It hurts to be rejected by someone important to us. It distresses us to remember cruel things done to us in the past. We feel like weeping over the mess we have made and the people we have hurt, and the things we can’t undo. And it is so painful to lose someone we love. We all know something of this inner pain. We are all hurting in one way or another. What is it that hurts?
It isn’t your body that is hurt by these sorts of things, it is something else. This sort of pain is in a part of you that x-rays can’t find and doctors can’t treat. It is so real that it can affect you physically and emotionally in all sorts of ways, but it is not caused by your body.
The pain is in your soul, in the spiritual part of you. You are able to feel it the way you do because you have a soul. It is spiritual pain you are feeling. And it is your soul that feels it.
Did you know you have a soul? Your soul is just as real as your body. It is the invisible, spiritual part of you. It is the part of you that has the life in it. It is the personal part of you that thinks and chooses and feels happy and sad. It is the one part of you that will never ever die. When your body dies your soul returns to God and goes immediately into heaven or into hell. Physical death is not the end. You definitely have a future.
Sadly many of us have been taught to think of ourselves as smart animals. You perhaps, as a result, ignore your soul and its cries for help. Instead you spend your life trying to dull the pain. Perhaps you turn to money and possessions and the pleasure they give, or perhaps you can’t do that so you turn to your drug of choice or sex or whatever else seems to numb the pain for a moment. But nothing takes away the pain.
What you feel inside shows that you are much more than an animal. It shows you are a human being with a God given soul that has spiritual needs. It also shows that your soul needs healing.
Who could you go to find the kind of spiritual help – healing – you need for your soul?
The only person is the great physician – the soul doctor – God so kindly sent to help us.
He has the only real remedy for our inner pain.
He can help you.
His name is Jesus.
The Evangelical Presbyterian Church
Rev. Chris Connors