C I R C L E O F H O P E

When we hurt, we seek healing - for ourselves or for our painful situation or both. That’s good. We’re not supposed to hurt, and we know that. Part of us remembers Paradise and knows that that is where we were supposed to live. Also, since God has set eternity in our heart (Ecclesiastes 3:11),[1] part of every person - believer or unbeliever - knows that our true home is in heaven where God “will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.” And so we want everything in our life that’s not right to be fixed. Many of our prayers are requests that God fix things or make things better. Above all, when we are sick, we want Him to heal us. After all, the Bible says He “forgives all your sins and heals all your diseases” (Psalm 103:3).

But we are not always healed of everything that needs healing - not in this life, anyway. Even a great healer of the sick like the apostle Paul had to say at least once (2 Timothy 4:20b): “I left Trophimus sick in Miletus.” And he advised Timothy to “use a little wine because of your stomach and your frequent illnesses” (1 Timothy 5:23b). Consider, too, that Jesus, when he walked through the large number of disabled people at the pool of Bethesda cured only one (John 5:2-9a).[2] This is a great mystery - why some hurt and are healed, while others hurt and are left to continue hurting.

When we have tried all avenues for healing, including God, without success, what then? Then, it is a wise person who begins to live according to the Serenity Prayer:

God, grant me the serenity
to accept the things I cannot change;
courage to change the things I can;
and the wisdom to know the difference.

Such a simple idea - I change what I can and accept the rest. But oh, how hard. How hard for the mother whose child has just lost her battle with cancer. How hard for the young person who can’t raise enough money to go to school to pursue his or her chosen career. How hard for the person whose body cries with chronic pain 24/7, with no end in sight. How hard for the abuse survivor, whose mind and emotions have been warped and twisted by the experience. How hard for the accident victim who will never walk again through no fault of their own. How hard for the political prisoner. How hard for you, whatever your pain.

Pain like this was never supposed to be. It’s wrong. We shouldn’t have to suffer like this. But we do. And even God seems to add to it. He could fix it, but He doesn’t. And odds are, He’s not explaining why not. He’s completely silent. It’s like He has backed us into a horrible corner and won’t let us out of it. Now what do we do? How do we even begin to live the Serenity Prayer?

The first thing we do now is pick up all our courage and face our reality. Jesus promised that “the truth will set you free” (John 8:32b). The Bible also promises (Galatians 5:1a): “It is for freedom that Christ has set us free.” Unfortunately, that doesn’t mean freedom from pain because Jesus also promised (John 16:33b): “In this world you will have trouble.” He further told us (Matthew 6:34b): “Each day has enough trouble of its own.” And again (Mark 10; emphasis added):

29 “I tell you the truth,” Jesus replied, “no one who has left home or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or fields for me and the gospel
30 will fail to receive a hundred times as much in this present age (homes, brothers, sisters, mothers, children and fields - and with them, persecutions) and in the age to come, eternal life.

In other words, we will hurt and struggle to differing degrees every day of our life on this planet. On the other hand, we don’t have to be beaten down or victimized as a result. We can live free of pain’s tyranny. Paul put it this way in 2 Corinthians 4:

8 We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair;
9 persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed.

But first we need to honestly face our condition. Why? Because “the truth will set you free” (John 8:32).[3] If we minimize our pain, as in “How are you? Oh, not bad, you?”, that’s not reality. If we exaggerate our pain, as in “That’s it, my life is over”, that’s not reality either. If we always run from our pain by medicating it or distracting ourselves from it (which are good things for reducing extreme pain to manageable pain, but we’re talking here about using those things to avoid admitting that we have a problem), without ever having a really good look at it, that’s not reality. If we deny our pain and continue to carry on as if nothing has changed, that’s not reality either.

