Episode 129 - Transformed to Embrace Our Scars - Be Transformed Part 10

We've come to the end of our series, Be Transformed. We have covered a lot over the past 10 weeks, including a lot of sin. Maybe you had something horrible done to you that you can’t move on from. Maybe you did something horrible to someone else and the guilt is eating you up. Maybe you have been immersed in sin and are ashamed to tell anyone. Maybe you’ve had an affair or an abortion and are suffering from deep regret and depression. Maybe things you have done in your past are so bad that you don’t think you deserve God’s mercy or grace. Maybe you’re divorced or have a child who is on a really bad tract and you feel like a failure. Maybe you’re addicted to drugs, alcohol, pornography, or something else and you feel defeated. If any of these apply to you, then this episode is for you.

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Transcript

Episode 129 – Transformed to Embrace Our Scars

         Welcome back! It has been a jammed packed 9 weeks, and we hope that you have been edified and have seen transformation in your life. We know we have been blessed! 

         We have been, so it’s a little sad that this is the last episode in our series, Be Transformed. However, our next series will be a great continuation and definitely a source of transformation. Our new series is called, “The Truth Will Set You Free.” It will be a study on the Book of Ephesians. And, yes, we know that the actual verse, “The truth will set you free” is from the Gospel of John, but it is completely applicable to the book of Ephesians. If you have never studied Ephesians in depth, it is an incredible book loaded with essential truths, doctrine and theology. 

         Definitely transforming stuff! So be sure to join us for that series. But first, we finish up our Be Transformed series with “Transformed to Embrace Our Scars.” Maybe you had something horrible done to you that you can’t move on from. Maybe you did something horrible to someone else and the guilt is eating you up. Maybe you have been immersed in sin and are ashamed to tell anyone. Maybe you’ve had an affair or an abortion and are suffering from deep regret and depression. Maybe things you have done in your past are so bad that you don’t think you deserve God’s mercy or grace. Maybe you’re divorced or have a child who is on a really bad tract and you feel like a failure. Maybe you’re addicted to drugs, alcohol, pornography, or something else and you feel defeated. If any of these apply to you, then this episode is for you.

         At the age of 30, Abby laid on her bed staring up at the ceiling of her childhood bedroom feeling like she was at rock bottom. Her marriage had fallen apart, and she was forced to move back in with her parents. She felt humiliated and ashamed. In 2016, 

Sara was getting ready to celebrate her 15th wedding anniversary. While she was making plans, her husband told her something that shattered her world. Even now, she can’t bear to reveal details, but the end result was that her and her husband got divorced. She was paralyzed, not knowing how to function without the man who had been a part of her for her whole adult life. 

Matt grew up a sheltered, home schooled, Christian kid. In 6th grade, he went to public school where he was introduced to pornography. He quickly became addicted. It was an addiction that lasted into his marriage. All the while he was still leading worship music in his church as well as other churches. The shame became so great, he pushed everyone away, including his wife – he went a week without saying a word to her. 

In 2008, Justin heard a cop knocking at his door. He knew he was about to get busted for drugs. He ran into his mother’s room and put his cocaine in her dresser drawer. He then ran into the bathroom and tried to flush 15 balloons of heroin down the toilet. He managed to flush all but one before the drug enforcement agents broke the door down. He was arrested. He remembers looking through his jail cell waiting for his mom to bail him out just like she always had in the past. He did see his mom, but she was in hand cuffs. The police found the cocaine that he put in her dresser drawer. Having been numb for years because of the drug use, his emotions finally overcame him and he collapsed on the floor of his cell knowing his life was at rock bottom. 

On New Year’s Eve 2015, musical performer Jon was in the middle of playing for a large audience. He had reached the success he had always dreamed of. But as he looked out at the crowd counting down to the New Year, he felt nothing but emptiness and brokenness. He had nothing left to give anyone. He realized the years he had spent chasing what he thought was his dream, had just left him empty and cold. It had drained everything out of him and he felt no pleasure in it anymore. He was ready to walk away from music and never look back.

