Christ Is Relevant to Hurt

“You hurt my feelings.”

When we utter these words, what are we really saying?
“Shame on you. It is your job to make me feel good, and you failed in your job.”
“How you make me feel can change my day.”
“I am unstable and need you to not rock my world.”
“Christ is not sufficient for me. You can affect my mood more than He can.”

Ouch!! You want to quit reading, don’t you? All our defense mechanisms rise to counter with, “So you think I shouldn’t have any feelings?” “If Christ is really relevant in my life I’m not suppose to feel anything; I’m just going to be happy all the time?”

The truth of the matter is that our hurt feelings are symptoms of the fact that we getting our validation from someone other than God – some one or some thing is making us feel love, significant, and secure. God designed us to find our love, significance, and security in Him. He is the One who never changes, and therefore can offer us stability as He validates our identity.

God wants us to be complete in the person of Christ, the position of His child, and the possession of His righteousness. His love tells us, “You are valued.” As His children we have significance that states, “You have purpose.” Because of His righteousness we have security that declares, “You are safe.”

By expecting to gain validation from another, we give them access to the God-place of our souls—that place designed by God for God. Only He has the right to occupy this position in our lives. From this God place He rules over our souls and replenishes our hearts with His validating love while establishing our identity.

Inevitably when our chosen God substitute fails to give us the validation we desire, we experience marginalization – the sense that we are not valued. The outcome is a diminished sense of love, significance, and security. With wounded souls, our feelings are hurt. This warning signal should cause us to notice that God is not in His proper place in our lives.

Jesus said, “If you want to be my disciple, you must hate everyone else by comparison—your father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters—yes, even your own life. Otherwise, you cannot be my disciple” (Luke 14:26 NLT).

The God place of our souls is designed for Jesus. Boundaries should be built around this sacred place to assure that none other but Christ resides there. It should be guarded by our fear of God with our appropriate view of God serving as the sentinel. The highest of all that is lofty should be ascribed to Jesus so that He attracts in full our hearts, minds, and souls, capturing our strength with the truth of His glory and virtue. Then Jesus becomes central because He is preeminent. We come to see Him in truth, as He actually is—Lord, Savior, lover of our souls, champion of our hearts.

When we choose to place Christ in His rightful position in our lives, peace and joy begin to pervade as the resident norm. Life now is a continuous process of experiencing Jesus relevantly to our lives—exploring how He is relevant to every new challenge of our souls.

Why then would we seek another?