Bandages to Bondages

I have been finishing up the updated Beth Moore Bible study, Breaking Free.  It occured to me while going through it that we all are walking wounded and how we deal with those wounds affects the rest of our lives.

Our bandages can become our bondages...

if we don't go to God for healing.

The only true way to get healing is through God allowing Him to bandage our wounds. Any other substitute will lead to bondage.  What kind of bondages are out there?  Too numerous to count: addictions, fear, bitterness, eating disorders, the list could go on and on.

But Christ says, "He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim freedom for the captives." Isaiah 61:1

Christ's job is to bind us up...bandage our wounds and yet keep us free at the same time.  You see, God isn't dysfunctional like the rest of us...when we go to Him, He is able to bind us up to save us and to stop the flow of hurt whereas any other person or thing binds us up to enslave us. Save or enslave...it is our choice.

Ironically, Christ's ability to bind us us comes from His own wounds...

"And by his wounds we are healed." Isaiah 53:5

It is with the own shedding of His blood that He is able to halt the flow of ours...the depths of our sorrows..the gush of our hurts.

One of the disturbing concepts in the Bible is that God allows hurt to come into our lives.  Why?  Why would a loving God do such a thing?

"For he wounds, but he also binds up; he injures, but his hands also heal." Job 5:18

These words are worrisome until you look beyond them and find the "why" behind them...

"Blows and wounds cleanse away evil, and beatings purge the inmost being." Proverbs 20:30

It is through adversity that we build character...that we get rid of the junk and garbage in our lives.  We aren't willing to give up those things that bind us (because they become a comfort to us) unless there is an awful good reason to do so.  Sometimes God allows that "awful reason" so that we are willing to lay our bondage aside.

Another concept that God has been teaching me over the last few years (I am a slow learner!) is that our wounds make others walk the other way.  As broken human beings, we aren't always capable of healing or dealing with the wounds of others.  Sometimes our wounds make us angry people...who wants to be around that?

"My friends and companions avoid me because of my wounds; my neighbors stay far away." Psalms 38:11

Do people run for the hills because we are walking wounded?  Have we become "hurt people that hurt people"?  Have our wounds festered enough that we reek and no one can stand to be around us...

That's when it is time to take our bondages and exchange them for Christ's bandages.