sorrows

Our wounds bring hurt. But His wounds bring healing.

For those who have been around the church, it's pretty easy for us to say that we know that Jesus bore our sin on the cross.

Yet even in this, I must lay down my pride... If in any way my feelings and my actions do not line up with what I say I "know", I do not truly know it as fully as I proclaim. Not that we can ever know all about the mysteries of God...for we will not know fully as we are fully known until we see Him face to face. But I cannot assert, "Oh, I know that" when my thoughts are overrun with the contrary or my feelings betray me.

So if we say we know that Jesus bore our sin on the cross, and then go out and try to earn back our good standing by doing things for Him, we don't truly get it. Or when we try to punish ourselves... Or think we must do good things in order for Him to be pleased with us... We don't truly get it. That Jesus was the perfect Lamb of God, the perfect sacrifice that canceled out the debt of what we owed to God. That the finished work of Jesus on the cross is enough. That IT IS FINISHED. But that's not even the main point of what's on my heart...

What I see so often is that we do not even begin to grasp that He also bore our sorrow and grief on the cross.

"Surely our griefs He Himself bore, And our sorrows He carried" (Isaiah 53:4a)

That He understands.

"A man of sorrows and acquainted with grief" (Isaiah 53:3b)

Sweet one, He felt the full weight of all of your sorrow and grief on the cross. All of it. Every tear, He sees and holds. So when you feel like no one understands, there is always One.

And you see, our wounds, they speak hurt over us. And they are very real. But they are not the final word spoken over us. Because you see the One with final authority, whose very words spoke the world into existence, whose words carry more weight and are more true than anyone else's words, says...

"By His wounds we are healed." (Isaiah 53:5b)

These words, breathed by the very God who knit you together, are more true than your feelings. And it is not hypocritical for you to declare as true what God says is true even when you don't feel like it yet. What's more true: your feelings or what God says?

Please, oh please, be honest about what you're thinking and feeling, but in the very same breath confess as true what God says is true.

My brother simply and profoundly says, "Our wounds bring hurt. But His wounds bring healing."

When I define myself by my pain, or when I define others by their pain, I effectively treat the finished work of Jesus on the cross as not being enough. I keep myself (or others in my mind) bound in hurt instead of receiving the healing freely available. But when I define myself and others by the pain that Jesus bore for them, we together walk in healing. Not in any way diminishing the pain and sorrow and grief we experience, for it took the most precious blood of Christ to bring healing! But seeing the greater glory of the finished work of the Risen King, rather than lingering in the darkness of the defeat of death.

And Jesus, knowing the ending of the story, endured the cross (our sin and our sorrow and grief) for the JOY set before Him! He saw the joy coming and bore the sorrow so we could have healing and enter into His joy as well.

So may you find healing. May you even find the hope that healing can come.