Friday, May 3, 2019
I will exalt you, Lord, for you rescued me. You refused to let my enemies triumph over me. O Lord my God, I cried to you for help, and you restored my health. You brought me up from the grave, O Lord. You kept me from falling into the pit of death. Sing to the Lord, all you godly ones! Praise his holy name. For his anger lasts only a moment, but his favor lasts a lifetime! Weeping may last through the night, but joy comes with the morning. Psalm 30:1-5
I’ve come
to believe very deeply that ministry is the art of using your pain well.
I’ve
written enough about times of wake-up calls that come
through pain;[iii]
I’ll spare you my rehearsing those details again. However, considering how often life has
taught me this lesson, that our pain is for a purpose, not just chance, or
natural selection, or to satisfy the whims of random capriciousness of some
far-off God, it begs a question of how that fits together: Does God really use pain in one person
to bring healing to another? I believe strongly
that the answer is YES. Further, I
would call that process the very definition of ministry. The pain in one human being is the seed of
healing in another.
Years ago
I heard Rev. Steve Brown voice his conviction about this issue in a sermon that
every
time a nonbeliever gets cancer, a Christian gets cancer; it’s so the world can
see the difference faith makes.
I kind of believe that, at least on the level that there is, without
doubt, a correlation between pain and the birth of faith.
C.S. Lewis
believed that; in his book The Problem of Pain he wrote:
God whispers to us in our pleasures,
speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pains: It is His megaphone to
arouse a deaf world.
Because of
time constraint in a five-minute devotion, I don’t have space to develop a
whole theological treatise about the purpose of pain; others have done that
well. So, let us just run with my
presumption that pain is necessary because we have chosen it. Our sinful nature prefers rebellion, and
rebellion leads to the consequence of separation from God…which always brings
about pain. God is not the author of
pain, but He uses what we have chosen (bad, or good) to bring
about his loving plans for us.
Here’s an
illustration of how pain in one person forms a culture of ministry for the
benefit of another. When a whole hive of
yellow jackets decided my face was a landing strip – I got the point…about a
hundred points, actually. I was a
teenager, helping Dad trim some dead branches, high up in the oak tree in our
yard. I made a bad choice to cut the hollow
branch that was home to those demons with yellow and black stripes. That choice caused me pain. I lost consciousness, and my quick-thinking
father rushed me to our doctor and a life-saving injection.
Fast-forward
about five decades; my bride, Elizabeth and I were doing some spring cleanup in
our yard and she discovered the mean-spirited descendants of the bees that had
gotten me. She lost consciousness in 3
minutes. Normally, even when something
bad happens, I’m a wait-and-see kind of guy. Not this time; 911 and a trip to the hospital
later, my bride is still with us. I knew
her need and what she was going through; I knew I had to act quickly, and no
time was wasted. My pain in 1960 became
Elizabeth’s help in 2010.
For You Today
The pain you have experienced in your life is really a gift. It is God saying to you that he trusts you
with that pain, because someone else will need it.
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