Pain is God's megaphone

Life is a choice and choosing to live victoriously is better than trying to live a positive life negatively.

But here's the thing. If a child doesn't feel pain, will he learn? If an underlying health issue doesn't instill some pain, will we do anything about it?

Lepers yearn for the gift of pain, because their disease so dulls pain that they injure their limbs enough to lose them. The pain of learning carries through life, but it only is pain and will only adjust us, if we feel it and admit to it.

In our formative years we have so much happening that our suppressed pains bubble beneath our consciousness and never get addressed until a change in life or a crisis, brings the issues to the surface. Then God goes to work.

Bravery without fear is stupidity, just as faith without contradictions is merely an attitude. If we don't feel the pain of a time of spiritual adjustment, the chances are high that we won't hear what God is saying nor will we adjust our stance.

Paul conceded that suffering is something to endure, for a season. It is not suffering if we merely rise above it when God may need us to listen. We all retreat to caves, so did biblical characters, but for the contemporary soul, such withdrawal can present via defense mechanisms like withdrawal, wallowing, anger, facades, and denial.

When I realized how much painful issues of my past had driven me into my own cave of coping and compensation, I needed counselling to confess that, because my posture had crowded God out of my crisis. That helped me to leave my cave, roll stones over it and walk with God into a better outcome.

So, this all poses a dilemma. I absolutely advocate worship in adversity, because it enthrones God and drives back our spiritual enemies, but that could be mistaken for a worldly attitude that veers close to mind-over-matter, which is not faith in God at all - it is often denialism and self-confidence.

CS Lewis rightly said, "Pain is God's megaphone to speak into our deaf worlds", and my experience is that God will allow the pain to deepen until we stop pretending and fall down in His presence to confess our need for answers and His love.

The biblical foundation for all of this is referred to as the baptism of suffering, by which we learn about God's will, just as Israel had to grow up in her own wilderness.

So yes, have faith, look up, believe God is working through it all, but don't deny the pain as that would be self-defeating. James 1:3 speaks of our faith turning to perseverance, but adds, "Let patience (in suffering) have its perfect work so that we may perfect and entire, wanting nothing".

(c) Peter Missing: bethelstone@gmail.com