If you’d have met Geoff, you’d have liked him. Geoff was mixed race. He had very short hair and a neat handlebar mustache. He was a bit of a villain, and he worked as a doorman at a night club in Moss Side called The Reno.
Geoff was 11 years older than me. He’d been on the scene for years, so I knew who he was. Most people did. He was well respected.
I’d crossed paths with him a few times when I was out and about, so he kind of knew me too, but we didn’t really get to know each other properly until we served a jail sentence together. That’s when we became really good friends.
We first started getting friendly when we were on remand in Strangeways prison. In those days, you got one shower a week. One time, I went down for my shower, and Geoff was there. He had his towel wrapped around his waist. We started chatting – and then I clocked his stomach. There was a massive chunk of it missing!
Geoff had broad shoulders, a bit of a pigeon chest, and a tight stomach. So, when he walked, he walked with his chest out and belly in. I didn’t know that this injury was part of the reason why!
You should’ve seen it. It was full of twisted scars.
‘Geoff, how did you get them?’
He said, ‘I got them when I was working on the door at The Reno. I got into a battle outside one night with a load of white kids. One of them smashed a pint pot, rammed it into my stomach, and turned it’.
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And then he said, ‘I couldn’t keep myself up…but then this guy stepped in to help me out. So, the lads legged it’.
‘I was a right mess’, he recalled. ‘But as bad as it was, I didn’t bother going to hospital. Because I didn’t want to get the police involved. So, I just stitched it and tied it up the best I could, and it left me like this. With all these scars’.
These were Geoff’s ‘battle scars’ – battle scars that proved he’d stayed standing!
See, battle scars prove that you can stay standing!
What about you? Maybe you’re in some kind of battle right now, and you feel as if ‘you can’t keep yourself up’.
Listen: God can step in to help you out, just as that guy did for Geoff!
You see, Jesus is God with skin on. He died on the cross. He rose again. And then he went to the place where his followers were.
In the Bible, a guy called John tells us that Jesus said, ‘Look at the scars on my hands; look at the scars on my side’.
He showed them his scars – his ‘battle scars’.
They looked, and they saw them first-hand. Imagine that?
These battle scars proved to them that he’d stayed standing.
Listen: If Jesus can stay standing after that battle on the cross, he can help you stay standing in your own battles!!
Whatever it is you’re battling with, he can get you out on the other side!
You too will have battle scars that prove you’ve stayed standing, but you need to let God step in to help you out! The choice is yours.
Barry