Wounded

Isaiah 53

Dear God,

Everyone is broken, only in different spots.  As long as I stay under the flow of Your saving, sanctifying, healing grace in my life, You work restoration and wholeness where I am broken.  The moment I pull myself out from under Your healing flow of grace, I will break myself all over again, even worse than before.  The only hope for my healing is Jesus.  The wounds of my life are too deep for any other healing to provide effective restoration.  Wholeness is elusive apart from the Father’s grace, Jesus Christ’s sacrifice, and the Holy Spirit’s application of grace to the immediacy of my condition.

Thank You, Jesus, for being my Wounded Healer.  Thank You for Your sacrificial death and atonement to provide salvation for all.  Thank You for enduring a cruel beating, Your body becoming an open wound for my sins, and the sins of the whole world.  Thank You for bearing the wounds of my sin in Your body on the cross of Calvary.  Thank You for providing for the healing of my life, broken by sin, rebellion, and the disease of self.  Thank You for atoning for the sins of the whole world, even mine.

When I was rebellious, resistant, recalcitrant, and running from You, You drew me with eyes of love.  You drew me from a cross.  You drew me to bow before You in my brokenness, convicted and confessing, until You assured me by faith that I was Your own.  Thank You.  

Thank You for calling me to die to my self, and for drawing me to my own cross where I could be “crucified with Christ” (Galatians 2:20), and raised through the fulness of Your Holy Spirit.  Thank You for allowing me the privilege to serve the One who has transformed me.

Yet, in Your optimism of grace, You see broken places in my character that You want to correct and restore to wholeness.   Open the broken places of my character, my background, my family history, the scars from my own past sins, the scars of others’ sins against me, my flaws, my blunders, even my torn relationships and my inability to restore them... Open them all to Your healing.  I spread my soul like an open garment.  Examine me. Heal me in places where I cannot reach, see, or heal myself.  I need You to bring wholeness to my life.

You saved me by grace through faith in a moment.  You sanctified me in a moment.  Now, there is ongoing sanctification, restoration, and healing that You want to effect in me, much of which will take a lifetime.  I want to be like Jesus.  Shape me.  Remake me.  Prepare me for heaven.  I love You.  I need You.  I am utterly dependent upon You.  You are my Wounded Healer.

In the Name of the Father, the Son Jesus, and the precious Holy Spirit,
Amen.