Scars // Pastor Tim Roseberry

So we're going to be looking at John chapter 20 this morning, and John chapter 20, understand where we're at in the timeline. This is 11 days after the crucifixion, eight days after the resurrection. And if you can imagine the situation, you're one of the disciples, you're one of the ones that knew Jesus the best, you're trying to wrap your mind around what's going on. I mean, you've heard from people that he was resurrected, but yet you're trying to figure out how you're going to deal with the morning of losing someone like Jesus. The man that has led them for the last three years, a man who has healed them, and they've seen all kinds of miracles. I mean, he's gone. And you're wondering, well, was he really resurrected? How do I even handle the feelings that I'm having? And not only that, but what in the world am I going to do as far as making sure that I'm safe? Because he was crucified for what he believed in, and they believed in him. So they were wondering if they were going to be next. And so the Bible says in verse 19, that Sunday evening, the disciples were meeting behind locked doors because they were afraid of the Jewish leaders. Suddenly, Jesus was standing there among them. Peace be with you, he said. Because since we read that scripture, but we don't put ourselves in the shoes of what was really going on there, picture yourself at a reception. Somebody has died. You've gone to a funeral or a memorial service, and maybe you're in line to get some food, get some fried chicken or something, and all of a sudden, the person that you just celebrated their life for shows up. That's what's going on. That's what's happening in this scripture. Verse 20 says, and he spoke, he showed them the wounds in his hands and his side. They were filled with joy. When they saw the Lord, again, he said, peace be with you as the Father has sent me, so I am sending you. So he's there to talk to him about, hey, carry on my message. Go on and do what I did. That's why I came in the first place. And then we skipped down to verse 24. One of the 12 disciples, Thomas, it named the twin, was not with the others when Jesus came. They told him, we have seen the Lord, but he replied, I won't believe it unless I see the nail wounds in his hands, but my fingers and do them and place my hands into the wounds in his side. Of course, this is doubting Thomas. And I think Thomas kind of got a bad rap here, because the truth is, is if we were in his situation, we would have been doubting too. We would have been saying, oh, come on. You guys are making this up, or I've got to see it for myself. I think we all would have said that. Well, eight days later, the disciples were together again. This time, Thomas was with him. The doors were locked, but suddenly, as before, Jesus was standing among them. Then he said to Thomas, put your fingers here and look at my hands. Put your hand into the wound in my side. Don't be faithless any longer, believe. Jesus wasn't in the room when Thomas doubted him, but he knew where Thomas was. He knew what he was thinking. And then Thomas exclaims, my Lord and my God. Now, in the scripture, this is Jesus's resurrected body. Now, we understand if we studied scripture, if we studied heaven, if we just talked about the rapture before, we kind of understand that we're going to have these resurrected bodies. And we've heard that they're going to be perfect. We've heard that we're going to be without pain. And I mean, we're going to have this at the best we ever looked in our life. I mean, this resurrected body is going to be way better. We have that to look forward to. But Jesus is in his resurrected body yet he still has scars, recognizable. Now, there's no other place in scripture where we see Jesus make use of his scars. God resurrected him. He gave him power over sin and death. He's been given a resurrected body, but God left his scars. He left his scars on his son because the scars are not about triggering Jesus about his past. Instead, they're a testimony specifically for Thomas during the first days after his death. I mean, God uses his scars, but he's using our scars too. Your recovery from whatever hurt you've been through isn't just for you, but it's for others too. There will be promises in your life that will need to see your scars to get through the pain they're experiencing. There are people that God will put in your life that need to see that recovery is possible. Joy again is possible. Smiling again is possible. Jesus authenticated himself with his scars, scars on his hand, his side, his back in his head, and he wasn't ashamed of him. He allowed God to use them for the kingdom purpose. Now, in this text, how do we define what a scar is? Well, scars are placed in our lives where pain has left a permanent mark, memories or emotions. There's no forgiven forget. There's no way we can forget the hurts and the pains that we went through in our life. I mean, they're there. They're in our memories. If we don't deal with these scars in the right way, if we don't think about them correctly, they will compromise us and cause us not to understand the Lord or what he's doing. If you think about it, and maybe you've seen this in yourself or in someone you love, we will always grow to the level of our unhealed scars and then we stop. We'll always grow to the level of our unhealed scars and then we stop. You may learn more and experience more and do more, but you won't grow more. You'll stop growing at that place. Now, this doesn't happen to everybody. I mean, isn't it interesting how some people will grow through their scars and they become better for it where other people are defined by their scars? Have you ever seen that maybe and somebody you know and you look at their life and you look like maybe what