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If you play “connect the dots” with the scars across my belly and hip, you can draw a turtle.
A collection of silvery lines are the only remains of five surgeries. These now-painless marks are tangible evidence of past healing. I have invisible scars too - remnants of emotional wounds that were far more painful than joints being repaired or organs and babies being cut from my body. And today, unwelcome aches in my heart are still crying out for healing – deep unseen wounds that wish they were already scars. Maybe you have some of those too? Hope is ours because Jesus has scars too. Though we might expect a perfected body to no longer bear the marks of suffering in this world, in His resurrected body, Jesus has scars. Scars were the key to confirming His identity to His disciples. Only when they saw His scars did they recognize Him. His tangible marks of suffering now exist not as defects, but as a witness to the glory of God – an eternal proclamation of the pain He bore for your sin and mine. In holy perfection, Jesus’ pain is remembered by His scars. Perhaps the marks of our own agonizing wounds in this life will remain in heaven as permanent scarred testimonies of the glory of God? While things still ache, this assurance of unwasted pain brings real hope. Because of the scars Jesus will bear forever, you and I can be sure that whatever hurts today will one day be a beautiful scar that identifies us as those who have suffered with Jesus.
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Prayer is our most effective tool in helping our husbands and bringing about real changes in our families, yet it is often our last resort. After we have nagged, cried, and talked to our friends, we decide, “all I can do now is pray.”
Oh, how foolish! Prayer is a supernatural defensive weapon we can continually use to help mold and shape our families. Sadly, prayer is often explained like a quaint little two-way chat with God. That’s so trite and ridiculous. Prayer is war. Prayer is labor intensive effort. Prayer takes concentration and perseverance. It is a battle to get into prayer, a battle to stay in prayer, and a battle to believe prayer is even accomplishing anything. That’s why there is so little of it in our lives! If it was easy, we would do it all the time. And yet, we MUST pray if we want to see things change in our homes. Prayer requires faith. It demands we believe what the scriptures say is true, that we participate in spiritual things we can’t see, and that we believe something we can’t see is happening as a result. I once heard prayer described as a Christian’s “long-range artillery.” Prayer is a way for us to do battle from great distances. It is limitless. There is no place too far for prayer to reach. Whether your husband is out of the country, out of town, or out of his mind—discharge prayer to wherever he is, and you are helping him there. |
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