          Abby, Sara, Matt, Justin, and Jon’s stories may be different, but they are the same. In fact, they are the same as many of our stories. Hurt, betrayal, devastation, disillusion, addiction, brokenness, disease, illness, physical harm, emptiness, and sin. All of us have experienced pain and suffering on some level. And we all have scars from it – some scars are physical, some scars are emotional. Some of our scars may be old, and some may be fresh, but they’re there. Even if we’ve gotten passed our circumstances and overcome them, the scars remain. 

         Scripture is full of people with scars. Can you imagine how Adam and Eve felt when their son Cain killed their other son, Abel? After burying one son, they had to watch their other son (and their daughter who was Cain’s wife) walk away never to see them again. You have to wonder if they felt responsible since it was their sin that brought the curse upon their family. 

         David was a man after God’s own heart, but he was also one of the most scarred. After he saw first-hand how God saved him over and over from King Saul, he disregarded his duties as king and, instead, forced himself on another man’s wife. When trying to pawn his baby off on her husband didn’t work, he had the husband killed. Not only did God punish him by killing the baby, God told David that he would ever after have family troubles for the rest of his life. David had to feel the pain of that scar resurface when he sent his daughter Tamar to take care of his son, Amnon, and Amnon raped her. How about when his other son, Absalom, killed Amnon because of that rape. Or when Absalom turned his attention to David and wanted to kill him so he could take the throne from him.  And certainly, David felt the pain of that scar when Absalom, whom David loved, was killed for his coup attempt by David’s men.

         And how about David’s daughter, Tamar. She was just trying to be a devoted sister who willingly went to care for her half-brother Amnon, whom she was told was ill by her father, David. The account of her rape is in 2Sam 13:11 – 17, “But when she brought (the food) near him to eat, he took hold of her and said to her, “Come, lie with me, my sister.”  She answered him, “No, my brother, do not violate me, for such a thing is not done in Israel; do not do this outrageous thing. As for me, where could I carry my shame? And as for you, you would be as one of the outrageous fools in Israel. Now therefore, please speak to the king, for he will not withhold me from you.” But he would not listen to her, and being stronger than she, he violated her and lay with her. Then Amnon hated her with very great hatred, so that the hatred with which he hated her was greater than the love with which he had loved her. And Amnon said to her, “Get up! Go!”  But she said to him, “No, my brother, for this wrong in sending me away is greater than the other that you did to me.” But he would not listen to her.  He called the young man who served him and said, “Put this woman out of my presence and bolt the door after her.” 

         And how about Paul. We all know of Paul’s conversion from Pharisee condoning murder of Jesus’s followers to being one of those followers whose life was often in danger. But we don’t think a lot about Paul’s scars. He had imprisoned a lot of Christians and stood by applauding while some were killed. Besides living with the knowledge of once being in direct opposition with Jesus, during his ministry, Paul had to run in people whose family and friends he had imprisoned or persecuted. No doubt the Apostles knew many people Paul had tormented. 

         And, of course, Jesus had scars. His were physical. After Jesus’ resurrection, John 20:19-20 tells us, “Suddenly, Jesus was standing there among them! “Peace be with you,” he said. As he spoke, he showed them the wounds in his hands and his side.” Why do we have scars? Why did Jesus’ resurrected body, which points to our resurrected bodies still bear the scars of His crucifixion? Will we ever be free of the scars we carry around?

         Chris, we should back up a little and before answering those questions, answer why God allows or cause bad things to happen to His people in the first place. Why does He allow His children (either before or after saving them) to fall into gross sin? Let’s start with why God allows bad things to happen to His people. I mean, we can understand Him allowing bad things to happen to His enemies, but us? We are His beloved children. Now we all know that we aren’t good – only God is good. RC Sproul has a famous quote that goes, “Why do bad things happen to good people? That only happened once, and He volunteered.” That is an absolutely true statement, but for our purpose, it needs to be expanded on. While we shouldn’t expect to be exempt from pain and suffering, God does not inflict it or allow it merely because we deserve it. He does have a purpose for it for those who belong to Him.

