It’s not uncommon for some of the world’s most famous musicians to have instruments such as guitars and violins custom made by people known as luthiers. Antonio Stradivari, born in 1644 in Italy, is perhaps known as the most famous luthier in the world. Antonio crafted what many musicians consider the finest violins and string instruments the world has ever seen. Modern luthiers to this day, still don’t know Antonio’s exact methods and materials. If you had owned one of Antonio’s violins during his lifetime, and it was damaged, you would have taken it to nobody else for repair, because only he would know exactly how to fix it to its original glory and beauty. Very few of Stradivari’s instruments exist to this day. They are so rare and sought after, that they fetch millions of dollars at auction, making them some of the most expensive instruments in the world.
I have heard it said that hurt people hurt people. This statement is something I have come to believe as true, having personally experienced it and walked with hundreds of men through the process of healing.
Every man and woman that walks this earth will be hurt in one way or another, and more than once. We can be hurt and wounded by our parents, spouse, siblings, friends, co-workers, church leaders, and others. We can be hurt physically, emotionally, psychologically. We can experience unmet expectations, disappointments, the loss of a loved ones.
Wounds like these, left unaddressed and unhealed, can cause us to have a distorted view of ourselves, of God, and of others. From this distorted view, we often can come into agreements with lies based on this distorted false-reality. These agreements change the way we otherwise might live our life. From our hurt, we hurt others. And the cycle continues to repeat.
Like Stradivari’s violins, you too have been uniquely created by The Finest artist. God says that He knit you together in your mother’s womb. He knows so you intimately that He has numbered every hair on your head. He crafted you with such precision, love and purpose that He says before you were even born, he set you apart. You are His treasure, and you have priceless value.
When we are hurt and wounded, the only one who knows exactly how to fix us back to our original glory and beauty, is the One who created us. We have to go to Him for healing. When we draw near to Him, He will draw near to us, and by His revelation, by His Word, we can choose to reverse the agreements and the distorted lenses we view everything through, and agree with His Truth. We can try to repair ourselves, we can try looking for aftermarket parts, and these might work for a little while, but we will not be fully restored to our original design and glory.
I don’t fully know why we experience so much pain and hurt in this world, but what I do know that God wants to heal us of it. Jesus said that He came that we may have life, and have it in abundance. In Galatians 5:1 it says that it is for freedom that Christ has set us free. The abundant life we were created for is a life of freedom, and freedom happens when allow him to remove our distorted lens, and heal the hurts in our hearts. We know when something is wrong. We know when we’re not acting the way we were created to. This allows the opportunity for us to stop, and ask God, why am I responding this way? And let Him reveal the truth.
Scripture tells us many stories about just how desperate people were to just see Jesus. So desperate to be healed and restored, they traveled great distances by foot, faced ridicule, risked their lives, they persistently pursued him, from a place of hope and faith.
How desperate are you to be healed?