Overcoming Injuries

Pastor Robarge’s Sermon
Sunday, October 23, 2011

Grace, mercy and peace be unto you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen.

It was the first game of the NFL season between the San Diego Chargers and the Minnesota Vikings and there was kickoff time. The kicker for the San Diego Chargers kicked it off to the other side, to the Vikings. The Vikings took that ball and returned it for a touchdown. There was a problem with the play. The kicker went down with an injury. His knee was torn. His ACL was shot, out for the season. First possession of the game and he’s gone for the season.

The injury is a part of the game. We know that even when these athletes come out here and they’re so pumped and ready, they’re playing to full speed and injuries are bound to happen. If we look over the course of any NFL team right now or in any course of a professional team, what you’d find on their pages are a list of injuries. No team is free from injuries.

People go to their team to find out, “Who’s injured this week?” They’re trying to figure out how their team is going to play. If you look at the list, you find that some of the injuries are season-ending injuries. Some of injuries are bumps and bruises from week to week. They don’t know if they’ll play or not.

Just as sports is not free from injuries, neither is this game of life. Sometimes, I have a hard time with calling life a game and using that analogy. Then I started to look at Scripture and Scripture often speaks of analogies this way. The apostle Paul likes to use the images that people realize in daily life. He took images from the races, from the Olympic games and he took them into daily life. He said, “Run. Run the race.” Now he wasn’t saying that it was some kind of joke or some kind of game. He was saying, “Take that image of the runner and understand that when this runner runs, he runs with all of his might.” So it is with you.

As we’ve been talking about this whole series of Getting into the Game, we’ve been looking at what does it mean to play, what does it mean to be a winner? We know that our win is already secured in Jesus Christ. What does it mean to still go out there and play?

Just as injuries in sports, we also find there are injuries in life. When we’re out there playing hard, it’s hard to say we’re never going to have an injury. Injuries come in multiple ways. We look at physical injuries. We look at emotional injuries that are caused by broken relationships, marriages that have split up, parents that have hurt you. You see all these kinds of different ways, we look at those different pieces and we understand that, in this world, we’re going to have trouble. Jesus said it Himself, because we’re not free, even though we’re Christians, even though we follow God and we believe and trust in Him, He says we’re still not free from injury.

I’d like to say that as a Christian, we’re going to be okay. I know that we are going to be okay. But I’d like to say we’re going to be free from injury, but it’s simply not the truth. Jesus in John 16:33 says, “In this world, you are going to have trouble.” It’s a definite. But when Jesus says you’re going to have trouble, the thing is what are you going to do with your injuries? Life is not defined by how many injuries you have or the kind of injuries that you suffer. Life is defined on how you’re going to deal with those injuries, because an injury left to itself, an injury ignored is only an injury that continues to get worse.

You’ve seen it. You’ve probably felt it. There would be those times when you say, “So I have this injury, I have this wound, somebody said something and what am I going to do with this? How am I going to move forward in life?” And most of the time, we say, “I just want to ignore it. I’m going to get better. I’m strong.” But it’s like this, the image I like to use is that of baggage. When something happens, when there’s a broken relationship, when somebody says a word that cuts you to the core, that cuts to your heart and you’re injured, what happens to it? Usually our first reaction is to say, “Well, I’m not injured. I’m strong. I can take this.” So what do you do? You take the baggage and you throw it on your back and you take it with you. And then something else comes along and maybe it’s smaller, maybe it’s bigger. Maybe there’s a big relationship that was broken and you say, “I’m strong enough to hold onto this one, too. Let me take the baggage and throw this one on.”

Do you see where I’m going? With all this baggage, with all this injury and we try to ignore it. We try to act like it’s going to go away on its own but instead, it ends up on our back and we end up carrying it along in life. Some people have gone to a certain extent to even say, “There is no baggage. I don’t carry any baggage.” But it’s slowly affecting their personality, their character. Hurt has caused them to be bitter, to be angry because injury, when it occurs, we have to be able to deal with it or else it continues to get worse.

Let me give you an example of a real live thing that was going on with me. Back in high school, I always played soccer my entire life, from the time I was 5 throughout high school into college. There was a moment towards the end of my Junior year when I was playing soccer when I injured my knee. I kicked something wrong. I went to the doctor and the doctor said, “Well, you don’t have a complete tear. It’s not completely gone, so I would encourage you to get surgery on it now so it doesn’t get worse in the future.” So I said, “What does it mean for me to get surgery right now? How long am I going to be out?” As a high school kid, I’m thinking short term right now. There’s only this year and next year. That’s as far as I can see. So he says, “You’re not going to be able to play soccer next year.” I was like, “You’re telling me I’m not going to be able to play soccer in my senior year in high school when we have a shot to win the state championship?” If this surgery is optional, I’m not going to take it.

