The longer we live the more wounds we acquire. Many of those wounds come from our childhood and their trauma raises its head over the years. Many of us live with a great deal of pain beneath the surface. That pain causes us to wonder if God can actually use us, it keeps us from stepping into our purpose. It makes us wonder if we are good enough. And often, the pain that we feel doesn’t go away and we carry it beneath the surface, silently and relentlessly.

That pain robs our joy, and even tests our faith. Whether it was an abuse situation, a traumatic event,  such as a divorce or a miscarriage or a serious illness, it creates uncertainty and pain. Like a Tsunami it rearranges the landscape of our lives, sometimes in an instant. One day life is normal, and the next day our lives are thrown into confusion and chaos. Like a drowning person, we find ourselves fighting to get back to the surface so we can take a breath. Pain, fear, and uncertainty have taken over. It is hard to even grasp this new reality as our minds and hearts shout, “This cannot be!”

No matter how strong our faith, such events often create a crisis of faith. To not ask hard questions about God’s love and faithfulness in the trauma of life undone is abnormal, maybe irrational. Never is our understanding of God’s love, grace, and mercy more challenged, and the answers more important,  than when life is hard and hope is scarce. We hang on to faith by the tips of our fingers as our minds work to encompass issues we have never had to understand except in a theoretical way. To all of this there are no easy answers and often just more questions. The life undone forces us to question and reexamine the very core of what faith and life are about. I have asked these hard questions, and I am sure you have as well.

Here is what we do know. Jesus came to heal broken people. If you carry wounds in your life, Jesus wants to bring healing and make you whole. Eight hundred years before Christ, the Prophet Isaiah wrote this about the coming ministry of Jesus. “Surely he took up our pain and bore our suffering, yet we considered him punished by God, stricken by him and afflicted. But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was on him, and by His wounds we are healed.” (Isaiah 53:4-5).

Because Jesus can heal our wounds does not mean that he always does.There is a mystery to physical healing that we cannot fathom. Paul prayed for his thorns in the flesh to be removed and God said no, “you are made perfect through suffering.” Yet when I had my first serious illness and people were fasting and praying from around the world, He chose to heal to the amazement of the doctors and nurses involved. Sometimes people will say, “you didn’t have enough faith,” but that is simply not true. We simply cannot understand the mind of God because His will involves our own spiritual transformation and dependence on Him. Thus He may heal in one instance and not another because it is His perfect will. God is not a genie in a bottle who jumps to every request we have. He is the sovereign Lord of our lives who cares for us deeply and in that care may heal or may not heal completely. 

I have watched healing take place and I have seen it not take place this side of heaven. Make no mistake, there comes a day when we are completely healed. It is one of the wonderful gifts of a new body in heaven. No pain, no sorrow, no tears, no aches or pains. In heaven we are completely whole. In either case, now or then, God does in fact answer our prayers. 

One of the reasons God allows suffering and pain in our lives is to share His comfort with others. Paul puts it this way in 2 Corinthians 1:3-7: ”Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves receive from God. For just as we share abundantly in the sufferings of Christ, so also our comfort abounds through Christ. If we are distressed, it is for your comfort and salvation; if we are comforted, it is for your comfort, which produces in you patient endurance of the same sufferings we suffer. And our hope for you is firm, because we know that just as you share in our sufferings, so also you share in our comfort.”

Did you catch the biblical truth here? “Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves receive from God.” That is a powerful statement. In fact, the writer of the Hebrews says that Jesus can identify with us because he lived among us and experienced all that we experience except sin. Likewise when we suffer we experience God’s comfort and are far better equipped to give that comfort away. We have received it and needed it and so we are able to give it away to others.

What a brilliant strategy on God’s part. He allows us to join Him in His sufferings and in doing so we are able to minister to others along the way. Never stop asking for the healer to work in your life. Never stop praying for that healing. And never stop allowing God’s comfort to you to roll over over to others. When we have suffered we are in a position to comfort others.

Father, Thank you that you are a God who heals. Whether this side of heaven or the other side. Work in our lives, heal our hearts and bodies and give us the wonderful capacity to comfort others. Amen.

The Question for Today: Who needs the overflow of God’s comfort to you today?