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| DIGGING DEEP #55 | December 3, 2013 | ||
| Wounded healers I believe one of the greatest ways God uses and heals our suffering and failure is to reconcile others to Himself through our pain. It is one way that God redeems everything that we release to Him. His desire is to reconcile everything in our lives to Himself. He begins with our sin and then starts to reconcile each area of our lives and suffering that we surrender to Him. These reconciled areas become our point of ministry with others. 2 Corinthians 5: 18 Now all these things are from God, who reconciled us to Himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation, 19 namely, that God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and He has committed to us the word of reconciliation. When we see God use our pain, sin and suffering to advance His kingdom by bringing peace and healing to others through what we have suffered it helps bring further healing and understanding to us. Our whole life starts to have a purpose and make sense. After all, wasnt Jesus the ultimate wounded healer? Isaiah 53: 4 Surely our griefs He Himself bore, And our sorrows He carried; Yet we ourselves esteemed Him stricken, Smitten of God, and afflicted. 5 But He was pierced through for our transgressions, He was crushed for our iniquities; The chastening for our well-being fell upon Him, And by His scourging we are healed. Lets not forget, in the middle of our suffering, that the main mission of Jesus was to destroy the works of satan. 1 John 3:8 the one who practices sin is of the devil; for the devil has sinned from the beginning. The Son of God appeared for this purpose, to destroy the works of the devil. As we surrender more completely to Jesus, His mission becomes our mission; to destroy the works of the devil. In this way God takes the pain and suffering inflicted on us by our enemy and does a spiritual jujitsu on satan by taking the very thing he meant to destroy us with and uses it as a tool to destroy satan’s work in the life of another. This is the story of Joseph and his brothers. Joseph’s brothers meant to destroy Joseph by selling him into bondage in Egypt but God used Josephs bondage to save his brothers from the famine that had come into the region. God took the very thing, inspired by satan, meant to destroy Joseph and used it to save, reconcile and redeem the whole family. Joseph words it this way to his brothers. One of the greatest modern day examples of this is in the life of Joon Gon Kim. He was a South Korean evangelist in the 1950’s whose whole family was killed by a band of communist guerillas that invaded the village where Kim lived. He was also beaten and left for dead. The pain and bitterness he felt was about to destroy him until he released it to God and started praying for those who had committed this satanic attack. Kim was eventually led by the Holy Spirit to find the leader of the attack and told him he forgave and loved the communist leader. The leader was so overwhelmed that he received Christ through Kim’s testimony and then turned and led a number of other communists to Christ. This was obviously a supernatural act only possible through the power and wisdom supplied through the Holy Spirit. Having this Kingdom perspective on suffering helps me understand that this passage in James is not just some theological theory that only the hyper-spiritual can live out but it is something we can all comprehend when we release our pain to God and then live by the power of the Holy Spirit. Ray Sturdivant |
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