SCAR SHARING

Have you thanked Him?

Have you praised Him?

Have you made it your priority to agree and cooperate with Him today?

Have you taken that deep breath and listened for what He has for you today?

1 Timothy 2:1 (The Message)

1-3The first thing I want you to do is pray. Pray every way you know how, for everyone you know.

Don’t hide your scars; instead, use them, realizing that scars are a map of God’s grace in your life. When you show others your scars and tell them how God helped you get through the struggles that caused them, your scars will point others toward God to help them in their own lives.

1 Corinthians 1:4-5

God of all healing counsel! He comes alongside us when we go through hard times, and before you know it, he brings us alongside someone else who is going through hard times so that we can be there for that person just as God was there for us.

If we hide our scars how can we reveal to others what GOD has done?

If we hide our scars how can we “be there” for someone?

If we mask our pain how can find possible paths of relief?

Yet sadly our culture either exploits our failures or shames them to such a degree that we bottle them up or hide them from sight.

But recovery and GOD reminds us that we only as “sick as our secrets”. And the BIBLE reminds us constantly that honest transparency, “scar showing” is crucial to healing and health!

James 5:16 (MSG)

 Make this your common practice: Confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you can live together whole and healed.

Hiding the scars only serves to hurt us.

It does me know good to “pretend” that I don’t struggle with anger from time to time.  It does me know good to bury my challenges like lust and ego for if do I may NOT encounter the person GOD has designed to come along side me for accountability, grace, truth, mercy and healing. 

I won’t encounter them if I am unwilling to to transparent.  

I need others to be equally transparent to help me overcome!

At the same time, GOD has given me MY scars to provide hope to someone else that GOD is real, that GOD delivers and the GOD can be trusted with the worst of it.

Case in point.

I am on my way back from Columbus yesterday and am having a conversation with a dad who is heartbroken.  He is picking up his little girl from an AKRON hospital. She was on death’s door from heroin.  He was perplexed.  He was in pain.  He and she needed hope!

She was still "bleeding" and needed HEALING!

And as GOD prompted me to share my near-death experience, as GOD prompted me to show a scar or two, the dad on the other line opened up about his struggles.  We shared POWERFUL empathy.  

Trust and healing ensued.  

And miraculously out of the pain came the HOPE we could share with his little girl; Philippians 4:13 kind of help; that GOD was in the business of making our SCARS saving tools of GRACE and CHANGE.

How about you?

Sick from too many secrets?

Think your scars only serve to shame?

Read that little quote from the beginning of this again…

“…scars are a map of God’s grace in your life.”

“Experience is not what happens to you. It is what you do with what happens to you. Don’t waste your pain; use it to help others.”  - Rick Warren

Share your scars.

 

 

I love you all!

Freedom Church