So I left that day, no surgery, no plans. And I went forward and I played my senior year and I was injury free. We won the state championship. It sounds like a good outcome. It sounds like, “Well, hey, you’ve got that covered.” But I still deal right now with injuries in my knee and I will go along and sometimes I will be limping because there are still these problems with my knee. My wife will just tell me, “I told you that you should have gotten the surgery.”

What happens is this short-term thing. We say, “I don’t have to deal with it now because eventually it will get better.” “I don’t want to deal with it now because look what I’m going to miss out if I do.” Do you see what happens? There are even these small everyday aches and pains, these small injuries that can end up becoming a season-ending injury or even a career-ending injury. Do we want to get to that place or do we want to say, “Today’s the day. I’m going to deal with my injuries.” “Today’s the day that I don’t want to any longer carry this baggage on my back.” Because all of us, I don’t care who you are, you’ve all been injured in some way, shape or form.

All of us have had injuries no matter whether or not we’ve ignored them and thought they would go away or if they’re really hurting us right now today. This morning, what I want to do is to give you some strategy to be able to go forward and say, “This is the way I want to deal with my injury because I don’t want to carry it anymore.” Now I’m not saying this strategy is going to be an easy process, like I go one through five, I say a magic hocus pocus and then boom, my injury is gone. No, that’s not the way it works. What this strategy does do is it’s a place to start. It’s a place for you to say, “I want to be able to start somewhere because I’m tired of carrying these injuries and these wounds for far too long.”

So the first strategy this morning, it should be obvious, but we’re going to say, “Go to the cross.” We go to the cross because there, Jesus Himself suffered injuries. Now He didn’t go and suffer injury just for the sake of suffering injury so that you could say, “Oh, I can be just like you.” No, we can’t suffer as Jesus suffered. We cannot take the sins of the world upon our back, but Jesus Himself, in that image of the cross, He says, “Come to me all who are weary and burdened and I will give you rest.” “Take your baggage and your injuries and I will be the one who binds them up.”

If you listen to that passage from Isaiah once again, in Isaiah 61:1, Isaiah is talking about Jesus here. It’s a prophecy of what Jesus has come to do and he says, “The Spirit of the Sovereign Lord is on me, because the Lord has appointed me to preach good news to the poor. He sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim freedom for the captives and release from darkness for the prisoners.” Jesus Himself is even prophesied to come, to be the one who is going to bind up the wounds so we don’t have to deal with them anymore, so they can be healed.

So if you suffered from those injuries, the first strategy is to go to the cross, to go to the place to say, “Here is where healing can begin at my Savior’s feet.”

Second strategy is to identify and name your injury. I don’t know if you’ve ever watched any football or not and it doesn’t matter if you have. I’ll give you the image anyway. But when I’ve watched football in the past, there are always those moments in the game where somebody gets injured and what happens to the TV camera? What happens to the moment? What do they do? They take the camera and they say, “Did everyone see that? His ankle turned in four different directions. I don’t think it’s supposed to do that. Did you see it? We’ll show it again. Did you see it? We’re going to show it again.” And they show it again and again and again until it’s a commercial break.

The wound is identified. The wound is named. It’s there for everyone to see. Sometimes our wounds in life seem to be magnified in the face of people. People look at it and say, “Well, I know you have a broken relationship in your life. I know, I can see the wounds that you have.” Do you ever feel like that? When you walk into a place, you know people are looking at the wounds instead of who you are?

There are an interesting couple of verses in Scripture. Jesus Himself, in the gospel of Mark, comes across a blind man who has been blinded since birth. There’s an interesting phrase that Jesus says. He says this to the man, “What do you want me to do for you?” “What do you mean, ‘What do you want me to do for you?’ I’m blind. I’d like to see.” This blind man thinks it’s pretty obvious. “Well, of course, I’m blind. You’re a healer. Put the two together. I want to see.”

Then there’s another instance in the gospel of John. There’s a man who it says has been paralyzed for 38 years. Jesus comes across him and He says, “Would you like to get well?” “What do you mean, ‘Would I like to get well?’ I haven’t been walking for 38 years. Of course, I would like to walk again. That’s what I want to do. That’s why I’m here. That’s why I’m begging. That’s why when I see you, I know you’re a healer.”

They seem like pretty obvious questions in the face of our Savior. “What do you want me to do for you?” “Would you like to get well?” But Jesus Himself wants them to identify their wounds. Jesus Himself wants them to be able to see it, to name it, to bring it out so the healing can start.