they've been through recently and you look, you're just amazed. You think to yourself, how in the world are they doing so good? It looks like they haven't gone, they haven't gone, even gone through anything and then you see other people that go through stuff and they never get over it. Well, the truth is it's all about our emotions. How we handle and move through these times in our life is 100 percent emotional and we know that our emotions will limit us and emotions are good, emotions can be great. I mean, we can have all kinds of great emotions, but then we can have all kinds of bad emotions and those bad emotions will limit us. Now, if we're aren't careful, our emotions will control us to a point where it just gets out of control. It'll make us think and say and do stupid things, right? I mean, you think about it. If it were for screwy emotions and people's lives, we would have nothing to, we would have nothing to watch on Facebook Reels or TikTok. I mean, all these people that do stupid things and say stupid things, it's amazing what unleashed emotions can do in our life. Now, pain makes us emotional. It will. Even the people that look like, oh, yeah, it doesn't hurt, it doesn't hurt, no, no, no, it hurts. And whether that emotion comes out or it stays within them, pain makes us emotional. Unfortunately, as we go through life, pain is going to be there. The pain is the greatest enemy to growth and it's the greatest opportunity for growth at the same time. When you grow through your pain, you grow greater than you've ever grown before. You mature, you deepen in every way, including your understanding of God. It's like this, and we liken this over to an onion. We talk about this in spiritual warfare all the time, that we are kind of like an onion, that as we go through pain, as we go through different hurts in our life, that it's like peeling away these layers that we have, getting down to what's really, really important, making us better with every layer that is removed. Now, when we look at growth and we look at the pain in our life that makes us grow, what are some super common scars that will cause this pain in our life? Of all the things that I could think of, there is one in particular that we deal with more in spiritual warfare and deliverance and counseling than any other, and that's rejection. Rejection. It's something that we've all faced, and it's something that can be so damaging in our life. Rejection by peers, or a former boyfriend, or girlfriend, or maybe an authority figure, and these rejections, if not dealt with, can cause all kinds of things to happen in our life. First of all, we'll stop trusting. We'll get to a point in our life where we won't trust anymore and we'll build up all these walls around us and we'll just decide you know what, I'm going to reject you before you can reject me. So, we don't let anybody close in our life, and we used to have this moldable soft heart, and now it's hard as a rock, and nobody can reach us, and we never let anybody in. We were never vulnerable. with anybody. It may cause you to be struggling with patience. It may cause you to get angry easily. It may make you want to control things. It can affect your self-esteem. It can bring about depression in your life. And we've all experienced something like this. But if we handle this, right, these hurts can turn to beautiful scars because they're your scars. They're your battle scars of life. That you don't want to get rid of. You earned them. You grew through them. You are better because of them. And you can use them for the Lord in the future. So another source for scars, this is one. Rejection is a source for scars. Another one is failure. We're all going to go through failure in our life. Marital failure, moral failure, ministry, financial, business, school, sports, failures of part of life. Nobody goes through life without failing. But how we handle that, or that will decide how deep the scar goes. Abuse, of course. Abuse is very scarring. Sexual, physical, mental, emotional, spiritual. There's all kinds of abuse out there. And many of us have been abused in some way. Most of us have been abused in some way. Many worse than others. But abuse can cause scars. Betrayal. Betrayal can cause scars. And it can kind of go along with rejection. Betrayal through infidelity. Maybe you have a business and somebody embezzled money from you. False accusations. Betrayals is something that can cut deep. And then tragedy. Now, tragedy is hard. And tragedy is something most of the time we don't cause. It just happens in our life. And the wake of that tragedy can cause through loss of loved ones, personal injury, maybe some kind of bankruptcy or being fired at this tragedy. It can wound you deeply. And it can seem like it can take months or even years to get over. But there's always a spirit in our scars. All scars have a spiritual element to them. Let me try to explain this. The problem with pain isn't the pain. The problem with pain is that the devil speaks into it. The devil will speak a message to us when we're going through pain to keep us there. He doesn't want us to get victory over it. He doesn't want us to see. It doesn't want to see any success come from it. He wants to keep you in the pain, looking at that pain. He loves to do that. He wants to hurt you and continue to hurt you. And so he'll speak things to you in that pain. It sounds like in your head that somebody's verbally talking to you, but you will think things like there's something wrong with you. You'll never succeed. You'll never measure up. You'll always be disappointed. No one will ever love you. God doesn't love you. God's mad at you. You aren't special. You're on your own. You're different. Don't trust anyone again. You're not worth it. That's what the enemy loves to