This is “God Uses Life’s Bruises.” Do you ever catch yourself wishing for a wrinkle-free, worry-free life? It seems like, from the outside, those lives exist. But let’s be honest. Have you ever actually met someone with a wrinkle-free, worry-free life? It’s pretty much the law of nature that no one makes it through life without taking some punches. No one makes it to the finish line without making some bad decisions. Sometimes we’re tempted to believe that the dents and dings in our life disqualify us from being used by God. Well, you might be surprised to learn in this message with Jentezen Franklin that God can do some of His best work through our hurts and brokenness. It’s the kind of beautiful, redemptive work only He can do.
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>> Thank you for
joining us today.
It’s our prayer
and our deep desire
that we speak a message
that touches your life today
as you view this program.
And I agree with you that
you’re going to find
God’s will and God’s next
step for your life.
Listen to this message
and let it speak to you today.
♪ ♪
>> 1 Kings 20.
I’ll begin with Verse 35.
“Now a certain man of the sons
of the prophets said
to his neighbor
by the word of the Lord,”
in other words,
God told him say,
“‘Strike me, please.’
And the man refused
to strike him,
and he said to him,
‘Because you have not obeyed
the voice of the Lord, surely,
as soon as you depart from me,
a lion shall kill you.’
And as soon as he left him,”
which I would’ve never left him.
He’s my neighbor.
I might as well move in here.
This is a wild story.
“And as soon as he left him,
a lion found him
and killed him.”
Look at Verse 37.
“And he found another man,”
the prophet, “and said,
‘Strike me, please.’
So the man struck him,”
and notice the wording,
“the man struck him
and inflicted a wound.
Then the prophet departed
and waited for the king
by the road,
and disguised himself with
a bandage over his eyes.”
I’d like to read one more
verse in the last verse
of that chapter, Verse 43,
“So the king of Israel went
to his house sullen,” or heavy,
“and displeased,
and came to Samaria.”
One translation said
heavy under conviction.
I love that.
So, I wanna talk to you
today about something,
and I’ll give you the title
in a few minutes,
but this is one of those wild
stories in the Old Testament
that has not much
of any lead up to it.
It almost seems random, strange,
in the middle of everything,
and God doesn’t explain it.
He leaves it up to people
to come up with a message
out of it.
To me, it’s strange because
you have things you don’t
understand about this text.
Why is a prophet standing there
saying to a man with a sword
’cause it was a serious wound
that he inflicted on him,
required bandages and help,
and he said strike me.
I mean, God told him to go tell
a soldier or somebody with
a sword to strike him.
And the Bible said, you know,
that the man looked at him
like you would look.
What if somebody came up
and said, “Hit me.
Hit me.”
I remember when mom used to whip
me and dad used to whip me.
They would say a little line
every once in a while that
I thought was cruel and unusual
punishment because they
would say something like,
“You asked for it.”
Y’all remember those words?
And I would always
come back quick.
I’m asking you to forgive me.
I’m asking you to not do this.
And they said, “No.
When you didn’t do what
I told you to do,
you asked for this,
so now you’re gonna get it.”
And it’s almost like this —
well, it’s not an almost.
This prophet is standing
there saying, “Strike me.
Hit me.
Thus sayeth the Lord,
hit me with your sword.
Hit me hard.
Cut me.”
And the first guy
doesn’t do it.
I mean, it’s just random.
This whole story is in two
or three verses.
And then when he didn’t do it,
the guy turns around and says
then I just release a lion
to kill you for not obeying
what the Lord told you to do,
and a lion came
and he killed him.
And then while he’s out
there chewing on the guy,
he goes to another man,
and he says, “Strike me,”
and I like this guy.
He’s like, “Where at?
I don’t care.
I’m about to cut you bad.
You have no idea.”
Because I believe he was
thinking I know what happened
to the last guy who
was told to do this,
so you’re about to get hit.
And it’s really amazing.
Teaches you a couple of things.
When you see things in the Bible
and in life there are always
lessons to be learned in things
you don’t understand.
In life you’re gonna have
things that hit that you
will not understand,
and in the Bible there
are things that seem random
that you don’t understand.
