Serenity Saint April 28, 2023

The Great Physician

On hearing this, Jesus said, “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick." - Matthew 9:12 (NIV)

We all have them. We've collected them throughout the years from childhood and even into our adult years. We get scars when the skin is wounded and the tissue breaks. Eventually collagen builds back up and the skin is repaired, leaving you with a scar. Those scars remain visible for others to see and maybe they might be curious as to how you got the scar.

Then there's the scars that aren't visible for others to see and ask you about. The scars that don't wound the skin but the scars that wound your heart. In my opinion these are the scars that take longer to heal and sometimes the most painful. We carry these wounds into our deepest thoughts and into our deepest feelings. Some of us might even allow the open wound to influence our decisions. A lot of us do not even know how to begin the healing process and just the thought of having to touch it is too painful. Instead, we just leave it alone...untouched, without any healing or comfort giving treatment to the wound, because the thought of cleaning it is unbearable.

We bury our physical and emotional pain by self-medicating with drugs and alcohol. Thinking that maybe it will fix itself or just go away. We drown ourselves in a bottle of alchol or disappear into a baggie of drugs. It's our escape, our pain reliever. We don't want to think about it and we sure don't want to feel the pain of it again. So we lose ourselves and push ourselves further down the rabbit hole with increasing substance abuse.

I know all too well about the emotional pain and the ways I tried to "heal" myself. I know that there's all types of pain. From physical, mental, verbal, to emotional pain. I tried so hard to forget my emotional pain but to be honest I wasn't doing a very good job at it. In fact, I was making it worse, I was damaging myself even more. I needed a doctor for my hurting heart. Not a heart surgeon to fix me physically, I needed THE Healer. The Great Physician. I needed the One who could see past all the masks I tried to hide behind. The One who knew my heart. The One who knew the medicine I needed to heal my pain. The One who was capable of restoring me. The One who could save me. Wanna know who He is?

His name is Jesus Christ. He saved me from all my past hurts and failures, from the disappointments and let downs. He made me like who I was seeing in the mirror again. He saved me from a lost life of sin. It didn't happen overnight but it happened. I no longer wake up looking for a quick fix to stop the heartache and pain. I wake up now and start my day with reading my Bible and praying. I wake up, sometimes a little cranky at Kevin for waking me up, but I no longer have to stress over where I'm gonna get some drugs today or whether I'll run out. He has renewed my mind by reading my Bible (Romans 12:2) and given me comfort through prayer (Proverbs 18:10). I urge everyone reading this to give Jesus a chance to turn your life around. He will do it for anyone who asks. Try Him and see.