Showing posts with label wounds. Show all posts
Showing posts with label wounds. Show all posts

Tuesday, June 28, 2022

PASSION AND COMPASSION

Just as the healed, healthy body gets up, stretches, and moves, so does the human personality healed by God long to be involved in loving, creative encounter with other human beings.  Reaching out to heal others is a spontaneous development in the growing wholeness of our spirits.  Just as the yeast kneaded into the dough acts, grows, and manifests itself throughout the changing loaf, so does the radical act of God within us work change in us and through us. This change is that of passion and compassion as we encounter the agony of the torn, fragmented world around us.

Within a few months after consenting to God's deep healing within myself, I began to notice a new, painful awareness of the hurting people around me. On buses, in airports, on the busy sidewalks of the city I began to notice faces lined with pain and weariness. It became painful to open the newspaper and to watch the evening news. As the healing deepened within me, the sensitivity grew. I began to want to do something for the wounds of others. I began to realize that this longing was an inseparable part of growing within the healing of God's love. 

-- Flora Slosson Wuellner in “Prayer, Stress, and Our Inner Wounds”, published by The Upper Room, Nashville, TN.   Used with permission.


#5381

Wednesday, August 28, 2019

THE REFUGE OF GOD

"The LORD is good, a refuge in times of trouble. He cares for those who trust in Him." (Nahum 1:7 NIV)

It is a blessed thing to find refuge in this turbulent world. There seem to be more people against you instead of for you on any given day or situation. And the truth is that many people seem to be looking for the edge to get over on someone or some situation. The world is indeed a dangerous arena to face. We need a place to run and hide and find solace from the storms that engulf our world. Indeed we must discover this little "secret refuge" or we continue to face the waves alone and end up battered and wounded…

Do you want to be a friend or a foe of God? Only a fool would choose the latter. Notice the key in seeking the refuge of God is that we trust Him… If we have some little (or big) area of our life in which we have failed to give it totally to God we find ourselves missing one of the most wonderful blessings of God - refuge in His arms…

Enjoy the refuge God so freely offers and take a respite from this world. But don't forget to tell your friends of this wonderful and blessed place to hide from the troubles of the world - at least for a little while to recharge!

-- Pastor Gary Stone


#4661

Friday, July 22, 2016

HEALING THE WOUND

Forgiving is going to a person either in your fantasies or in reality and saying, "I don't understand. I'll never understand and it wasn't OK and it isn't OK, but I forgive you." Forgiving doesn't make a person a doormat. It isn't the same as tolerance. Forgivers don't have to be fools. Forgiving is healing yourself of something that happened to you that you cannot tolerate but you forgive it as the only way to heal the wound that it left with you.

-- Lewis Smedes in Wrestling with Angels video


#3915

Thursday, October 22, 2015

DISCERNING HEARTS


God can give us discerning hearts to recognize the fear in our anger, the muffled hope in our cynicism, and the wounds we carry as weapons. God can help us see ourselves as He sees us, and love ourselves and others with His gracious love.

-- adapted from Alive Now Magazine, published by The Upper Room, Nashville, TN.   Used with permission.


#3751