If you know me or have followed this site for a while, you know my story. I was deeply wounded by the person I trusted most in the world. For years, I held onto that pain to the point that it was keeping me from living the life God wanted me to. Then God spoke to me through an evangelist. He said, “It’s in your scars that others will find their healing.” I spent months going back through the wound so I could let it go and forgive. I needed to let God bring healing into my own life first before He could use it to heal others.
I think that one of the greatest tragedies in life isn’t that people hurt us, it’s that we carry those wounds with us to the point that they limit us. When we allow our identity to be found in our wounds, we minimize who we are in Christ. Doing that keeps the wound open and we walk through life with this raw emotion that allows us to stay hurt which keeps us from making deep connections with people. We then hide behind the pain of the past and use it to keep people at a distance, but that’s not God’s way of doing things. He wants to close our wounds and heal us by helping us forgive.
Hebrews 12:1 says, “As for us, we have all of these great witnesses who encircle us like clouds. So we must let go of every wound that has pierced us and the sin we so easily fall into. Then we will be able to run life’s marathon race with passion and determination, for the path has been already marked out before us” (TPT). When we let go of our wounds, they begin to heal. When they heal, they create scars. People don’t find healing in our wounds, they find healing in our scars for they are proof of God’s work in our life. They carry in them the hope for someone else that their wounds will one day be closed.
Photo by Kelly Sikkema on Unsplash
Throwback Thursday is a feature I’m using to help build some margin into my schedule to pursue other ventures. Each Thursday I’ll be bringing you a previously written devotional that still speaks encouragement to us from God’s Word.
Devotions by Chris Hendrix 