The first thing that I want
you to understand about
the story is that the prophet
found another man real quick.
If you, if you don’t have
an appetite for your call
and your place in what God
has told you to do,
if you don’t love what
God has given you,
and you don’t love the family
or the husband or the wife
or the life that God
has given you,
if you don’t take advantage
of the opportunities
and the open doors
and the times when God says I
want you to do something for me,
if you decide not to do it,
please learn from this
story God always has somebody
else He can raise up.
He may have to get
them off of drugs.
He may have to pull them out
from living under a bridge,
but just when you think you’re
all that and just when you think
that you’re so big and powerful
and smart and talented,
God says if you don’t
learn to obey me,
don’t ever forget I’ve got
another man or another woman
always waiting in the wings,
and I’m gonna get my job done.
I’d like to use you,
but I don’t have to use you.
I can use somebody else,
and it’s all dependent upon
will you obey me,
even when you don’t
understand my instructions.
And the man smoked him
and notice the text,
wounded him.
He was visibly wounded.
The prophet was bleeding,
had to have bandages
put on his body,
and then he went from that place
immediately and waited on a spot
on the road because God had
told him the king of Israel,
King Ahab, was coming
in his chariot with
his entourage down that road,
and now that he
had been wounded,
now that he had been hurt,
now that he had been attacked,
now that he had bled
he has something about him
that immediately felt now I’m
ready to go give the message
to the most powerful man
in the nation because
I am qualified.
I mean, he asked for
it and then he knew he had
a message from God,
but he wasn’t qualified to give
it until he had been wounded,
until he had been hurt,
until he had gone through
some suffering and some pain
and some tears and some
bleeding and some hurting.
He had the word,
but he said I’m not qualified.
I’m not prepared,
and I’m not positioned to give
the king because the king would
have kept on riding if he
hadn’t seen the prophet
and the one that had bandages
all over him bleeding.
It caught his attention.
He said, “I’ll listen
to that man.”
So many times we think
it’s our talent that will
bring us before great people,
and certainly it helps.
I’m not against it.
Your education, all of that,
we all need all we can get,
but when it really comes down
to it what I’ve learned
and I’m a communicator,
this is what I do for a living,
the sermons that reach people
the most and touch people
the most are not ones that just
are up here that are Bible,
spitting out facts of the Bible
and all of that’s important,
but it’s really when in times
that I’ve gone through woundings
and hurts and cuts
and attacks myself that I begin
to have this authority.
There’s a weightiness that
comes when somebody’s been
through something.
We want a perfect life.
We want no wounds, no hurts,
beautiful families,
no issues to ever hit our lives,
and when it does come we sulk,
we sour, we fail to understand
that this prophet said, God,
if that’s what it takes,
the wounds and the hurts for me
to help somebody else
and them listen to me because
of what I’ve been through.
God uses, here’s my title,
“God Uses Life’s Bruises.”
God uses life’s wounds.
Your wounds carry a message
in them that men and women
in a hurting world
who are hurting —
I don’t care how hard they are.
I don’t care how
wicked they are.
I don’t care how drunk they are.
I don’t care how high they are.
I don’t care how many
lovers they have.
When they encounter someone
who’s speaking a word from
the Lord and that someone has
been qualified by their own
wounds and their own failures
and their own heart broken
and their own bleeding
in some area of their life.
There’s something about that,
the foolishness of preaching,
and He needs wounded,
hurt, bruised people
to bring that message.
You say, well, I have a valid
excuse to not be a good dad
because I never had one.
Well, you can look
at it like that or you
can say I’ve been wounded,
and God can take my bruises
and my wound and my cut.
Because I didn’t have a mother
doesn’t mean I’m gonna
pass generational curses
to my children to be the same
way and to abandon their family,
but God can actually use what
they mean for my evil,
Joseph said, concerning
his own family.
What they meant for my evil
God can use it for the good,
and I can transfer blessing
and I can be an even more
attentive mother or father
because of what
I’ve been through.
The wounds can be used
to heal and not destroy.
Well, Pastor,
you just don’t understand
how bad I’ve been hurt.