tell you. He wants to sell you on that lie. And he can hit you in the most vulnerable spot in your life where you're hurting the most. And that's what he speaks to. The enemy wants us to be defined by our scars. Jesus wants us to be defined by his scars. I don't know if you've ever watched this show before. It's called "Berry to Live Horting." Have you ever seen that show before? So it is a reality documentary type series. I think it's on A&E. And it talks about, or it goes to people's homes that are hoarders. And I'm not just talking about people that collect too much stuff. I'm talking about people that have allowed this to go on for such a long time in their home that from the floor to the ceiling is just things that are stacked. And they have to basically move through little corridors and all of the stuff just to get around. And so what the show does is they bring in counselors and they bring in moving specialists and organizational specialists. And they help this person to dig through all this stuff because it's gotten to a point in most of the shows that the city or the county that they're living in is going to make their living quarters condemned if they don't do something. And so the counselors dealing with emotional issues and the organizers trying to help them to know what they should keep and what they should throw away and what they should sell. And they end up going through and just cleaning the home up. And it is an amazing transformation that takes place not only in these people's lives emotionally, but also just where they live. The one thing when you watch this show that every one of them have in common is a deep hurt, a scar that was ever dealt with. A devastating thing in their life that made them say, you know what, I will never hurt that way again. And it causes them to go, I'm going to control my environment to the point where I will never will never lose anything again. And so the enemy speaks to that in their mind so much that they'll never throw anything away because they think I might need that someday. That's how the enemy works. The hurt keeps hurting them. Some of you are carrying a hurt that might be decades old. And it's still hurting you today. You think about it. It may mold the decisions that you make. You've carried it for years to the point where it's a weight now. It's an anchor that just is drug behind you. The issue isn't the event. It's the message that lives in the scar. And anytime someone comes close to that scar or something happens around that scar in your life, you hit a wall. Your growth stops. Your marriage can't grow beyond your scars. Your business can't grow beyond your scars. Your relationships can't grow beyond your scars. It paralyzes you. But when God redeems pain, it's powerful. It's powerful. Rebecca and I have told this story many times through the years. If you've been through Renewal and Rescue 1.0, you've heard it. But about five, six years into our marriage, we had to turn it basically across roads, a turning point. One of those major events happened in our relationship where it really caused most relationships to just break up. And we had a choice in that moment. We could say, "Okay, we're done. We just need to start over with somebody else." Or we could double down and say, "No. We're not going to let the enemy win here. We're going to figure out what's wrong in our relationship. We're going to take responsibility both of us and what we've done wrong. And we're going to try to get better." So we read books and we listened to great teachers and we went to seminars and we got counseling. And you know what? It was amazing what God put in our labs to help us. And it worked. The information was given to us. God's healing and blessing was in our life. And we worked what we learned to the point where we were like, we got to tell everybody about this. This stuff really works. It changed our life. It transformed our life. And so we said, "You know what? We want to take all this information. We want to put it together and we want to share it with others." So since then, and that was 20, 30 years ago, since then we've written three curricula. And we've taught seminars and thousands of people have gone through those seminars and you know what? God gets glory for all of it. And now we've been married for 35 years, 35 years. And our marriage is better now. We're more in love than we've ever been after 35 years. But God redeemed that, right? God redeemed that. God has the power to redeem your pain miraculously. So what are the steps that we can take in emotional healing? Because most of us need to do some emotional healing and some of us need to do a lot. Well, the first is we got to make Jesus the Lord of our pain. Make Jesus the Lord of your pain. Many times we are scarred, many times where we are scarred, we're the most unteachable, the most affinable, and the most on the poor side of emotional. So we have this hurt. We have this pain. We have this scar. We haven't really wanted to deal with it. Somebody comes around and tries to help and we are just like no way. That part of my life is off limits. Don't talk to me about it. No, no, no, we're not going there, right? But when Jesus touches pain, it doesn't get worse. It goes away. But he can't touch it until he's lured over it. He can't heal it until we're vulnerable and transparent with God about it. One of the biggest enemies that we have in our life is our lack of vulnerability. And whether it's our ego or we've you know pride or we were taught growing up that we're supposed to handle our own problems and we weren't supposed to burden anybody else with them. Whatever it is, it's the enemies lie to keep us locked up. It's the enemies lie to keep our heart hardened to where we can never grow, we can never get better, we can never