Years ago, because of disappointment, I realized that I had stored up rocks of offense and used these to build a protective wall around my heart! I was not only discouraged, I was disillusioned with people, and with life.

Before me was a choice: to live out a theology of weakness, that is, to partake of the sufferings, the woundedness, the death of Jesus.

I found it hard to understand how laying down my life in the midst of the wounding could advance the kingdom of God. Some natural responses when we are wounded are to harden our hearts, to withdraw, to shrink back.

But one must never forget that it is God who allows the wounding. Because in any such experience He sends the opportunity for growth.

I had two paths to choose from.

One was to become hardened, phony, empty, or shallow. "Allow my heart to shrink in its capacity to respond in love." Fight back. Let my heart become detached, indifferent, and cold.

Or choose to climb higher, respond in love, seize the wounding experience and increase the redemptive power of my life.

I chose to respond in love, a difficult choice to make, but one I will never regret.

Because of this choice, the wounds that I thought were unbearable eventually began to close up, and heal.


Isaiah 53 says that by Christ's wounds we are healed.

And by our wounds, if we respond correctly, others will get healed.

It is not God's desire that we become bitter, cynical, hardened because of life's hurts.

I knew that my Father allows the wounding experiences to expose my self-imposed boundaries around my heart, to reveal the defense mechanisms I have put up that life may no longer hurt beyond what I am willing to endure.

Through wounding, God wants to expose the lies we have believed, about Him, about ourselves, about others.

It is a divine strategy. When the hiding places of the enemy are exposed, then he can no longer lie to us.

The Father wants us to tear those walls down, and rather, take the wounds of our soul, embrace them as our allies, and use them as divine opportunities to make us become more like Jesus.

God sees the finished product, the masterpiece of you and me, but to get to that point is a refining process.

Woundedness is one of the means, an opportunity God uses to make us life-givers, just as Jesus was. It is a precious gift that we can either receive, or reject.

As we allow ourselves to be wounded, instead of shielding our hearts from the pain, God's living power is released in our lives.

Woundedness was the very essense of Christ's life here on earth. And if we would follow Christ, wounding is inevitable.

Isaiah 52:14 says that Jesus was marred beyond recognition.

Marred beyond recognition. How many of us would allow that in our lives?

Living a theology of weakness means that there will be numerous times when we will be praying the mercy prayer for those who have wounded us.

To pray the mercy prayer for those who have done us wrong is to release mercy instead of vindictiveness, forgiveness instead of hatred, life instead of death.

"Father, forgive them for they know not what they do," was the prayer of Jesus as He was dying on the cross.

It was prayed by Stephen as he was being stoned to death... "Father, do not hold them accountable for this sin." Because of his prayer, it turned a Saul into a Paul, the greatest ambassador of heaven to the Gentiles.

This is a vivid illustration of fighting in the opposite spirit, which is what a theology of weakness is all about.

It is living in the upside down kingdom.

A narrow road leads to that kingdom. Wounded people who have chosen self-protection would rather go through life frozen in a time warp where the memory of that experience continually haunts them, as they regularly recite a litany of hurts, if onlys, what ifs, what could have beens.

The wounds remain fresh because the environment for healing is not available in that time warp.

But is this how we want to live?

Jesus offers us remedies, solutions for the wounding experiences of life, so that offense will have never have a place in our hearts.

Repay no one evil for evil. Romans 12:17
Bless those who persecute you. Romans 12:14
Feed your enemy if he is hungry.
Heap coals of fire on an enemy's head. (This was an act of goodwill.)
Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.
Love your enemies.
Do good to those who hate you.
Pray for those who spitefully use you.
Offer the other cheek to him who strikes you on the cheek.

These are all theology of weakness, upside down kingdom principles.

Peter tells us to rejoice and not to think it a strange thing when we go through fiery trials; rather we are to willingly partake of Christ's sufferings because when His glory is revealed, we will be glad with exceeding joy. (1 Peter 4:12-13)

As ambassadors of God's kingdom, we are agents of redemption, and therefore prime targets for Satan's schemes. The enemy will always find ways to offend, discourage, silence and intimidate us!

It should not really take us by surprise.

Jesus maintained love and forgiveness in the midst of suffering. As a lamb before his shearers is silent, He opened not His mouth. This was the secret of His redemptive power, the same secret available to us.

Let us look to Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith. The crucible is the place of extreme heat where gold is refined, and all its dross and impurities removed.

A goldsmith is often asked, "When is the molten gold removed from the fire?"

He answers, "Until I see my face reflected in it."


Gethsemane is a word that literally means "olive press." By God's design, He allowed the struggle between life and death, obedience and disobedience, to once more take place in another garden: this time not the garden of Eden, but the garden of Gethsemane.

"Father, if you are willing, let this cup of suffering pass away from me," Jesus pleaded with His Father.

"Yet, not My will, but Your will be done."


The olive press was a crushing weight, extremely heavy, and made of solid stone. It was placed upon ripe olives to squeeze the oil out of them. The oil flowed into a vat at the bottom of the press where it was allowed to stay until the impurities settled to the bottom.

Olive oil, even today, is a healing balm.

Jesus was placed under the heavy weight of the sins of the entire human race, like an olive press, a Gethsemane, that out of His deep wounding a healing balm may flow... that out of this crushing others may touch God and find life everlasting.

My Prayer:

Father, I pray that out of the crushing blows that we endure, the disappointments, the heartaches, the unfair and unjust things that people have done to us, out of our merciful response, may Your life flow.

Out of our healed wounds may others also experience the healing touch of God upon their lives...

And Father, as You see Your face reflected in our responses, may others be drawn to You.