Sermon Tone Analysis

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 ,

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 ,

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.