         Christian or not, suffering remains the inevitable result of living in this fallen world. Additionally, part of our struggle with pain and suffering is because of the time we live in. Our culture takes one of 2 approaches to suffering. There’s the hedonistic view which says that we should seek to reduce pain and acquire pleasure, at any cost. This approach is usually why so many end up addicted to drugs, alcohol, pornography, or something else. We try to distract ourselves from our pain. The other approach is the stoic approach. This view says that we have no control over what happens to us externally. All we can do is choose how we will respond internally. And how we should respond internally is to not let anything bother us. We need to keep a stiff upper lip and to not let anything get us down. 

         Many Christians take the stoic approach. I knew a woman that no matter what happened or how bad something that happened to someone was, her automatic response was, “I can’t wait to see what God is going to do with this!” She wasn’t wrong, but she was pretty insensitive. Imagine telling someone who had just lost their child or someone whose husband just left her and her children, “I can’t wait to see what God is going to do with this.” There will be a time for words like that, but at the beginning of someone’s pain is not that time. If anyone had the right to always say watch what God is going to do with this, it was Jesus. But that wasn’t Jesus’ initial approach to pain and suffering. We probably all remember the story of Jesus’ friend, Lazarus. Jesus went to Bethany knowing Lazarus would be dead when He got there and knowing He was going to raise Him from the dead. Yet when He got there, Jesus was overcome with emotion and wept as John 11:35 tells us. What does this tell us?  It tells us that except for a few extremely rare places in the Old Testament where God had a reason to tell someone not to grieve, grief is never sinful. Whether it’s grieving the loss of a loved one, grieving something terrible that has happened to us, grieving when we find ourselves in over our heads in sin, or grieving when we are in pain. Grief is godly and healthy. 

And to answer why does God allow suffering in the first place for His people, well, specifically, we don’t always know. God isn’t obligated to give us an answer. R.C. is completely right that the only person who had something bad happen to them who didn’t deserve it was Jesus. He owes nothing to the rest of us. Job had absolutely no idea what the reason was for all the things that happened to him. And God never gave him an answer. We have the advantage of seeing what was going on, but Job never did. But even if we don’t know the specific reason God allows or causes the suffering of His people, He does give us some general reasons. First, the most obvious, we suffer because of our own sin. Hebrews 12:5 -7 tells us, “My son, do not regard lightly the discipline of the Lord,nor be weary when reproved by him. For the Lord disciplines the one he loves, and chastises every son whom he receives.  It is for discipline that you have to endure. God is treating you as sons.”Sometimes, whether we want to admit it or not, our suffering is our own making. Our own sin is the cause of our troubles. And since we belong to God who loves us, He’s not going to let us stay in that sin forever. The pain and heartbreak we feel, in other words the consequences of our sin, could be God getting your attention and convicting you so that you deal with your sin. 

This was certainly the case with David. The prophet, Nathan, confronted David about his sin with Bathsheba. He says to him in 2Sam. 12:9, “Why have you despised the word of the Lord, to do what is evil in his sight?” We may not have a prophet visit us and give us a direct message from God, but we have something better. We have God’s Word – which is a direct message from God – and the Holy Spirit living in us convicting us. If you belong to God, even if you haven’t yet fully come to Him, God is not going to leave you in gross sin. There will come a time when you are convicted. And sometimes, that time is when you are at the absolute rock bottom. That was the case for Matt and Justin whose stories we told earlier. 

So sometimes the cause of our pain and suffering lies at our own doorstep. But that’s not always the case. It certainly wasn’t the case for Job. It wasn’t the case for Sarah that we talked about earlier, either. And, again, we don’t know the specific reasons God may have to inflict or allow bad things to happen to us when we haven’t done anything to warrant them. But, there are 2 general reasons. First, it may be to draw us nearer to Him and rely on Him. Nothing is more toxic to our relationship with God then complacency. When we are cruising through life, it is easy to put our faith on auto pilot. Even if we are completely devoted to Him, if we never have trials or suffering in our life, we will be much less apt to delve into our relationship with Him, longing it to go deeper. 1 Peter 1:6 – 7 confirms this, “now for a little while, if necessary, you have been grieved by various trials, so that the tested genuineness of your faith—more precious than gold that perishes though it is tested by fire—may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ.”

