Quest 44 - How To Deal With Pain

Pain stinks. We dread it, we run from it, we hate it and in our lives, we inevitably experience it. Just yesterday my daughter Keeley tripped and fell 3 different times, all 3 times she screamed and cried. Each time we had to pick her up and comfort her. She recognized that pain was bad.

I can remember moments in my life that brought me pain. 

There was the time I had a rebar wire in my foot. 

There was the time I strained my right buttocks in a football game. 

There was the time I got my wisdom teeth taken out. 

We all have stories of physical pain. Interesting enough, we look back on them and laugh while sharing the stories of pain with others. 

Physical pain does that because most of the time, that physical pain is a momentary pain and once it’s gone, it’s gone for good. Yet, there is worse pain than that. It’s a pain that sticks and never seems to go away and that pain is a spiritual and emotional pain. We want nothing more to avoid it because we recognize that pain doesn’t go away easily. 

There is a fantastic book on pain called The Problem With Pain by C.S Lewis and he said this, “Mental pain is less dramatic than physical pain, but it is more common and also more hard to bear. The frequent attempt to conceal mental pain increases the burden: it is easier to say “My tooth is aching” than to say “My heart is broken.” 

I think that sums it up pretty well. Don’t you? Which leads me to the concept that I want to tackle today. If we are dealing with pain, and inevitably we will, what do you do? 

My thesis is that we try to heal a broken heart in a broken way when we need to go to the one who created the heart to heal the heart. I’ll look at this from two different angles. 

1. The Broken Way. 

This is the way that we try to heal our broken hearts on our own. For many of us, we don’t even realize what we are doing when we try to heal our hearts. We just know something needs to change. Something happens and we try to fix the feeling by giving the problem to something else for reprieve. This could be relationships, a bottle, a double cheeseburger with bacon, a release of anger. It’s a momentary fix. 

In this situation - we feel a reprieve for the pain, but we aren’t released from the pain. 

It reminds me of the great quote from Paul Blart Mall Cop, “Peanut butter fills the cracks of the heart.”

Yes momentarily, that peanut butter will help, but over time it will go away and you need more peanut butter. 

There is only one thing that brings release from pain and that is time with God. People don’t want to hear that though because people want to blame God for their pain. 

Referencing back to C.S Lewis’ book - this quote had me fascinated about this idea, “The problem of reconciling human suffering with the existence of a God who loves, is only insoluble so long as we attach a trivial meaning to the word "love", and look on things as if man were the centre of them. Man is not the centre. God does not exist for the sake of man. Man does not exist for his own sake. "Thou hast created all things, and for thy pleasure they are and were created." We were made not primarily that we may love God (though we were made for that too) but that God may love us, that we may become objects in which the divine love may rest "well pleased".” 

This got me thinking about it… We have it flipped. Rather than centering the pain on how we can fix it through God, it’s about how God can fix it through us. Meaning there is a right way to deal with pain. 

2. The Right Way.

Mark laid it out perfectly in Quest this week using John 14 to deal with this question. Here are some of the scriptures that communicated the right process. 

John 14:1-2, ““Don’t let your hearts be troubled. Trust in God, and trust also in me. 2 There is more than enough room in my Father’s home. If this were not so, would I have told you that I am going to prepare a place for you?

We have a place in the Father’s home. Jesus has prepared it for us. When you are in pain, recognize that no matter what has happened, God is a God who loves you and cares for you. He wants you close to him. 

John 14:6, “Jesus told him, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one can come to the Father except through me.”

WE ARE TALKING ABOUT THE RIGHT WAY AND THE WRONG WAY. THERE IS NO MORE OBVIOUS WAY TO DEAL WITH PAIN THAN USING JESUS’ OWN WORDS

John 14:15-17, “ “If you love me, obey my commandments. 16 And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate, ]who will never leave you. 17 He is the Holy Spirit, who leads into all truth. The world cannot receive him, because it isn’t looking for him and doesn’t recognize him. But you know him, because he lives with you now and later will be in you.”

There is great power in that scripture to be held onto. In a world where it can feel like the release from the pain is so far away, there is still a God who is active and a part of our lives. He isn’t leaving us, he is in the pain with us. For that I am thankful. 

Mark said it perfectly, “Our peace in the midst of trouble comes from Jesus’ presence. God became present in the person of Jesus. And when Jesus left, his presence remained with us through his Spirit living in us.”

If you are dealing with pain and trouble right now, I am sorry. There is still hope though and I hope today that you find it the right way. God is here for you and for me because he loves us.