THESE SCARS
They Still Speak
The Silent Language of Living Wounded
Wherever you are today, your limitations, your walls, your scars are before God’s eyes.
September 2nd, 2022
Pierced by Love
Psalm 138:8, ‘The Lord will perfect that which concerns me.’
Three years, He lived among, and walked in ministry with, people; some becoming His best friends, many becoming the recipients of His miracles, His healings, His introspection. Lifetimes now, He has lived in us, enabling us to carry out His ministry; receivers of His grace and redemptive love…we now the introspection of God’s great love for mankind. What Jesus did on behalf of us at the request of His Father is beyond human understanding. Like Scripture says, few would die even for a righteous man…but a wretch, who gives His life for that? Jesus did. He gave His life for me. It wasn’t taken from Him—He willingly gave it. For me.
I can actually picture it quite well. Perhaps because the Scriptures paint such an intimate love story. It seems like in the three years Jesus had His ministry on earth, there was always something—many things—going on. He was traveling villages and reaching into so many lives and changing destinies for everyone—even Demons—who He encountered. We listen as the people praise ‘Hosanna!’ and next we hear them crying “Crucify Him!’. Jesus is sold out in the shadows of a garden for a few shekels and a kiss—just like mankind was sold out in a garden for something worth nothing and an eternal lie. Oh, how the enemy must have swooned on both of those days.
The Roman soldiers drug the people’s Savior away, mocking Him ‘King of the Jews’, and upon His body, He took my lashes and received my thorny crown and bore my wounds. Into His flesh went the spear, and the shame meant for me that drove the nails into His palms, pierced His skin, not mine. He wept blood on my behalf, and when He rose again, conquering the enemy, death and the grave, He still wore those wounds. In fact, while He completed His assignment in this world and to honor His Father, He carried those raw places and lived wounded, I believe, so He could identify with you and me.
If anyone knows what it is like to live wounded, it is Jesus. He gets you and He gets me. He carried it and bore it for us; in many respects so we wouldn’t have to. Your name and my shame were upon His lips, and He signed for our forgiveness with His blood. But that’s exactly what Jesus did at the Cross for us…He forgave. He wiped the past, present, and future clean, like an erased slate, not even a mark left behind from the eraser that cleansed our sin.
We learn in Scripture, however, Jesus wore His scars until the end. They tell a marvelous story of God’s grace, how God’s great love brought us out of a pit and set us free. And yours do too. If you will allow him to, He can use what wounded you to rescue and redeem others, to change the direction their lives are heading. Your scars speak volumes to others even though you may never say a word. It’s in how you live and what you share of your testimony, of what God has done in your life, and how He is using your wounds to help write—not only your—but someone else’s victory story. He has come to build doors where once walls stood instead, in order to set us captives free.
Isaiah 49:16, ‘”Can’t you see? I have carved your name on the palms of My hands! Your walls are always my concern.”’
