What does it look like when we walk through seasons of trial and tribulation, when we carry pain and we choose to not avoid that pain, but we choose to let Jesus the way, the truth and the life, into those places? What does it look like when we allow him to utilize those difficult things for our good and for his glory.
The Healing Power of Letting God Redeem
Justin:
Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life. But He also says to those that were following Him, “In this life, you will have tribulation, but take heart, I have overcome the world“. So in the world you’ll have tribulation, but take heart because the world that has tribulation in it, I have overcome that.
And to imagine that our first response to encountering tribulation or trial or suffering in this life is to try and turn to other sources as a wellspring for our answer to our pain. It is interesting because we have Jesus, who is the way, the truth and the life. We have Jesus who is the Savior, who is able to sympathize with us because he’s been through all of it before, and He’s overcome all of those things.
The idea that as believers, that our first response when experiencing tribulation, pain, or suffering should be to turn to anything other than The One who says that He took care of it is fascinating. I have to be really careful how I carry my pain, because everything that God allows to come into my life, is for a reason, for a purpose, regardless of whether or not I am justified to have that pain.
Gina:
There’s a huge mystery, and that is the sovereignty of God. So He’s given us free will, but He’s sovereign. So the implication for some could be, “Well, if something happens in my life, well, God did that to me.” So then that gives me a justified position of blame, hurt or offense.
That gives an opportunity for the enemy to go, “See, you don’t deserve good things” or “You’re being punished.” But the reality is – that because we live in a broken world, because we have an enemy, because we have free will… God isn’t Zeus up there going, “Ooh, let’s knock him over and see what happens.”
But as life does happen we have a choice in that place to be yielded to Him and to allow Him into that space. We have a choice to let Him be the Redeemer or not. And this is huge because there’s the, “Well, if I’m obedient and I do all the right things, then my life should be okay.” So then that enslaves me into this work based mentality, trying to work hard enough so that I don’t go through something.
Or things are terrible, so then I must have done something wrong. The enemy will distract us with all of that and keep us from encountering God in the middle of that place. If we can allow God in, and we will open our ears to hear, and allow our eyes to see His presence in that place, then we are going to discover an intimacy with Him and a dependence on Him, and a strength through Him to now stand in a way that we never could before.
Justin:
Yes and amen. But when left to our own impulse, and our pain, we have to be so careful because we will have as an initial response to drop into all of those operations that you just talked about. Operating as someone that’s wounded or broken or isolated, without keeping watch over how we carry the privilege that our pain gives us, which is to connect with the Father through that season.
We have this tendency in our flesh to impulsively respond initially and quickly to eliminate the pain. It’s really difficult for us operating outside of “the Way the Truth and the Life” to rightly carry our pain, and to carry our pain in a healthy way, if I can say pain and health in the same sentence.
Because I do think that pain is part of us becoming healthy. Why? Because we’re being transformed into the image of Jesus- through the tribulation we face in this life by taking heart, knowing that he’s overcome it.
So I drop my anchor in Him, and what He says in the midst of pain, and I hold fast to those things, those qualities, those things that we see take place. I think there’s a lot of power in understanding that. So I would just say that how we handle our pain is so massive and significant in our spiritual journey.
Forgiveness Sets Us Free
Gina:
It is. I want to address this, because I feel like there’s so much of this and this is just across generations and new believers and old. And that’s when you’ve been hurt by the church. That could be whether you’re a leader or not.
When I teach classes there’s a lot of people with a lot of baggage, who have experienced a lot of spiritual abuse or whatever the case may be. Some of it, justified in their pain, and you’re just going, “How is that person allowed to be in a pulpit position.”
Justin:
Where they have willfully wounded somebody.
Gina:
Yeah. And then all the way to- this poor guy was just doing his job and there’s some baggage, and everything in between. We take Verses like, “Why do you try to take a log out of your brother’s eye when you have a log in your own.” And it’s easy to categorize that into the “big obvious sins”, but we don’t bring them back to really just relational things.
I’ve been a believer for a long time, and I’ve been in leadership for a long time, and I’m pretty healthy. I can walk through some stuff, but even when we were on staff, we went through a lot of different things. I personally went through a lot of different things.
And my friend Kelly and I went to a conference and it was on prayer or healing or something, and the second day during worship, they sent out people to pray over people in the room during worship. I was worshiping, and I have my journal, having a great old time with Jesus, I’m in ministry, I’m doing life, I’ve got a healthy marriage, healthy relationships, the whole thing.
And this guy comes up to me and I didn’t even see his face, but he put his hand on my shoulder and he’s praying for me, and then he leaned down and he’s like, there’s men that have hurt you. And at first I was internally defensive, “I’ve got a great marriage.”
