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Have you ever been hurt by someone inside the church?

Not just a stranger or someone who makes no claim to faith.

Someone who sang worship songs on Sunday and treated you in a way that made you question everything you thought you knew about them.

A pastor who handled your most vulnerable moment carelessly. A leader who used your trust against you. A community you gave years to, that disappeared the moment you needed them most.

And the part that makes it so hard to talk about is this.

When the world hurts you, people tell you to lean on your faith.

But when the church hurts you, where exactly are you supposed to go?

Being let down by a believer does not just hurt your feelings.

It raises questions that go far deeper than the person who caused the pain.

If the people who know God the most can treat me this way, what does that say about God?
If this is what faith produces in people, do I even want it?
Was any of this real?

You were not just hurt by a person. You were hurt in the one place that was supposed to be safe. In a community built on grace, forgiveness and love, you experienced the opposite.

And that kind of wound has a way of making you pull back from everything. Not just the church. But prayer. Scripture. God Himself.

That is what makes it one of the most difficult wounds a believer can carry.

The church is full of people. And people are capable of causing real pain, even while genuinely believing they are serving God.

David is described as a man after God's own heart in Acts 13:22. He was anointed, chosen and used by God in ways that are still talked about thousands of years later.

And yet David betrayed one of his most loyal and faithful soldiers.

Uriah never did anything wrong. He served David with everything he had. And in 2 Samuel 11, David had him placed at the front of the battle and then pulled the troops back so he would be killed, all to cover up David's own sin.

A man God called His own, using his position to destroy someone who trusted him completely.

That is the part most people miss when they read that story. David did not stop being anointed while he was doing it. God's hand was still on his life. Which means someone can carry a genuine calling and still cause you genuine hurt. The two things are not mutually exclusive. And that is exactly why position inside the church has never been proof of character.

That does not excuse what was done to you. But a person's failure to represent God well is not proof that God is not worth following. It is proof that they were not ready for the responsibility they were given.

The hardest part about being hurt by the church is what happens to you.

You tell yourself you just need a break from going to church. That is fair enough. But the break slowly turns into weeks and months.

Your prayer-life starts to suffer because you were taught to pray by the same people who let you down. So you do it less. Or you stop altogether for a while.

And gradually, the hurt that was caused by one person starts to affect your relationship with God.

That is what makes this worth talking about honestly.

What that person did came from their own brokenness. Your relationship with God should not have to pay for it.

In Matthew 18:6, Jesus said something startling about people who cause others to stumble in their faith.

"If anyone causes one of these little ones who believe in me to stumble, it would be better for them to have a large millstone hung around their neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea."

Read that carefully.

Jesus did not minimize what it means to wound someone's faith. He did not say, "Forgive immediately and move on." He addressed the person who caused the harm with the most serious language He used about anything.

God saw what happened to you. He is not asking you to pretend it did not hurt.

As Christians, we are taught to forgive. But many of us believe that forgiving someone means we have to trust them again, or act like nothing happened. That is not what the Bible teaches.

Forgiveness does not mean you have to pretend or trust.

You can forgive someone and still choose not to place yourself back under their influence. You can release the bitterness from your heart without reopening the door. You can hold no ill will toward that congregation and still recognize that it is not the right place for you to be.

Romans 12:18 says: "If it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone."

Notice the Bible says as far as it depends on you. Being at peace with everyone is not always possible. But bitterness is a weight you alone carry, not something the other person feels. Releasing that weight is for your sake and not theirs.

Write down the name of the person, people or the situation that hurt you.

Then write down the things you felt as a result. Not what you think you should feel. What you actually felt.

Then bring both of those things to God in prayer. Tell Him exactly what happened and how it made you feel about Him. He already knows. But saying it to Him in prayer is often where healing begins.

Here is what I want you to hold onto.

Being hurt by people inside the church is painful because the exact place that was meant to point you towards healing turned out to be the source of the wound. But what those people did came from who they were, not from who God is. He is not responsible for what they did in His name.

You do not have to have church figured out right now. You do not have to trust a congregation again before you are ready. But do not let someone else's failure become the reason you keep God at a distance too.

He is not them. He never was.

The door back to Him does not have to be the same door that hurt you. It just has to be a door.

✝ Kingdom Mantra

Has today's teaching helped you make sense of a hurt you have been carrying? Hit reply to this email or drop a comment below if you are reading this on our website. I would love to hear from you. God bless you. ❤️

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