“By His wounds we are healed.”
Isaiah 53:5
It goes against our human understanding…our drive to avoid discomfort and pain…our almost obsessive desire to escape suffering. But it is an undeniable truth that there is healing to be found in wounds.
We find healing in the wounds of the One who gave His life for us on the cross.
The wounds that rightfully belonged to me – wounds that He in no way deserved – were inflicted on the body of God Himself, so that I could be saved from the wounds I already bore on my broken, filthy, ugly soul.
His wounds brought about my healing.
But what about my wounds?
Because to walk through this world believing I won’t be wounded is complete delusion, pure and simple.
What about the wound of loneliness?
Depression?
Grief?
Betrayal?
Rejection?
Abandonment?
The wounds wrought by warfare? The sores from suffering?
Is there purpose in this pain?
Last week I considered God’s statement that He heals the brokenhearted, and that He binds up their wounds (Psalm 147:3). If that’s so, why does He allow the wounds in the first place? He could intercept them, after all. He’s wise enough to know what’s coming, and strong enough to stop it.
So why doesn’t He?
As a frail and faulty human, I have no desire to even try to guess the mind of an infinite God. Our infinite God could very well have an infinite number of reasons for allowing His children to experience pain. And my aim here isn’t to plumb the depths of those reasons. I just want to offer one.
God uses wounds in beautiful ways to heal our souls of even deeper maladies.
May I share a personal experience with you? My husband held a job in insurance sales for almost ten years. He was very successful, and enjoyed his job. God provided generously for our family through his employment, which granted my husband a sense of fulfillment and allowed me to stay home with our children.
To make a long story short, my husband lost his job last year, in a painful way that felt like deceit and unfairness and betrayal.
It also felt like rejection and callous disregard and more betrayal.
But when the job was gone, we knew our God well enough to know that He had allowed this pain for a reason. Perhaps He just wanted my husband to be employed elsewhere. But we also knew it was possible that God’s reasons went deeper than that. And so we pleaded with Him to teach us what He wanted us to learn.
Before long, God pointed out something rather startling: while our brains had always registered God as our Provider and our lips had always proclaimed it, deep down, our hearts had sort of wondered what would happen if the job went away. And if we thought about it too much, we had been afraid of the job going away.
It’s one thing to hail God as our Provider when the bountiful provision is in plain sight to my human eyes. It’s quite another to hail Him as Provider when the abundance vanishes from my view.
My husband and I experienced very real and painful wounds. But those wounds revealed much deeper issues that needed to be addressed.
And so, in the same way a surgeon takes the utmost care to slice through skin and tissue and muscle in order to remedy an internal problem, our Heavenly Father allowed deep wounds upon our hearts to get to our souls. Through a very painful experience, He healed us…
of fear about unemployment…
of unbelief in God’s complete and generous provision no matter what…
of erecting a place of employment as an idol, seeing it as our source of provision…
of erecting ourselves as idols, trusting in our own abilities to provide…
of associating our worth, however loosely, with the bottom line on our bank statement.
I have learned that it is through suffering that God reveals our idols to us – people or ideas that we hold dearer than we do God Himself.
Through the heartache of loneliness, God may want to tenderly show us we have valued our human relationships more highly than our divine relationship.
Through the wound of rejection, God could be gently pointing out to us that we have idolized acceptance from men more than we’ve relished our acceptance in Him.
Through the ache of loss, perhaps God is lovingly revealing to us the many blessings we fail to thank Him for and have taken for granted.
Through the injustice of abandonment, we may need to learn that we have placed our trust in a mere mortal, rather than in God alone, the only firm Foundation and faultlessly faithful Friend.
I adore my Lord, who calls Himself Jehovah Rapha, “the Lord who heals” (Exodus 15:26). Yes, He is a healer of our bodies.
But even more, He heals our souls. The parts that we know are sore and painful and broken.
And the parts we don’t.
