BP 135
Have you ever been cut open with the edge of a sharp knife? I hope not.
Unless . . .
Unless a surgeon used the sharp edge of a scalpel to cut you open. For a healing purpose. I have discussed knives in a previous post but want to develop the concept a bit further today.
The difficult truth about scalpels and other blades like hunting knives is that they all cause pain. None of us enjoy pain. None of us would choose pain—physical, psychological, spiritual, relational. But pain is a part of the world we live in.
People around us may cut us with knives of criticism, shame, anger, rejection, and abandonment. Others may injure us physically with their hands, weapons, or their automobiles. Still others may harm us spiritually by being distorted figures of God that lead us to dislike and fear our heavenly Father or even to alienate ourselves from our loving Savior.
All these “knives” cause us suffering and make us feel unsafe and untrusting of the world and those around us. These sharp blades cut us deeply. They harm us.
Fortunately, hunting knives are not the only sharp instruments in the world. As mentioned above, there are also scalpels. Scalpels are tools of healing wielded by trained, professional surgeons. Scalpels are as sharp or maybe even sharper than most hunting knives. They can cut deeply. They may even cause pain as intense as a hunting knife. However, their goal is not to harm but to heal; not to disembowel and end life but to extend and improve life.
Always remember that harm is dangerous and to be avoided but that there is some hurt, while causing great suffering, that is not meant to destroy you but to heal you. In fact, hurt and pain might be the most loving agent you will ever experience. Plan on the truth that your loving heavenly Father will use a scalpel in your life when absolutely necessary. To heal. To grow. To bring you joy. To give you great compassion for others. To see with eyes beyond this world. To prepare you for eternity and your true home.
Pain, like nothing else, can strip away our counterfeit pleasures and cause us to fix our eyes on Him and Him alone. Remember what Paul said in 2 Corinthians 1:8ff: “For we do not want you to be unaware, brothers, of the affliction [the scalpel] we experienced in Asia. For we were so utterly burdened beyond our strength that we despaired of life itself. Indeed, we felt that we had received the sentence of death. But that was to make us rely not on ourselves but on God who raises the dead.”
Pain and suffering from surgeries kindly applied by God’s scalpel to His children are premeditated for our eternal good. God’s scalpel always focuses on a heart surgery. If a heart surgery would save your physical life, would you choose it even if it was painful and frightening? Is it not the same with spiritual heart surgery?
God’s scalpel always has as its goal making us more like Him, developing His character within us as evidenced by the fruits of the Spirit. And those fruits are amazing to have within us: “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control” (Galatians 5:22ff).
Alan Redpath commented well concerning the divine scalpel: There is nothing—no circumstance, no trouble, no testing [no scalpel]—that can ever touch me until, first of all, it has gone past God and past Christ, right through to me. If it has come that far, it has come with a great purpose, which I may not understand at the moment. But as I refuse to become panicky [or bitter], as I lift up my eyes to Him and accept it as coming from the throne of God for some great purpose of blessing [surgery, growth] to my own heart, no sorrow will ever disturb me, no trial will ever disarm me, no circumstance will cause me to fret, for I shall rest in the joy of what my Lord is. That is the rest of victory.
We are born fallen and broken: “And you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience— among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind” (Ephesians 2:1ff).
Even after we have been justified and made into new creations, we still fight the battle Paul described in Romans 7 between the flesh and the spirit. God will therefore continue to transform us into His image for our joy and our ability to love others and even to receive love.
To accomplish this amazing transformation, He will speak to us through His word, maybe even through mental pain like OCD, through the gentle voice of the Holy Spirit, possibly even at times through physical pain. His heart’s desire is always to grow us. He doesn’t want us to settle for less than the greatest good.
But the pain that God allows/brings into our lives is never meant to be an end in itself or to punish us. The divine scalpel is always wielded to heal us, to make us aware of Satan’s accusations and lies in our lives, to grow us so we will forgive and not be bitter and be soft instead of hard, to release idols and other counterfeit pleasures, to lead us not to depend on ourselves in self-reliance but on Him so that we can let go of all our fears and trust God with our present and our future.
God’s scalpel, as I know from my own life, can even be used to prepare us to meet and walk with others we will later rendezvous with in their valley of darkness to be their comfort and voice of truth. Jesus allows us to experience pain so that we can weep with others, so that we can comfort them with the comfort with which we have been comforted in our darkness and torture.
I have never liked suffering. I hated the valley of anxiety I walked through for a decade beginning at age 23. But I now know without doubt that I would not be who I am today had I not experienced God’s scalpel. Honestly, I would rather have Him excise the tumors of fallenness in my heart (ugh, it sucks to be born in sin) than allow me to drift through life with a disease-riddled soul.
Some of you will ask if God is responsible for cancer, heart disease, mental illness, child abuse. I must admit that I definitely don’t have the full answer to this question. What I can say is that God does not tempt us, and He is not responsible for any evil. (Grow in discernment to know the night and day differences between Satan’s hunting knife and the divine scalpel.)
Maybe we have a partial answer in 2 Corinthians 12:7ff: “So to keep me from becoming conceited because of the surpassing greatness of the revelations, a thorn was given me in the flesh, a messenger of Satan to harass me, to keep me from becoming conceited. Three times I pleaded with the Lord about this, that it should leave me. But he said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.’ Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me. For the sake of Christ, then, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities. For when I am weak, then I am strong.”
It appears from this passage that God does allow Satan to harass us at times not to torture us but, in this case, so that we might know our weakness and depend more fully on God’s power. I believe this dependence leads us to trust Jesus more fully which produces in us peace, joy, love, and trust. What could be greater than that?
God is always more interested in what He can do in us than what He can do for us.
What is the application of this post about God’s scalpel? I will leave you with one thought: God is the kindest being in the universe. Think about that. If He does surgery on our bodies and hearts by allowing pain or causing it, His motives are always loving and kind. Anything other than the use of that scalpel would be unloving and unkind. Think also about that.
Do you remember the old saying? There is the pain of staying the same and the pain of growth. Which pain would you rather choose? God, as the kindest being, is committed to your growth even though it will be painful.
So, know that God’s loving discipline (Hebrews 12) is never meant to harm you but to kindly make you more like Him so that you might better live out the two great commandments: “And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ The second is this: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these” (Mark 12:30).
Always in community with others who are older and wiser and have experienced years of God’s scalpel healing, learn to trust the divine Surgeon. It may (will) take decades to develop that kind of trust. Know that any pain that comes your way as a son or daughter of the King, God will weave into a tapestry of strength and joy in your heart. For eternity.
He always has a purpose for pain. He will never waste it. Every time it will increase our joy as we surrender to Him and say, “May your will be done, not mine, for you always know what is best for me.” But it will require a long journey of faith to trust Him at that level. It is always easy to trust God when all is well. The darkness is scary and a difficult place to trust His loving Presence.
But never forget–what is true in the light is true in the dark.
“It is for discipline that you have to endure. God is treating you as sons. For what son is there whom his father does not discipline? If you are left without discipline, in which all have participated, then you are illegitimate children and not sons. Besides this, we have had earthly fathers who disciplined us and we respected them. Shall we not much more be subject to the Father of spirits and live? For they disciplined us for a short time as it seemed best to them, but he disciplines us for our good, that we may share his holiness. For the moment all discipline seems painful rather than pleasant, but later it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it” Hebrews 12:8-11).
“For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, declares the LORD. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts” (Isaiah 55:8ff).
“For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future” (Jeremiah 29:11 NIV).