It Starts Small

Everyone knows a little bit of something about the Apostle Paul. Every person, good or bad, in the Bible is there to show us and teach us something about ourselves. The intent and purpose of God’s Word is to show us who we are on the inside. To help us grow, overcome, be renewed, healed, and to lead us into stepping into deeper waters with our Heavenly Father and Jesus.

I do not recall when this came about last year, but I had been praying for God to help me understand all the events in my life with respect to me. My role in it all. My failures. I prayed God would help me to understand all the subjected violence. What could he do with that and how can I reflect Him in the events of my life?

I happen to braid my hair that morning. While looking at myself in the mirror I saw the scar on my neck. Some time ago I had a thing removed from my neck. That scar got me to thinking about imprisonments, wounds, and scars. I also had begun to really sink my heart and mind into the New Testament. There was the guy named Paul and I believed somewhere Jesus had the answer I was looking for.

I start these deep dives with a list of questions. FOr example, when I am studying a person, I write a historical analysis on them. Where they are in respect to Christ, before or after? What are the events told to us in the Bible. Where were they living? WHo is all involved in the scripture written about them. What do they do and say. What is the outcome of what they do and say. WIth Paul, that could take a lifetime, so I kept it simple, but I noticed a pattern in His letters. The way he spoke to fellow Saints.

This is a man who had been in three shipwrecks, imprisoned, beaten, starved, and suffered immense physical torture of his body. Most of his letters are written from prison. But if you read how he addresses his fellow brothers and sisters in Christ, he does it in such and beautiful and encouraging, uplifting, way! I can remember reading his opening letter to the saints in Philippi. I sat there thinking about this sort of love he had dwelling inside him. He was imprisoned (some suggest in Rome) but still had such a filling of love for these believers and workers. His eyes never left its focus on Christ and our Heavenly Father.

Prisons. Wounds. Scars. What do our prisons, wounds, and scars say about us?

I had created my own prison. My imprisonment was built on fear. Each brick was believing the lies satan spoke in me and others spoke to me. My imprisonment was built with mud of hate. As I built my prison brick by brick, I began to shrink my world around me. I had to protect me. I had to try and keep whatever little bit of humanity I had from getting hurt. I enclosed my heart with the hardness of unbelief and pride. I was too prideful to ask for help in any situation. I had built a prison and tomb. In a sense all of me had died in that grave of hurt, pain, suffering and despair. Until that glorious day, on the side of the highway, when Jesus held out His nail scarred hand and pulled me out of that grave, that prison.

Together, hand in hand, He cleansed my wounds. He helped me, through His truth, to overcome what had built that prison. He washed my wounds and supernaturally healed them. Then became the sight. To really look back upon it all to see that in the circumstances that surrounded my wounds, God could use them for good. Each wound was an experience to be shared. An experience to understand others and to lead them to a true hope! A true hope of healing and that only through Christ are we made whole!

⁶ Being confident of this very thing, that he which hath begun a good work in you will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ: Philippians 1:6

¹² But I would ye should understand, brethren, that the things which happened unto me have fallen out rather unto the furtherance of the gospel; Philippians 1:12

My Heavenly Father chose me not to suffer, but through reconciliation and deliverance of suffering is a testimony, a furtherance of the Gospel! Just as Paul wrote, I may be in prison, but guess what? It causes everyone around me to be curious of why I am here and I can share Jesus with them. I do not know if Paul knew, his story would be shared thousands of years later and give hope to even more saints than he could count. My suffering, my pain, my fear, my overcoming, my redemption, is all a testimony of my Heavenly Father and Christ Jesus. An amazing pastor spoke, looking back, helps us see tomorrow. My scars are now a testimony that God can use to reach others to give them hope, healing, and wholeness.

What are the barriers in your life from walking in complete surrender to our Heavenly Father?

Are you in stuck in your own prison?

When you look back where do you see God in the midst of your past? How can your deliverance, rescue, overcoming, healing, and wholeness from Christ be a testimony to others who may be stuck in the same place you were?