The Seven-Fold Recompense

When the enemy is caught red-handed, he has to pay back seven-fold.

And friends, we've caught him.

We know what he's been doing. We know what his tactic has been. We've seen how church hurt has become a pandemic in the body of Christ, how it's fractured families and wounded believers and driven the next generation away from God Himself.

But when the thief is caught, he doesn't just return what he stole. He pays back seven-fold.

It's time to call in what's owed.

The Three-Step Treatment Plan

To cure church hurt—to actually eradicate it from our lives and our churches—we need a comprehensive treatment plan. Not just a band-aid. Not just pretending it didn't happen. Real, deep healing.

Here are the three steps:

1. Heal past hurts

We have to stop carrying this pain around. We have to stop walking around wounded, unknowingly inflicting pain on the people around us because we're still bleeding from our own injuries.

2. Examine ourselves

We have to see if we're a carrier of that virus, of that disease called church hurt. We can be hurting others without knowing it or feeling justified by our behavior. We need honest self-examination, even if it hurts for a minute.

3. Restructure our thinking

We have to change our mindsets. Because when we have the wrong mindset, we build the wrong Kingdom. The structure has been the problem to begin with. It's the structure that has created an environment where envy, jealousy, fear, and greed are allowed in the atmosphere. It fosters it.

The Poison We Carry

If you've been injured by the church, you have to call it what it actually is.

Sometimes we try to gloss over it. But you can't be healed from a generality. If they exploited you, if they used you, say it. If they abused you, say it. If they just disappointed you, say it. If it was evil, call it evil.

We're often reluctant to do that when it comes to men and women of God. "Don't touch the anointed one!" But in order to get healed, you have to have a problem to get healed from. Otherwise it just festers in the background, and the medicine you apply doesn't get through the scar tissue.

We also have to ask the Lord to show us in those places of pain: What did we believe?

Too often the enemy uses those times to get us to believe lies about ourselves, lies about the church in general, or even worse—lies about God.

And we have to break out the lies.

When the enemy gets us to believe a lie, it becomes like a program, like a computer program running in our subconscious. We're not even aware it's there. But when we come out of agreement with a lie and the Lord tells us the truth, it rewrites the code. It's like a truth virus gets entered into that programming.

Then we also have to understand: In that season of betrayal, of injury, where was Jesus?

Did He leave us or abandon us? Did He sanction that? Was He giving permission for those people to do that?

No.

But He has to tell you where He was. That's an individual thing, one on one.

Unforgiveness Is Poison

We have to walk through forgiveness. And for a lot of us, that's not easy.

Unforgiveness is poison to the container that holds it.

Most of us try to hold on to unforgiveness—not meaning to—but we feel like it's there to protect us from them and from being hurt again. But that's a lying spirit telling you that.

Unforgiveness is poison.

It ties your heart like a heavy chain that goes from your heart to those people and to those events. And wrapped inside that chain is like a conduit where the poison actually continually flows back into you.

Unforgiveness is poison. We have to be willing to say, "I want it out."

And you have to know it wasn't God that did that to you. The Father didn't sanction it.

"I'm Not the God You Are Mad At"

I know someone who went through an incredible season of church hurt. He was not only being betrayed by the people who were supposed to be his closest friends and allies, but he was being stabbed in the back. He was even being slandered publicly. They created forums to talk about him and his family.

He was so hurt and so angry with God that he said, "I wouldn't treat a dog the way you've been treating me."

The pain was so real. Just to make it stop, he was like, "I don't even know if I believe anymore."

Thankfully, his wife prayed him through all that over and over and over again.

After the rage left and the pain subsided—just a day or two later—he felt the presence of the Lord. And he's like, "Aren't you mad at me that I was so angry with you?"

The Lord spoke to him very clearly and said, "I'm not the God you are mad at."

Many of us have some really bad theology that says anything that's happening must be the Lord's will because it's happening. God's large and in charge. He's sovereign. His will's being done.

Is that true?

Not if He's not forcing His will on everybody. Very different Kingdom. Always has been.

The Old Testament is full of stories where God's not getting His will done because He's trying to enter into the people's institutions and the people's darkness and being a part. It's a story of God interacting with man, not man doing everything God's way.

Otherwise, we really would have heaven on earth now, wouldn't we?

We're supposed to. His family business is dominion. But He won't empower the wrong Kingdom. He wants us to empower the right Kingdom—His Kingdom.

Knowing it wasn't God is so important. Because otherwise we're going to—in our heart, if not even in our head—actually think He left us, He abandoned us, He sanctioned it, He's mad at us.

This is the story of most Christians.

