Why does God allow us to be bruised? Isn’t pain to be avoided at all cost? Isn’t it God’s heart to protect us from all kinds of harm? Can’t the Lord keep us from becoming bruised?
Bruising is necessary for us to experience the great mercies of God. The Holy Spirit uses this bruising to level pride, and high thoughts, so that we may understand what is really in the hidden recesses of our soul. We all like sheep love to wander away from God when life is good and become proud and independent and we deceive ourselves into thinking that we can mange on our own on our self-sufficiency until we are bruised. Then we begin to really think, and we come home to ourselves with the prodigal (Luke 15:17). It is a very hard thing to bring a dull and an evasive heart to cry out to God for mercy. Our hearts, like criminals, until they be beaten down, never cry for the mercy of the judge.
We can never out-smart sin. Sin has a way of revisiting our lives again and again. We therefore suffer many sinful relapses. But it is the bruising that the Holy Spirit uses to bring down the high thoughts (2 Cor 10:5) we have of ourselves – that sin is not such a big issue; that we can out-smart sin. So when the Holy Spirit does a work of conviction in our lives together with some affliction, we come under God’s healing and purging power. We are bruised to be healed.
In our Christian journey, we need bruising so that reeds may know themselves to be reeds, and not oaks. Even reeds need bruising, because of pride in our lives, and to let us see that we live each day by His mercy. Peter was bruised when he wept bitterly (Matt. 26:75). This reed, till he met with this bruise, said presumptuously, `Though everyone else forsakes you, I will not' (Matt. 26:33). David was bruised enough to humbly make his confessions in Psalm 32. Hezekiah complains that God had `broken his bones' as a lion (Isa. 38:13). And Paul needed the messenger of Satan to inflict him lest he becomes over-confident in his own abilities (2 Cor. 12:7).
It is a lie that Christians should not suffer because they are in Christ and Jesus has already been punished for us on the Cross. Yes, Jesus was punished on the Cross for our sins and therefore God will never punish us for our sins anymore. But God when God allows you to be bruised He is doing a gracious, good work with you. He is making you more Christ-like. He is changing you from the inside out.
