Father, I love when You give me inspiration. I love when Your Word inspires me. I love when life inspires me. I am so blessed by You! May I always use the gifts You’ve given me to bring You glory!
Mark 5:1-20 (<<click to read the passage)
What do we look like spiritually? If we are forgiven, we are clean but we all have scars, I would think. It would be very unusual for us to get through our physical life without a few scars. I have my fair share – nothing big or in any way dramatic but I have them. So why wouldn’t I have scars spiritually?
Many scars are from poor choices. On my right index finger, I have a scar that is roughly a half inch by a quarter inch in size. Shortly after we moved into our home, in attempting to cut a plastic bucket in half I shaved a dime-sized part of my finger off. It needed stitches. I have a scar. And it was because of a poor choice.
In today’s passage, Jesus came upon a man possessed by an evil – or unclean – spirit. “…and the man lived in the tombs, and no one could bind him anymore, not even with chains.” v4 Every time they tried to bind them, he just broke the chains and shackles.
“Night and day he was constantly screaming and shrieking among the tombs and on the mountains, and cutting himself with [sharp] stones.” v5
Can you imagine his scars? How long had this been going on? Over and over again… Jesus rid him of his legion of demons and he returned him to his right mind. He was clean and clothed and sane but what about the scars? I’m sure both physical and spiritual scars remained but he was whole once more.
And just as we have stories to go with our physical scars, we have stories to go with our spiritual ones as well.
For those who have read my blog, you are familiar with my story. In short, I struggled to live a victorious spiritual life – and I have the scars to prove it. But, praise the Lord, He finally got through to me and I started journaling and out of that journaling came More the Useless.
I share my story. I expose my scars so that others may know that we serve a mighty God who loves us and empowers us to, each and every day, serve him faithfully with all of our might.
We all stumble. We all fall. There is not one of us who doesn’t. Let us encourage one another with our scars and the stories that go with them. We can be victorious!
“Little children (believers, dear ones), you are of God and you belong to Him and have [already] overcome them [the agents of the antichrist]; because He who is in you is greater than he (Satan) who is in the world [of sinful mankind].” 1 John 4:4 AMP
(If you would like to read the story about the young lady in my picture, click on this link. https://www.vogue.it/en/photography/photostories/2018/04/05/behind-the-scars-by-sophie-mayanne/
Of all places, it is from a photography campaign in Vogue Magazine entitled Behind the Scars by Sophie Mayanne. This young lady’s story is found on slide 16.)

Mar 13th, 2019, Wed, 10:10 am