So if God's not the problem, who is?

It's God's kids. We are. Not only can we be the victims of church hurt, but we can actually be the perpetrators as well, sometimes even unknowingly.

The Prayer of Release

We have to have compassion for the people who hurt us. We have to be compassionate with the people and ruthless with the spirits that were driving them.

Because here's the thing: they were conditioned to be in that kingdom too. That's what they knew. That's what they experienced.

The moment that we can take them off the hook, the moment we have the ability to begin to release that forgiveness.

Yeah, they should have known better. But Jesus on the cross said, "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do" (Luke 23:34, KJV).

The truth is they knew what they were doing, but they didn't really know. And the people who hurt us—it's the same way.

Here's a prayer to walk through:

Lord, bring to my mind the people or events that you want me to forgive.

Lord, what did they do that was so hurtful? Give it a name.

Lord, were there any lies that I believed about myself or about you in that season?

Lord, what was the truth?

Lord, will you show me where Jesus was in that moment? Where was He? What was He doing? What does He want me to know?

Lord, is there anything else you want to say to me about them or those circumstances?

I choose, as an act of my free will, to break those chains that tie my heart to those people and those events.

I choose to forgive.

I cut those chains of pain and unforgiveness. I take an axe to the roots.

Lord, what did those injuries cost me? What did they cost my family?

I choose to forgive that too. I forgive them. I let them go. They owe me nothing.

Lord, I take you off the hook too. You weren't to blame. I forgive you for not meeting my expectation. And Lord, I'm sorry for being angry at you.

The Prayer of Repentance

Now we examine ourselves. We ask the Lord to show us the things that we did, the things we need to repent for.

Father God, I repent for those things that I've done.

I see now how they hurt others, how they hurt the church, and how they even hurt myself.

[Take a moment to tell the Lord specifically what you see and you're sorry for. Tell Him that you've changed your mind and you no longer feel justified for believing that way.]

Thank you, Lord, for forgiving me.

Thank you, Lord, for washing me clean.

The Commitment to Change

If you're willing to commit to shifting your mindset away from the kingdoms of this world—where the power pyramid exists in every human relationship—and you're coming into the Kingdom of Jesus, it will take work.

It will take being intentional. It will take catching yourself when you slip back into old patterns.

But if you're willing, here's the commitment:

I commit to being the solution.

I will no longer be a carrier of the church hurt disease.

I won't participate when others engage in hurtful speech.

I will hold myself and those I'm in relationship with accountable.

And Lord, if I catch myself messing up, I'll clean up my mess.

The Recompense

Hurt people have been hurting people. But healed people will heal people.

The healing is just as contagious as the harm. More so.

In the Old Testament, you couldn't touch the leper or you'd get leprosy. But in the New Testament, when you touch the leper, they catch your healing.

It's a different Kingdom.

And now, there's a prayer of recompense. The enemy has been stealing from us, stealing from our families for far too long. We're calling in a recompense—a repaying.

We've caught the enemy. We know what he's doing. We know what his tactic has been. And when the enemy is caught, he's got to pay back at least seven-fold.

If there's been anything held back in our generations because our forefathers didn't understand, we're calling that in too.

Father God, I'm declaring right now in Jesus's name that you are paying back, that you're making the enemy pay back everything that he's stolen from us and from our generations, in Jesus's name.

Thank you, Lord.

The Prophetic Act

Here's the final step. Take all of that—the hurt, the pain, the unforgiveness, the bitterness, the lies you believed, the pyramid mindsets, the jealousy, the competition, the need to be significant—and throw it in the trash.

Do a prophetic act. Take those things and throw them in the trash. Don't carry them out the door.

Some of you might need to write it on something. But prophetically, put it in there.

Leave it there.

Because a cure means it's gone once and for all, never to come back again.

The New Day

I believe we can eradicate church hurt. We can cure it.

What has been given up to create new prototypes—churches that operate in God's Kingdom, not the world's pyramid system—is not just for one house. It's for our communities. It's for the church body at large.

We can eradicate church hurt. We can cure it.

And a cure means that it's gone once and for all, never to come back again.

There is a new day dawning. What's been laid down, what's been sacrificed—it's not just going to be for one building or one congregation.

It's going to be for our community. It's going to be for the church body at large.

The enemy has to pay back seven-fold. And we're calling that in.

All of it. Everything he stole. Everything he twisted. Everything he used to divide and wound and drive people away from God.

He's paying it back.

Seven-fold.

And we're stepping into that inheritance right now—healed, whole, free, and ready to build something completely different. God's Kingdom. The real one.

Blessings,
Susan 😊