Scars

Open up by showing and talking about the scars that I have on my body.

Top of my head

Back of my head

Left middle finger

Left ring finger

Shoulders from arthroscopic Sx.

Right knee from fall in boy scouts.

When I look at my scars, they remind me of times and events in my life. I guess you could say that my scars are like little historical monuments that each have a story to tell. (Mention how each of the scars that I listed came into being!)

Truth be told, most all of us have scars on our bodies from something.

Sometimes the scars are from our own doing and sometimes they are brought on, by circumstances and people that you and I have no control over.

I know, as a young man, me and my friends thought that having some scars was a cool sign and that “real men” had scars on their bodies as a sign of toughness!

If we got cut playing, we would look at it and be like, “Awesome......that’s gonna make a really cool scar!”

Whenever you watch action and war movies or play certain video games, the tough characters are almost almost always depicted with very prominent and notable scars as signs of their battles and toughness!

So, what are scars and are they normal to have? That is, are scars an abnormal bi-product of healing?

Quite the opposite. Scars are formed in and throughout the human body, as a normal, healthy response to all sorts of trauma.

In other words, you don’t just have external, visible scars. There are scars all throughout your body, from various forms of stress and trauma.

Your body lays down collagen tissue to try and heal and quickly fill in and close off the injured areas.

So, yes, scar formation is a normal response to injury, but the tissue that comes from this normal response, is a different tissue in place of what was there before.

Scar tissue is thick and fibrous and not as pliable and elastic as the original skin and other bodily tissues that the scar has replaced. And scar tissue is not attractive and it can be quite unsightly to many people!

And once scar tissue is laid down, there can be a dramatic change in function and ability.

Tell of fighting scar formation in Physical Therapy and why we did it.

So, there are two main points that I want to make about scars this morning and then go from there to wherever Holy Spirit wants us to go.

First of all, scars are a normal bi-product of healing from stress related and traumatic injuries to the body; both internal, as well as external.

The second thing is that sometimes, based upon the severity and duration of the trauma to the tissues, the scarring effect becomes limiting and dysfunctional for the person and requires an outside source to help restore function.

And having said these two things about scars in and on our bodies, I want to move into the spiritual aspect of this message.

When I see a scar on someone’s body, it reminds me of trauma, or injury to that person.

Even on myself, when I see the scars that I just told you about, they serve to remind me of trauma and affliction that I went through.

The wound may have closed and healed, but the scar tells me that it happened and reminds me of that specific occurrence.

Spiritually, we are the same way. There exists scars within our souls that have come from trauma and injury to our hearts and souls and minds.

And just like the natural scars on and in our bodies, these spiritual scars also serve to remind us of the hurts that we have incurred during our lives.

And these scars that are formed in our souls, may have actually come from physical events that took place, in the natural sense, but they dramatically and negatively affect the heart and soul of the individual.

For instance, if a woman is raped, the law calls this a physical act of aggression and violation of the woman’s body (which it is), but also, besides the physical, there is damage done to her heart and soul as well.

It is a physical trauma, in the natural sense, but one that has lasting repercussions emotionally.

And this horrific trauma that she suffers in her heart, produces scars that can affect her for the rest of her life!

And there are numerous other ways and reasons that such scars can form!

And so, just as I said about physical scars and that they are a bi-product of trauma and that they can become debilitating and need outside help to heal and restore function, so also are our spiritual scars!

I think that what we need to realize this morning is that just as God has equipped out physical bodies to heal and restore itself and that it uses scarring as part of that process, so also, does God use scarring in our emotional and spiritual healing.

And just as I said that sometimes we need an outside source to help restore function from the scarring in our physical bodies, so also do we need to realize that the Lord is that source that provides complete restoration to our souls after the scars have formed from our spiritual wounds.

This is why the Psalmist said in ,

Psalm 147:3–4 ESV

3 He heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds. 4 He determines the number of the stars; he gives to all of them their names.

Notice what the Psalmist records here. It doesn’t say that God heals up the broken limbs (although He does this as well), but rather, it says that He, “heals the brokenhearted and binds their wounds”!

