When our souls are writhing in unhealed pain from past experiences, we are not living the best version of the life the Father intended. While the change we desire may seem impossible, we can encounter an experience that looks and feels completely different from the traumatic history that has shaped us to date.

Finding healing from trauma.

We can receive comfort, knowing that Jesus, our Savior, never changes (Hebrews 13:8). As He has been, He will remain. The changing tide of circumstance and the tormenting nature of trauma may have wielded harm, but with God, we can embrace the One who promises and will deliver on making all things new (Revelation 21:5).

In many ways, we define our lives, characterizing them by the onset of our trauma. We wrongly assume “it will always be this way” or “nothing will ever change.” Where we are conditioned to think, “it is what it is” or “call it like I see it,” we miss miracle moments.

The enemy wants us to form and attach faith to negative sentiments, fueling its infiltration throughout our lives. When we do so, we abort the opportunity for God’s faith to flourish. Pessimism neutralizes the power that initiates the miracles, signs, and wonders that follow our faith.

Are we willing to consider that God desires to reveal something new, calling those things that don’t exist into being (Romans 4:17)? If so, we can experience the spark of the miraculous from the inside out.

We first experience the newness Jesus promised before we facilitate that with others needing our testimony. The Holy Spirit works through us, furnishing the desire, and the ability to do, what pleases our Father. It is impossible by human will or in our strength, but solely through the power of Christ, working in and on our behalf.

For it is God who works in you to will and to act in order to fulfill his good purpose. – Philippians 2:13, NIV

When we peruse the pages of the gospels, we notice the evidence of miraculous encounters. Jesus and His message sparked total life transformation for people awaiting the promised Messiah. After 400 years of silence, they had encountered trouble and endured deep heartache. Jesus empathized, as He was prophesied to be a man acquainted with grief and sorrows who would identify with humanity in all of its suffering (Isaiah 53:3).

Jesus longed to gather His people to Himself and attend to their needs (Luke 13:34). Sadly, many who needed redemption rejected His message while others defied every known and unknown barrier to draw near to Him.

Jesus didn’t turn the people away, and He didn’t disappoint. All those who found themselves entrapped in circumstances that resembled more of a prison than a life encountered freedom in the face of and at the feet of the Savior.

Which one of us can relate to the despair and exhaustion that trauma brings with it, whether in the present season or another that we’ve faced? How many times have our hearts felt overwhelmed by the pain we’d rather ignore? Do we lower the volume on His voice when He is counseling our hearts about forgiving those whose actions precipitated our trauma and suffering?

It isn’t that God is cruel. He is more aware and grieved by the trauma we have endured than we may ever know. However, the Holy Spirit’s role is to lead and guide us into all truth (John 14:26). This truth reveals that we detach the power of past trauma when we forgive. In effect, forgiveness uproots the stinger of old painful memories and disruptive triggers.

Instead of holding onto them and being imprisoned by the toxic poison of old pain, our decision to forgive trusts the Lord who knows how to handle us and those who hurt us. He is the Righteous Judge, infinitely able to minister to our deepest needs. Beyond our sense of vengeance and wanting to make things right in our own eyes, He meets us where we are.

The experience of trauma doesn’t have to cancel our hope in the One who is the Truth, and has already provided for our deliverance and freedom (John 14:6). We never needed to cling to the false security of nursing unresolved pain or the illusion of self-protection.

In Jesus’ day, this seemed impossible even as it may in our circumstances. Jesus’ people had endured much suffering at the hands of their occupiers and oppressors. They were accustomed to exacting personal vengeance.

Even in those times, forgiveness appeared to abandon justice altogether, as it seems to during our healing process. Loving one’s enemy sounded like a foreign concept, and in many respects it was. It emerged from another Kingdom, not known in this world, but one established in the heavens.

As we pursue the King and His kingdom, the King’s way leads us into paths of righteousness, ones we wouldn’t have chosen for ourselves (Psalm 23:3). Yet, the Holy Spirit guides and graces us where we don’t know how to align with the Kingdom standard. He helps us stand firm in the decision to detach from the pain and the desire to exact our own sense of justice.

Instead of trying to be our own god, protector, or defender, our obedience and surrender permit the Almighty to heal what is out of alignment. In doing so, He fights on our behalf the battles we see and the enemies we don’t.

Surrendering our will to the Father allows us to form a greater connection with the One who heals the pain and restores the years of suffering that we can’t retrieve. This requires faith, which is borne out of hearing God’s Word.

Jesus fed these uncommon truths to the masses and multitudes who diligently sought Him (Hebrews 11:6). Though they still experienced pain, these seekers persisted in following Jesus. They developed their faith and learned how to live in love. While they didn’t possess printed personal Bibles or electronic apps that gave them access to Scriptural truth, that didn’t hinder the hungry from pursuing God’s Kingdom as a pearl of great price.

For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision has any value. The only thing that counts is faith expressing itself through love. – Galatians 5:6, NIV

Active faith changed the landscape of their lives. Similarly, it has the potential and power to do so with us. Those who received from Jesus encountered the results that faith produces and the rewards that following Him brings. In response to hungry hearts, God furnishes momentum.

His Holy Spirit accelerates us toward the impossible, where faith ventures beyond the confines of trauma’s prison. It is our faith in Him that shows up in the resolve to press through crowds, to appear foolish, and to make uncommon choices that produce evidence of a change.

Like our Biblical brothers and sisters, everything that they had known in their lives shifted the moment they encountered Christ. Whether it was infirmity, demonic oppression, mental torment, or even death, none of it carried the finality that the world had previously known.

All things had to bow and change in the gloriously disruptive presence of the Messiah. Our lives follow a similar trajectory. Our Savior has come, and He has brought with Him all we need to live an abundant life, our best life now.

Next steps.

Wherever you are in the process of navigating the wounds associated with past trauma, you don’t have to be fixed; you need to be healed. There is a compassionate Savior who is willing to engage and redeem what has hurt or hardened in your heart.

Faith and resilience have likely contributed to your landing on this site. Allow the Holy Spirit to guide you toward a counselor who can help you follow the next steps to heal your soul and the wounds you carry in your mind and heart. Abundant life isn’t on reserve for Heaven. God intends for you to heal from trauma and embrace His version of your best life now!