In the Pain

There is much thought and study on how Christians are to handle pain and suffering.  Many writers believe that it is in that pain and suffering that a deeper relationship of Jesus is found.  Tim Keller is one such writer and authored the book Walking with God through Pain and Suffering. 

Pain and suffering seem to be an unavoidable path in life.  However, our view of that pain and suffering might very well change the pain and suffering to not be pain and suffering.  Mr. Keller remarks to this, “No matter what precautions we take, no matter how well we have put together a good life, no matter how hard we have worked to be healthy, wealthy, comfortable with friends and family, and successful with our career — something will inevitably ruin it.”  By ruin it, the idea is it is ruined by our standards.  God’s standard may not see it as ruined at all, but simply shaped so we can see a deeper portion of Him.  I’ve mentioned before that once you have had to depend upon Jesus and Him alone because you had nothing left to hold onto and only Jesus is the answer or everything falls apart, you know faith.  The miracle happens in you and around you.  Mr. Keller adds, “You don’t really know Jesus is all you need until Jesus is all you have.”  I believe it is God’s full intention for every believer to know Him in this way.  Everyone’s path is their own.

Certainly once we become aware of our sins we enter into some pain and suffering as our hearts are broken over our filth.  We become desperate in our dark condition.  However, until we enter into this conviction we cannot see our need for a Savior.  We do not see Jesus as our only hope and as a light in a dark world.  It is in the pain and suffering of our broken heart that we see the greatest light and are filled upon believing in Him with His own Spirit and completed.  The brokenness is necessary.

Likewise, the pain and suffering we might be in at various times is necessary for God to show us the depth of a well that we would never experience otherwise.  Once we find it, the pain and suffering is so secondary to His presence at the well.  We find that we can only focus on Him.  Again, Mr. Keller writes, “Some suffering is given in order to chastise and correct a person for wrongful patterns of life (as in the case of Jonah imperiled by the storm), some suffering is given not to correct past wrongs but to prevent future ones (as in the case of Joseph sold into slavery), and some suffering has no purpose other than to lead a person to love God more ardently for himself alone and so discover the ultimate peace and freedom.”

I find that we reduce the glory of God so we can manage it.  But by doing so, we prevent ourselves from seeing the expanse of the hope we have in Him.  It IS more than anything we see, hear, touch, or feel in this world, no matter how difficult or painful.  “The most rapturous delights you have ever had — in the beauty of a landscape, or in the pleasure of food, or in the fulfillment of a loving embrace — are like dewdrops compared to the bottomless ocean of joy that it will be to see God face-to-face (1 John 3:1–3). That is what we are in for, nothing less. And according to the Bible, that glorious beauty, and our enjoyment of it, has been immeasurably enhanced by Christ’s redemption of us from evil and death.”

Therefore, knowing that whatever trial we are in and whatever the pain, God must be glorified because He loves us enough to make a way for us to see Him more clearly.  He desires for us to be our greatest and that can only be found in Him.  “It fits to glorify God — it not only fits reality, because God is infinitely and supremely praiseworthy, but it fits us as nothing else does. All the beauty we have looked for in art or faces or places — and all the love we have looked for in the arms of other people — is only fully present in God himself. And so in every action by which we treat him as glorious as he is, whether through prayer, singing, trusting, obeying, or hoping, we are at once giving God his due and fulfilling our own design.”

Lift your hearts Christian and glorify God wherever you are!  Look desperately for Him where you are and He will overwhelm your every sense so that all you know is Him.