SCARS - How Can I Use My Scars for Ministry?
March 24, 2019
2 Corinthians 1:1-7 (p. 803)
Introduction:
I spent about 3 months in the burn unit at St. Joseph Hospital when I was 11 years old. I suffered 3rd degree burns on about 50% of my body after knocking an alcohol lamp over on myself…I remember the salt water baths to keep me from becoming infected. I remember changing the dressings. I remember the skin graft surgery. I remember not looking in the mirror very often.
I also remember people praying for me and coming by to see me and my family. Some of them would end the conversation…“Hang in there I know how you feel.”
As I look back as an adult, I understand they meant no harm…they were just trying to be kind and relate…but at that time I remember thinking…“You have no idea how I feel!”
It used to help me when Dad would show me his wooden leg and the battle scars on the other one and say, “I know what its like to hurt…I know what its like for people to stare at me when I limp.”
But the one incident I remember during those 3 months was when Mr. Bryant came by to see me…He had 4 boys…John was about a year older than me…Mr Bryant told me about being burned at Pearl Harbor, as badly as I’d been burned…He showed me his scars…which had faded dramatically over 21 years…He gave me a letter he’d written to his wife Dorothy…In this letter he told her to find someone else…he was too scarred. She didn’t. After his visit he said, “God had a plan for my scars…and God’s got a plan for yours.” And then he said, “I know how you feel and what you’re going through. Call me anytime.” And I felt something click in my heart…a kindred soul…someone who didn’t just know what I was going through, but had been victorious over it.
Paul writes as an Apostle of Jesus to the Church at Corinth…an Apostle is someone sent with the authority of the One who sent him.
Paul believes he carries the authority of Christ…a powerful salvation message in the Gospel…he has Timothy with him as he writes this letter…the 2nd one to this Church in Corinth and Achaia. He introduces this letter with the prayer of grace and peace from God the Father and the Lord Jesus…and then he says.
2 CORINTHIANS 1:3-7 (p. 803)
I believe with every fiber of my soul that Paul is approaching the Corinthians just like Mr. Bryant approached me…He is walking into a spiritual burn unit with the power of God and a ministry of scars.
Sharing this powerful truth:
I. GOD HAS BEEN MY COMFORTER IN ALL MY TROUBLES
Paul starts with praising God…“Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. The Father of compassion and the God of all comfort…He comforts us in all our troubles.”
Thats an amazing statement from someone who would write just 5 verses later:
“We do not want you to be uninformed brothers and sisters about the troubles we experienced in the province of Asia. We were under great pressure, far beyond our ability to endure, so that we despaired of life itself.” (2 Cor. 1:8)
Paul doesn’t get specific about what they weren’t through here…but if you consider he’d been stoned, beaten, snake bit and shipwrecked we get an idea of how bad it must havebeen…Basically he’s saying…“We were stressed beyond despair…we knew we were going to die.”
Anyone who tells you God won’t put more on you than you can bear is a liar…but He won’t put more on you than He can handle…in fact that might be exactly why He allows it…So, as Paul says in verse 9 “We know this happened so we might not rely on ourselves but on God who raises the dead. He has delivered us from such a deadly peril, and He will deliver us again…on Him we have set our hope.”
Noah built a big boat for 120 years with no converts other than his family…Abraham walked up a mountain to sacrifice the son he’d waited his whole life for…David picked up 5 rocks and a slingshot and ran toward Goliath…The Apostle Paul sent where God called him even though he was beaten, stoned and put in jail.
Our faith in god doesn’t grow when it’s not tested…our faith grows when God comforts us in our troubles and proves His power in our weakness.
There is no pain without purpose in the plan of God.
And one of the main purposes is to make us effective ministers to others.
“We are comforted by a compassionate Father so we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves receive from God.
It’s a ministry where we:
II. PUT OURSELVES IN ANOTHER’S SKIN
God is the Father of compassion…He made it…and the word for compassion literally means…“To feel what another feels in the depth of your bowels.” (Womb) Compassion isn’t just about being sad someone is hurting…Compassion puts themselves in the other person’s skin…Compassion hurts so deeply it becomes a catalyst to help… Sympathy says… “I’m so sorry.” Compassion gets off their donkey and gets in the ditch. Compassion holds the bloody wound and compassion pays for the recovery. Compassion gives birth to actions.
