Pain in the Process

Intro

About three weeks ago I injured my wrist playing softball. It has been swollen and causing a lot of pain, especially at night.

I realized a couple of things. I am not as young as I used to be and don’t bounce back as quickly. Two, I seem to injure more easily and quickly than I used too.

This past week I was praying and asking God what to preach on for this Sunday. The other day I woke up with this phrase:

Pain in the Process

Being in physical pain myself, I immediately felt thats what I need to speak on the next two weeks.

Pain in the process.

I am currently reading a book called “rediscovering Discipleship” by Robby Gallaty and he wrote this:

“God uses every pressure, circumstance, and situation to shape and mold us into the person he desires us to be. Often His choice instrument for doing this is pain. Pain reveals areas in our lives that need to be formed.” - Robby Gallaty

After reading this, I was like ok God, lets do it. So here we are.

Pain in the Process.

When I read Scripture I find that there are a lot of people who went through pain and there definitely was a process.

Process means time. Not sure how long that time is, none the less, anytime we go through pain, there will be a process.

Noah endured humiliation & mocking for ninety plus years while he constructed the Ark. Pain in the process.

Joseph endured isolation in a pit and incarceration in a prison before God promise from eleven years prior came to pass.

Moses wandered the wilderness for forty years before, not he, but the Children of Israel could enter the Promised Land.

Jesus spent thirty years living a normal life according to the will and wisdom of God before He began His earthly ministry.

Each and everyone of these and more, learned to wait on and trust in the Lord.

When it comes to our pain, I would dare say a lot of people are impatient.

We ask questions like:

Why am I going through this?

When will it end?

Why does it hurt so much?

or I think quite a few people ask the question, God where are you?

And many more.

Church, you hear me often state that we must trust the Truth of the Word over our emotions. Even when the emotion of pain comes in.

I am reminded of what the Truth of the Word says.

James 1:2–4 NLT

2 Dear brothers and sisters, when troubles of any kind come your way, consider it an opportunity for great joy. 3 For you know that when your faith is tested, your endurance has a chance to grow. 4 So let it grow, for when your endurance is fully developed, you will be perfect and complete, needing nothing.

Troubles we face, James says are an opportunity.

They are an opportunity for either the pain or the trouble to be highlighted or…it can be an opportunity for not just any joy, but great joy to shine in your life.

Why?

Because as James says, it allows growth to take place in your life.

Your faith in who God is will begin to grow.

This tells us that our pain is not wasted. God never wastes anything that we go through in this lifetime. What hurts us in the process can become what strengthens us for the purpose.

Unlike my wrist, pain isn’t always evidence that something has gone wrong. Sometimes pain is part of what God is doing deep within us.

Here are somethings we can learn from pain.

Pain doesn’t mean God is absent

As I mentioned before, one of the first thoughts we have when we are going through a painful time of life - this could be physical, spiritual, relational, financial - we ask the question, “God where are you?”

God’s presence is NOT determined by your circumstance.

Too often our own religious mindsets get in the way. We tend to think well if things are going good, God is with me. But the moment things go awry, God must have left me.

This is NOT what the Scripture teaches.

Psalm 34:18 NASB95

18 The Lord is near to the brokenhearted And saves those who are crushed in spirit.

Jesus Himself said,

John 14:18 NLT

18 No, I will not abandon you as orphans—I will come to you.

To believe or even to tell someone else who is a child of God that God has left them and the pain they are suffering is proof, is not biblical and therefore a lie. Do not believe it.

Let me show you something in the life of Jospeh.

He was thrown into a pit by his own brothers.

Sold by his brothers as a slave.

They lied about his death to his father. Anyone had family hurt you?

Falsely accused. Anyone been falsely accused?

Thrown into prison unjustly.

Through all of this, the Scripture says:

Genesis 39:2 NASB95

2 The Lord was with Joseph, so he became a successful man. And he was in the house of his master, the Egyptian.

The whole time, through all the pain, the Lord was with Joseph.

God was with him in the pit.

God was with him in the prison.

God was with him in the palace.

God was with Joseph in the pain and the process.

Sometimes it is the process that is painful.

We haven’t shared much of what we faced during the process of coming over to New Life over 4 years ago. We made some people very angry, lost friendships, and even had some curse me and my family. That pain was real. But we knew God was with us. We knew God was working, even in the pain.

Here is what we have learned. God’s presence isn’t proved by the absence of pain.

God’s presence is often revealed by how He sustains us through the pain.

A lot of times when we feel the pain, we pray:

“God, get me out of this!”

And God certainly can. I don’t know how many times I asked God to make the pain stop. To take it away. But more times than not God says, “I’m going to walk you through this.”

Once again I am reminded of truth in the Word of God.

Isaiah 43:2 NASB95

2 “When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; And through the rivers, they will not overflow you. When you walk through the fire, you will not be scorched, Nor will the flame burn you.

When you pass through the waters, not if you go through the waters. When you go, God says I will be with you!

You may not understand the why, God may not take away the pain, but you can rest assure that God is going to be right by your side!

Count it all JOY when you face these trials and tribulations!

Why? Why would I want to be joyful about the pain! That is crazy!

Some things only grow under pressure

Pain does test your faith. Tests your trust in who God says He is and who He says you are.

Paul writes in:

Romans 5:3–5 NLT

3 We can rejoice, too, when we run into problems and trials, for we know that they help us develop endurance. 4 And endurance develops strength of character, and character strengthens our confident hope of salvation. 5 And this hope will not lead to disappointment. For we know how dearly God loves us, because he has given us the Holy Spirit to fill our hearts with his love.

