My Theology of Pain

As I have begun preparing a message on perseverance in Christ, I have had to think hard about the topic of pain. "Perseverance" according to the Merriam Webster dictionary is: "continued effort to do or achieve something despite difficulties, failure, or opposition." So when I consider all that the Bible has to say about perseverance...I eventually have to come across the "difficulty, failure, opposition" which for me I will condense into one word "pain".

We have all heard the phrase "No Pain, No Gain" (and if you haven't well now you have!) Its a common phrase used during trainings, boot camps, and weight lifting. But I want to take this phrase and apply it to our daily walk with God. The more I study about "pain", the more I realize that pain may really be "God's mercy in disguise"

First, without pain we wouldn't know how to protect ourselves. Here is a horrible but true story. When I was in Nigeria, our mission team visited, treated, and tried our best to comfort those with Leprosy (Leprosy is a disease that has been known since biblical times. It causes skin sores, nerve damage, and muscle weakness that gets worse over time.) Most people don't know but the worst thing about Leprosy is the fact that you can't FEEL pain anymore. Your body becomes numb to feeling. So many of the people we visited who as you can imagine lived in the slums had body parts burned, severed, cut, infected, and bitten (yes bitten off from rats and bugs). Because they could no longer feel pain they could no longer defend themselves from injury.

Second, without pain we wouldn't experience what it is to truly have faith. We wouldn't know what it is to hope for something. And I believe we ultimately would not understand the power of love. Pain is what brings all these things into completion for us. When we are really under a trial, the virtues of faith, hope, and love really come ALIVE!

Third, I want to encourage you from the book of Philippians 2:1-11: "Therefore if you have any encouragement from being united with Christ, if any comfort from his love, if any common sharing in the Spirit, if any tenderness and compassion, then make my joy complete by being like-minded, having the same love, being one in spirit and of one mind. Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather, in humility value others above yourselves, not looking to your own interests but each of you to the interests of the others.In your relationships with one another, have the same mindset as Christ Jesus:

Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage; rather, he made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to death— even death on a cross!

Therefore God exalted him to the highest place and gave him the name that is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue acknowledge that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father."

We have hope to endure all trials because we have Jesus. Jesus Christ persevered despite all the pain at the cross, the whippings of the 39 lashes, the thorn of crowns...Jesus overcame and so we can overcome!