So many times in churches today, the focus is on what the Church is doing, and how the individual can be involved. “Find your place in God’s Kingdom!” “Be a part of what the Church is doing to change the world!” But what about the Kingdom within? What about how we are doing on the inside? Surely we are only as effective in our mission in the world to the degree that we live in freedom in our own lives!
You can only effectively extend the Kingdom externally, to the degree that you have allowed God, the Holy Spirit, to establish His Kingdom within. Only as that “authority to rule over” (The Kingdom), the dominion of the Holy Spirit, becomes the dominant, determining force within your own heart, can it then flow through you to impact your world and environment.
In other words, before you get to the conquest of territory that extends the Kingdom in your future, we must address the issue of past and present realities. It is impossible for you to carry the Authority of the Kingdom with boldness and confidence if you have major areas of spiritual and emotional vulnerability remaining in your life.
Job 24:12 says “The dying groan in the city, and the souls of the wounded cry out, yet God does not charge them with wrong.”
God’s heart hears the cries of those who have been wounded by life. Society is filled with wounded, hurting people. From the derelict in the street to the millionaire in his mansion, no strata of society are exempt. And many of these wounded people end up in church and they come bruised and bleeding, sometimes openly, sometimes well disguising the pain they carry within.
Father God comes to them, to us, to you, not with judgment, but with mercy. But this mercy, and this love that God has towards all of us in our time of hurt and pain, is carried primarily, through those who have the capacity to minister that mercy.
I believe that it is through those whose own scars qualify them to be touched with the cries of others. Your past pain and subsequent healing process, is exactly what empowers you to be the agent of mercy and love that someone else so desperately needs right now.
Jesus bore our transgressions on the cross (Isaiah 53:5), but to bear our sin and to pay the price for our healing, it was a process. First He was wounded, then He bore those wounds to the cross, then He died (a process of dying to Himself), and from that place of death He rose again to new life, and finally His wounds became scars.
For us it is the same process. We must bear our wounds to the cross and die to ourselves if we are to experience the new life and see our wounds become scars!
So today, are your wounds still fresh? Or have you taken your wounds to the cross and allowed the work of the cross to bring about new life in you? Do you bear a wound or a scar?
Or perhaps for you, God today wants you to be willing to share the journey with someone who is wounded, and allow the mercy and love that you have experienced and that has healed you, to flow into the life of someone who so desperately needs it.