It’s the same thing with you. No longer should we be able to say, “Well, let’s hide this away. I’ll save this until the next day to deal with,” because the next day never comes. It’s never easy to deal with an injury, no matter what size. But why not start today by naming it, by identifying it, by bringing it to the cross.

The third strategy: We must not let this weariness and this injury separate us from the team. Often times, an injury, what we’ll see is they have to stop playing for a little while to tend to their injuries. But it’s the injured players who kind of stick around on the bench and kind of watch the game and still participate in some way. Those are the ones who you know are the true teammates. “Even though I can’t be on the field with you right now because I’m injured, I’m still here with you. We’re still on the same team. I’m still fighting for you.” We can’t let our injuries separate us from our team.

There was a verse last week that Pastor Burcham was talking about with the lions and the devil that prowls around like a roaring lion trying to separate people. Have you ever watched Animal Planet? Anybody watch Animal Planet? Have you ever seen the ones on the lions? They show sometimes how a lion likes to hunt. Now a lion will maybe run into a group of gazelles, for example. The intention itself in the midst of that group is not to be able to get all of them, but the intention is to be able to find the weak ones, to be able to find those ones to isolate its prey so it can attack one single gazelle. As a group, you can’t get them all. But he’s looking to isolate the one.

That’s what happens in isolation. That’s what happens when sometimes we want to go and lick our wounds alone. I don’t want to let anybody see that I’m hurting. I don’t want to let anybody know that this has affected me, particularly when the wounds and injuries come from our teammates, right within our own church. We sometimes have people who say harsh words to other people. We have battles within our own team and we say, “So the injury is coming within my team. Why would I want to stay on this team?”

That’s exactly what Satan wants you to believe, that you can be alone, that you can be separated, that you can do it all by yourself. Don’t leave the team. Don’t be separated. Don’t be alone because, in isolation, that’s where the devil will pounce. He will attack. He will kill and He will destroy. Don’t let your injuries separate you.

The fourth strategy, which is probably the most difficult one, is practicing the art of forgiveness and letting go. Much of the time, in our injuries, it’s always been somebody from the outside affecting us. It may be with hurt words or hurt relationships or broken pieces of who we are. Those are usually the kind of attitudes that have been affecting us and so we have to start to be able to practice the art of forgiveness, the art of letting go from hurt feelings.

Jesus Himself said, “You will forgive just as I have forgiven you.” Look at how much you have been forgiven. Why would you not forgive somebody else of the pain they’ve inflicted upon you? I’m not saying this is always easy. Most of the time it’s never easy. But if we think about it, when we look at the picture of forgiveness that Scripture paints, when we fail to forgive in our life, it’s like building up the walls around our hearts so we close everything else out, so we fail and we almost shut down. The cause was somebody else’s pain that was inflicted and then it becomes self-inflicted because we’re building up those walls, because we’re no longer saying we want to feel anything around us and so we shut down.

Forgiveness is difficult. Forgiveness is always painful. You see that it was for our Lord when He went to the cross for the forgiveness of all of our sins. Forgiveness is always going to be painful. Somebody has to take that forgiveness. Somebody has to take that side of it, to be able to say, “I forgive you,” almost the hardest words to say but they are freeing words to say. Practice the art of forgiveness, the art of letting go.

Paul himself in Ephesians 4:31 says, “Get rid of all bitterness. Get rid of all anger.” And then he says, “Be kind and compassionate.” Because Paul himself will never tell you to get rid of something without putting something on. So he’s saying get rid of anger. Get rid of the bitterness that your injuries have caused. But he says, “Now instead, put on this. Put on compassion, forgiving one another just as Christ Jesus has forgiven you.” It’s difficult, but it’s one that’s needed.

The fifth strategy is that we, by all means, finish the race. Again, I go back to the illustration of what Paul is constantly using in Scripture, that image of the race, the runners who are out there. He says, “So now we have this race that’s set before us. What are we going to do?” He says, “Cast off everything that hinders you. Bind up all your wounds so you can get in the race, so you can win that crown of victory that Jesus Christ has secured for you.” That’s why we run the race. That’s why we play the game. We know there are going to be injuries. We know there are going to be wounds, but it’s how we deal with them that’s going to make the difference.

No longer try to ignore, no longer try to say, “I can deal with this myself. I can handle this. I can handle the pain. I can handle the situation.” Instead, turn towards the cross. Start to forgive and let go and then run the race because that’s what it means to play the game and that’s what it means to win because we know the victory is secured. We know we have it in hand and we run with our eyes looking forward to Jesus, our author and our perfector of the faith, who no matter what injuries we suffer, He will be there to bind it up. Amen.