Articles
Embrace Your Pain and Be Blessed!
William Gaultiere, Ph.D.
Clinical Psychologist & Spiritual Director,
ChristianSoulCare.com
“Rejoice in your trials!” we’re
told again and again in the Bible. Oh, but it’s
so hard! How? Why? A little boy named Jamie gives
us a clue. He tried out for a part in his school
play. He practiced, gave his all in the audition,
and prayed. His heart was set on getting a part!
Finally the list was posted. Jamie didn’t
get a part. He pressed his lips together and dropped
his head in disappointment. But suddenly his head
popped up again, his eyes brightened, and he rushed
to his mother and exclaimed, "Guess what Mom?
I've been chosen to clap and cheer!"
More than just a cute story, Jamie shows us how
to find and act on the good in the midst of a painful
situation. The Bible is full of real life stories
of God’s people responding to pain by deepening
their trust in God and growing spiritually. One
of my favorites is the story of Jacob.
JACOB
WRESTLED WITH GOD IN HIS PAIN
Imagine being Jacob. Your brother Esau wants
to kill you because you tricked him out of
his inheritance.
Esau’s a big, burly hunter accompanied
by an army of 400 bandits and you’re a
slender, soft man who likes to play with animals
and talk to the women. You’re walking through
the desert with your wife, children, servants,
animals, and all your possessions. Mile after
mile you walk, knowing that he’s coming
after you.
That night to sleep you go out alone away from
the noise and stench of the animals and away from
the safety of your caravan. You’re alone
to pray and to sleep under the stars. Then in the
middle of the night someone accosts you! He’s
fighting you! Surely, it’s Esau come to murder
you! What do you do? Scream for help! Plead for
mercy! Better yet, you run! No. You realize it’s
an angel and you wrestle him. Yes, you fight an
angel! And the angel wrenches your hip. You scream
out in pain. He tries to get away, but you won’t
let him go! You keep wrestling him until daybreak!
What’s going on? Is Jacob crazy? He’s
scared to death. He’s in pain. He’s
getting beat up by an awesome and imposing creature
from another world (Angels are not cute, chubby
cherubs floating on clouds as they softly sing
sweet songs; they are glorious and powerful creatures,
warriors as well as ministers, that people are
always afraid of at first.), but he keeps fighting!
He wants to know the angel’s name and he
won’t let go until he’s blessed. Finally,
the angel gives in and the wrestling match ends
with Jacob being given a new name. No longer is
he Jacob, “The Cheater,” but now he
is Israel, “The Overcomer,” because
he has struggled with God and prevailed.
Jacob is never told the angel’s name, but
he is blessed by God and so he names the place
of his divine encounter Peniel, “The Face
of God.” In his painful trial when he was
so scared of his brother’s revenge he pleaded
for God’s favor and protection, he clung
to God’s promise to his father Abraham and
to him to bless their family line. The angel wounded
him in the wrestling match, but even with his heart
crying out in fear and his hip screaming out in
pain Jacob wouldn’t let go of the angel until
he had the blessing of seeing God’s face
and receiving his new name from God.
The rest of his life he’d walk with a limp… and
a smile.
LEARN THE MEANING OF YOUR PAIN
As a Psychologist I continually encounter pain.
Everyday people talk to me about their pains.
Besides that, like you, I have my own pains and
that of my family and loved ones to deal with.
And as a Christian who reads the Bible everyday
I think about pain a lot.
The Bible has so much to teach us about pain,
so much that is hard to understand and even harder
to bear. How do we rejoice in trials? (James 1:2-4).
How do we experience peace in trouble? (John 16:33).
What’s the blessing of being sad? (Matthew
5:4). Why does it seem that God is distant when
we hurt the most? (Psalm 13:1). We have so many
questions because we experience so much pain that
we can’t get free of.
Like Jacob, we need to understand the source of
our suffering before we can know how to experience
the blessing that God can give us in the midst
of our pain. It made a big difference whether Jacob’s
painful wrestling match was Esau seeking murderous
revenge, God punishing him for some sin in his
life, or a trial that God was using to grow his
faith. Since Adam and Even sinned and were kicked
out of the Garden of Eden all people, all of creation
even, has been subjected to the pain of being separated
from God and the frustration of yearning for a
reconciliation with God that we cannot effect ourselves.
Only God can re-connect us with Him so that we
enjoy his love and live the glorious life He created
us for (Romans 8:20-22).
