Heart Tracks - Wounding Healer

     As a young boy I had my share of cuts and scrapes, many of which required that I run home and get my mother to "treat" them.  I always approached this with a certain amount of dread, because I knew that she kept in the medicine cabinet, her trusty little bottle of iodine.  I knew that before she would cover the wound with a band-aid, she would first clean it with that iodine.  I also knew that this cleaning would sting greatly, seemingly even more than the wound itself.  I never understood why something meant to make it better, could hurt so much.  I'm not sure I've gotten any better at that when seeking to understand His healing ways.  Job 5:18 reads, "He wounds so that He may also heal."  To the flesh, this seems really counterproductive.

Our thought, like my thought as a child is that a band-aid should be more than enough.  So many of us would much rather have band-aids applied to deep wounds in our life, wounds that are caused at root, by sin, than for the Father, through His Holy Spirit, to do the deep cleansing, often scouring, work of healing.

    If one is paying any degree of attention to the day to day news, we know that our culture is decaying and collapsing at an ever quickening rate.  TV and radio personalities, along with special interest group leaders keep calling upon congress, the President, and the courts to legislate something that will make the problem go away.  These are nothing more than band-aids, for they will not cleanse the root problem which again, is that of sin.  Legislation, education, and intellectual enlightenment will not deal with this problem, though throughout history, the world has stubbornly believed that it could.  Everyone knows there's a problem, few, including many in the church, want to identify it as sin, which at root, is a conscious choice, as well as an inherent tendency,  to live against the Lordship and authority of God as He reveals Himself in Christ.  So, we go on making band-aids of one sort or another, covering the wound, but never cleansing and healing it.
    This is not confined to the world however.  The church in many ways has done the same.  The Father said through His prophets that His priests had offered superficial treatments for His people's mortal wounds.  Can we at least allow Him to examine us to the extent we may be doing that today?  Yes, we must offer to all a place of refuge in Him, but it will never be more than an illusional/delusional refuge if the wounds, the sins, that are consuming us and those around us, are not confronted, laid open before Him, and then yielded to the deep cleansing, and yes, scouring work of His healing.  That very hand that wounds, brings pain in the dealing with and healing of the infection of sin, is the same one that brings wholeness and life to that which was doomed to lameness and death.

    The infection, as it affects every aspect of our lives, relationships, homes, and yes, churches, will not be dealt with, cleansed and made new by our insistence on making minor life adjustments to His call to the holiness and wonder of His life.  It comes only by being laid open, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually, by and before Him.  If we will submit to the iodine of His Holy Spirit, the infection will be healed, from the inside out.

Blessings,

Pastor O