heal. And guys, here's the thing, man, when you want to get the most out of counseling, you want to get the most out of deliverance, be transparent, be vulnerable. It's against maybe what we felt our whole life, but it is so powerful. Sometimes we just need to cry out to God. We just need to ball our eyes out to Him. When was the last time that you got alone in your home? You shut all the doors. You got to rid of all the distractions and you just cried. You just wept. It's so healing when we allow ourselves to be vulnerable with Him. And God loves that vulnerability because it causes him to be out on our behalf. He sees it. Where is kids? If you see your kids and they're on the ground and they're balling, what do you do? Oh, okay. Just deal with it. I'll be I'll be around later. No, it makes us run to them. It makes us want to fix it. It makes us want to get them healing and get them better. God is the same way. When we show our vulnerability to Him, it's showing God I need you. You're the only one that fix this. I'm a mess. I'm tired of being a mess. I'm tired of hanging on to all of this hurt and this pain. Take it from me. And you know what he'll do? He'll take it from you. God wants to be your healer. God wants to take away the pain. God wants to take that scar and turn it into something great in our life. It's okay to open up to Him. It's okay to share your pain, your frustrations and your failures. He's got big shoulders. He can handle it. And he wants to handle it. He wants to be a part of your life in the most intimate ways. Secondly, make God's Word the supreme truth over your scars. Second Corinthians 3 through 5 says, "We are human, but we don't wage war with human plans and methods. We use God's mighty weapons, not mere worldly weapons, to knock down the devil's strongholds." With these weapons, we break down every proud argument that keeps people from knowing God. Pride keeps us from knowing God. With these weapons, we conquer their rebellious ideas and we teach them to obey Christ. A stronghold is a wrong thought or lie that is entrenched in a scar and the devil hides behind it. He loves to do that. He wants us to believe the lie. So what do we do? We expose the lie to the truth. And the best way to expose the lie to the truth is to use the truth, which is the Word of God. It's amazing. It's amazing what can happen in our life. If we'll just read the Bible every day, if we'll just make it a point to instead of looking for help outside somewhere, we just go, "God, what do we do in this situation?" And I feel like, you know, I don't know the truth in this situation. And God is saying, "It's right there." I had to give that to you. It's in the manual. It's right, you've got to turn to it. It's right there. The Word of God is a gift. The enemy wants to fight the truth with the lie. And he loves to attack our mind. And never probably more than ever. I've prayed this over the last year because you know what? I can't trust my own thoughts. I can't trust my own thinking. But I can trust God. And so I'll get up in the morning and I'm like, "God, I pray you'd bind up any evil spirits who would try to hijack my thoughts that would try to control my mind." And I pray Jesus that you would bind my mind to yours because Jesus gets us. He was here. He lived on this planet and he did it very successfully. He never sinned. So that's the guy I want to bind my mind to. And so I have to do it every day. I have to do it every day. If I don't do it every day, then sure enough, the enemy will come in and he'll take a thought that I have in my mind and he'll run with it. And I'm an hour two down the road and I'm still mulling over thoughts that I shouldn't be having in the first place. I just God, just please. You got to take my thoughts. I trust you, Jesus, with my thoughts. I don't trust myself. So make God's Word the supreme truth over your scars. Number three, I mean, we've ministered to this last week. Forgive anyone who has hurt you, hurt or scarred you. So we talked about that. It's so important that we're forgiven others. But then we also forgive ourselves. Because some of our scars are self-inflicted. We have a scar because we did something stupid. We made a dumb decision. We went down a path and we shouldn't have gone. And so ever since then, the enemy has been speaking to us, well, you were dumb. That was stupid. You shouldn't have done that. You should feel guilty about that. You should feel shameful about that. And so instead of getting over it, we just feel guilty and shameful over it because we never forgive ourselves for it. Just forgive yourself. Give yourself a break. Our quickest way to healing is through forgiveness of others and forgiveness of ourselves. Number four, ask for help. Ask for help. God never meant for us to be dropped off on this planet and do life alone. And we can't, we can't successfully. It's so beautiful the way the Holy Spirit will minister to us. But it's I think even more beautiful how the Holy Spirit will use somebody else to minister to us. God has people around you that will help you. If you'll just tell them, I'm struggling, I'm hurting. Pray with me. Help me. I don't know what to do. I don't know about the situation. Be vulnerable and open up. Celebrate recovery. Our care nights are awesome here, right? Dealing with her, it's habits and hangups. We have a divorce care group. If you've gone through a bad breakup, bad relationship, we have a grief share for those of you that have lost somebody close to you and you just, you just can't work through it. You just can't get over it. Guys, those are beautiful assets in our church. Use them. Use care nights on Monday night. Go through deliverance. We have 140 people right now going through our spiritual warfare class. I hope every one of them follows