Sunday, August 03, 2008

COME AND BE HEALED

The enemy is raging and tearing through the world, and affecting many lives, declaring war on mankind, and on the Father. So I was in the Spirit a few days ago, thinking about the scars and wounds that mankind have in common. Sometimes these wounds last a lifetime, and hurt us in the mind and heart until the day we die. Scars and wounds caused by families, through generations of sin and selfishness, caused by an invisible enemy that delights in our troubles and always tries to make them worse.

In my own life, as in so many, there are still those wounds, and it doesn't take much for wounds to flare up and throw one back into the past where they began, and if it were not for Jesus, we would fall back and maybe never get up again. So many, so innumerable are these scars and wounds, that I thought, how can they ever all be healed? What kind of power does it take to heal every single wound we carry, in all our generations? Some self inflicted, some leading to suicide, some to rage and homicide. All these things in us, intermingled and tangled and oh, so painful. But He can and He will heal every last one of us.

And then I saw Jesus, and He looked as He did at the end of the film THE PASSION OF THE CHRIST. Jesus' mangled body was more marred than any man, as the Scripture describes. Wounds from head to toe, not a part of His body untouched by the whips, the nails, the spear. So much of His blood shed, that He allowed Himself to suffer. But He became whole again when He rose, as if it never happened. Yet, as it is written, He still carries the wounds of the cross on His body.

When I thought of this, I wondered why He needed to keep them. Was it so that all would be reminded of what Jesus did for them? The Holy Spirit makes Jesus known to all mankind and when we see Him, there is no mistaking Him. So why does He still carry these wounds, He that is the unblemished Lamb of God? Then the Father spoke to me.

He said: "Jesus will not give up His wounds until every wound is finally healed in every single one I created, whom I love".

He carries His wounds because we are a wounded world, still lost without Him. And He thinks of us all by name, and He knows our struggles with each other and with ourselves, that we have had every single day of our lives, right from the beginning when we were babies. Then I understood, as long as we are still in need of healing and redemption, He will not give up on us and our wounds. We can see how He understands and cares, because we can see in His hands and His feet that He understands wounds that lie so deep. We will be healed altogether and forever, and until that day comes, with marks in His hands and feet, He stands before us all, calling us to come, come, come and be healed.