This is talking about emotional wounds, soul and heart wounds!

And it is saying that God, like a physician, is there binding those wounds so that they will heal!

We need to understand how very much God desires to restore us and our lives and to heal our wounds so that we can become a blessing to others.

The reason that the Psalmist followed up that verse about healing and binding our wounds with, “He determines the number of the stars; he gives to all of them their names”, is because if God cares enough about the inanimate stars in the vast universes, to number them and name them all and know their names (and there are some 300 billion stars in just the Milky Way galaxy alone. And there are some estimated 100 billion galaxies in the observable universe, then do the math on the number of stars).

The point is, if God cares that much for stars, how much more do you think that he cares about your healing and restoration?

He cares so much for you and I in fact, that the Bible says this in ,

Psalm 56:8 NLT

8 You keep track of all my sorrows. You have collected all my tears in your bottle. You have recorded each one in your book.

God counts and keeps record of the individual tears that you and I have cried and lamented over!

Now think about this for a second. If God cares so much for you and I, that He keeps a record in the books of heaven, of every tear that we have ever cried and He numbers the very hairs on our heads, then when the Bible says that He heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds, you can bank on that happening!

In the book, The Scars That Have Shaped Me, by Vaneetha Rendall Risner, she shares about places in her life, where the pain and the scars that came from life’s wounds, were healed and used for the glory of God. Listen to this one small section in the book.

“My story begins in India, where I was born to Christian parents. As an infant I contracted polio, long after it was virtually eradicated. Because the doctor had never seen polio before, she misdiagnosed me and prescribed the wrong treatment. Within a day, I was totally paralyzed. The physicians in India offered little hope for my recovery and encouraged my parents to seek better medical care in the West. We quickly moved to London, where I had my first surgery when I was two years old. By the age of thirteen, I had undergone twenty-one operations and had moved from England to Canada and finally to the United States. I lived in and out of the hospital for most of my young life and learned to walk, albeit with a pronounced limp, at age seven.

She goes on, in talking about the embarrassment of growing up with her twisted and deformed looking legs and the wounds from that, as caused from the polio.

She tells of how she married, while in graduate school and had several miscarriages, but then was blessed with two daughters, only to develop post-polio syndrome, a few years later, which caused marked pain and weakness in her limbs and possible future quadriplegia.

Then, only to have her husband walk out on her and the children.

During all of this, and before her husband left her, she was writing posts and blogs and trying to encourage others about the love of God and His healings.

It was in that period of her life, after having had the 3 miscarriages, that she became pregnant again.

This child, which she and her husband at that time had been praying for, through the 3 miscarriages, was finally born into the world. They named him Paul and had many great expectations for little Paul, and that this baby was going to glorify God in his life somehow.

Paul was born with a heart defect and came through the initial surgery very well. He came home after only 3 weeks and was beginning to thrive. The attending physician said that he was doing so well that he took him off all of his heart medications. Two days after this, Paul died. A bad call from a doctor and her new baby was dead!

Vaneetha said that she struggled with how could God be glorified in this!

Several months after the funeral, she was trying to put the pieces together and heal and she told the story of little Paul to a newly acquainted friend who was also a song writer. Her friend, ended up writing a song based upon Vaneetha’s story. This song was eventually picked up and recorded by Christian recording artist, Natalie Grant and in 2005, this song was a hit and it won numerous awards.

The song was titled, Held and it opens up talking about a mother losing her 2 month old child and that this is appalling.

Then the words of the chorus come:

“This is what it means to be held

How it feels when the sacred is torn from

your life

And you survive

This is what it is to be loved and to know

That the promise was, when everything fell

We’d be held.”

The song was all about God holding us closer to Him through our pain and sufferings.

She received numerous letters from people who shared with her how this song how helped to bring comfort and understanding in their own hurts and trials. And then, one rainy day, while feeling sorry for herself and running behind in getting some errands ran, she ducks into a bagel shop for some quick lunch. (SHARE THE ENCOUNTER WITH YOUNG MAN IN THE SHOP AND THE SONG!)

