The very thing that discourages you the
most, God uses to develop you.
Pain is like a warning light and it’s saying
something’s wrong in my life. Now, is it
wise to ignore a warning light? No, it’s
not. In the same way, it’s not wise to
ignore your pain; it’s saying something’s wrong. However we need to understand that: Pain
is a tool God uses for good in our lives.
Now, the problem is we often don’t understand it; we don’t realize what
the good is. In fact, Jesus said in
John 13:7 (NIV), "You don’t realize now what I am doing, but later you will understand." And, nowhere is that truth more appropriate
than pain because often pain comes into our life and we don’t understand why
it’s there or what it’s there for. We
don’t see any purpose in it and if pain doesn’t have a purpose, it’s very
difficult to handle. It’s much easier to
handle when you see a purpose behind it.
God can use pain to motivate
us and spur us into
action. Pain spurs us into action like
nothing else. I’ve heard it said, “We
don’t change when we see the light, we change when we feel the heat.” Pr. 20:30 (GN) says, “Sometimes
it takes a painful experience to make us change our ways.”
You see, pain prompts us to do things we’d rather put
off; it prods us and it pushes us and it compels us to change. Pain forces us to change when we don’t want
to change.
God can also use pain to
guide us. In other words, like a bit in a horse’s
mouth, God takes pain and He turns us in different directions because of the
pain. Ps. 119:71‑72 (LB), “ . . . it
was the best thing that could have happened to me, for it taught me to pay
attention to your laws.”
Now, David is saying that pain is a teaching tool.
Has God ever had to get your attention through pain? You see, God whispers to us in our pleasure,
but He SHOUTS to us in our
pain. He says, “I want your attention”
and boy does He get it when you’re in pain.
Sometimes it doesn’t take a lot of pain ‑‑ you know just like a
little rudder can turn a big ship, sometimes just a little pain in your life
will lead you in a new direction and God not only motivates us into action, but
He guides us through pain.
God at times will use pain as
a measuring tool.
God uses pain to help you see what you’re like on the inside. For instance, when I experience pain, the way
I react to it measures my faith. My
commitments can be gauged by how I react to pain. My maturity can be gauged by how I react to
pain. My patience can be gauged in how I
react to pain. It’s one way of seeing
what’s on the inside of you.
We understand that people are like tea bags ‑‑
you don’t know what’s in them until you drop them in hot water. And, you really don’t know what’s inside you
until you’ve faced the test of pain.
Sometimes God uses pain to
protect us from something
worse. Sometimes He uses pain to protect
us and prevent us from getting involved in something that we shouldn’t be
involved in. Pain can be a blessing in
disguise. For instance, if you have a fever, that is a way that your body tells
you that you probably have an infection in your body that needs to be dealt
with and, if you never had any fever, that infection could take over your body,
you might even die from it. In fact, a
minor pain can often trigger an awareness of a life-threatening disease and, if
you didn’t have that pain, you’d never know it and you’d be gone. Sometimes God uses pain to protect us.
When we feel depression, or when we feel resentment,
or anger, or worry, or when we feel apathy, or when we feel fear, or when we
feel hostility, it is saying to us that something is out of whack in our life;
something’s out of balance, and God’s saying, “I want you to get this
corrected”.
Lastly, God
uses pain to make us mature. You’ve
heard this phrase before: No Pain; No
Gain! It just doesn’t come any other
way. There are no five easy steps to
life wonderful. There is no gain without
pain. The fact is, we want the product
without the process. What’s the product? Oh, we want the maturity, we want the
emotional stability, we want the health and wholeness, we want the confidence
and the meaning and significance and purpose of life; but we don’t want the
process which is pain and suffering, and tough times. We want all of the stability and wholeness of
emotions, but we don’t want to go through the process. But, you can’t short circuit it. The
very thing that discourages you the most, God uses to develop you and it is
not an accident.
Read: Psalm 27:7-14 & 2 Corinthians 1:3-7
