I remember when I was a girl, and I would get hurt. I would run to my mother and ask her to make it all better. Such a simple thing. And somehow even though she didn’t magically heal the wound just getting a hug and a Band-Aid somehow made it all seem better. I’m definitely not a little girl anymore but I still get hurt. This actually isn’t easy for me to admit because I try to make myself invulnerable to being hurt by others. I don’t let things offend me or bother me and even when something is done that should hurt me emotionally or otherwise, I do my level best to suppress it or ignore it. The truth is though, that there have been things that have happened that have really hurt me. Really is a loaded word isn’t it. It’s a little small disclaimer word used before another word that in this case means a whole lot. No really, it means there was a whole lot of hurt that I have felt in my life. I’m sure I’m not alone in this.  Although, I’m ashamed to admit it but so much of the hurt is due to my own internal voice criticizing me. But I’ll get to that later.

There are those who will tell you that as a believer you are somehow magically pardoned from all pain and trouble. That if you’re really living by faith, it’ll be simple. Kind of like the yellow brick road when it was through the munchkin land, but people forget that that road kept winding and it went through a lot of troubled areas too. The life of faith is lived on the road of this world. It is ripe with opportunities for trouble, challenges, and yes, pain. Sure, there’s lots of other great things too but we can’t act like everything is rainbows and sunshine when the truth is that our lives are full of challenge and also hurt. So as a believer we don’t get a pass on pain.

There is something that we do get as a believer that others don’t. We have someone to go to who can make it all better. Kind of like when I was a girl and went to my mother, but now I can go to my father God when I encounter pain in this life. Sometimes he’s able to just make it all completely better and there’s healing, absolute restoration. Other times what I receive instead is comfort and a Band-Aid. The wound isn’t completely healed yet, no, that will take time, but I do get comfort and strength from his presence. It’s the comfort of knowing that your pain has been seen and understood. It’s the comfort of knowing that you don’t have to suffer alone. It’s the comfort that he doesn’t push you away and tell you to deal with it on your own but instead he’s willing to sit with you in your hurt, no matter how deep. 

Perhaps you’ve experienced similar things in your life when you’ve encountered hurt, and you’ve gone to God seeking healing and comfort. I want to make a key point here. There were a lot of other times when I was a kid that I didn’t want to tell my mom that I had hurt myself. Perhaps because I had done something stupid and hurt myself. So, I would try to quietly find a way to manage the injury myself, embarrassed and ashamed.

One such time was when I was riding my bike to school for the first time. I wanted to prove myself to my mother and my grandmother, that I was a big girl. On my way to the school, I accidentally fell and hit the license plate on a car. I didn’t think much about it I just tried to get up and keep going because I was embarrassed. When I got inside the school, after locking my bike up and going into my classroom my teacher asked me if I was OK. She hadn’t seen what had happened so how could she know something was wrong? She told me that I had blood on my shoe, as a matter of fact my sock was completely soaked with blood and about half my shoe was bloody as well. When I hit the license plate, I actually gouged out a good bit of my skin on my ankle. Of course, I was sent to the nurse and eventually we had to go to the doctor only to find out that it had been so long since the injury that there was no point in doing stitches. I still carry the scar to this day. Because I was absolutely sure that I had done something wrong in that moment when I was injured and I didn’t want to be seen as not grown up enough, so I hid my injury. I think we do that in our lives. You see some of the hurts we have are out of our control.  They were other people doing things to us that we didn’t deserve and did no actions that would even lead us to the place where those things happened to us. But then there’s other things. You know what I’m talking about.