Our reality is that we hurt, perhaps terribly. Our pain also limits what we can do. If we have physical issues, we will be limited in what our bodies are capable of. My husband, for example, can’t sit through most church services because, once 45 minutes of sitting on a hard seat has passed, his pain condition flares to intolerable. If someone has just lost a loved one, that person will be emotionally unstable for a good while and will not be able to function in some social (including church) or ministry activities. If you lose your job on Friday, you may not be a happy, smiling worshipper on Sunday, although you will be able to worship because the criteria for worship is that God’s “worshipers must worship in spirit and in truth” (John 4:24b). And so the newly unemployed, in order to worship in truth, may worship soberly, offering God their sense of shock and rejection, or they may worship silently, allowing the songs and prayers of others to wash through their soul and bring God’s goodness into a heart that’s desperate in the face of financial uncertainty. Then there’s the parent whose child is in serious condition in hospital. That parent may not be able to handle a full slate of church meetings and services, plus care for their needy child, but will need to pare back for a while. In other words, one thing that pain does is to change our life. And often that involves not doing everything that we did before pain.

However, when we come to grips with our pain and our limitations as a result of pain, we may find ourselves face to face with the BIG LIE. The big lie is that it is what we do that gives our life value. Therefore, the more we do, the more valuable we are - to our families, our workplaces, our church.

The western world has bought into the big lie big time. When a westerner meets somebody for the first time, they will always ask the person’s name, and the next question is pretty much guaranteed to be: “What do you do?” This question means “What is your job”? Once the person answers, they are evaluated accordingly. If they’re a brain surgeon, that will likely spark some lively conversation for a while. If they’re a floor cleaner, they might hear an “Oh, yes” of acknowledgment and then a change of subject from exploring the other person’s life because who wants to talk about floor cleaning? The message is, what you do isn’t interesting, and the underlying message is one of shame: “You haven’t really done much with your life, have you? But since we’re here talking, we may as well find something interesting to talk about.” And if you’re unemployed, oh dear. No job, no value. Every unemployed person or person on welfare knows this. They are made to feel, in one way or another, that they lost their worth when they lost their income, and they struggle to not come under that lie and to maintain their dignity.

But leaving westerners alone, how many of us, no matter where we live, have lists that go something like this:

A good husband or wife, mother or father, mother-in-law or father-in-law ______.

But does God have lists like this, so that He can tell if we’re measuring up or not? Well, one day, back when Jesus was alive on the earth, some people asked Him about God’s list. They said to Jesus (John 6:28b): “What must we do to do the works God requires?” And Jesus said (John 6:29): “The work of God is this: to believe in the one he has sent.” So let me ask you: Do you believe in Jesus? Yes? Then that completes God’s list. How you spend the rest of your life is up for grabs. You and God are free to decide together how you will live it. But I can guarantee you this. God will include generous amounts of time for you to look after yourself - to attend counseling sessions, to rest through the day, to spend time rebuilding fractured or broken relationships, to mourn a lost loved one, and so on. How do I know? Because He calls Himself the Good Shepherd (John 10:11),[4] and God says that one thing a good shepherd does is to heal wounded/sick sheep (Ezekiel 34:2-4).[5]

So the Christian believer in pain, no matter what form that pain takes, measures up. They can admit their pain and know that they lost nothing of their worth when trouble came and they began to hurt. And they can rest assured that God wants them to care for themselves. The wounded believer doesn’t need to feel that they have to put on a brave face and carry on as if nothing of importance happened. Something of huge importance happened if it drove them into pain. We misunderstand the Scripture that says “I can do everything through him who gives me strength” (Philippians 4:13) if we think it means that we deny our hurting hearts and bodies and carry on as usual. We misunderstand because we ignore the verse that comes just before this one, where the apostle Paul says (Philippians 4:12): “I know what it is to be in need, and I know what it is to have plenty. I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want”. Paul says two important things here.

One is that sometimes we hurt and God doesn’t fix it. Those who preach that everyone should have full health and lots of wealth are not supported by the Scriptures. Christians do go hungry and live in want. According to Hebrews 11:32-39,[6] heroes of faith may be strong in life, conquer, rule and see resurrections, or they may be destitute, the refuse of society and martyred without rescue. Plus, one look at Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane before His arrest shows that our emotional pain and our desperate circumstances may not be lifted from us by God.