through on deliverance. Because I mean, they're doing all the work. You better get the fruits from it. Deliverance will change our lives if we'll just do it. But it's once again, we've got to be vulnerable. We've got to be transparent. We've got to rely on somebody else to help us. Counseling. Guys, get counseling. Sometimes that's what we need to do. We just need to find a good counselor and we just need a lot of help us. That's fine. That's good. It's normal. Don't let anybody think they make you think that that's weird or bad or that you're broken in some way if you ask for help. Just ask for help. And then finally, look for ways for God to use your scars for him. Don't let the victories that God has given you in your life go to waste. There is someone out there that may be only you can reach that needs to see your scars, that needs to see, that you made it. And with God's help, you can make it too. A couple of weeks ago, Amanda Peterson did a video testimony, which was just awesome about her losing her daughter. And the thing about Amanda is that this didn't happen that long ago. And she doesn't have it all figured out yet. She's working. She's working on it. She's she's doing her best. But she said in the moment when we were getting ready to do that that message, she was like I want to show them. I may not be able to give people the answers, but I can at least show them, hey, I'm going through it. God's got me. He's faithful. I know good is going to come out of this somehow. When God wants to use you and he wants to use your scars, he doesn't expect you to know all the answers. He just wants you to be available. Monday nights, we have greasher, but we need to lead her right now. Maybe you're that leader. Maybe you're the person that has just gone through something or maybe went through something years ago where you lost somebody that you loved and you had to go through all the stages of mourning and you want to help. You want to help somebody else. That's a that's a great place to start. Don't let the devil speak into that wound in your life and keep you a slave to it. Turn it on him. Oh yeah, devil. You thought you had me. You thought you could hurt me bad enough to ride one equipped. No, no, no, I'm just going to take that hurt that you put in my life and I'm going to use it against you. I'm going to take that hurt and I'm going to help somebody else that's going through the same thing because when you're going through something, sometimes the way the enemy makes you feel is that you're the only one going through it. You're on an island all by yourself. You got no help around you. Nobody will understand. So I guess you just better do this one alone. In those situations it's amazing when you hear somebody that says, "I know what you're talking about. Same thing happened to me." And you're like, "What? Somebody else feels about feel? Man, it's just so much ministry just in that." So as we stand, I'm going to ask our prayer counselors to come down. Because maybe this morning you need some extra prayer about a scar that you have and the enemy has been attacking your mind and he has just been dumping debris into that wound and making it faster and making it to a point where it won't heal and you just need somebody to pray for you. Allow yourself to be vulnerable. Allow yourself to be open to that. Or maybe you just need somebody to pray for your mind, but the devil would just get out of your head. Somebody that will do warfare while you're paskiss, here's the thing, when you come down to pray for these guys, they'll pray for you the whole week, they don't just pray for you today. They'll pray for you as long as you want them to pray for you. Maybe you've been carrying whatever that way is around for so long. And hurt that pain and you're ready to drop it. You're ready to stop allowing it to define who you are. Right? God doesn't want that. He wants you having abundant life. He doesn't want you sad and sorrowful and guilt, feel guilt and shame or whatever it is that the enemy is making you feel. You want you to be free from that. Let's drop the weight this morning. Or maybe God's calling you to do something. Maybe right now you in your mind you're going, that's why I went through that. Sorry, Lord, that I haven't done it sooner, but I promise you I'm going to serve you with this. I'm not going to let the enemy get the victory, I'm not going to allow this hurt to keep hurting me. I'm going to allow it to help somebody else. So Lord, we love you and we praise you and we thank you because you've rescued every one of us so many times we can't even count. We're here today breathing air because of you. Thank you for that. And Lord, we just want to thank you for our scars, for the hurts that you brought us through. In fact, right now I just want you to do that. I just want you to thank the Lord for bringing you through your hurts. It's hard thing to do, Lord, to thank you for the pain I've been through, but you brought me through it. I'm not as healthy right now as I want to be, but you're going to help me get over this. And I pray Holy Spirit right now, miraculously, that you would take the weight of that pain off of every shoulder in this room, take the weight off, help us to forgive who we need to forgive, help us to ask for help if we need it. And Lord, show us how we can serve you. We love you, God. Thank you for how awesome you are, Jesus name. Now we're going to slip out of here in a second, but don't leave if you need prayer. We've got plenty of counselors down here that would love to pray with you. God bless you. Thank you for being here. God brought you here this morning for a reason. He's talking to you. Let whatever he's saying sink in, be blessed, be victorious, and let him use you for his good. God bless you. See you next week.