More specifically, I believe that there are four
reasons for pain, four different types of pain
that we experience in life outside the Garden of
Eden that we were made for. As I’ll explain
later, understanding the reason for the pain you’re
in is crucial because it changes how to best respond.
I’ve learned that there are two polar tensions
involved in the cause of pain. The first involves
control. We experience pain either because of our
choices or because of events that happen to us
outside of our choosing. And the second polarity
has to with morality in that we may suffer because
of sin (ours or someone else’s) or a stress
that is separate from moral issues. It nets out
as mapped in the table, “Four Reasons for
Pain in a World Separated from God.” (Of
course, life doesn’t always fit neatly into
these four boxes so keep in mind that there may
be overlap between the areas.)
1. We experience pain when someone chooses to
sin against us.
A number of years ago a Christian minister who
did marriage seminars around the country asked
me to co-author a book with him on marriage because
I was a published author and a Christian Psychologist.
We discussed our ideas for the book and decided
that I would write the book using material from
his seminars and my counseling practice. But after
I completed much of the first draft he changed
his mind and decided he wanted to write the book
on his own, even though we already had signed a
contract together with a publisher. Of course,
the publisher wouldn’t let him alter the
contract so he decided to pressure and guilt-trip
me out of any royalties.
I felt violated. I sought support and input from
my mentor and prayed about it. Then I calmly confronted
the man with what he was doing and how it wasn’t
right. He wouldn’t budge in his angry insistence
that I bow out, not only of the writing, but also
the royalties. I went back to my mentor and to
prayer. I decided to compromise by letting him
take control of the book and accepting only half
of the royalties that were due to me. It hurt the
way he treated me, I missed the chance to help
write that book, and I lost a few thousand dollars.
So I experienced pain from being sinned against.
An incest survivor, a wife of an adulterous husband,
and a man who is verbally abused by his wife are
obvious examples of people who are in pain from
being sinned against. Many times in your life you
also have experienced pain of varying degrees from
someone violating you.
2. We experience pain when we choose to sin.
A few years ago I came to terms with the fact that
I had been slandering a colleague of mine in
some of my conversations with friends. He didn’t
know it, but it was still hurtful to him, to
me, and even to those who listened to my criticisms.
I was envious over the success of his ministry
and criticizing him distracted me from dealing
with my own feelings of frustration and inadequacy.
Part of my problem was that he had hurt me previously.
I need to work through my anger and hurt. I learned
to forgive him and to pray for God to bless his
work and I started focusing more on being myself
and doing the ministry that God has given me
to do and doing this with contentment.
The pain that we experience from own sins is
harder to identify and talk about because often
we don’t
want to admit to our responsibility and are ashamed
of our sin. And as Christians we certainly don’t
want to make the mistake of judging and condemning
other people so we tend to avoid this area. But
often people suffer because of their sins or being
irresponsible. The Bible teaches that we reap from
what we sow (Galatians 6:7-10) and that when we
sin God disciplines us, like a loving Father, to
teach us and help us to grow spiritually. He may
send a prick in our conscience, a rebuke from a
Christian friend, or a painful hardship in our
life circumstances (Hebrews 12:4-6).
Here’s a few examples of people suffering
painful consequences for their sins: a worker who
is fired for being chronically late, a teenage
girl who is punished for stealing from her mother,
or a husband who suffers a divorce because to avoid
conflict he went ahead and married his charming
girlfriend who was abusive and unreliable.
3. We experience pain from tragedies and losses
that happen.
We live in a fallen, imperfect world where stressful
events occur. Recently, I experienced a painful
accident. The trunk of a liquid amber tree that
I had cut down over a year ago was laying in my
side yard. I finally got sick of looking at it
and decided to chop it up into logs for our fireplace.
At one point I had cut half way through a section
of the wood and thought I could save some time
by stomping down hard on the log and breaking it.
When I did half of it flew up and hit me in the
mouth!
Immediately I cried out in pain, ran into the house,
looked into the bathroom mirror and was horrified
to see blood pouring out of my mouth and my tooth
knocked loose. The next thing I did was the one
smart thing I did: I screamed out, “Kristi!” But
what followed that is a machine gun fire of shouts
that I’m not proud of: “Oh I’m
so stupid! Stupid! Stupid! Stupid! I’m going
to lose my front tooth! How could I be so dumb!
Why didn’t I listen to Kristi when she told
me to just throw the wood away?”
By this time, of course, Kristi had come running
to the bathroom. Hanging up on the call she had
been on, she looked into my mouth and then dialed
the number to page our dentist. Then she turned
to me tenderly and pleaded, “Bill, if I had
hurt myself like that you’d have compassion
for me. It was an accident. You need to be kind
to yourself.” She was right. It was a reminder
for me to cooperate with God’s care for me.