However, Paul says one other very important thing in Philippians 4:12. He says that we can learn, in the midst of our difficulties, the secret of contentment. In other words, while we certainly can do all things through Christ, we have to learn our way to the place where we are no longer beat down and crushed by our troubles. Also, whereas the Bible says that we can do all things through Christ, it does not say that we can do all the things on our “to do” list and our family’s “to do” list and the church’s “to do” list and our employer’s “to do” list. The Bible is very clear that we are to make every effort to enter into God’s rest (Hebrews 4:1-11),[7] and anyone who enters God’s rest “rests from his own work” (Hebrews 4:10). In other words, in Christ, man-made “to do” lists must go. What we think we should be doing and what other people think we should be doing are irrelevant. What God thinks we should be doing is all that counts. “For we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do” (Ephesians 2:10; emphasis added). And, as we’ve already noted, the Good Shepherd is very concerned that wounded sheep receive care, so taking time for care of our needs is a godly use of time.

Which brings us back to the question: How do we learn to find our balance once pain knocks us off balance? How do we learn contentment when we don’t even have enough to eat? How do we not despair, but find hope, when life is very hard and we haven’t a clue how to fix anything that’s happening to us?

Each person’s journey through their pain will be as individual as they are and as their pain is. However, there are some principles that can guide us.

First of all, we need to understand that our pain is not us, and it says nothing about us. It isn’t a measure of how close or not close to God we have been walking, how godly a life we’ve led or not led to this point, if God is pleased or not pleased with us. Jesus was “a man of sorrows, and familiar with suffering” (Isaiah 53:3), yet He was the perfect Son of God, one with the Father (John 10:30),[8] and completely without sin (Hebrews 4:15).[9] Jesus said (John 15:20a): “Remember the words I spoke to you: ‘No servant is greater than his master.’” If Jesus suffered, then we will suffer. That is simply a fact of life. Couldn’t God have prevented this from happening to me? Absolutely. But He didn’t. Why didn’t He? Well, He doesn’t always explain. But He has given a promise (Romans 8):

28 And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.
29 For those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the likeness of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brothers.
30 And those he predestined, he also called; those he called, he also justified; those he justified, he also glorified.
31 What, then, shall we say in response to this? If God is for us, who can be against us?
32 He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all--how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things?
33 Who will bring any charge against those whom God has chosen? It is God who justifies.
34 Who is he that condemns? Christ Jesus, who died--more than that, who was raised to life--is at the right hand of God and is also interceding for us.
35 Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword?
36 As it is written: “For your sake we face death all day long; we are considered as sheep to be slaughtered.”
37 No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us.
38 For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers,
39 neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

In Jeremiah 18, Jeremiah was told by God to go to the potter’s house, and this is what Jeremiah saw as he watched the potter at work (Jeremiah 18:4): “But the pot he was shaping from the clay was marred in his hands; so the potter formed it into another pot, shaping it as seemed best to him.” God then went on to compare Himself to the potter and His people to the pot in the potter’s hands. Note that the pot was marred in the hand of the potter. Meaning your life can be marred while you are in God’s hand, close to Him, pleasing to Him. But the promise in Jeremiah 18:4 is that, if this happens, God won’t just restore what was lost (heal/fix the problem), but will make of your life something completely new. Most of us, when we hurt, look back and want what we used to have. But the call of God is to look forward to the new thing He will make out of our shattered, broken, wounded lives.

Human beings have a natural aversion to pain. Which is perhaps why we try to convince ourselves that if we please God enough the worst can’t happen to us, and if we stick close to Him so that we are held in His hand we can’t be marred. But the Scriptures don’t support any of that wishful thinking on our part. Instead, Jesus tells us the opposite:

John 15:20a “Remember the words I spoke to you: ‘No servant is greater than his master.’ If they persecuted me, they will persecute you also.”

Mark 10:29-30 “‘I tell you the truth,’ Jesus replied, ‘no one who has left home or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or fields for me and the gospel will fail to receive a hundred times as much in this present age (homes, brothers, sisters, mothers, children and fields - and with them, persecutions) and in the age to come, eternal life.’”