Think about it…God became flesh. John says “The Word became flesh and made His dwelling among us.” (John 1:14) Jesus, the Word spoken at creation, became flesh…It’s why He is “Immanuel.” (God with us) He literally put Himself in our skin…He entered the “womb” of a virgin, through the power of the Holy Spirit so He could be “one of us.”
It’s why the writer to the Hebrews describes Jesus in this way…
HEBREWS 4:14-16 (p. 840)
Jesus only ascended back into heaven after His birth, His life, His crucifixion, His burial and His resurrection…He’d been with God before all this…but now He returns to be at the Father’s right hand having experienced everything we experience…and He never sinned.
Romans 8:34 tells us…“Christ Jesus who died - more than that, who was raised to life - is at the right hand of God and is also interceding for us.”
Satan can try to accuse God’s chosen…He can try to condemn…but Jesus stands in our defense…He is our adorable and defender.
I believe this is what compassionate children of God also do…we enter the lives of hurting people…we take the scars of the burn unit, the divorce court, the funeral home and the physical thorns…and we take the comfort and compassion God has poured into our lives and pour it right back into the lives of others.
How can this world understand “Good News” unless we prove it’s the answer to “bad news?”
III. HOPE IS WHAT HURTING PEOPLE NEED
It does something powerful to the human soul.
When a Mr. Bryant enters your hospital room, faded scars and all and he says, “I know the God who saved and helped me can save and help you…This is my testimony… “If we are distressed it is for your comfort and salvation.”
“If we are comforted it is for your comfort which produces patient endurance of the same suffering 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.” (v. 6-7)
Jesus made a promise in John 16:33 “I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.”
The “these things” He had just told his followers about were “I’m leaving you…I’m going back to the Father…You can’t come right now.”
2 parts to this conversation get our attention…one He promises that if you are in this world you will have trouble…you will suffer…you will go through trials…you will grieve…you will have physical pain…this world = trouble.
But the 2nd part says…“In me you win.” I provide peace during storms…Don’t give up…I conquered those troubles. TRUST ME!…WE WIN!!!
One of the greatest weapons Satan uses is our desire for comfort…He always wants us to seek comfort and self fulfillment over seeking God’s Kingdom and His righteousness.
It’s natural to hope for good things…hope is one of the two things we can’t live without…Air and hope are essential. But you don’t need a “comforter” if you’re always comfortable…and one of the most important motivations for our faith is…our hope isn’t in the temporary…our hope isn’t in the things we see…our hope is in the eternal and the things we can’t see! In our text Paul mentions troubles, suffering, and distress…but 8 times in those 5 verses he mentions God’s comfort.
You see Jesus said, “God causes His sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. If you love those who love you, what reward will you get? Are not even the tax collectors doing that? And if you greet only your own people, what are you doing more than others? Do not even the pagans do that? Be perfect, therefore as your heavenly Father is perfect.” (Matthew 5:45-48)
Believers live in the same world as unbelievers. God’s children encounter the same mixture of good and bad according to God’s purposes. But our response to it when it comes to how we relate to people, shows who our Dad is…and our hope for eternity shines…in a very clear difference to the unbelieving world.
If you are a disciple who suffered, do you still believe God is good? Do you still believe He loves you and has a plan? I ask that sincerely because you will hear two voices speaking to your spirit in these times…The Holy Spirit who is the comforter…telling you “Take heart, trust God, nothing will touch you that doesn’t pass through Jesus’ nail scarred interceding hands.” But you will also hear from the adversary…the Evil One, the inventor of lies “God must not love you to let this happen…If He was really in control He would have stopped it immediately. Your plans are over!”
Abraham heard both those voices as he walked up the hill with Isaac. Moses heard those voices as he stood trapped at the Red Sea. Jesus heard both those voices in the garden and as He carried His cross up Calvary. But trust, faith and obedience let God provide a ram, part a sea, and produce a resurrection.
Scars will make you either “Bitter or Better.” They will make you “Bitter” if you think God is short changing you and treating you unfairly…They will make you “Better” if you trust that He is molding you to be more like Jesus…He came to comfort others…He didn’t make His home here on earth…He sacrificed Himself so others could be comforted and make it home with Him.
So how about you this week…will you look at the greatest scars in your life and let them be used for God’s glory…and so others can have the hope of heaven?
I promise, if you do, life not only gets better…it becomes joyful…abundant…and victorious.