I was fortunate that in the end that lesson only
cost me a few days of pain and inconvenience and
a hundred bucks, as my tooth was saved.
You’ve probably experienced painful circumstances
much worse than my tooth accident. I have. And
we know other people who have. A wife loses her
55-year old husband to cancer. A husband and three
small children lose their mother to a car accident – no
one was drunk or driving recklessly; it just happened.
A woman in her 50’s never got to be a mother
even though she and her husband tried and prayed
and went through years of getting help for their
infertility.
Painful things that nobody intended and which weren’t
directly connected to anyone’s sin just happen
in life outside of the Garden of Eden. This is
NOT God punishing you! Jesus made it clear that
God allows undeserved tragedies not as punishment
for sin, but as agents of spiritual change (Luke
13:4-5). And he allows undeserved disabilities
not as punishment, but as opportunities to display
his glory (John 9:1-3). We all go through trials
to one extent or another and these are opportunities
for spiritual growth (Romans 5:3-5) and may be
ways that God is pruning us to bear even more fruit
then we already are (John 15:2).
4. We experience pain when we choose to deny ourselves
a desire.
There’s a fourth reason for pain that you
may have never thought of: Choosing pain. No, I’m
not talking about masochism, a sick way of getting
pleasure out of harming yourself. I’m referring
to someone who chooses pain or stress for healthy
reasons. Like recently, the night before Briana,
my seven-year old girl, was to run a jog-a-thon
for her school fundraiser she declared, “Daddy,
I know I can run the most laps of anyone in my
class because I can push through the pain!” And
she did. Her determination paid off. Anyone who
exercises does the same thing. They stress their
muscles and endure pain in order to get stronger
and fitter.
We can do the same thing spiritually. For instance,
this year I returned to regularly practicing a
spiritual discipline that I had neglected for years:
fasting. Some people go without food for health
reasons or to lose weight, while these are valid
reasons it’s not what I’m doing. I
go 24 hours without food in order to feel the pain
of hunger. Why? Because whenever I feel hungry
I’m reminded of my deeper hunger for God
and I go to prayer and I meditate on Scriptures
like Jesus saying that we don’t live for
bread alone, but for God’s Words (Matthew
4:4) and that his food is to do God’s work
(John 4:34). Fasting helps me to feed on Jesus
as the Bread of Life (John 6:35).
Tithing money works the same way. So does letting
go of worldly pursuits or even secondary priorities
that are good in order to purse what is best, to
seek God with a whole heart. Anytime a Christian
endures persecution for doing what is right or
for living as a Christian they are choosing to
suffer. Missionaries are obvious examples of people
choosing loss, stress, pain, or even martyrdom
for spiritual reasons.
Suffering persecution may include being sinned
against, but it’s different type of pain
because your ability to love is greater than your
need for justice and there is an important opportunity
for the offender to receive a Christian witness.
Clearly, if your soul is being beaten down into
a place of shame and fear then you need protection
and care. And often offenders need to be confronted
and held accountable. I believe these situations
are different than a call for someone to endure
the mistreatment of persecution for Christ’s
sake.
PAIN
THAT’S DENIED IS BAD
It’s natural to want to avoid pain. And yet,
ironically, once pain has already come your way
to avoid it at that point is a problem. Any pain
that is denied or anesthized or bandaged without
being cleaned will only makes things worse for
you. It means a warning isn’t heeded, a hurt
isn’t healed, a lesson isn’t learned,
and the blessings of spiritual growth and God’s
presence are missed. Let’s consider each
of the four reasons for pain and look at how if
we don’t deal with the pain then it becomes
bad pain that accomplishes no good for God or our
souls.
1.
When someone sins against you. It’s natural
and helpful when you’ve been violated to
feel angry and scared of it happening again and
so to set boundaries to protect yourself from further
injury. But often we deny and defend against our
inner pain, muffling our anger so that it becomes
depression or turning it against ourselves and
feeling ashamed for something that’s not
our fault. Or we may go to the other extreme and
take the victim stance, getting stuck in blaming
our offender and feeling sorry for ourselves. Then
we’ll become resentful and anxious. These
are bad pains that serve no good purpose. They
actually leave us open to be sinned against in
the same way again and again.
2.