You have all these assumptions, and I think my flesh was going, “What does he think?” So I start thinking, “I’ve got a great marriage and you know, I don’t have any issues or whatever.” And he leans down. He said, “There’s men that have hurt you and you need to forgive them.”
And all these names started bubbling up and they were some people that I’d worked with, and I’ll be honest, you were one of those names.
Justin:
Oh, well, duh. Yeah. I was your direct overseer through a massive church transition. I had to do all sorts of stuff in the midst of that to figure out how to manage relationships in all of its madness.
Gina:
The thing that was interesting is that, although I knew that I carried some pain, I didn’t realize that I had unforgiveness. I thought that I had been dealing with it and I’d been walking it out. Sure. But until I sat in that place and I allowed myself to hear what He had to say, and I asked the Holy Spirit, “What do you mean by this?”
And I let him say what He had to say, and I started writing out names. And then as I’m writing those names, I start repenting and I start forgiving. Now I’ve opened the door for Him to do that work, to bring healing and reconciliation to me in my life.
Justin:
Well, and reconciliation to those relationships were available.
Gina:
I wasn’t cutting off relationships, or visibly angry with people, it was this internal pain and unforgiveness that God revealed. When we talk about Isaiah 61, that, “He comes to set the prisoners free, to open prison doors to those who are captive.” I was a prisoner in my spirit, in my own self.
That was hindering my connection with Jesus, my connection with other people, and my ability to step forward into the things that He had for me, because I needed to have that dealt with so that I could be free, and so that I could step forward.
I think that is such a trick of the enemy in such a covert insidious thing he does, is to keep us trapped in those things and convince us that we need to stay protected even from the Holy Spirit.
Justin:
Oh yeah, and he’ll use God’s word to do it too. He’ll use the culture of how you’re accepted in your church circles to do that. And what I mean by that is, you can be just bearing up, look at how strong I am, look at how able I am to endure.
Avoiding False Humility in Pain
Justin:
And all the people that are looking at me will see me as a strong person. It’s like you stand out and then you say, “God, aren’t you so proud of me with how much I don’t even need you to deal with my own pain? Look how strong I am! I don’t even need you.”
Gina:
Oh, it’s false humility.
Justin:
But it’s all the time. “Look how strong I am.” Like how high of a pain tolerance do you need before we have to say, “Okay, I need to go back to the Way, the Truth, and the Life. I need to go back to the Liberator. I need to go back to the one that said “You will have tribulation, but I’ve overcome tribulation in this world.” I need to go back to Him.
He holds the truth that sets me free, not just into salvation, but free from all of the bitterness and all of the seeds that get sown in those difficult seasons of pain. He has the keys to those seasons. He holds the keys to life and death. And he’s given us the keys to life, through His word, through His promise, through His presence in His Spirit, through His empowering us to live life out.
But man, how high of a pain tolerance do you need before you fall on your knees? And if I can make that a moment to moment conversation, imagine how equipped I’m gonna be in the Holy Spirit to operate by the Spirit as opposed to by the flesh. Because if my initial impulse is always to fleshly respond or react, then man, how many things do I want to build on a fleshly response?
It can get out of control, like a brush fire. So fast before I realize it. When, if I could become moment by moment aware that my pain should be a trigger for me to fall back into Way, Truth and Life. That my ways aren’t sufficient, my protections over my own self are not sufficient. My self preservation is not worth wasting my time I have in this life.
And that’s part of what I think Paul means when he says, Hey, make the best use of your time. Follow these things that I’m telling you to do, make the best use of your time. I think part of what needs to be restored and grown up in us, is that we are moment by moment, by moment, by moment, bringing the Father to the table of our decision making. Moment by moment, by moment, staying awake and bringing the Spirit in, because the Spirit’s willing, the flesh is weak.
What if our weakness became the trigger for us to fall on our knees and ask the Spirit to speak in no matter where we’re at? We have a discipline that transcends all of that space of our pain. Our discipline gets triggered. “Oh, ouch. That hurt. Okay. God, don’t let there be a root of bitterness. I don’t wanna fall into that.”
Bitterness is a season, it’s not an emotion. Once you’re in, the door closes behind you. So if I could operate in the Spirit somehow through yielding, by allowing my fleshly pain to trigger me, to abide, to dig deeper into dependence with Way Truth and Life. That’s what the Spirit does. He confirms the things and the teachings of Jesus within us.
He confirms the connection we have with the Father, not the connection we have with ourselves. The connection with the Father welcomes us into that presence that we have already been given. But He says, “Hey, come on home. Let’s do this again. Hey, come on home. Let’s do this again.” It’s a beautiful thing we’ve been given.
Check out the rest of the conversation: Pain – The Beginning Of Prosperity & Navigating Pain With God
Check out the Dwell Meditations
