Use Your Pain

Wednesday, September 15

Use Your Pain   

It is good for me that I have been afflicted, that I may learn Your statutes. Psalm 119:71

Pain is the reminder that the real enemy is trying to take us out and weigh us down. Through the pain your testimony is even stronger, louder, and more impactful. Don’t waste your suffering, plug it into Christ and allow Him to be glorified at all times. Take comfort and solace in the fact that you can put your pain to work. Consider the actions of Paul, he was always concerned for the souls of those he touched and he continually prayed for these churches. His letters reflect his pastor’s heart and his love and concern for those he thought of as his spiritual children. Paul did not write out of self-pity, he wrote words of encouragement from a very dark place.

Through affliction, Paul wrote what is known today as the prison epistles. They are called prison epistles because they were written by the apostle Paul during one of his incarcerations. Paul’s Roman incarceration produced three great letters to the churches of Ephesus, Colossae, and Philippi, as well as a personal letter to his friend Philemon.

Your affliction is a gift from God. When we factor God into the equation, things look very different. It’s not that the affliction itself is less painful or that something sad has been made happy or that evil has somehow become good. But we now see what we are going through with our spiritual lens.