In times when we go through turmoil, if our minds are not connected to the Father, they will make us believe that we will be known by our pains. But that’s not what He promised us.
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“But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s special possession, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light.“
1 Peter 2:9
“Is the glass half empty or half full?” Do you know this phrase? You can focus on your pain and you have complete freedom to do that, although it is a bad path to choose. Such decision can stop you and lead you to a place of stagnation. That’s not what God called you for. The situations He allows us to go through are not to stop us, but are to mark us. And that doesn’t mean that we will be marked by pain, but by a victorious passage through difficult times.
Pointing to a miracle
When Jesus was resurrected, He didn’t come back unscathed. His hands still had the nail marks.
Christ went to meet His disciples when Thomas was not there. So the disciples told Thomas that Jesus had risen, but he said he wouldn’t believe it until he saw Him. A while later, Thomas met with Jesus and the passage from John 20 tells what the Lord said to him:
“Put your finger here. See my hands. Reach out your hand and put it into my side. Stop doubting and believe’. Thomas said to Him, ‘My Lord and my God!’. Then Jesus told him, ‘Because you have seen me, you have believed…”
He could have come back completely healed. In the face of His resurrection, coming back completely unmarked would be a very simple thing to resolve. But the scars pointed to the miracle He experienced.
Know that your scars also point to your victory. They show God’s help and His strength through you.
Grace overflowed
“I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us.“
Romans 8:18
The enemy knows your name, but he will call you at all times by your pain and your mistakes. He will always try to remind you of these things, putting in your head that the Father has abandoned you, showing Jesus’ death as an omission of God, as if He had abandoned the Son and abandoned you now.
But God, knowing your pain and your mistakes, calls you by your name. He gave you an identity that goes beyond any situation you face in your life.
If in weakness we gain his strength and in pain we find his consolation, in the scars of our struggles he will not show what we lacked, but how His grace superabounded upon us and will follow us through all the days of our lives.