Are you experiencing a painful trial? Take heart, beloved friend. He won’t waste your pain. If you let Him, He will use it to make you stronger than ever.
Written by Jennifer Clarke
Insightful, real and encouraging, Jennifer. My heart reasonated within me as I connected with your words today. God doesn’t waste a moment in our lives, they are not a surprise to Him and if we truly believe He is who He says He is then we must be able to praise Him in the rain, and the sunshine, and the rainbows, too.
Thanks for the reminder to push through toward the goal!
Blessings,
Dawn
Welcome, Dawn! Thank you so much for stopping by and for taking the time to share your heart. I’m grateful for our God who is sovereign over the rain, the sunshine, and the rainbows! 🙂 I look forward to more interactions with you, both here and at Journeys in Grace. Blessings to you!
What insight you shared. I truly had not considered the verse from Psalms 143. I like the point you make that God does not cause hurt or harm. Many times I find myself working with clients that believe God brought sickness, death and harm. Doing so would mean that there must be sickness, death and harm in Him, because he only gives out of who He is. To get us to believe such is the strategy of the enemy because it only lead us to distance ourselves from Him. I loved reading your story of grace and lessons that you gleaned through your husband’s unemployment. Truly He works ALL things for our good. I love Him so. Thank you for sharing such encouragement and insight. I think I will share that scripture today as I speak at a widows luncheon. Thank you also for linking up on Thriving Thursdays. Blessings to you.
Hello, Carmen! Thank you so much for reading! It’s beautiful how He works even the hard things for our good, isn’t it? And also for His glory. I’m so grateful that His glory doesn’t come at the expense of our good. Because we certainly don’t deserve anything good from Him. Such grace!
I do believe God sometimes sends hard things our way as a form of discipline (Hebrews 12:6-11 and numerous other passages allude to God’s discipline) — but it’s not because His nature is sickness, death, or harm, but rather purity, holiness, and love. He knows that the discipline He administers curbs our waywardness and rebellion, thus preventing far more destructive consequences to us, to our testimony, and to those in our sphere of influence. And so even that discipline is for our good, from the purest Source of Fatherly love.
But like I said, God certainly doesn’t cause every trial and hardship in our lives — our enemy, Satan, is surely on the prowl, seeking to steal our joy and defeat our testimony. But the blood of Jesus has never known defeat. Praise His name!
I absolutely love your perspective and the great examples you have given, Jennifer!It comes to me often these days the thought that God is always taking His plan to end even if that implies suffering and trials for us.It´s a great thing to consider that what matters is how our soul is developping in order to take us one day in the promised Home,and that,in the end,nothing matters if we´re not passing our faith exams with excellence.Like the Word says,nothing makes sense if we lose our soul,so I think we should always see pain as a process that de-clutters our soul of the maladies,like you said.Too bad we are so self-centered that we seek the comfort and happiness of this world,without noticing that we are raising inside us maladies that could separate us from the love of God.God help us all to understand what matters:a comfortable life,or a sin-free life with our God.
I´m happy to be able to connect with you from such a far location(Romania) but I think that no matter the distances between us,we all have the same God and the same purpose that bounds us:to please Him through all areas of our life!:)
Hello again, Rebeca! What a pleasure to hear from you in Romania! It’s a tremendous blessing to hear of your faith in God through Jesus Christ, and your genuine desire to grow in your faith. You are clearly striving to set your affections on things above, not on things on the earth (Colossians 3:2), and your example is an encouragement to me. Thank you for reading, and for sharing so eloquently from your heart!
Jennifer-
Thank you For your service to the Lord and his people. Thank you for sharing truths for challenging places. I like your writings they are practical and show that you really respect God to be God, revering him knowing that his best was is and will remain Jesus Christ the Lord. I thank you,
Hello, Jess, and thank you for this encouragement. I’m glad my writing resonated with you, and that it reflects my love for our Savior.