spices— chief, first, essential( Exodus 30:23). The first ingredient is myrrh.
Myrrh is fragrant to smell and bitter to taste. Its Hebrew root, marar, means to trickle, and also to be made bitter, vexed, grieved. And myrrh is harvested by wounding the tree. The bark is cut, and from the gash comes a resin gathered in amber tears— precious enough to perfume kings and sanctuaries.
No cut, no fragrance.
Those who live in the anointing know the cost. They are misunderstood, lied about, ridiculed by the very people they bled for— and still expected to suffer in love. Myrrh tastes bitter going down. But afterward God releases a fragrance no seminar can manufacture.
Kelley Varner said it candidly in his book, Corporate Anointing: Those who are destined for the heights of Zion will be taken to the depths and plowed.
A. W. Tozer wrote in The Root of the Righteous: It is doubtful whether God can bless a man greatly until He has hurt him deeply.
That is not cruelty. That is cultivation. Our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us.( Romans 8:18 NIV)
Stoned one day. Preaching the next.
At Lystra, they stoned Paul and dragged him out of the city, supposing him to be dead. However, when the disciples gathered around him, he rose up and went into the city.( Acts 14:19‐20 NKJV)
And when he returned to the city that nearly killed him, his message was a commission, not a complaint: We must through many tribulations enter the kingdom of God.( Acts 14:22 NKJV)
Later he wrote, From now on let no one trouble me, for I bear in my body the marks of the Lord Jesus.( Galatians 6:17 NKJV) The word marks means a brand burned into a slave’ s skin. Paul’ s résumé was written in scar tissue.
Show Me Your Scars
We frame our diplomas and hide our scars. Paul did the opposite. J. Oswald Sanders wrote in Spiritual Leadership that the toll of leadership is heavy, and the more effective the leadership, the greater the cost. So do not despise the limp. Someone is watching you walk, wondering whether faith holds under what they carry.
Your Wound Is Somebody’ s Well
Here is where God redeems the tears. He comforts us in all our tribulation, that we may be able to comfort those who are in any trouble.( 2 Corinthians 1:4 NKJV)
Nothing is wasted. The comfort you received in your worst season becomes currency you
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