Scarred

We just finished a series with our students called scarred and boy was it awesome.  We challenged the students to begin to unpack the hurt and pain that they have learned, from a young age to suppress and hide because of fear or rejection.  As we shared this series, I used a back pack to illustrate how we try to pack away the emotional pain we experience thinking that we can deal with it on our own, or that we can ignore it and it will go away!  I wish that was the truth!  But the reality is, as we pack these things away in our backpack there are two realities we can see:

Reality #1 – I can only fit so much in my backpack.

Reality #2 – The more I try to carry, the heavier the backpack becomes.

One thing I have learned is …  pain happens.  Everyone deals with pain, but not everyone deals with it in healthy ways.  I want to be the person that deals with pain in a healthy way.  The only way to do that is to begin the journey of unpacking the hurts I have experienced … and let me tell ya, I have some hurts. We all do.  Here are 5 things I shared this weekend with the students that I think are helpful steps to take to deal with the pain that many of us try to ignore or hide.

1.    Jesus welcomes your HEALING!
As I read the Bible, I have never seen someone Jesus turned away from or didn’t heal.  Notice that when this man ran to Jesus, Jesus didn’t run in fear or disbelief.  He simply talked to him as he would anyone else and healed him from the pain and torment he was in. You might be able to hide your pain from everybody in this room but you can’t hide your pain from Him. He welcomes it.

As you begin to unpack the emotional scars in your life hand them over to Jesus so He can heal you

2.    Do the opposite of what FEELS SAFE!
Whenever we get serious about dealing with a hurt, for some reason we begin to talk our way out of what needs to be done and settle for something that might be easier or feels safer.  For us to have the healing we need, we need to do the opposite of what feels safe.

Here’s what I mean.  If you have a pain that no-one knows about, the temptation will be, to try do it on my own, because that’s what feels safe.  If you want to experience the healing we are talking about in this series, you need to do the opposite of what feels safe.

3.    Connect with SAFE FRIENDS!
A lot of us have stuff in our life that we’ve kept hidden for a long time. Something that happened to you. Something that you did. You’ve never told anyone. Maybe there’s some things in your life—maybe an eating disorder, maybe it’s pornography, maybe its depression, maybe its just your family is just falling apart and you feel like life is spinning out of control. You’ve dealt with whatever this thing is for so long and you’ve tried and you’ve tried and you’ve tried to get past it. You see that all you’re doing is you’re just sitting there with your defense mechanisms. You’re exploding on people, you’re pouting, you’re denying and you’re never healing. Today, what I’m telling you is if you’re ready to get serious, if I’m ready to get serous, if we want to heal it’s going to start with us inviting some safe friends into our life and saying, I need help.

The question for you today is. Are you willing to do that? Are you willing to invite some people into your life and share with them the deep hurt and the pain that’s going on and saying, “Will you help me?”

To help you with this we have created a safe place where you can have safe friends that will take this journey with you, it called Life Hurts God Heals.  It is a ministry that starts this Wednesday right here from 7:00-8:30.  I want to encourage you to get involved in this.  As you leave today, sign up at the booth, talk to one of the leaders and take the information to your parents.  I know it’s a risk, but remember, we have to do the opposite of what feels safe!

4.    Confess with TOTAL HONESTY!
It is much easier to tell partial truths.  But if you are going to take the steps toward healing take all of them!  Allow yourself to be totally honest so you can begin to deal with the whole problem and not just some of it.

Yes, it will be scary and hard, but once you find those safe friends it’s OK for you to be vulnerable. Here’s the thing. Everyone is broken. You are not alone. If you’re dealing with depression, you’re not alone. If your family is falling apart at the seams, you’re not alone. If you’re dealing with cutting, if you have thoughts of suicide, you are not alone. It’s a lie. You are not alone.

5.    Commit to CHANGE!
Change takes work, it can be scary and at times you may want to give up!  My prayers is that we can do this together.  That we could see and meet God in new ways as we begin to replace the hurt and resentment with peace and forgiveness.

Bottom line, hurt happens!  Let’s learn to deal with that in healthy ways . . . TOGETHER!