No, you don’t understand
now that you have been hurt,
now that you have been attacked,
now that you have been wounded,
you can be highly effective
in leadership.
The very thing we think
disqualifies us from leadership.
See, we think leaders
have to be perfect.
Their lives have to be perfect.
Somebody that I listen to needs
to have it all together when
in reality sometimes you need
to get around some people who
have been wounded and hurt
and made it through.
Some things,
some things you go through,
some things you go through,
and it’ll never
be the same again.
There’s nothing you can do that
can change it, and it’s hard.
It’s hard.
But God says I can
use that wound.
I can use that bruise.
I can use that attack.
I can use that divorce.
I can use that.
If that disease had not come —
and don’t get me wrong.
God doesn’t send it.
Read the story of Job.
It’s Satan that sends it.
It’s sin that sends it.
It’s the enemy that sends it.
It’s disobedience that sends it.
But God, if He allows the wound
to hurt, the attack, the blood
shed to come to your life,
to your family,
the sword to hit you,
it’s only so He can give you
more ability to communicate
to somebody else that I went
through it, and I made it.
The tragedy,
the loss of a loved one,
the early death
of some relative.
God says I can use that
wound to get my message
across to powerful,
hardened people who nobody else
can reach but the wounded.
Sometimes we think if we’ve
been wounded we can’t leave.
Sometimes we look at God’s
command and say I really can’t
worship today with joy because
I’ve had such a hellish week.
I really can’t lead.
I really can’t help others
because I’ve been wounded
and I’ve been hurt.
I can’t even lead myself.
I’m so messed up.
I can’t even get myself
out of this depression.
How in the world,
how in the world can God use me?
Because that’s how He does.
We’ve all been shot.
Throw away your excuses.
You say I’m the only
one that’s shot?
No, you’re not.
You’re not the only one hurt.
You’re not the only one wounded.
You know children can wound you
and marriage can wound you
and family can wound you,
and job situations can wound you
and business deals that go bad
and devastate you can wound you,
and addictions can wound you.
Here’s a big one:
and friendly fire can wound you;
people that you were so close
and so tight with
and something happened
and now there is this terrible
wound that doesn’t
ever seem to heal.
But what I’m saying to you
is you may never get over it,
but you will get through it
if you will do what God
tells you to do,
and some of you say, well,
I want Him to take it away.
Some scars will never go away.
Some wounds will never go away,
and it may never go away,
but you will get through it,
and you will stand victorious
and you have a choice to make.
You don’t choose what
sword comes at you.
You don’t choose what
wound comes into your life.
Some things just hit,
and you don’t understand
and never will,
but you do choose your response.
In 1 Chronicles 2:16
there is a woman mentioned
by the name of Zeruiah,
and the reason she is mentioned
is because she
is David’s sister.
She is David’s sister,
and her name is Zeruiah,
and the sons of Zeruiah
were Abishai, Joab, and Asahel.
Now, keep that up there
just a moment because
it’s so important for you
to understand because
the Scripture clearly tells
us who this woman was.
Her name was Zeruiah which
means in Hebrew “my wounds.”
My wounds.
Now look at me, everybody.
My wounds.
And the reason that
it’s important is something
happened according to —
you know, they name people
after events sometimes that
happened in their life.
For example, there’s the story
of Benoni who was Rachel’s son,
and she was dying giving birth,
and she said Benoni means
child of my sorrow.
And so she was dying
and as she was dying she said
his name shall be called
Benoni which means sorrow.
And the dad came over
and said, no, no.
As she was dying he said his
name will not be called sorrow.
His name will be called Benjamin
which means son of my right hand
from which is the lineage
of the kings of Israel.
Wow!
In that moment that dad could
have named that child after
the sorrow and the wounds
of the mother,
but he didn’t do that.
You remember when they lost
the Ark of the Covenant,
2 Samuel 6,
and the Bible said
the philistines stole it
and then the father in law,
Eli, the high priest fell
backwards when he heard the news
and broke his neck and that
family went into crisis,
and the Bible says there
was a woman giving birth,
and she named the child Ichabod.
