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“But he was pierced for our transgressions; he was crushed for our iniquities;
upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his wounds we are healed.” – Isaiah 53:5

Jesus never got rid of His scars. Remember how He showed His hands to Thomas to give him faith.

And in all of the books about Heaven, Jesus’s scars are always still on His Hands.

They are part of who He is. And Jesus has used His scars time again to help people either obtain faith, or keep it. This world so often believes that scars are a bad thing, but they are not.

They are a good thing, because they help us to help others and they make us who we are 🙂

This life can be hard. Very hard. Very painful at times. Sometimes our suffering comes in physical pain. Sometimes it comes in our emotional pain. Sometimes it just comes.

But there is one thing that we don’t always get taught. Our suffering can be offered up to Jesus. In my case, I have always offered it up to Jesus and Mary for the “conversion of others”. We don’t want anyone to be left behind. And we know that Jesus and Mary do not want that either.

But there is another reason to offer up any pain or suffering. It’s because it makes it so much easier to bear.

Because for now our pain and suffering has a purpose. A good purpose.

Many of us felt that obeying God would come without fear.  That somehow in Trusting & Obeying God, all of the fear in doing so would be eliminated.  But that’s not true.

But I finally realized that Trusting God means taking that step of obedience, no matter how afraid I feel.  So I went anyway. And so can you!

Trust means choosing to be vulnerable and Trusting God will catch us if we fall.  A scary thing!

We can’t afford any delays.  We need to answer God’s Call immediately, no matter how afraid we are.  We need to go anyway!

I am God’s.  He will never let me fall!

“So do not fear, for I am with you; do not be dismayed, for I am your God.
I will strengthen you and help you;     I will uphold you with my righteous right hand.” – Isaiah 41:10

The final step in giving our fears to Jesus is realizing that we are not really afraid that Jesus won’t help us. We know that He will. Our real fear is that Jesus won’t help us the way that we want. But if we think about it, we all know that Jesus will always do what is best for us because He loves us so.

This doesn’t mean that the outcome that we are praying for won’t happen; it just means that whatever the outcome, we can Trust that it is the best one. We need to lean into that knowledge and the fact that Jesus loves us so and stay there.

Because Jesus will help us!

Giving our fears to Jesus seems so simple, but it is really so difficult. We all want to, but we need to know exactly how to.

One way to start is simply asking Jesus to take that fear from us. It seems somewhat simplistic, but is important. And Prayer is the First Step.

The next step is that we need to shift our Focus from our fear to Jesus! How do we do that? By getting busy doing the Lord’s work. We can smile at someone, listen to a person with problems of their own, get groceries for someone in need, drive someone to church, mow someone’s lawn, take out someone’s garbage or clean their car…there are so many acts of kindness that need to be done. So many ways we can “love our neighbor”.

The next step is practice. If we want to shift our Focus from our fears to Jesus, we need to practice. It takes a Holy discipline to make that shift. And if we practice on all of our fears, even the small ones, than we will be ready when the big ones come.

We can’t look up and down at the same time. If we are looking at Jesus, we can’t look at our fears. And if we are busy doing acts of kindness for Christ, we simply don’t have time to entertain them…

So we need to shift our focus today and give our fears to Jesus 🙂

Is it that we can’t forgive, or that we can’t heal? Sometimes we can forgive, but it still hurts. And that hurt can sometimes cause anger. Sometimes we have prayed for that person in everyway we can think of, we have done our very best to think of reasons that we might have compassion for that person. And we have tried to have real empathy for that person. But we just can’t seem to release those feelings of pain and anger.

That’s when we need to ask Jesus to change us. We can’t always make changes on our own, even if we want to. But God can change us. God can heal us.

We just need to ask Him to 🙂

So now we have decided to forgive. What’s next, because we are still stuck with all of those feelings of pain and anger?

We can ask Jesus to put compassion in our hearts for that person. We can ask Jesus to put empathy in our hearts. And they are different. Compassion is sympathy for that person. Empathy is truly walking in their shoes.

No matter the person, we can be sure they are facing their own set of hardships. Everyone does. We need to spend some time dwelling on them, so we can truly feel all that they are going through.

And then there are the seasons. We all go through them. Some seasons are filled with love. Some pain. In some seasons, we are so busy; we are completely insensitive to others. We need to ask Jesus to place us in a Season of Sensitivity and Compassion/Empathy. If we can’t do it ourselves, Jesus can and will.

Sometimes we want to be a better human being than we are, but Jesus can and will help us get there 🙂

Not forgiving just hurts us. It doesn’t hurt the other person. Let’s face it, they may not even care. It’s us that stays awake at night. It’s us that tries desparately to hold back the tears. And it’s us that may snap at someone we love, because the anger we are stuffing down rose up. And it’s us that remain trapped in the hurt and anger. So how can we be free once again?

We need to pray for the person that hurt us. And pray not just for them and their relationship with Jesus, but pray for their needs here here on earth too. Perhaps they are in need of a better job, better health, better circumstances… Perhaps they are shy, in need of friends or better family relationships… We can ask Jesus for all of that.

And if we do, we will also be forced to remember all of the challenges they face, along with any difficult circumstances they may walk in. And slowly, but surely, our empathy and compassion for that person will rise.

And before we know it, if we keep praying for them, our empathy and compassion will rise higher than the hurt.

And one day, we will once again be free!

We talk a lot about forgiveness. Jesus forgave us and we need to forgive others. We know that. And many times, it’s easy and sometimes it’s not.

But sometimes the hurt is deep, and so is the anger. There was once a story told about this kind of hurt. There was once a man who hammered a nail into a piece of wood. And the nail left a hole. That is so much like our hearts. Sometimes, someone hurts us so badly, a deep hole is left in our heart filled with pain. So how do we forgive the person who made that deep hole. Who ripped apart our heart.

The first step is make a decision to forgive that person. Sometimes even making that decision requires prayer.

Recognizing that if we allow our hearts to grow cold. If we allow our hearts to harden so as not to feel the pain. We will also not feel anything else. Not Joy, not peace, now the presence of Christ can help us to make that first step: Deciding to forgive.