When Wounds Become Weapons

There is a difference between a scar and an open wound.

A scar has been healed.

An open wound is still hot to the touch.

Unhealed wounds are points of entry to the soul. We avoid pressing on them the way we avoid putting weight on a sprained ankle. We protect them. We guard them. We insist they are fine.

But untreated wounds do not stay neutral.

They become infected.

And infected wounds do something dangerous: they change the way we see.

There are many in the Body of Christ who believe they have “dealt with” their wounds. They have prayed. They have declared. They have moved on. Yet instead of being healed, they have become defenders—protectors against the very environments or people who once hurt them.

The question is sobering:

Did the Lord ask them to guard?

Or are they guarding from pain?

When pain goes unhealed, it often disguises itself as righteousness.

Absalom believed he was correcting injustice (2 Samuel 15).

But his rebellion was born from unresolved offense.

And Proverbs 14:1 says:

The wise woman builds her house, But the foolish tears it down with her own hands.

Read that again, with her own hands!

It is possible to destroy what we claim to love while believing we are protecting it.

There are leaders who guard status, title, and position in the body of Christ. They keep gifted people close—controlled—or confined, lest they outgrow the leader. These mentors do not launch; they limit.

There are others who build codependency among those they mentor. These leaders quietly draw their value from those around them. Their identity is fed by being needed rather than by being healed.

And there are still others who blame the environment or circumstances for every negative experience, attributing only the positive to God—never recognizing that He is also sovereign in the stretching, the pruning, the exposure.

When we run from discomfort too quickly, the good is delayed.

The truth is, God wastes nothing.

He uses both the pleasant and the painful to reveal what is in our hearts.

The true test is not whether we were wounded.

The true test is what flows out of us afterward.

Do we protect?

Or do we heal?

Do we gather people to our side in shared offense?

Or do we invite them into wholeness?

Do we confront in love?

Or avoid truth to preserve comfort or peace?

Healing is not proven by how loudly we speak.

It is revealed by how freely we love.

Isaiah 61 is not lived by wounded warriors.

It is lived by healed ones.

He binds up the brokenhearted before He sends them to set captives free.

The Church does not need more defenders of personal pain.

She needs men and women who are willing to let God cleanse their wounds so their influence carries love instead of infection.

God does not promote from ambition.

He promotes from obedience.

And sometimes He withholds titles—not as punishment—but as protection.

Protection for those around us.

Protection for our own hearts.

The gathering table He builds is not about status.

It is about presence.

And presence requires a surrendered heart.

Worldly wisdom says:

Protect yourself. Guard your position. Build your platform.

Godly wisdom says:

Obey Me. Let Me heal you. Trust Me with your influence.

Prayer

Lord, expose any place where my wound has become my weapon.

Heal what I have justified.

Cleanse what I have protected.

And make my influence a place of freedom, not infection.

Amen.