The Wounded Healer

by David Kyle Foster

God is doing a marvelous thing in our day. Remember the parable that Jesus told in Mt 22:1-14 about the King (referring to God the Father) who prepared a wedding banquet for His Son (referring to Jesus)? Those He invited made many excuses and would not come. At the end of the parable, the King said, "The wedding banquet is ready, but those I invited did not deserve to come. Go to the street corners and invite to the banquet anyone you find. . . . both good and bad." This parable is being fulfilled before our very eyes as we see satanists, mass murderers, sexually immoral, blasphemers, and all manner of wicked and rebellious people being invited, and coming, into the Kingdom of God.

This is a time of the greatest world-wide revival in history, when God is just as lavishly pouring out His grace on sinners, from the least to the greatest. He is inviting anyone who will come to the wedding feast of the Lamb, without regard to the severity or longevity of their sin. He is also doing another most unexpected thing - a thing that is driving the modern Pharisees to distraction. He is using some of the vilest offenders as ministers of the gospel. He is even resurrecting and restoring those who have been anointed in ministry and who have fallen into sin, as leaders and prophets in His kingdom. He is demonstrating the lavish, unbounded nature of His grace and His mercy. He is wooing by grace. He is inviting those who religious people consider uninvitable - murderers, homosexuals, divorced leaders, fallen ministers, adulterers, alcoholics, drug addicts - into ministry. He is demonstrating once and for all not only that it is by grace alone that we stand before Him, but that it is by grace alone that we minister for Him - not by our works, lest any man should boast. He is clearly demonstrating to the world that even His ministers are chosen not according to their works, but according to the sovereign mercy of God. And so, instead of looking to our leaders, we will be persuaded to fix our hope on God alone for the things that only He can provide - things such as grace, forgiveness, direction, empowerment, modeling of righteousness, etc. He may use our leaders to mediate some of these things, but our focus must never be on the leader as the source, but directed specifically on the person of God.

And so we see an amazing phenomenon in ministry today. We see "wounded healers" everywhere - people who have experienced the utter depths of sin and woundedness, whom God is using to minister to other wounded people and to train the rest of the flock in how to sensitively do such ministry themselves. They have not "earned" a place as priests in God's holy temple, like the "professional" clergy. They are unworthy, and from the depths of their heart they know it. They are utterly dependent on God and they know it - and it is through such that God is able to pour out great power in these last days to break the chains of the evil one that has enslaved an entire generation.

You see, I don't believe that Jesus was saying to the Pharisees that the sins of the woman with the perfume were greater than their sins. I believe He was saying that because her sins were obvious to her, she was in touch with the utter wickedness and depravity that is within every heart, and that being in touch with that fact, she was enabled to come to God in abject brokenness and humility, and enabled to love more fully the One who forgives so deeply. The problem with the religious people was that they were so perfect on the outside that pride had obstructed the depth of depravity on the inside, and they were incapable of grasping their utter need for a savior. They had not been forgiven of much as far as they could see and yet their sin, the sin of self-righteousness, was one of the deepest and darkest - an estimation based on Jesus' reaction to self-righteousness during His ministry. It was that sin alone that stirred Him to speak some of His strongest warnings, as recorded in chapter 23 of the gospel of Matthew and elsewhere.

It would be good for all of us to examine this creeping weed of self-righteousness, for not only does it attack the religious, it also works its way into the "wounded healers" eventually. The Apostle Paul rejoiced that in his weakness, the power of Christ was made more manifest. So there is every benefit, and not one drawback, to our honest admittance of our continual need for the grace of God, and our absolute inability to do anything of any eternal consequence without Him. We are all "wounded healers" if we will but see it.