Three Faithful Wounds by A.W Tozer
"Faithful are the wounds of a friend," says the Holy Spirit in
Proverbs 27:6. And lest we imagine that the preacher is the one who
does the wounding, I want to read Job
5:17,18: "Behold, happy is the man whom God correcteth: therefore
despise not thou the chastening of the Almighty: for he maketh
sore, and bindeth up: he woundeth,
and his hands make whole."
You see, the one who does the wounding here is not the servant, but
the Master Himself. So with that in our minds, I want to talk to
you about three faithful wounds of a
friend.
In order to get launched into my message let me introduce a little
lady who has been dead for about six hundred years. She once lived
and loved and prayed and hadn't
much light and she hadn't any way to get much light, but the
beautiful thing about her was that with what little Biblical light
she had, she walked with God so wonderfully
close that she became as fragrant as a flower. And long before
Reformation times she was in spirit, an evangelical. She lived and
died and has now been with her Lord
nearly six hundred years but she has left behind her fragrance of
Christ.
England was a better place because this little lady lived. She
wrote only one book, a very tiny book that you could slip into your
side pocket or your purse, but it's so
flavorful, so divine, so heavenly, that is has made a distinct
contribution to the great spiritual literature of the world. The
lady to whom I refer is the one called the Lady
Julian of Norwich.
Before she blossomed out into this radiant, glorious life which
made her famous as a great Christian all over her part of the
world, she prayed a prayer and God answered.
It is prayer with which I am concerned tonight. The essence of her
prayer was this: "Oh God, please give me three wounds; the wound of
contrition and the wound of
compassion and the wound of longing after God." Then she added this
little postscript which I think is one of the most beautiful things
I have ever read: "This I ask without
condition." She wasn't dickering with God. She wanted three things
and they were all for God's glory: "I ask this without condition,
Father; do what I ask and then send
me the bill. Anything it costs me will be all right with me."
All great Christians have been wounded souls. It is strange what a
wound will do to a man. Here's a soldier who goes out to the
battlefield. He is full of jokes and strength
and self- assurance; then one day a piece of shrapnel tears through
him and he falls, and whimpering, beaten, defeated man. Suddenly
his whole world collapses around
him and this man, instead of being the great, strong, broad-chested
fellow that he thought he was, suddenly becomes a whimpering boy,
again. And such have even been
known, I am told, to cry for their mothers when they lie bleeding
and suffering on the field of battle. There is nothing like a wound
to take the self-assurance out of us,
reduce us to childhood again and make us small and helpless in our
own sight.
Many of the Old Testament character were wounded men, stricken of
God and afflicted indeed as their Lord was after them. Take Jacob,
for instance. Twice God afflicted
him; twice he met God and one time it came as a wound, and another
time it came actually as a physical wound and he limped on his
thigh for the rest of his life. And
the man Elijah, was he not more than a theologian? He was a man who
had been stricken; he had been struck with the sword of God and was
no longer simply one of
Adam's race standing up in his own self-assurance; he was a man who
had an encounter with God, who had been confronted by God and had
been defeated and broken
down before. And when Isaiah saw the Lord high and lifted up, you
know what it did to him. Or take Ezekiel, how he went down before
his God and became a little child
again. And there were many others.Let's talk about these three
wounds in their order.
THE FIRST IS THE WOUND OF CONTRITION. Now I've heard for the last
thirty years that repentance is a change of mind, and I believe it,
of course, as far as it goes.
But that is just what's the matter with us. We have reduced
repentance to a change of mind. It is a mental act, indeed, but I
point out that repentance is not likely to do
us much good until it ceases to be a change of mind only and
becomes a wound within our spirit. No man has truly repented until
his sin has wounded him near to death,
until the wound has broken him and defeated him and taken all the
fight and self- assurance out of him and he sees himself as the one
who nailed his Savior on the tree.
I don't know about you, but the only way I can keep a sense of
contrition upon my spirit. Now there's a lot of cheap and easy
getting rid of sin and getting your repentance
disposed of. But the great Christians in and out of the Bible, have
been those who were wounded with a sense of contrition so that they
never quite got over the thought
and the feeling that they had personally crucified Jesus.
Let us beware of vain and over hasty repentance, and particularly
let us beware of no repentance at all. We are sinful race, ladies
and gentlemen, a sinful people, and until
the knowledge has hit hard, until it has wounded us, until it has
got through and past the little department of our theology, it has
done us no good. Repentance is a wound
I pray we may all feel.
THEN THERE IS THE WOUND OF COMPASSION. Now compassion is an emotion
identification, and Christ had that in full perfection. The man who
has this wound of
compassion is a man who suffers along with other people. Jesus
Christ our Lord can never suffer to save us any more. This He did
once for all, when He gave Himself
without spot through the Holy Ghost to the Father on Calvary's
cross. He cannot suffer to save us, but He still must suffer to win
us. He does not call His people to
redemptive suffering. that's impossible; it could not be.
Redemption is a finished work. But He does call His people to feel
along with Him and to feel along with those that
rejoice and those that suffer. He calls His people to be to Him the
kind of an earthly body in which He can weep again and suffer and
love again. For our Lord has tow
bodies. One is the body He took to the tree on Calvary; that was
the body in which He suffered to redeem us. But He has a body on
earth now, composed of those who
have been baptized into it by the Holy Ghost a conversion. In that
body He would now suffer to win men. Paul said that he was glad
that he could suffer for the Colossians
and fill up the measure of the afflictions of Christ in his body
for the church's sake.
Three Faithful Wounds by A.W Tozer