After our talk today with the missionaries of Spokane (from Cup of Cool Water, Christ Kitchen, Youth for Christ, and more), I think I begin to see that which I have tried to ignore all along:
Pain IS the point.
Pain is what it’s all about. God desires Pain for us because that is where we see him, know him, need him, love him and become who we are meant to be in him. “Rejoice in suffering.” “Share in the suffering of Christ.” “Do not be surprised at suffering.” This idea of Pain and Suffering that God has for His children is one that we do not even want to try to wrap our minds around. “God wants me to be happy!” we say. “God wants my children to be safe! God wants me to have stuff! God wants me to… wait, what is this? He wants me to ‘participate in the pain of Christ’? Ok, God, you just crossed the line.”
But does God really want us to live a sterile, safe, dull, and protected life? I do not dare to think so. The Bible is all about Pain. It’s what brings us to the breaking point where we are truly alive and truly dependent on His grace. That is when we see the cross and know. It is only in Pain and Suffering that you taste what true love from a Savior feels like. And that is pure joy.
Mark Terrell from Cup of Cool Water ended our time with some advice. He said, “Ministry is the best and worst thing that has ever happened to me. I have never felt so much pain, hardship, rejection, trial, and suffering. But in this ministry, I have also never felt so much love, encouragement, hope, peace and joy. I am furiously, furiously loved by God.”
You see, the pain is the point that brings us to God’s heart.
LL
Emilie–That’s exactly what I was trying to say. My dramatization got in the way of Truth, but your words bring me back to the real point I failed to make:)
God feels pain today, just as Jesus Christ felt pain. Though pain is not optimal, and hardly understandable, it is a sub-point, if you will.
Yahweh does not long for us to be in pain, yet I believe that He longs for us to have the correct response to situations that merit pain. God does not rape people, for example, and He does not will rape to happen, yet if our hearts do not break for victims of heinous crime, where does our love lie? Certainly not with God. Pain is an inevitable part of life here under the sun, and though God does not cause it, He allows us to feel pain because He has more in mind for us than comfort.
God has higher aspirations for us than to be circumstantially happy, God desires joy for us, even in the midst of crushing pain.
Not everyone has experienced intense, acute pain. But those who have can understand the refining power and bittersweet beauty of pain and suffering. When we are crippled by pain, we become wholly dependent on God, and that is what He desires. God desires our undivided love and attention, and the end always justifies the means once you reach it.
Our life and pain here on Earth is nearly incomprehensible now, but will be only a fleeting moment looking back.
Thank you all for your input! It is exciting to battle out these ideas and hear what others have to say. Yes, I am glad to be taking Rob’s class:) I see it as a crucial part of my journey.
Scarlet–good distinctions between the two types of suffering. That helps!
Thank you all for your posts, this is a very challenging idea for me. The Bible seems to lean both ways on the issue of pain and suffering: we should expect to experience pain and ultimately we will be living in the presence of our King without any suffering. So we both expect pain and know that God’s final desire for us is no more pain.
And maybe that is another big part of our experience of pain. Pain is used by God as an activating agent for us to further his kingdom in which there is ultimately to be no pain. Seeing others suffering, and identifying with that suffering, can lead to a more missional lifestyle that will spread shalom on earth in the present time.
-Jeremiah
I like what you have written here. I think more than embracing pain and not shying away from pain I see a different challenge. Don’t allow yourself to be complacent and ever get too comfortable. I believe that God wants to have happiness regardless of what people might say, but I also believe that you are right. God wants us to strive for the widow and the orphan…to lower ourselves and to never be too comfortable so that we may not become complacent. I applaud your challenge.
I think one of the difficult things in the journey to know God is discerning between the pain that comes from the accuser and the torment that is in sin, and the pain that comes from persecution for the sake of righteousness and dying to self. The first torments us and pushes us down to hopelessness. The second builds us up and causes us to run with greater determination to the heart of our Papa and to the arms of our Bridegroom. I pray that the church would not be deceived but would learn to discern between the two.
Thanks for the post. I think I get what you are saying, but not sure I would go to say it is all about pain. God uses pain and suffering…but to watch a child suffer from starvation, a woman suffer from abuse, a family experience pain from from losing their son to cancer…to say that God desires that makes God out as a transcendental perpetrator. I would probably put it that we all experience it and should lean into it for that is where we can meet God…or something like that.
What do you think?
I didn’t say this in my comment, but I appreciate you bringing this forth. I just want to be sensitive towards it, because as I said-there are times when pain is pointless.
But certainly God uses pain, I’m just wary of anything where we make God out to be the author of our pain. Requires more nuance than you or I can lay out in a short blog post or a comment 😉
I don’t know you, but I’m glad you’re taking Rob’s class!
If I were to refute this, I would merely be restating what I’ve already written, so I’ll refrain. I might add, however, that my own experience of pain has led me to believe in the beauty of it. It’s not of this world, that’s for sure. I don’t know if I’m making any sense, but that’s the way I see it. Thanks for your comment! I hope to find more clarity in the future, but for now, I trust in a God I do not understand. And that’s ok with me.
I’d offer a little push back. As Christians we certainly don’t want to shy away from pain, because our example in Jesus is one of not allowing pain to stand in the way of love. But I think it’s a bit on the side of overstating our case to say God desires pain. As far as I can tell, pain is not a part of God’s plan.
I think we walk a fine line between speaking of identifying with Christ in pain (or maybe more appropriately Christ identifying with us in pain?) and painting God as some sort of sadist who wants us to experience pain.
Certainly pain is part of the human experience and not something we shy away from, it’s like the expression “no pain, no gain.” But I’ve experienced enough of life to know that there’s such a thing as pointless pain – the sudden loss of a loved one, freak accidents, grieving the loss of life over a collapsed bridge. I’m not sure that I believe in a God who causes those things to teach us something.
I think it is safe to say, however that God uses the opportunity afforded us in pain to teach us. So by all means, let’s not shy away from pain, but like martyrdom neither should we just pursue it to pursue it.