John Maxwell said that in a devotional I picked up at a used bookstore last week. So think: When you see dysfunction in family, marriage, workplace, church – do you see contentment, security and peace in the individuals?
I don’t think hurting people say, “I’m hurting so I’m going to make sure everybody else hurts, too.” That’s a cliché. Hurting people hurt for a reason, and the reason makes you act the way you do. If I’m confused or scared or feel insignificant, I might be short tempered and protective and act in selfish ways that hurt others. If I feel unloved, I might feel lonely or bitter, and I might do unreasonable things to try to get love. Fill a family, marriage, workplace or church with hurting people and hurt gets multiplied.
But if your need for love and acceptance and approval is met, you can stop grasping desperately for it.
When you know you have a soft place to land, when you know your need for love and comfort and significance is met by someone who is able and eager to fully meet it and who will never reject you, it does something to the hurt. It stays where it belongs, away from others. And it’s replaced by something that bubbles up the same way hurt does:
Whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty again. The water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life – John 4.14
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