Purpose in the Pain
When you are experiencing pain, you want it to end. When you are uncertain of what’s next, you long to know even a sliver of what is to come. It’s our nature to seek comfort and familiarity, or at the very least to feel some control. When someone else is in pain, we also wish for their time of yuck to end. We pray for clarity, rest, and for the hard stuff to end. I get it, and I have been there.
What I have come to learn even more personally is that it is in the pain that we grow. It is in the discomfort that we take life-giving steps and essential risks to get to the next place. When we have little control over our spouse, friend, boss, child, and we grieve the front row seat to the heartbreak. It is in the pain that we learn to wait and we have the choice to lean in deeply to our Heavenly Father. Oh, it is hard. Over the weeks and months of my painful waiting my prayers shifted from “please show me what you have for me and end this pain” to “Lord, give me more of you. All I can know for sure is that you love me, your Word is true, and your Spirit lives inside of me. I trust you—help me trust you more.”
Sometimes when things don’t go our way we blame the Enemy. Yes, he often times causes trouble. Sometimes we accurately blame our flesh, which is our own sinful nature and gets us into trouble. Even more than that, sometimes God himself closes doors because it is not His will for you to do even this seemingly good thing. If you are right in the middle or att he precipice of a very goof thing—trying to be a missionary and suddenly break your leg or driving people to church and your car dies or surrendering to a call to be more bold about your faith at work only to be reassigned, rest assured that God is still at the wheel. This is seen in Scripture in the book of Acts which describes the early church. “When they came to the border of Mysia, they tried to enter Bithynia, but the Spirit of Jesus would not allow them to.” Acts 16:7. God himself presses the pause button.
This pause button was pushed for me recently, when my husband and I felt the call to end our nonprofit work and go back to pastoring at a church. We surrendered it all (thanks to his patience guidance) and then proceeded to be in a waiting place for an excruciating amount of time. Really, God? You’re going to get us to the place of YES and then just let us dangle here, like we’re on a roller coaster with our feet dangling waiting for the ride to resume. If you are in a moment of usefulness, excited about what God is doing in you, and sickness or financial trouble or relationship strain (or 100 others things!) are interrupting you, lean into the God who knows.
My friend Deena shared a devo book called “Streams of the Desert”. In one of those devos, George Matheson shared this concept well: “It was hard at such times to leave my work undone when I believed that work to be the service of the Spirit. But I came to remember that the Spirit has not only a service of work, but a service of waiting. I came to see that in the Kingdom of Christ there are not only times for action, but times in which to forbear acting. I came to learn that the desert place apart is often the most useful spot in the varied life of man—more rich in harvest than the seasons in which the corn and wine abounded. I have been taught to thank the blessed Spirit that many a darling Bithynia had to be left unvisited by me. And so, Thou Divine Spirit, would I still be led by Thee…Teach me to see another door in the very inaction of the hour…Inspire me with the knowledge that a man may at times be called to do his duty by doing nothing, to work by keeping still, to serve by waiting.”
When you cling to God, you not only get the love and comfort of God himself, you also impact those around you. Your kids or parents see you trusting God. Your neighbors and friends witness your faith in action. You never know how your faithfulness (no matter how at the end of your rope you might feel!) might impact others in a powerful way.
You might not know which way to go or how to endure the pain, but I can assure you that the relationship with God and the new level of dependence on the Holy Spirit, will be enough and will hold you in the waiting.
