Your Woundedness Is a Weapon
What if the very thing the enemy used to diminish you is what God will use to amplify you?
There’s an elephant in the room that the church has danced around for too long, and it needs to be named.
We’ve watched leaders fall. Men and women who were genuinely gifted, who flowed in the Spirit, who preached with fire, who prophesied with accuracy — and then, sometimes slowly, sometimes suddenly, they went off the rails. Moral failure. Addiction. The kind of wreckage that leaves congregations asking uncomfortable questions: Was that word over me even real? Was any of it God?
I don’t raise this to pile on anyone. And I’m not only talking about church leaders — this extends to believers in every sphere. But we have to be honest about what’s happening, because I believe there’s a root cause we’ve been slow to address.
Many of these individuals simply weren’t discipled properly. They were gifted — sometimes extraordinarily so — and that giftedness became a fast track to a platform. But the maturity of their character didn’t match the weight of the position they were placed in. And so, eventually, what wasn’t built properly came down.
Studies consistently show that the vast majority of pastors don’t finish well. They may have decades of ministry, but they don’t cross the finish line in a way that leaves a legacy. That’s a tragedy. And it’s not primarily a giftedness problem. It’s a wholeness problem.
Because ultimately, what determines whether you go the distance isn’t how well you preach, how much revelation you carry, or how powerfully the gifts of the Spirit flow through you. It’s your character. Your Christ-likeness. Your stability. Your capacity to remain when everything in you wants to quit.
The Soul Is on a Journey
Paul’s prayer in 1 Thessalonians 5:23 frames everything: “May the God of peace sanctify you wholly — may your entire spirit, soul, and body be preserved blameless at the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ.”
Three parts. Spirit, soul, and body. And each of them is on a different trajectory.
When a person is born again, their spirit is made whole instantly. It’s complete, perfect, united with the Spirit of God. That’s not a process — it’s a done deal. But the soul? The soul is on a journey.
The soul — your mind, your will, your emotions, the seat of your personality and memories — carries the weight of everything you’ve lived through. Trauma is real. Pain is real. The wounds of neglect, abuse, betrayal, loss, and even our own sinful choices leave marks that don’t disappear the moment we say yes to Jesus.
And here’s the liberating tension: your spirit is already perfect in Christ, but your soul is still learning to believe what your spirit already knows.
David understood this in Psalm 23:3 when he wrote, “He restores my soul.” The Hebrew word he used — yashoth — literally means “to cause to return.” To return to a point of origin. To return to original design. To intended wholeness, to shalom — nothing broken, nothing missing, nothing in part, but complete.
He restores my soul. God is in the business of return.
Why Discipleship Is the Core Mission
We’ve made a strange peace with shallow discipleship. I’ve heard people say, with genuine surprise, “I’m discovering that discipleship is more than just working through a course or a programme.” And honestly, that alarms me. If we’ve somehow reduced the Great Commission to a Bible study curriculum, we’ve missed the point almost entirely.
Jesus didn’t say go and inform all nations. He said go and make disciples — and the Greek word behind “equip” in Ephesians 4:12 (katartidzo) carries a meaning far richer than activating someone in spiritual gifts. Jesus used the same word in Luke 6:40 when he said that when a pupil is perfectly trained, he will become like his teacher.
Perfectly trained. Formed into likeness.