Ms. Risner finished this section by saying, “None of my other trials have been memorialized with a song, but God has brought meaning to them all. With each loss, he has pulled me closer to himself and shown me the depth of his comfort. The deeper the sorrow, the more profoundly he draws near. God uses us to comfort one another with the comfort that we ourselves have received from God. It is both a privilege and a responsibility. And as we tell others of God’s faithfulness in the midst of trial, it reminds us afresh that God will never forsake us. Though we may walk through the valley of the shadow of death, we will never walk alone.”

You see, God is the one who will provide that needed “extra healing/ that extra rehab”, once the scars of life have formed after your sorrows and hurts have come!

He tends to the wounds and delicately binds them, as His words of peace and healing nurture our souls, until the wound has closed and all that is left are the scars that serve to remind us of what He has done for us!

It is God, Himself, who says to us in , “ “My wayward children,” says the Lord, “come back to me, and I will heal your wayward hearts.”

Jeremiah 3:22 NLT

22 “My wayward children,” says the Lord, “come back to me, and I will heal your wayward hearts.” “Yes, we’re coming,” the people reply, “for you are the Lord our God.

And it is Jeremiah, who is known as the weeping prophet and who wrote the book of lamenting, called Lamentations!

This is a man who knew much grief and sorrow and yet he clearly heard and understood the words of God and that God desired to heal the wounds of their souls!

The scars from where we have been healed remind us of what God did for us and they will prompt us to share this healing love and mercy with others who are hurting!

“Faith is realizing that I am useful to God not in spite of my scars but because of them.”

Faith is realizing that I am useful to God not in spite of my scars but because of them.

Author and philosopher, Elbert Hubbard said, “God will not look you over for medals, degrees, or diplomas, but for scars.”

Scars come only after the healing of the wound has taken place. The scar shows that the wound has closed over

Yes dear friends, God will use even the scars from our hurts and sorrows, to help heal others and bring Him glory!

Consider Charles Colson, the aide to Richard Nixon who was sent to jail for Watergate. As a result of his experience as a convicted felon, Colson founded Prison Fellowship, now the world’s largest Christian outreach to prisoners and their families. Prison Fellowship has more than 50,000 volunteers working in hundreds of prisons in 88 countries around the world. A ministry that has blessed millions of people got started twenty-five years ago because Charles Colson committed a crime and was punished for it and out of the tramuma came the scars and out of the scars came a healing ministry!

Scars come only after the healing of the wound has taken place. That is, the scar shows that the wound has closed over, right?

Well, if the wound has closed over and the scar is in place, then why do some of these wounds continually fester and hurt so much?

The reason, many times over for this, is that the wound is not allowed to heal properly. It is continually being picked at and irritated over and over.

In other words, it is the underlying tissue that has become either infected, or inflamed, even though the scar is there saying, “we’re healed”!

And this same thing happens both physically, but also and more importantly for today’s message, emotionally and spiritually!

And this is a person who will not allow the scar to be a testimony of glory to God, because they have not allowed His complete healing!

“Well, how could this happen? How could God allow someone to go through this”, you might ask.

There are two basic reasons that I will mention very quickly.

One - because some of these wounds of the heart and soul, are very emotional and painful and even, in some ways, embarrassing and hard to talk about, and so a person will carry them inside, like some dark and hideous secret and never give light to them, and thus these wounds may close over and scar, but they are always painful and always irritated.

tells us this of Jesus, “He was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows. But he was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our iniquities: The chastisement of our peace was upon him and with his stripes we are healed.”

He was bruised for our iniquities: The chastisement of our peace was upon him And swith his stripes we are healed.

4  Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows

The chastisement of our peace was upon him And swith his stripes we are healed.

I believe this passage of the suffering servant, Jesus Christ, to refer to something more than the healing of the physical, as it is commonly used to mean.

God already provided healing for people in the Old Testament and Jesus was already healing the sick and raising the dead, before He ever went to the Cross, in the New Testament.