Human beings also make another, equally wrong, assumption - that pain is the same thing as suffering. But there is a very important difference. Pain is inevitable and comes because we live in a sinful world. Only when we step into glory where there is no more sin will pain disappear for us (Revelation 21:4).[10] Suffering, on the other hand, is one of just many possible responses we can make to our pain. Suffering has to do with how we interpret our pain. Suffering is also part of life on this planet, but it is important to remember that it is just one response to our pain. And so the Scriptures can say things like:

Matthew 5:11-12 “Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me. Rejoice and be glad, because great is your reward in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.”

Luke 6:27-28 “But I tell you who hear me: Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you.

1 Thessalonians 5:16-18 “Be joyful always; pray continually; give thanks in all circumstances, for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus.”

Philippians 4:6-7 “Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.”

Hebrews 12:2a “Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy set before him endured the cross, scorning its shame …”

James 1:2-4 “Consider it pure joy, my brothers, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith develops perseverance. Perseverance must finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything.”

It would be cruel for the Scriptures to tell us to do any of this if suffering is our only option when hurtful things come. The fact that they tell us all these things tells us that we have other options.

Truth be known, it isn’t pain we fear so much as suffering. When we hear someone say, “You’re going to have to learn to live with it; nothing can be done”, we tend to move immediately to suffering. We think we’re at the end of the road and have no choices. But remember the pot marred in the potter’s hands? Pain is not the end of the road. In God’s hands, it can be the beginning of a new road. We do, however, need to learn our options and how to switch gears. How do you go from dead-end despair to rejoicing, being thankful in all circumstances, blessing those who inflicted your pain, and so on? Two things are needed. We need a way to unburden ourselves of our anger, hurt, despair or whatever else is locking us into suffering, and we need to learn to find God in our pain, for He is the source of the joy, hope, love and so on that can reverse our suffering if not our pain.

Let’s look first at unburdening our suffering hearts. There are many avenues for this: prayer ministry, counseling, self-help groups, sharing with a trusted friend or loved one. But the avenue that is often overlooked in the church is lament. Lament is going to God and letting it all hang out - saying it like it is. We may be familiar with 1 Peter 5:7: “Cast all your anxiety on him because he cares for you.” And we may be familiar with songs like “What a Friend We Have in Jesus”, which tells us: “Oh, what peace we often forfeit, oh, what needless pain we bear all because we do not carry everything to God in prayer.” But often we come all prettied up for God. We may, for example, be burning with rage at the abuse we suffered at the hands of our parents, despairing over the damage to our own souls and how we will get through the pain of the past, but we’ll say to God: “Oh, God, I have so many problems because of abuse and these people hurt me so bad, but, by an act of my will, I forgive them, and I ask you to heal me of all these emotional problems and all this pain. In Jesus’ name. Amen.” Looks good as prayers go, doesn’t it? Yet it has one problem. It isn’t true. If we were honest, our prayer might go something like this: “God, where the X%@!# were You when all this was going on. Why did You give me these freaks for parents to begin with? You knew what they were going to do to me, and You went ahead and let them do it all. I hate them with my whole heart, I wish for them pain beyond endurance or, better yet, that they were dead and gone. They’re monsters, and You’re no better. Yet You want me to trust You and obey You? I don’t think so.” Why is this prayer better than the other when it sounds so - well, terrible - and how can we expect God to answer a prayer like that?” Because it’s honest. It’s the truth. God isn’t surprised by it. We’re the only ones surprised that we are capable of and, indeed, are experiencing so much negative emotion. God has seen it all along because He knows our heart. With some of us, He has been waiting many years for us to admit to it all. He has waited while we have kept pretending that we’re fine, we’re handling it, we’re victorious Christians, we’re thankful to God and grateful for all He’s done for us. As long as we’ve done that, we have been like the Laodiceans who kept talking about how much they had going for them when, in fact, they were “wretched, pitiful, poor, blind and naked” (Revelation 3:17). What was God’s advice to these pretenders? He said first: “I know your deeds, that you are neither cold nor hot. I wish you were either one or the other!” (Revelation 3:15). He wants us to be what we are, and if that happens to be wretched, vengeful and angry, then when we come to Him, we come wretched, vengeful and angry, stone cold toward Him. But then God says to these wretched ones and to us in our wretchedness (Revelation 3:18): “I counsel you to buy from me gold refined in the fire, so you can become rich; and white clothes to wear, so you can cover your shameful nakedness; and salve to put on your eyes, so you can see.” The biggest surprise to us in lament isn’t the depth of our darkness, but the fact that there is no rejection in God’s heart when we come to Him stone cold in our heart. Instead, He tells us that He has blessings in mind for us, if we’ll only come honestly.