Because of the pain that they
were experiencing in their
generation they decided
to pass it in the name unto
the next to generation,
and the name Ichabod
means the glory has gone.
The glory has departed.
The glory has been taken
out of this family.
Well, here’s the miracle
of 1 Chronicles 2:16.
Zeruiah’s name means my wounds.
They were visible wounds.
Something had happened
in her childhood.
I don’t know if she was burned.
I don’t know if she was injured.
Something had happened
that caused her to have
horrible wounds.
But something amazing happened
through this woman because
her offspring did not receive
a transfer of her issues
into their life.
I can prove this because when
you look at who her three
children were it’s amazing
and it tells you there is Joab.
Joab became the four-star
commander general of the army
of Israel under King David.
The son of my wound became
a four-star general and led
in battle every war that
they fought under the greatest
time that Israel ever had
in the expansion of Israel.
The second son was
called Abishai.
What did he do?
Read in 2 Samuel 23.
You don’t have to go there.
Just read.
2 Samuel 23, the Bible said
David was an old man.
He was the only giant killer
ever recorded to kill a giant
in all of the Bible,
but one day when he got
out on the battlefield
as an old man,
a giant that had six toes
and six fingers,
that’s what your Bible said,
hit him.
He was the brother of Goliath.
Hit him, and he was coming after
him because he had killed his
brother and had him down and was
about to slave the psalmist
of Israel, the King of Israel
David, and across the field
comes the son of the wound.
If she’d transferred wounds
and offense and hurt
and self-pity and depression
and fear and worry,
he would have never —
Nobody had ever seen anybody
kill a giant but David,
but when David was laying
on the ground wounded
and the king was about
to take his head off,
here comes the son of the wound
running across there, Abishai.
He fights the giant,
gets between David
and the giant,
and slew the giant.
And then there’s this third
fella and his name is Asahel,
and you know what his name means
and you know what it says
of him in the Scripture?
It said that he was the fastest
runner in all of Israel.
He could run faster
than anybody.
He was the fastest in his field.
So, here’s a woman
that has wounds.
Her name means my wounds.
She’s carried them all her life,
but instead of letting her wound
produce bitterness and pain
and depression and addiction
and curses and bondage
and low self-esteem
and no belief in themselves
or confidence in themselves.
She raised three champions
in one household
with her wounds.
One became a four-star general,
one became a giant slayer,
and another one became
the fastest in his field.
Don’t tell me you can’t do it.
I know you’ve been wounded
if you’re a single mom
or a single dad,
but you can raise champions
for Jesus Christ if you will
believe that He can use
life’s bruise to bring
about something good.
My question to you,
my question to you is what
will your wounds produce?
Will they produce bitterness?
Will they produce unbelief?
Will they produce addiction?
Will they product rebellion
and excuses and resentment?
This is what
the Apostle Paul said.
He had it all.
He had intellect,
he had education,
he was gifted,
he was an intellectual,
and he said, yet,
I don’t glory in any of that,
but he said I glory
in my infirmities,
my wounds.
He was beaten with rods.
He was stoned.
He was beaten with a cat
of nine tails.
He was tied up.
He was tortured.
He was snake bitten.
He was shipwrecked.
He was stoned and left for dead.
He was scarred up.
He was wounded,
and yet when he said, God,
I wish you would take
all this pain away,
God said I’m not ever
gonna take it away.
You’ll never get over it,
but you will get through it.
As a matter of fact,
my grace is sufficient for you,
and my strength will be made
perfect through your wounds.
I’ll give you grace even
though you’re gonna take hit
after hit after hit.
I really want God to use me,
and I’m not gonna be like
that prophet in the Bible.
I sure ain’t gonna go up
and ask for it, strike me,
God, come on.
I’m not gonna get out
in the next lightning storm
and say strike me and make me
walk funny so I can preach good.
That’s not what I’m saying.
I’m not volunteering
for none of that,
but since we’re all in it.
Oh, excuse me.
Look over at somebody acting
real sanctified right now
and say you’ve got wounds.
You’ve just got your bandages
on, but you’ve got your wounds.