And swith his stripes we are healed.

and carried our sorrows

a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief

I read this passage to refer to another healing that could not completely take place until He had paid the price for our sins upon the cross, and that is the spiritual healing of a person.

Without the debt of sin being paid, there would never be complete and total healing for our spirit and soul! The enemy would always have the right to come and bring fear and shame and condemnation!

But Jesus took all of that upon Himself on the cross and gave us the right and the ability to be healed and restored! (“There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.”)

It is a proven fact that different sources of light can exponentially help to heal a wound.

Well, Jesus is the light of our healing and without the light of the world shining in on you, the wounds will not heal!

Just like Jesus asked the lame man and the blind man, of what did they want Him to do for them; did they want Him to heal them, He is asking many of us the same thing about our spiritual and heart wounds. “DO YOU WANT ME TO HEAL YOU?”

Psalm 119:130 NLT

130 The teaching of your word gives light, so even the simple can understand.

If we say “YES” then this means that we want the light brought into the darkness for healing and this also means that we must be willing to confess and release, so that the enemy is uprooted and so the healing can come!

tells us, “Confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed.”

So, many of our wounds do not heal properly, because we do not allow the healing to come in.

The second reason that I believe that these wounds do not heal properly and that the scars bare only pain and remorse, verses showing the glory of God, is that we keep irritating them.

If you scratch and pick at a healing wound, it stays inflamed and irritated and can become infected.

Well, once Jesus heals and restores you, you are free from the past and its sins and the lies of the enemy and a works based merit system.

However, if you turn and revisit anything of your past, you are re-opening an old wound. You are asking Jesus for healing, which He does, and yet, you return to the very source from which the wound came.

There is an adage that says, “do not burn bridges” and this has a lot of wisdom to as far as life application goes.

However, when it comes to your past life of sin and hurts, I’m telling you that there are some bridges you had better douse with gasoline and throw and match to and never look back!

BURN THOSE PUPPIES DOWN!

These are people who return to unhealthy relationships, friendships, past addictions and then the wounds that they end up with are greater than before!

Can Jesus heal these people again? Absolutely! But we should take note of where Jesus said to the lame man and the adulterous woman, “Go and sin no more”, because the state that they were in was related to sins of their past.

Jesus heals and delivers us, so that we bare our scars of the past, (which is what a scar really is, a reminder of a healed, past event) and so we can use those reminders to tell others of what He did in our lives and thus help them to become delivered and healed.

Jesus bore His scars on His resurrected body as visible testimony of who He was and what He did, for all to see!

When Jesus heals you, you bare the scars of the past and the finished work of the Cross.

For this reason, Paul said, ““From now on let no one cause me trouble, for I bear on my body the marks of Jesus.”

Do you bare the finished works and scars of a risen and healing savior?

Or are you going back to the old life and its hurts and sources of wounds?!

King David sinned and then once the sin was out in the open, he fasted and wept and repented of the sin, so as to not bring judgement upon his son. Once he knew the answer and the outcome of his sin, then he allowed healing to take place. He got up, washed himself, anointed himself and changed his clothes and went to the house of the Lord and began to worship! Then he went home and ate,as he knew that God has seen and received his repentance.

For this reason, David said to the Lord in , about his sin with Bathsheba,

Psalm 51:14–17 NLT

14 Forgive me for shedding blood, O God who saves; then I will joyfully sing of your forgiveness. 15 Unseal my lips, O Lord, that my mouth may praise you. 16 You do not desire a sacrifice, or I would offer one. You do not want a burnt offering. 17 The sacrifice you desire is a broken spirit. You will not reject a broken and repentant heart, O God.

In order for healing to take place in your life, there must be a broken and repentant heart, so that the healing and finished work of Jesus’ blood can cleanse you and form that perfect scar over your souls wounds!

You are God’s masterpiece. Let Him finish the good work inside of you. He has chosen you to bare the Master’s marks!

End with mentioning Michelangelo and the sculpture of David.