For those worried that God will surely strike them dead if they ever come and are brutally honest about where they’re at, be assured that the Bible has a number of shocking prayers in it which don’t seem to have bothered God at all. Here is one (Psalm 137):

9 Remember, O Lord, what the Edomites did on the day Jerusalem fell. “Tear it down,” they cried, “tear it down to its foundations!”
8 O Daughter of Babylon, doomed to destruction, happy is he who repays you for what you have done to us -
9 he who seizes your infants and dashes them against the rocks.

It doesn’t get too much more hateful or vengeful against abusers than that. Or how about this one, where Jeremiah expresses his thoughts about God (Lamentations 3):

1 I am the man who has seen affliction by the rod of his wrath.
2 He has driven me away and made me walk in darkness rather than light;
3 indeed, he has turned his hand against me again and again, all day long.
4 He has made my skin and my flesh grow old and has broken my bones.
5 He has besieged me and surrounded me with bitterness and hardship.

14 I became the laughingstock of all my people; they mock me in song all day long.

This prayer is hot with rage and frustration. But it also shows why lament is such a wonderful kind of prayer for the hurting. Look at the very next words out of Jeremiah’s mouth:

22 Because of the Lord’s great love we are not consumed, for his compassions never fail.

24 I say to myself, “The Lord is my portion; therefore I will wait for him.”

What happened? God happened. Remember, God says to come to Him in our time of need, and we will find “mercy and find grace to help us” (Hebrews 4:16).[11] But He also says to come “in truth” (Psalm 145:18).[12] The writer of Lamentations came in truth, and God gave him mercy and grace that turned his whole outlook around. As a result, the church has a wonderful hymn based on this passage of Scripture. It’s called “Great Is Thy Faithfulness”.

Remember, when you came to Jesus to receive forgiveness for your sins and were saved, He really and truly forgave you all your sins. That means all the sins you had committed up to that point and all the sins you would commit from that point on. Including your longstanding bitterness and anger, your deep despair over your life’s circumstances, your confusion about why so much evil has come upon you, and so on. All means all. And the promise never changes: The Lord is near to those who call to Him in truth, and He will give mercy and grace. Lament, as raw is it may be, draws us closer to God, and that is exactly where we need to be when we hurt.

Finally, let’s look at learning “the secret of being content in any and every situation” (Philippians 4:12). This is the ultimate answer to being in pain without suffering - being able to do things like bless our abusers (Matthew 5:11-12), consider trials to be pure joy (James 1:2-4), give thanks “in all circumstances” (1 Thessalonians 5:16-18), love our enemies (Luke 6:27-28), and so on. This secret is very simply stated in Hebrews 12:2: “Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy set before him endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.” But while it is easy to say, this does not mean that the journey will be short and easy. For most of us, it isn’t. Pain is a desperately strong force that attempts to suck us completely into itself. It demands that we give it our full attention - fussing over it, fretting over it, worrying about it, complaining about it. But our path to victory is to give Jesus our full attention - to find Him in the heart of our hurting life and to cling to Him above all else. Dr. Larry Crabb, in his book Shattered Dreams,[13] tells a parable of what this journey may look like for you. Following is a paraphrase of it.

Once upon a time there was a man whose life was very pleasant, indeed. So was his relationship with God. The two go together, don’t they? God disagreed. So he allowed some unpleasantness into the man’s life.

