Healing Is Not The Same As Forgetting - Healing Church Hurt in the Care of the Good Shepherd

“He heals the brokenhearted and bandages their wounds.” (Psalm 147:3, NLT)

Many people feel pressured to “move on” quickly after being hurt by the church. Forgiveness is often presented as the required first step for healing, the only way to honor God and resolve the situation. This puts lots of pressure on the person who was hurt to forgive quickly and move on. In these moments, forgiveness gets misconstrued as forgetting, minimizing, or pretending the wounds never existed. Perhaps someone trying to help you offered a well-meaning reminder from Philippians 3:13, telling you to “forget what lies behind and strain forward to what lies ahead.” While Scripture certainly calls us not to live trapped in the past (Ecclesiastes 7:10), it never asks us to deny reality. Moving forward in a biblical way requires first acknowledging the seriousness of sin and understanding the real consequences another person’s wrongdoing can bring into your life.

God is never honored by rushed healing or superficial peace. In Psalm 147:3 (ESV), the Lord is praised because “He heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds.” The word “heal” carries the sense of repairing, restoring, or even rebuilding what has been torn down. The phrase “binds up” evokes the careful work of a physician wrapping bandages around an injury. This is not hurried care; it is attentive and compassionate. What becomes clear in this verse is that God does not overlook the pain His people have endured. He names it, tends to it, and moves toward those who are hurting.

The original readers of this psalm knew profound suffering. During the Babylonian captivity, God’s people experienced devastating evils: violent siege (Lamentations 4:9-10), severe famine (2 Kings 25:3), mass slaughter (Jeremiah 52:10), and forced displacement from their homes (2 Kings 24:14-16). Their trauma was not erased from history; God ensured it was recorded in Scripture. But why would He do this? Wouldn’t recording the atrocities that Israel suffered interfere with their ability to forgive and move on?

God recorded the sins they suffered so that his people would remember two things: the gravity of evil and the certainty of His redeeming love. God wanted Israel to know that He saw what had been done to them. He had not been indifferent to their suffering, nor had He forgotten their tears. The same God who allowed discipline was also the God who drew near to restore. His healing work was not instantaneous; it unfolded with patience and care. He attended to their wounds and invited them to remember His steadfast love: the love that delivered them from Egypt, preserved them through exile, and ultimately pointed forward to the coming of Jesus Christ, our true healer (1 Peter 2:24).

Healing, for Israel, was found not in pretending the past never happened, but in remembering God within their story of pain. The same is true for you and me. No matter how deep the wounds of church hurt may feel, you are never called to simply “get over it.” Scripture makes room for honest lament, thoughtful remembrance, and gradual restoration. Yes, by God’s grace you may grow to forgive those who sinned against you. You may even learn, in time, to love your enemies. But part of genuine healing involves acknowledging the evil that was done and recognizing how God met you in that place of sorrow.

When you remember the hurt, you also begin to see something else. God was a shelter in that storm, a steady presence when everything felt uncertain. His love becomes the healing balm that neither denies the pain nor leaves you alone in it. Over time, remembering is transformed. What once only reopened wounds begins to deepen worship. And as God continues His restoring work, you may find yourself able to write your own song of praise like Psalm 147, a testimony that the Lord draws near to the brokenhearted, that He binds what has been torn, and that no suffering is beyond the reach of His redeeming care.

God does not ask us to forget; He teaches us to remember his care in our story of pain, and there we find healing.