As Charles Spurgeon said, “There is no university for a Christian, like that of sorrow and trial.” He also said, “Men will never be great in theology until they are great in suffering.” Nothing brings us to our knees before God and searching through the Scriptures for answers than pain and suffering. We’ve talked about Richard Wurmbrand before. He was the Romanian Pastor held in a Russian prison for 14 years. Many of those years he was in solitary confinement, held completely in the dark and in complete silence. He said while it was a trying time, it was also his most intimate time with God in his entire life. And, Chris, I can attest to this. The toughest times of my life were also the most significant in my growth.

And the 2nd general reason God may be inflicting or allowing pain and suffering on us when we have done nothing to cause it is because like the woman you knew said, it is to show what He can do through it. This is certainly the case with the Apostles and many others who have been persecuted and/or put to death for the sake of Christ. As 1Peter 5:10 says, “And after you have suffered a little while, the God of all grace, who has called you to his eternal glory in Christ, will himself restore, confirm, strengthen, and establish you.”

Okay, so now that we have looked at reasons we may suffer, what do we do with it? We want to make it clear that nothing is irredeemable. There is no sin that God cannot and will not forgive if you are His. If you belong to Jesus, His death and resurrection paid for all of your sins – no matter how bad they are. However, as we have been talking about for the past 10 weeks, we do need to cooperate with the Holy Spirit in our transformation. If your pain is from your own sin, you will not be able to move forward successfully until you repent. After Nathan confronted David about his sin and told him that his baby would die and the sword would never depart from his family, David’s very first words to Nathan were, “I have sinned against the Lord,” (2 Sam 12:13) God did not take any of the consequences of David’s sin away, but Nathan immediately replied to David, “The Lord also has put away your sin and you shall not die.” 

When our circumstances are a result of our own sin, we need to repent. It’s not that God can’t work if we don’t – there’s no clogging the power of God as some Christians claim. God doesn’t need our repentance – we need our repentance! 

Acts 3:19 says, “Repent therefore, and turn back, that your sins may be blotted out, 20 that times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord, and that he may send the Christ appointed for you, Jesus.” Like we said, God doesn’t need our repentance to act in our life, any more than He needs us to display the Fruit of the Spirit. But both are signs of a saved person. We talked about this in detail in derailing your transformation, so we won’t go too in depth with this. Someone who does not repent of their sin, is probably someone who isn’t saved which is why Luke says that repentance is necessary. It is only when we are open and honest with God and when we surrender ourselves – including our sin – that He build us up. If your attention and life is consumed with addiction, adultery, habitual lying – you won’t be in a place to be sanctified.

So what if your pain and suffering is not of your doing? Then, friends, we need to heed the words of Paul in Romans chapter 8. Paul had pain and suffering that was partly due to his own sin – his previous life as a Pharisee – and partly that was not his doing. In fact, it was caused by his faithful following and witnessing of the Gospel. So he gets it either way. He says in Romans 8:18, “ For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us.” So, first Paul knows that any pain and suffering we endure are temporary and that there is much more than this life. He is being eternally minded as we talked about in crushing the fear factor.

And then later, in Romans 8:28 – 30, he says, “And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose. For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the firstborn among many brothers. And those whom he predestined he also called, and those whom he called he also justified, and those whom he justified he also glorified.” In addition to Paul keeping his eyes on the eternal and not the temporal, these verses show us that he understands that God’s purpose for our pain while we are on earth is for our good (which means our sanctification) and for God’s glory.   