When you sin. It’s appropriate when you’ve
sinned to be sad about the hurt you caused and
to appreciate better your inner emptiness and vulnerability
to temptation. But, here also, we tend to avoid
these painful and humbling feelings and adopt either
a proud, legalistic posture (“I messed up,
but I can do better if I try harder.”) or
license (“I messed up, but it doesn’t
much matter, as I can do what I want and things
will be okay.) We end up feeling guilty and condemning
ourselves or running to one pleasure after another
trying to escape the bad feelings. This also is
bad pain that is harmful to us and to others. (For
instance, someone who is feeling guilty is often
self-absorbed and not empathic at that point.)
3.
When tragedy strikes or an accident occurs. Unforseen
stressors and pains come our way in our
imperfect world. Sickness, injury, and death may
seem random and cruel. We don’t want to accept
that our world is so imperfect, so riddled with
pain and problems. To defend against this painful
vulnerability we may become pessimistic and soured
on life or idealistic and wear roles-colored glasses.
Life is depressing or fake and empty (hidden depression).
We may get lost in despair and helplessness. Withdrawing
into negative feelings about yourself and your
world is a dead end. A depression like this is
no good.
4.
God asks all of us to deny ourselves. “Take
up your cross and follow me,” Jesus challenged
us (Luke 9:23-24). God is our Creator and Lord
and He owns us in a sense. He is the Righteous
Judge to be feared. Especially as Christians we
realize this because not only has He created us,
but also He has “redeemed” or bought
us out of slavery to sin and has “set us
apart” to be His special treasure. He’s
the Lover of our Souls and when we turn to anything
but Him and what He provides we’re committing
spiritual adultery, betraying Him, testing His
patience and arousing His anger. But even many
of us Christians don’t seem to see things
this way. We tend to see God as either harsh and
mean or soft and easy. Either way, life will be
increasingly anxious if we’re living in our
own strength for our own purposes. We easily become
consumed with trying to make our lives work better,
pursuing empty pleasures, anxiously striving for
control and success. Our goals may be good and
yet if they’re not inspired by God and carried
out in His strength then they are distractions
or idolatries that are taking God’s place
in our hearts. This kind of anxious living is bad
pain.
LEARN TO EMBRACE YOUR PAIN FOR SPIRITUAL GROWTH
Prince Martinette of Grenada was heir to the Spanish
throne at the turn of the 18th century, yet because
of treason he was sentenced to a life of solitary
confinement in Madrid's prison known as the "The
Skull." The prison was dark and diseased
infested and it was considered a death sentence.
Upon entering the prison; the prince was given
one book to read, the Bible. After 33 years of
imprisonment, he died. When they came to clean
out his cell, they found some notes he had written
using nails to mark the soft stone of the prison
walls. Some of the notations were: Psalm 118:8
is the middle verse of the Bible; Ezra 7:21 contains
all the letters of the alphabet except the letter
J; and the ninth verse of the eighth chapter
of Esther is the longest verse in the Bible.
Instead of developing a relationship with Jesus
Christ and relying on his help to embrace his
painful ordeal he became an expert in Bible trivia!
How can the pain of a torturous imprisonment
be good? How can pain which starts out bad because
it originates in sin (yours or someone’s
sin against you) become a force for good? How does
denied pain that has only made things worse by
creating resentment, guilt, pessimism, or anxiety
be transformed into good pain?
Let’s look at how all four types pain gone
bad can become good. Like Jacob we can discover
a blessing in our pains. If we persevere, speak
the truth, and rely on the grace of God (often
through the Body of Christ) over time.
1.
Resentment and anxiety over violations can be
replaced by assertiveness. To take positive
aggressive action when we’re sinned against
is to respond to the natural feelings of anger
and fear (god pains) and to move forward to deal
with the situation. The Bible speaks often about
how we need to be assertive when we’ve been
sinned against. When we’re wounded and weakened
we need to first put our assertive energy into
seeking safety (“A prudent man sees danger
and takes refuge, but the simple keep going and
suffer for it.” - Proverbs 22:3) and then
asking for care and help to get our needs met (Matthew
7:7-11). We’re to “speak the truth
in love” to one another (Ephesians 4:15)
and to “rebuke our neighbor frankly” so
we do not share in his guilt (Leviticus 19:17).
With perpetrators we’re to set limits on
their sinful behavior and to confront them with
the help of godly people (Matthew 18:15-20). And
we need to engage in the process of forgiveness
again and again (Matthew 18:21-22). If appropriate
we may seek to reconcile with our offenders (Matthew
5:21-26) or even try to help them to change (Galatians
6:1).
2.
