Silas
Beloved of All
The ache you carry for your son is one the Lord does not overlook. Jesus himself bore our infirmities and carried our sorrows; the physical struggle with weight and the emotional scars from past hurts are both part of what he took upon himself at the cross. The healing he offers is not confined to one pattern. Sometimes he speaks a word and it is done the same hour; other times he leads a person through a gradual process that stretches over months or years, yet the process itself is no less divine. Even the body’s natural capacity to mend and restore was designed by him, so a safe, steady return to health, pound by pound, is still his healing at work. Do not grow discouraged if it does not happen all at once. Pray with confidence, commit your son to the Lord, and trust that any genuine healing, whether physical or emotional, is a fulfillment of what Isaiah foretold: he himself took our weaknesses.
Deeper still is the healing of those inner wounds. When someone we trusted turns against us, or when years of pain have piled up like a weight that cannot be measured on a scale, the natural pull is to replay the record again and again, preserved in the mind as vividly as any film. Yet there is a truth that alone brings freedom, and it is the same truth that transformed the apostle Paul. All the things he once clung to as gain, every credential, every achievement, every reason for pride, he came to regard as loss for the surpassing worth of knowing Jesus. Decades later he could still say, “I do count them as loss,” not dwelling on the past but actively releasing it in the present. That is the path for anyone who has been deeply wronged. The past has valid power only when it is translated into a present surrender. Holding onto what others did, going over the injury again and again, cements a person in place and makes forward movement impossible. But when, by a daily act of the will, those hurts are laid at the feet of Jesus and counted as loss compared to knowing him, the stranglehold is broken. The waste of the past does not have to define the future.
This is not pretending the pain never happened. It is fixing the eyes on Jesus, the author and finisher of faith, and running the race set before us instead of being tripped up by every weight and the sin that so easily entangles. Those weights are often the grudges we nurse and the betrayals we relive. Lay them aside. Let your son see that what waits ahead in Christ is more excellent than anything stolen from him in the past. The knowledge of Christ is a treasure so great that every loss becomes refuse by comparison, and the more that transaction becomes a present reality, the more the emotional scars will be supplanted by peace. Pray that he learns to count the past as loss, not once, but continually, until the wounds no longer have the loudest voice. God does indeed heal the broken in heart, and that healing may come in the quiet, steady renewal of the mind even before the body fully reflects it. Both kinds of restoration belong to him.
Deeper still is the healing of those inner wounds. When someone we trusted turns against us, or when years of pain have piled up like a weight that cannot be measured on a scale, the natural pull is to replay the record again and again, preserved in the mind as vividly as any film. Yet there is a truth that alone brings freedom, and it is the same truth that transformed the apostle Paul. All the things he once clung to as gain, every credential, every achievement, every reason for pride, he came to regard as loss for the surpassing worth of knowing Jesus. Decades later he could still say, “I do count them as loss,” not dwelling on the past but actively releasing it in the present. That is the path for anyone who has been deeply wronged. The past has valid power only when it is translated into a present surrender. Holding onto what others did, going over the injury again and again, cements a person in place and makes forward movement impossible. But when, by a daily act of the will, those hurts are laid at the feet of Jesus and counted as loss compared to knowing him, the stranglehold is broken. The waste of the past does not have to define the future.
This is not pretending the pain never happened. It is fixing the eyes on Jesus, the author and finisher of faith, and running the race set before us instead of being tripped up by every weight and the sin that so easily entangles. Those weights are often the grudges we nurse and the betrayals we relive. Lay them aside. Let your son see that what waits ahead in Christ is more excellent than anything stolen from him in the past. The knowledge of Christ is a treasure so great that every loss becomes refuse by comparison, and the more that transaction becomes a present reality, the more the emotional scars will be supplanted by peace. Pray that he learns to count the past as loss, not once, but continually, until the wounds no longer have the loudest voice. God does indeed heal the broken in heart, and that healing may come in the quiet, steady renewal of the mind even before the body fully reflects it. Both kinds of restoration belong to him.
