Purpose in Pain
What do you have in your medicine cabinet right now?
Isaiah 26:17–18
As a woman with child Is in pain and cries out in her pangs,
When she draws near the time of her delivery, so have we been in Your sight, O Lord.
18 We have been with child, we have been in pain; We have, as it were, brought forth wind; We have not accomplished any deliverance in the earth.
Purpose in the Pain or A Whole Lot of Pain for Nothing
Grandchildren… brushing teeth… “I can do it”
Teach them hygiene – even drilling them
Get a cut, apply a band-aid – wound care
We take better care of our physical bodies than we do our emotional selves
Yet our minds experience more injuries than our bodies
What do we know about emotional hygiene?
We wouldn’t say “Shake it off” for a broken leg… why do we do it for emotional injuries?
Emotional pain is not that much different from physical pain
1. We use the same language for both – hurt, wounded, ache, tender, suffer
2. Emotional pain activates the same areas of our brain as physical pain
We know what to do in response to physical pain
But we don’t know how to respond to emotional pain
We make our emotional wounds worse
1. We don’t practice emotional first aid
2. All too often, we “play with” our emotional wounds
If we cut ourselves physically, Mama tells you, “Leave it alone!”
We don’t dig deeper into the cut to see what’s there
We spend money to deal with & eliminate physical pain
Actually, we are already prepared for physical pain
Tylenol, Ibuprofen, Aleive, Band-Aids, Neosporin, alcohol, witch hazel, peroxide, Lidocaine patches, cocoa butter, cotton balls, gauze, steri-strips, first aid kits, sutures, in Medicine Cabinets
Where do we go & what do we have on hand when there is emotional pain?
How have you invested in your emotional first-aid?
There can be ‘Good Pain’
Good Pain is when there is Purpose in the Pain – No Pain, No Gain
Corrective Pain
1. Protective – Nerve endings – pull hand out of fire
2. Medicine – an alarm or a warning system in our bodies, needing remedy
3. Emotional – a sign of the need for behavior modification
4. Discipline – corrective & productive
Productive Pain
1. Discipline
No discipline seems pleasant at the time, but painful; Later on, however, it produces a harvest of righteousness and peace for those who have been trained by it. – Heb 12:11
- includes training & exercise
2. Adversity
We also glory in tribulations, knowing that tribulation produces perseverance;
4 and perseverance [produces] character; and character [produces] hope. – Rom 5:3-4
3. Childbirth
A woman giving birth to a child has pain because her time has come;
but when her baby is born she forgets the anguish
because of her joy that a child is born into the world. – John 16:21
There is joy on the other side of this pain
Heb 12:2
Looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God.
We have problems seeing ‘past’ the pain or on the other side of the pain
To get “to the joy” we must go “Through the Pain”
What is different about “going through” the pain of childbirth
& the pain of other experiences?
We see Purpose in the Pain of child birth
We even have expectations in that Pain
We don’t see Purpose in other pains
We don’t have an expectation that other pains will produce anything
Because we haven’t dealt with pain properly – we’ve ‘only produced wind’
When we have Expectation in Pain, we will PUSH Through the Pain
Pray, praise, persist, persevere, pursue, prevail
Pain is the sign that you are about to produce something (pregnancy)
Intense pain means it’s almost here!
We get in Pain
We have difficulty looking forward
But we are good at looking backwards
20/20 Vision looking back
50/20 Vision looking forward
Gen 50:20 – The evil that meant toward me, the pain that was put on me,
God uses it for good.
Rom 8:28
For we know that all things work together for good to those who love God,
to those who are the called according to His purpose.
God’s ultimate plan and purpose is for you to go from Glory to Glory
Not go from Pain to Pain
The same way you invest in and are prepared for physical first-aid & hygiene
Do the same for your emotional health
The same way you go to your doctor
Don’t be reluctant to go to a counselor