Better at Dealing with Hurt

Soon afterward, Jesus went to a town called Nain, and his disciples and a large crowd went along with him. As he approached the town gate, a dead person was being carried out—the only son of his mother, and she was a widow. And a large crowd from the town was with her. When the Lord saw her, his heart went out to her and he said, “Don’t cry.”
Then he went up and touched the bier they were carrying him on, and the bearers stood still. He said, “Young man, I say to you, get up!” The dead man sat up and began to talk, and Jesus gave him back to his mother.
They were all filled with awe and praised God. “A great prophet has appeared among us,” they said. “God has come to help his people.” This news about Jesus spread throughout Judea and the surrounding country.
Luke 7:11-17 (NIV) 

Your hurts don’t have to be introduced every time you walk in a room. Your reactions to people don’t have to always be fueled by your hurts, past or present. You don’t have to keep making progress with hurt being the obvious crutch that defines your resistance and explains your defenses.

We have to believe that life in Christ helps us to live better than our hurts. It starts when we let Jesus stop us from the pace our hurts have set and the direction our hurts have determined.

Luke is trying to encourage you in this text to stop heading in the direction your hurts are leading you in, and to stop walking at the interrupted pace your hurts have set for you.

If Jesus has the capacity to stop death when the procession is headed to the cemetery, then why didn’t He just go into the ministry of standing in front of cemeteries? Every time a coffin was coming through, He could just turn it around. Here’s the answer: because death is a part of life. Jesus wasn’t touching that coffin because He was just trying to demonstrate His power and sovereignty over death, but because He wanted everybody to know that when you are hurting, He has the capacity to pull out His compassion and turn your hurt around.

This is why verse 14 says Jesus saw her; her pain was apparently so deep, so telling, so painful that His heart was touched by it. He wants to affect how she processes her devastation and bless her so that she doesn’t have to live the rest of her life led by hurt.

Let’s not ignore our hurt. Let’s not let hurt linger either. We can do better by letting the Lord stop us from being guided by our pain and our hurt.