There is pain in the process. And it is the pain that causes the growth.

Look at the process according to Paul.

I would guarantee that every single person here would love to skip the suffering part.

God can absolutely do that. But from what I have learned in the past 25 years of really following Jesus, it doesn’t normally happen that way.

There is no such thing as a McChristian. Discipleship is a process, and part of that process is going through some pain.

It is in our pain/suffering that produces perseverance, character, and hope. In fact Jesus never said, “If you suffer”.

John 16:33 NLT

33 I have told you all this so that you may have peace in me. Here on earth you will have many trials and sorrows. But take heart, because I have overcome the world.”

When we go through the pain, you can certainly ask God to take it away and to bring the healing, but what happens if He doesn’t? We tend to believe the lie that He is not there and that He has left us.

What if we modify our prayer just a little.

“God, I know you can take this away, but if you don’t, I know you are with me. Help me through it. Help me glorify you in it.”

This changes things. It changes your perspective on the pain. Now instead of complaining, griping, moaning, woe is me, your:

Suffering can become the beginning of your spiritual formation.

Count it all joy! When I go through things in this life it will produce the endurance I need and it will build character in me, not just any character, but a Christ like character, and I have a hope that even if the pain doesn’t ever go away, God is still God, and if I leave this world today I will NEVER have to suffer again!

Here is the rub. You can’t grow in this unless you go through the pain in the process.

Some things can only be learned when God is your only option.

You can say things like, “I believe God provides.”

But there is another depth of faith when you watched Him provide when you had no where else to turn.

The first church we pastored I was only paid $300/wk plus they took care of our housing. Within the first week or two the secretary told me in the hallway, “We are not afraid to starve out a pastor.”

They tried. It was a hard season of ministry for us. We moved there with two girls and then we had Sophie. We couldn’t buy just the necessities. We cried, we worried, we gave it to God.

God showed up over and over. We would have money show up in our mail box. We had cars provided to us because ours got repoed. We had food given to us. We even had someone give us a brand new washer and dryer that we couldn’t hook up! That was for the next season of ministry unbeknownst to us. Another story for another time.

During that time we learned to really lean on God for provision. He came through every single time. It was a season of growth that could only happen if we went through it.

Can I tell you that our faith grew in God’s provision in that difficult season. So much so we went into the next season of ministry at another church that had over $14K in debt. We told that church, we are going to fast and pray that God will provide and make a way for us to be debt free. Can I tel you God provided again and we led that church debt free!

I tell you, you start walking in faith as it grows and people will start asking you to pray for them. I shared our story with someone here in our community about God providing multiple cars. I told them that I will pray God gives you a car. They doubted. Within a month or so I seen them driving around and they still are to this day.

Don’t complain about the pain…ask God to grow you through it!

Pain reveals what is inside us

Pain not only develops us, it exposes us.

When you squeeze and olive what comes out? Oil.

When you squeeze a grape, what comes out?

When you feel the squeeze of life, what comes out of you?

The pain and pressures of this life will expose what is on the inside of you. What will people find?

Bitterness

Anger

Fear

Control

Pride

Insecurity

Pain can reveal some of the negative thing inside of us, but it can also reveal the faith that we didn’t know was even there.

Look at the the disciple Peter.

Peter wasn’t perfect, he said he would never deny Jesus, but then the pressure came. Yet Jesus did not discard Peter.

I am sure glad that Jesus doesn’t discard us in our weak moments in this life.

Jesus didn’t discard Peter, He restored him. This failure became part of Peter’s spiritual formation.

The man who denied Jesus at one point, later on stood boldly on the Day of Pentecost and openly preached Jesus Christ is the way to salvation.

Generally speaking humans are selfish by nature. Even in our prayers. God change them.

We rarely pray, “God change me. God grow me.”

What if we changed that.

What if we prayed the same prayer of David?

Psalm 139:23–24 NASB95

23 Search me, O God, and know my heart; Try me and know my anxious thoughts; 24 And see if there be any hurtful way in me, And lead me in the everlasting way.

This can change the question in your painful season.

Instead of praying “God when will this end?”

Ask God, “God, what are you revealing in me?” or “God, what are you forming in me?”

This brings me to my last point.

God can form character through what we would never choose

Nobody signs up for suffering. If we had a sign up sheet in the foyer for “Pain & Suffering”, not one person would be like, “That sounds fun! I am in!”

Nobody wakes up in the morning and says, “I hope something painful happens today. I really need to grow more.”

Nobody chooses that. But many of the deepest things God wants to develop in us are formed through the things that we would never have chosen.

**Nicole’s Testimony**

Paul said this,

2 Corinthians 4:16 NLT

16 That is why we never give up. Though our bodies are dying, our spirits are being renewed every day.

While the things outside us may be hurting, something holy is happening inside of us.

This bears repeating.

“God uses every pressure, circumstance, and situation to shape and mold us into the person he desires us to be. Often His choice instrument for doing this is pain. Pain reveals areas in our lives that need to be formed.” - Robby Gallaty

Pain doesn’t automatically makes us better, but pain does allow God an opportunity to form us.

Closing

Suffering.

Nobody wants this word.

But suffering can produce perseverance, which produces character, which produces hope.

All you may see is your pain, but God may be looking at what He is producing in it.

If you are here this morning, and you are going through some pain. Physical, spiritual, relational, financial, let’s bring it to God.

You may not understand the season you are in, but you don’t want to waste it, come to the altar and surrender it to the one who will walk with you through it.

Let’s not pray, God get me through it, but God form Christ in me through the process.

Next week: how to keep your faith while you are hurting.