Guilt and self-condemnation over our sins can
be replaced by sadness. To feel sad when
we sin (what Paul calls “godly sorrow” in
2 Corinthians 7:10-11) is good and helpful, so
different from condemning ourselves and pridefully
trying to do better to make up for our wrong. To
realize that we’ve hurt ourselves, someone
else, and God (Psalm 51:4) can move us to say we’re
sorry, to empathize with how we’ve hurt someone,
and to change by seeking forgiveness and learning
to respect God’s rules. God changes our hearts
so that we want to live by depending on Him. We
discover the freedom to be our true selves (Galatians
5:1).
3.
Depression over our difficulties can be replaced
by grieving. Grief is good pain. It is
a pathway to healing that is part of all emotional
and relational
healing. The heart of grieving is to verbalize
your sadness to someone who offers comfort. And
the blessing that is behind all the pain is greater
intimacy with God, a deeper appreciation for Him
and the life that He offers. Eugene Peterson translated
Jesus famous beatitude this way, “You’re
blessed when you’ve lost what is most dear
to you. Only then can you be embraced by the One
who is most dear” (Matthew 5:4). It’s
a subtle shift, but makes all the difference in
the world if instead of isolating in depression
in response to tragedy we feel the reality of our
vulnerability to events we can’t control
and we embrace our sadness over painful tragedies,
trusting in God’s sovereign control and relying
on His gracious comfort.
4.
Anxious living can be replaced by revering God
and hungering for Him. Part of revering
God is to feel a certain fear and awe of One
so powerful
and holy. “The fear of the Lord is the beginning
of wisdom” (Proverbs 9:10). This reverential
fear is a good pain because it’s right and
it can lead us to seek to please Him above all
and to discover that His perfect love drives out
our fear (1 John 4:18). But when we look to Him
we don’t always feel loved (Psalm 13:1).
Especially in times of pain, we often long for
more of Him than we’re able to see or receive
(1 Peter 1:6-9). Our hunger for God is also a good
pain because it presses us onward to deeper intimacy
and greater service (Matthew 5:6). Our desire to
please God above all things motivates us to endure
persecution in order to share Christ (Matthew 5:10-12).
When, like the Apostle Paul, we choose to give
up our “rights” and privileges we find
Christ (Philippians 3:10-11) and discover that
just as the sufferings of Christ flow into our
lives so also does his comfort and resurrection
life (2 Corinthians 1:1-3).
WRESTLING WITH GOD FOR HIS BLESSING
Like Jacob we need to wrestle with God when we’re
in pain by searching for God’s face in our
struggle and learning the new name he gives us.
Forgiving those who sin against us, confessing
our own sins, persevering in trials, and choosing
to suffer for Christ’s sake are each, in
different ways, opportunities to deepen our intimacy
with God and to live out our calling to serve him
with our unique talents.
This is what the Bible teaches. It’s the
kind of persevering faith that the Bible heroes
in Hebrews 11 lived out and that Christians today,
like many of those I’ve counseled, also live
out. By identifying the type of pain we’re
in and responding with the kind of faith that is
appropriate to what’s going on we can discover
joy of the Lord in the midst of pain.
Like Job, who had family and servants murdered
and wealth stolen though he did nothing wrong,
when God allows us to suffer because of someone
else’s sins we can remain faithful to him
as we struggle to forgive our offenders and to
heal and learn while we wait for God’s response.
Like David, who suffered so much pain in his family
and his kingdom because of committing adultery
with Bathsheba and murdering her husband, when
we suffer because of our own sins we too can cry
out for God’s mercy, trusting him to turn
our lives around and bring about a deeper intimacy,
joy, and Christian service then we’ve known
before.
Like Naomi, who suffered the undeserved tragedies
of losing her husband and two sons before eventually
holding her daughter-in-law’s boy (the ancestor
to Jesus), we can trust that God will eventually
replace our broken dreams with better ones of a
deepening intimacy with our loving Lord and a growing
faith, both of which will blossom for eternity.
And like Paul, who chose to put himself at risk
of many torturous beatings and imprisonments and
hardships as a missionary, we can choose to give
up pleasures and privileges in this life for eternal
reasons, to accept pain in order to gain Christ
and live out the life and calling he has given
us.
But we can’t do it alone! We need the encouragement
and teaching of Biblical heroes like these and
the love of “Christ’s ambassadors” (2
Corinthians 5:7) in the Body of Christ. We need
to depend upon our Good Shepherd who is with us
in the valley of the shadow of death even when
we don’t feel Him. Our Shepherd will leads
us in the right path and provide us what we need.
