It is possible that as you journal through your life, you will encounter painful memories. You may already be aware of some of these memories. Some may be new to you; others you may have chosen to avoid thinking about. Let me invite you to look at pain from God’s perspective.
Pain is a reality for those of us who are living outside the Garden of Eden. Keep in mind that the heart of God is also in pain because we are outside the Garden, not walking with Him face to face. We are not of this world, but we are in it, and Satan is the Prince of this world, which leaves us living in the presence of sin. But God is a redeeming God. Not only does He redeem our souls from destruction, but He also redeems the painful situations that we have lived through in our lives.
It is so easy to trust in our own abilities…to trust in what God through Jeremiah calls the arm of the flesh (Jeremiah 17:5-8). We can trust in the Lord or we can trust in our own ability to make our worlds work. The consequence of making our world work on our own is that we won’t even know what good is or what it looks like when it comes. We will not understand what God calls good. God is inviting us to trust Him, not our own ability or perceptions. He is inviting us to walk into the Refiner’s fire where He promises to meet us. Look at what He says in Isaiah 43 about His invitation to enter the fire and the water and about His heart towards us. He meets us there. “When you walk through the fire, I will be with you.”
If God is sovereign and God is good and yet there is pain in our lives, then God has purposed it or allowed it for our good. If it is true that God is in our pain, then our problem is not pain. Our problem is our demand that we no longer experience pain. At the core of pain is the problem of sin: our sin against someone else or someone else’s sin against us, or the presence of sin in a fallen world. Sin causes pain, and we demand relief! We are unwilling to stay where God has placed us--that is, in pain.
Pain is an invitation to which we must respond. C. S. Lewis has said that “pain is God’s megaphone to wake a sleeping world.” Our heavenly Father uses pain for a variety of purposes. Pain comes from many directions into our lives, but always the hand of our Father directs it because He loves us.
Pain teaches many lessons. To list only a few:
Think about the consequences of no physical pain. If I have leprosy and a rat bites my toe, or if my tooth is abscessed, what happens? I cannot feel it. In a fallen world what would be the product of no personal pain?
What would happen if God removed the consequence of sin? What if there were no consequences when I sin against you, if there were no consequences when you sin against me, if there were no consequences when I sin against God? The Israelites offering their children as burnt sacrifices to the god Molech is a sneak preview (II Kings 23:10). The wickedness of man would have no end!
We see in Hosea 2:6-13 how God uses pain. God brings pain on Israel. None of her strategies to independently get what her heart longs for are successful. Look at the contrast in Psalm 63:1, at God’s purpose for doing all that: Therefore, behold, I will allure her, I will bring her into the wilderness, alone and apart, and I will speak kindly, tenderly, to her heart. (Hosea 2:14; author’s paraphrase)
In the verses that follow, He shows us what He does once He has His beloved’s attention. He gives her from His hand all that she has sought from her lovers. Have you ever realized the pains to which the Lover of your soul goes to get your attention? He loves you with an everlasting love; He has created you as His portion. He stoops down with all the love of a nursing mother, and with all the love and passion of first love, He draws you to Himself. He wants you to know how He feels about you.
Dan Allender has said that “it is in the Valley of the Shadow of Death that He sets a table before us and He gently treats our wounds.” We will be wounded, we will walk in that dark valley, but He is there, waiting for us. Only those with the courage to go with Him into the valley will know the secret of His presence.
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