Would you just raise your hand
and say, God, here’s my wounds,
here’s my hurts,
here’s my blood,
here’s my sweat,
here’s my tears,
here’s my turning and tossing,
here’s my worry,
here’s my fear,
here’s my depression,
here’s my wounds,
here’s my hurt,
here’s my bruise.
Would you use it?
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>> I believe today while
you’re viewing this program,
the Holy Spirit has
been speaking to you.
And it’s time for you today
to invite him and his great
presence into your life.
Just repeat this
prayer after me.
Say, “Lord Jesus,
cleanse me, heal me, help me.
I can’t help myself.
I can’t — I can’t get
myself free.
I need a deliverer.
I need a Savior.
I need You, Lord Jesus.
I bow to you.
I give you my life today.
Heal me, help me, lift me,
forgive me, cleanse me.
In Jesus’ name, I ask.
I speak healing
over every household today.
I speak the power of God
into every situation,
every person stressed,
every person who feels like
you’re at the end of your rope,
every person listening to me
that you just feel like you’re
out of options and you don’t
know where to turn.
It’s not by chance
you’re watching this program.
He’s still the answer.
His name is Jesus.
Speak that name.
Speak it and peace comes
wherever that name is invoked.
In Jesus’ name,
I speak health and healing
and comfort and angels
of God around your life,
in Jesus’ name.
And I want to welcome you
to the family of God.
I can’t tell you how excited
we are that you just made
the major decision,
the most important decision
in your life to follow
Jesus Christ and accept Him
as your Lord and Savior.
Fill out our Salvation Form.
You can go there
and we’ll send you, free,
a 21-day devotional to help
you in your new
relationship with Jesus.
You don’t have to walk alone.
We got online church
and online campus,
all of that,
and it’ll feed your soul.
And as many of you know,
God has lead us to work closely
with the nation
and the people of Israel
that border the Gaza Strip
in an area called Eshkol.
They’re constantly under attack.
That’s why this ministry
has been building fortified
buildings for the families
of this region of Israel.
In fact, during a recent
escalation on the border
of Israel, these bomb shelters
were used to keep families,
women, and children safe.
Will you help me today bring
comfort to the people of Israel?
When you give to this ministry,
our pledge to you is we do three
things with the resources.
We unashamedly preach
the Gospel of Jesus Christ
to 200 nations,
just like you’ve heard
in this telecast today.
Secondly, we produce
inspirational resources.
We put out all kinds of material
that encourage people
in their walk with God.
And thirdly, we go above
and beyond to support projects
just like this one,
and the nations of the world
that need it the most.
So today, do your part,
and I know God will bless you.
Thank you, and we’ll see
you next time right here.
>> Israel is under constant
attack from its neighbors
on the Gaza Strip.
When Hamas shoots rockets,
sirens will sound,
giving these families
of Israel only 15 seconds
to find safe shelter.
Because of this, these children
and their families live
in a constant state
of stress and trauma.
But there is hope.
Thanks to your generous support,
Jentezen Franklin Media
Ministries continues to bring
comfort to the nation of Israel.
The construction is almost
completed at the Eshkol Region
Kingdom Playschool Center.
Here children have a safe place
to go to school with
peace of mind,
knowing they are safe
from terror attacks.
To keep these children safe
when they are home,
we have been building
nearby bomb shelters.
Construction has been completed
of two bomb shelters,
and they have already been used
as a safe place to run during
the most recent escalation.
With a third shelter almost
completed, we are answering
the call to build a fourth bomb
shelter in the Eshkol Region.
These buildings do more than
bring safety to the community.
They will be used for trauma
therapy that children
and families desperately need.
Every time you help us break
ground at a bomb shelter,
you are helping us break
the chains of fear in these
precious people’s lives.
Thank you for your support
of Jentezen Franklin Media
Ministries as we fulfill
Biblical prophecy and bring
comfort to the people of Israel.
Call now or go online to see
how you can bring help
and healing to hurting children
in Israel today.
♪ ♪
♪ ♪
♪ ♪
>> We hope you’ve enjoyed this
teaching by Jentezen Franklin
and thank you for your continued
support of this ministry.
Your prayers and financial
support make these
programs possible.
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