Our weaknesses can be a container for God’s glory. Hannah tasted salty tears of infertility. Elijah howled for God to take his life. David asked his soul a thousand times why it was so downcast. The thing is? God does great things through the greatly wounded. God sees the broken as the best and He sees the best in the broken and He calls the wounded to be the world changers. Never ever be afraid of being a broken thing.
We want to be saved from our misery, but not from our sin. We want to sin without misery, just as the prodigal son wanted inheritance without the father. The foremost spiritual law of the physical universe is that this hope can never be realized. Sin always accompanies misery. There is no victimless crime, and all creation is subject to decay because of humanity’s rebellion from God.
Does God guarantee the absence of struggle and the abundance of strength? Not in this life. But he does pledge to reweave your pain for a higher purpose.
March 4, 2020
The very first words of Jesus while on the cross: “Father, forgive them.” Even the soldiers were shocked to hear those words. A river of love unquenchable poured from His heart. When we suffer, we think only of ourselves, our pain, our desire to be relieved from affliction. When Jesus suffered, His heart was focused on others, making sure they would be forgiven. They were harming themselves, not just Jesus.
February 6, 2020
God will take impossible pain away from you. He will absorb the sting of death because He has already paid the price on the cross. He will cause His love to go into places that feel like they can’t ever be healed. You won’t have to live with the condition that grief is your identity.
Shawn Bolz
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One of the greatest misconceptions people have about pain is that time heals. This couldn’t be further from the truth! If time healed, people in prison would be the most whole people in the world. Over the course of many trials and tribulations, I have learned the value of finding joy in the process of my pain and of looking forward to the outcome. Joy—or the promise of joy—gives you the ability to face seemingly impossible circumstances and helps you to thrive when life is hard. Remember, James tells us to consider it all joy when we face trials because of the fruit that is produced in us.
When you are deeply hurt, no person on this earth can shut out the innermost fears and deepest agonies. The best of friends cannot really understand the battle you are going through or the wounds inflicted on you. Only God can shut out the waves of depression and feelings of loneliness and failure that come over you. Faith in God’s love alone can salvage the hurt mind. The bruised and broken heart that suffers in silence can be healed only by a supernatural work of the Holy Spirit, and nothing short of divine intervention really works.
We change our behaviour when the pain of staying the same becomes greater than the pain of changing. Consequences give us the pain that motivates us to change.
To pray is to give Jesus permission to employ His powers in the alleviation of our distress. To pray is to let Jesus glorify His name in the midst of our needs.
As my sufferings mounted I soon realized that there were two ways in which I could respond to my situation — either to react with bitterness or seek to transform the suffering into a creative force. I decided to follow the latter course.