The man was shocked. How could this be? He was a good man. He was faithful to God. How could any of this happen to him? Surely God didn’t want this! So he did his spiritual warfare and sought prayer and “trusted God” to make it all better. Life would soon be pleasant again. He had faith. But he really didn’t have faith. He really figured God owed Him this. He was self-satisfied, and surely God was satisfied, too, and would reward his good life. God disagreed. So He allowed more unpleasantness into the man’s life.

The man was frustrated, but he tried to handle these new problems like the man of faith he was. He would be patient. He would ask for more prayer. But he never looked at his own heart, which was still self-satisfied and put faith in God making his life pleasant again if he did all the right things. After all, that’s God’s job, isn’t it? The man continued to live a good life and to pray and worship, but it was all to show God that he really deserved to be helped out of the problems in his life. God disagreed. So He pulled back His protection a little further, and the man’s life became miserable.

Now the man was angry. Where was this good God of His, the One who said He loved the man so much? An unbelieving father would treat his kids better than the Heavenly Father was treating the man! The man remembered the days when his life was very pleasant, but he now saw no prospect for a quick return to that pleasantness. Nevertheless, his highest dream was to get it all back again. But how could he? He couldn’t go back in time. And the future was looking far from inviting. He began to lose hope. He went to church, but really he wasn’t worshiping and praising - just going through the motions and pretending He believed in a good and loving God. God was not pleased. So He allowed all hell to break loose in the man’s life.

The man was desperate to find some kind of pleasure somewhere, including in things he knew were wrong. But when he gave in, he just felt worse than ever. He felt like he was living in a dense fog. God was nowhere. All that he had left was pain. Where was this God who could take away all the pain but wouldn’t so much as lift a finger to remove even the tiniest bit of it, who just kept piling it on? What was He, some kind of cosmic sadist? But the man continued to beg for help from the God He thought he knew. Except that what his heart was really saying was: “I don’t deserve this. This pain is all Your fault. You owe me better than this. You’ve promised better than this.” God disagreed. He let the man continue to struggle and allowed even more trouble into his life.

The man had never, ever, in his worst nightmares, believed his life would ever come to this. All these years, he had believed (although never in so many words, just in a deep part of his heart) that this could never happen to him and, if it did, his life would be over. His faith would be over because he would have no choice but to conclude that God isn’t good. The man struggled with hope and with faith. From this place in his soul where he so believed that life is about feeling good and that God’s job is to make that happen, came a voice of such deep disappointment that it cried for the man to turn his back on God, that this was the only thing left to do, and he would be justified in doing it.

The battle was fierce. The man held on to the shreds of his faith. But really, what he was doing, was again trying to put God in his service, showing God: “I’m still being faithful. Does that impress You? Are You willing now to give me what I need?” God was indeed willing to give the man what He needed. He had been willing all along. But that was not what the man wanted. So God continued to do nothing about the man’s hard circumstances. This pained God deeply to do. But He had something so much better that He wanted the man to have.

The darkness in the man’s life thickened. All he had was fear - and mystery. The mystery of a bad life and a good God. Where was God? Why did He disappear when the man needed Him the most? Did He care, or didn’t He? The man wrestled like Jacob in the dark until finally he cried out of his brokenness a simple prayer: “Bless me!” He cried for blessing not because he was good or deserved it or because God owed him. He cried for an unknown blessing to a God whom He was just coming to know. The man had discovered his desire for God above all other things, and his desire to receive God for who God was, not for what God could do for him. He finally had a glimmer of hope that perhaps his heart’s deepest desires could be realized - desires that he had never really known before. He had thought a good life was what would satisfy. Now he knew that that wasn’t it. Only God could fill his heart. He needed to discover just who that God really was. And what life was really all about. And what truly satisfied. The man’s suffering had become a doorway into God’s heart. God was pleased.

Some things in the man’s life got better. Some stayed the same. Some got worse. But the man now had new dreams and new desires. Above all, he knew, that if he was to satisfy the thirst in his soul, he had to stay close to the Water. If he didn’t, his thirst became intolerable. And so the man finally had hope. And his new relationship with God, which is what God had been trying to give Him all along, finally brought Him true joy.