For example, in my life a relationship with an ex-boyfriend that turned out to be very painful with serious negative consequences, but I had chosen to get into that relationship knowing that I wasn’t pursing a relationship God’s way. So, I guess that meant I deserved the pain? For others it might be a choice to take a substance, not realizing the addiction and the ramifications that would follow them for years. There are many more examples so I will stop with just the two and get to the heart of the matter.  The truth is when we think that our pain is our fault, we think that we deserve the pain. If we deserve the pain, then surely we don’t deserve to have anyone tend to that wound. I want to tell you today that we serve a God that doesn’t just want to tend the wounds that we received through no fault of our own. He also wants to tend to the wounds that we inflict on ourselves. 

The hardest part of this is that we have to go to him and tell him it hurts. We don’t want to tell him it hurts because that would be admitting that maybe we were complicit somehow in the hurting. So, our shame stops us from receiving healing and comfort when we allow it to stop us from going to him. I want to tell you that not only do we serve a God who wants to comfort us from all hurts, but he also is not going to waste his moments of comfort to chide us and blame us. It’s not about I told you so’s with God. If you hear, I told you so. It’s not his voice that’s speaking. 

This brings me to that other source of pain in my life which is my own criticism of myself. You know what I’m talking about.  It’s that part of you that says you deserve this, if you were stronger, you wouldn’t be here.  You made your bed, so you have to lie in it. You have no one to blame but yourself so you should just die in your pain. Yeah, that voice is harsh, it’s our own or the accuser, and it’s a lie.  We can use his truth to combat the lie.  To set the accuser straight.

Let me share with you the truth from the word about how God longs to heal you and about how he longs to comfort you. Proverbs 41 verse 3 says “the Lord sustains them on their sick bed and restores them from their bed of illness.” So whether he sustains or restores, he’s with us and strengthening us even in our sickness and sufferings. It says in another scripture that he’s near to the broken hearted so it’s not just physical wounds that he heals. It’s not only physical pain that he comforts us during. In Psalms 107 it says “then they cried to the Lord in their trouble, and he saved them from their distress. He sent out his word and healed them; he rescued them from the grave. Let them give thanks to the Lord for his unfailing love and his wonderful deeds for mankind.”  You see God desires to heal us and restore us body, soul, and mind. He desires also to sustain us and give us grace even in our hurts.  

The Bible not only says that we need to go to God because he wants to heal us and restore us and sustain us, it also says that we should go to each other. The body of Christ is meant to bear each other’s burdens.  In James 5 it says” Is anyone among you sick? Let them call the elders of the church to pray over them and anoint them with oil in the name of the Lord. And the prayer offered in faith will make the sick person well; the Lord will raise them up.” Now I know what you’re thinking.  You are thinking that complete healing is not always a given. Like I said sometimes when we go to God for a hurt or a wound, we receive a hug and a Band-Aid, but we still walk away with the wound that needs time to heal. We don’t always receive instantaneous healing. Sometimes we don’t receive healing at all in this life. But we do receive comfort and strength to sustain us. We do have grace that is sufficient no matter what the thorn in our side is that is not being removed.

I hope it is easy and clear to see that God wants you and me to come to him with our hurts, struggles, challenges, sicknesses, and our pains, all of them.  He doesn’t care why; he just wants you to come. As he said in Matthew 11” come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble and heart, and you will find rest for your souls.” Maybe it’s time to stop covering up your pain and hurts and bring them honestly to the one who can truly comfort you and bring about ultimate healing. Maybe it’s time to realize that although you think you’re covering it so well and that no one can see your pain is as obvious as the blood that covered my shoe. It was a definite indicator that something was very wrong whether I wanted to admit it or not. So just admit it and get help, he doesn’t want us to just stay in our pain out of shame. Maybe it’s time to stop being “strong” and allow yourself to be human and seek comfort and assistance. If you can’t go over it and you can’t go under it, but you’ve got to go through it, the least you can do is go through it well. So as believers we need to be examples to others around us of how to go to the father with our pains and hurts and seek comfort from him. I plan to.  I will be just like I was when I was just a girl and go to the greatest source of healing and comfort when I hurt myself or find myself injured, so he can make it all better.  I hope you find the courage to do the same.