I heard Anne Graham Lotz talk about God changing our scars to beauty marks. LORD knows I had some scars. I was talking to someone after a lecture I attended last night with a DTS scholar and after our conversation I drove home with alot of what I had said running thru my mind.
It�s not an easy message to tell folks that some of their pain is ok. That life is hard and GOD will be their peace. They want relief and sometimes relief doesn�t come in the process as quickly as desired. This causes all kinds of problems if you push ahead of God�s plans for your life and seek relief in the wrong people or things. People do not want to hear that this life is not about our comfort. I was driving along home thinking how much of my own life has been marvelously crafted by a hammer and chisel of some of the greatest pain. One of the deepest scars is the scar of rejection. No one naturally likes to be rejected. Those who are rejected by people who should have loved them are the people I most identify with. That type of rejection leaves significant scars. Women should guard their hearts better than I guarded mine. Women are not naturally designed to do that. We are designed to want to give of ourselves to others. I love being a woman and the wonderful thing about a woman�s heart is also what makes her vulnerable.
The most wise advice would be to avoid the scars in the first place. I know that sounded like DUH! God is teaching me by His Word how to do that but this blog is about people who are already scarred. What do you do when you are so deeply wounded and healing seems so very slow? I can only share and hopefully encourage you. I was very depressed and sinking over a final rejection by someone I loved. They couldn�t get their life together for whatever reason which kept them from being in my life. Boy, did that hurt watching them waste away and finally realizing they choose to.
I can�t tell you why this wounded me so deeply still learning that, but I can tell you that it was not a feeling I had experienced before. It was one of the deepest pains I had ever felt. I think it stripped something inside of me that needed to go. The best I can describe it is this, God has to meet all your needs and people never will. It�s unfair to folks to expect that. God has been molding my life in that direction lately. He has been molding me to trust Him completely and no one else for anything else. I love the body of Christ, love to fellowship, and they do meet a lot of needs in my life as they minister to me and I to them. What precious people God has put in my path in Dallas. Yet my hope is not in them because at some point they will fail me and I will fail them. I have to allow for that to happen because it will. Just love them anyway as they love me anyway. My hope is in the LORD alone.
What is healing me is His Word. I know that might be the last thing you want to hear because Christians rarely read the Bible anymore as a whole. We look for blogs, self-help books, and tapes and conferences to bring that magic wand that opens our eyes and makes all things right with the world. Save your money and your time. Those things can help to some degree but nothing will replace time with GOD and time in the WORD. Believe me I tried them all!!! My only hope is that you read this stuff I write and want to get to know the GOD I speak of intimately. If you read it and think of me then I have failed my mission. If you could look me in the eye right now I would tell you this. Get in the WORD, do it consistently and pray regularly it will change your scars to beauty marks. It won�t feel natural at first and might even be a chore. Still do it dear ones, let it open those wounds and spiritually salve them over as you heal the right and proper way, by God�s perspective. When I read I see the character of GOD who loves me, allows the Holy Spirit to guide and comfort me, as He heals my wounds. This life is hard, hard things happen, and some are part of our growth. Imagine a GOD who is loving enough to walk through it with you, leaving behind HIS WORD, and Spirit to be not only your guide but to reveal HIS heart clearly so that you know HE is holy and just. Only a perfect holy just GOD could orchestrate a symphony of pain that could bring sweet music and relief to our broken lives. It�s not about the pain, it�s about being molded more into HIS likeness to glorify Him. Jesus said he came to set us free. Pain brings bondage. It takes our focus. The only way to be free is to shift your focus to the object of your faith. God�s WORD accomplishes that in us by setting us free with truth. Luke 4:18 Jesus proclaimed this was part of HIS mission.
Luke 4:18 The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor; he hath sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised,
