The Word

Pain

🌟 Scriptures 🌟

1 Corinthians 13:4 

4 Love suffers long and is kind; love does not envy; love does not parade itself, is not puffed up;

🗣️The Message📜

I've always been fascinated with the story of Job, it's a story that always challenged me. I used to even avoid the story altogether, but I couldn't continue to do that because this story showed who God was. This also showed me that The Lord has made us not just for times of peace but times of sorrow. Pain gives us more wisdom, Pain gives us callous, pain makes us stronger, pain helps us to surrender and helps us grow closer to God. A young preacher by the name of Jerry Flowers said basically that God called us to experience certain pains to take us deeper in Him and deeper into our calling, so instead of trying to pray it away, we should embrace it. He called it stewarding pain. I really connected to that because I've been having mouth pain for a couple of weeks. One particular day I was in extreme pain and I found a way to make it stop, but it was only temporary and I kept asking God why He wasn't coming through and why was this pain was worse than it's been in the days before? Then when I lost the thing that was stopping the pain and let it take course it eventually stopped. I felt like God was telling me that sometimes we have to let ourselves go through pain before we receive our relief because pain always has a purpose. Job had to go through much pain as a test of his faith. David had to face rejection and literal death everywhere he went for years, Noah had to be separated from everyone he knew, The disciples had to face constant persecution and Jesus, as we know, suffered dearly and died for all of us, but all of this pain was for a purpose and without it, life would be very difficult for all of us.  I find it funny that in 1 Corinthians 13 when it starts talking about what love is it starts off by saying it's long-suffering. Just as Jesus suffered because of His love for us we must also take up our crosses in the name of Love for our Father, for Jesus, as we were commanded to do. "Luke 9:23, says "Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will find it." . Jerry Flowers also talked about the weight of our crosses, when we wear our crosses it's in remembrance of Jesus' sacrifice and our redemption, but it's also a reminder of the pain we must endure as servants of the One who died and rose for our sins, because of His great Love. We must not let our pain or hurt consume us, we have to be able to steward it and recognize that God is the ruler of pain. We must let God test us without falling out, we must not see every pain as a punishment, we must be mighty in God and in the power of His might and trust Him when the winds blow and the storm comes. We must be strong and courageous because God is with us in our pain, in our frustration, in our hurt and He's using all of it to make us stronger and to bring us into our calling. When you face pain of any sort, physical, emotional, spiritual do you automatically ask God to take it away? In those instances when He doesn't, do you get angry at Him? Do you question God? Do you question yourself? Well, next time ask God what the purpose of it is and to let His will be done as Jesus said to The Lord at Gethsemane. Lord may we trust You even more as we take up our crosses and follow You.