The details of your journey through pain will be your own - as individual and unique as you are. You will discover your own strongholds and wrestle with them til they give way. You will lament your own complaints until God has them all. You will encounter your own crises of faith and stumble forward in the darkness until you can see again. You will try hard to manipulate and control your way out, then abandon your addiction to control. Your spiritual life will take many twists and turns until you finally arrive at your heart’s true home - in the place where knowing God is everything and where Jesus’ promise is fully realized (John 14:23b): “My Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him.” As Christians, God is in us and is always with us, but how to live out of that place is a mystery to many believers - a secret, to use Paul’s language. Pain is one doorway to that place. It doesn’t have to be the end of your life. It can be the beginning of something better (Jeremiah 18:4b): “[S]o the potter formed it into another pot, shaping it as seemed best to him.”

[1] He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the hearts of men; yet they cannot fathom what God has done from beginning to end.

[2] Now there is in Jerusalem near the Sheep Gate a pool, which in Aramaic is called Bethesda and which is surrounded by five covered colonnades. Here a great number of disabled people used to lie--the blind, the lame, the paralyzed. One who was there had been an invalid for thirty-eight years. When Jesus saw him lying there and learned that he had been in this condition for a long time, he asked him, “Do you want to get well?” “Sir,” the invalid replied, “I have no one to help me into the pool when the water is stirred. While I am trying to get in, someone else goes down ahead of me.” Then Jesus said to him, “Get up! Pick up your mat and walk.” At once the man was cured; he picked up his mat and walked.

[3] “Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.”

[4] “I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.”

[5] “Son of man, prophesy against the shepherds of Israel; prophesy and say to them: ‘This is what the Sovereign LORD says: Woe to the shepherds of Israel who only take care of themselves! Should not shepherds take care of the flock? You eat the curds, clothe yourselves with the wool and slaughter the choice animals, but you do not take care of the flock. You have not strengthened the weak or healed the sick or bound up the injured. You have not brought back the strays or searched for the lost. You have ruled them harshly and brutally.”

[6] And what more shall I say? I do not have time to tell about Gideon, Barak, Samson, Jephthah, David, Samuel and the prophets, who through faith conquered kingdoms, administered justice, and gained what was promised; who shut the mouths of lions, quenched the fury of the flames, and escaped the edge of the sword; whose weakness was turned to strength; and who became powerful in battle and routed foreign armies. Women received back their dead, raised to life again. Others were tortured and refused to be released, so that they might gain a better resurrection. Some faced jeers and flogging, while still others were chained and put in prison. They were stoned ; they were sawed in two; they were put to death by the sword. They went about in sheepskins and goatskins, destitute, persecuted and mistreated - the world was not worthy of them. They wandered in deserts and mountains, and in caves and holes in the ground. These were all commended for their faith, yet none of them received what had been promised.

[7] Therefore, since the promise of entering his rest still stands, let us be careful that none of you be found to have fallen short of it. For we also have had the gospel preached to us, just as they did; but the message they heard was of no value to them, because those who heard did not combine it with faith. Now we who have believed enter that rest, just as God has said, “So I declared on oath in my anger, ‘They shall never enter my rest.’” And yet his work has been finished since the creation of the world. For somewhere he has spoken about the seventh day in these words: “And on the seventh day God rested from all his work.” And again in the passage above he says, “They shall never enter my rest.” It still remains that some will enter that rest, and those who formerly had the gospel preached to them did not go in, because of their disobedience. Therefore God again set a certain day, calling it Today, when a long time later he spoke through David, as was said before: “Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts.” For if Joshua had given them rest, God would not have spoken later about another day. There remains, then, a Sabbath-rest for the people of God; for anyone who enters God’s rest also rests from his own work, just as God did from his. Let us, therefore, make every effort to enter that rest, so that no one will fall by following their example of disobedience.

[8] [Jesus speaking] “I and the Father are one.”

[9] For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are - yet was without sin.

[10] He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.

[11] Let us then approach the throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need.

[12] The LORD is near to all who call on him, to all who call on him in truth.

[13] (Colorado Springs, Colorado: WaterBrook Press, A division of Random House, Inc., 2001).