Who are the bruised reeds?The bruised here are not just those who are brought low by the pain they suffer because of circumstances or people. But the bruised are those who are brought to see their own sins. It is our sins that bruise us most of all. When your conscience is under the guilt of sin, then your soul senses God’s displeasure and anger. This bruises the soul. It bleeds with pain. It is stricken. And we hate that bruising of the soul. We either seek to ignore the pain or make light of it or find some excuse to stay away from it or rationalize it away (Rick Warren says to rationalize is to believe a rational lie!)
But the more we seek to medicate and silence the pain of that bruising, the more we disqualify ourselves from the mercies of God. What we must come to is to be content with nothing when the soul is bruised with sin but with the mercy of God.
He has wounded the soul through the conscience, and he must heal (Hos. 6:1). The Lord who has bruised me deservedly for my sins must bind up my heart again.
The bruising is good for the soul. Why? Because a man truly bruised will judge his sin the greatest evil, and the mercies of God the greatest good. So a man bruised in his soul for his son becomes hungry for God’s mercy. He looks to God who will not break a bruised reed. He trembles at the Word of God (Isa. 66:2).
So don’t minimize the effect of God’s bruising with conviction of sin. Don’t medicate the pain. Run to the God of mercy. Find His mercy. Let the mercies of God bring you soul healing.
But how shall we come to kind of thinking? First, we must conceive the bruising either as a state into which God brings us, or as a responsibility we must take upon ourselves. Both are necessary. We must join with God in bruising ourselves. When he humbles us, let us humble ourselves, and not stand out against him, and be disqualified for His mercy.
Flow with Christ in all his bruising disciplines, knowing that all his dealing towards us is to cause us to return to our own hearts. We need to mourn our own sinfulness. We must lay siege to the hardness of our own hearts, and het the soul to not accept any peace with the sinfulness of the heart.
We must look to Christ, who was bruised for us, look on him whom we have pierced with our sins. But all these directions will not prevail, unless God by his Spirit convinces us deeply, setting our sins before us, and driving us to the place of conviction. Once convicted, we are bruised. Then we will cry out for mercy. Conviction will breed contrition, and this leads to humiliation. Therefore desire God that he would bring a clear and a strong light into all the corners of our souls, and accompany it with a spirit of power to lay our hearts low. All so that we will cry out for mercy and then find His mercy flooding our soul, cleansing us of sin and healing us from the inside out!