Ligonier Ministries says this, “Because we gain so many eternal benefits from our earthly sufferings, the mercy that sustains us through our suffering is actually a greater mercy than if God simply erased every trace of hardship or difficulty from our lives. To put it plainly, instant healing would not be as spiritually valuable to us as the all-sufficient grace that cares for us in the midst of our suffering.” Whatever the reason for our pain, there should come a point where we do stand back and watch to see what God is going to do through it. In Luke 4, Jesus goes into the synagogue in Nazareth where they ask Him to read. The scroll of Isaiah just happened to be given to Him. (Of course we know that’s not true). Jesus chooses the exact spot in Isaiah He wants to read from. Luke 4:18 – 19 records it. “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind to set at liberty those who are oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.” 

These verses from Isaiah are about Jesus – in fact His claiming that made the people want to throw Him off a cliff. But they are the gospel message. The poor is referring to the beatitudes and the “poor in spirit for theirs is the kingdom of God. The captives is referring to those who were in bondage to sin. The blind are those who were dwelling in darkness but have had their eyes open to the light. And the oppressed are those who formerly had sin and Satan as their masters. Jesus is the cure for those born dead and condemned. But He is more than thay to those He saved. All of the physical healings Jesus performed while on earth, point to the ultimate healing He gives His people. It is something more vital, more lasting, more significant, and more real than temporary relief from the pains of earthly affliction. The gospel gives us the only true, abiding remedy for pain and suffering, for sin, and for all its guilt and repercussions. And that remedy is Himself. 

And there will be scars. But instead of being reviled and embarrassed by those scars, may we wear them like a badge of honor. Our scars are not just ugly jagged reminders of a painful time in our life. They are a badge that shows how much we are loved by our Savior and how our Almighty sovereign holy God cares enough about us to grow us and transform us. They are also God equipping us for the work He has for us while we are on this earth. Our scars may be the thing that make us the perfect person to carry out what God has called us to.

         We started off telling you the stories of Abby, Sara, Matt, Justin, and Jon. You may be wondering how things turned out for them. For all five of them, when they were at rock bottom, God used their brokenness to bring them to Himself. Those who needed to repent, repented. Those who were victims of others sin, looked to God for healing. God used them all. He brought them all together and  sent them out to minister to others. Abby, Sara, Matt, Justin, and Jon are all members of the Christian group, I Am They. They wrote a song called Scars that is about what coming out on the other side of pain and suffering. Scars is an unforgettable, haunting song that pierces your soul. It is a song that could only have been written by someone who has lived through the song lyrics and come out on the other side. If you have never heard it, we strongly encourage you to look it up on YouTube. 

We aren’t able to play the song because of copyright laws, but we can recite the lyrics. 

(Because of copyright, lyrics are not able to be displayed)

         Jesus voluntarily became like us in every way – even bearing the scars of a traumatic experience. He could have chosen to not have those scars on His resurrected body, but He didn’t. He proudly wore them and showed them to His disciples as the sign of how much He loves us and what He willingly did for us. Jesus’ scars are a symbol of God’s great grace and mercy. Our scars, too, are a symbol of God’s great grace and mercy. No matter where we have been, or may still be, no matter how painful, devastating, destructive, or catastrophic your circumstances may have been or are, you are not alone. If you belong to Jesus, He is right by your side with scars of His own.

Since Jesus’ resurrected body points to the new resurrected bodies we will receive, we can surmise that, like Jesus, we may still bear our scars. But we won’t feel anything but gratitude for them. And we can start that today! Instead of being ashamed of our scars, may we all wear them proudly knowing they are a sign of where God has brought us out of and what Jesus and brought us into. Our memory verse this week is for all of us. Whether your pain and suffering is your own doing or someone else’s It’s Hebrews 4:16, “Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.” May you all rest in the mercy and grace of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. To him be glory both now and forever! 

Thank you for joining us in this transformation journey. If you want to delve more into complete Gospel message and all that Jesus has done for us, don’t forget our book and study guide, No Half Truths Allowed – Understanding the Complete Gospel Message. Besides the book and study guide, we have online Bible Studies and extended teaching videos available on YouTube to go along with them. Have a blessed day everyone!