What if pain is different than you thought?

As I sit here waiting for God’s promises to happen, I can’t help but marvel at how good God is. Which surprises me. After all that has happened, I am somehow landing on his goodness and faithfulness, even though I’m still where I was 2 months ago and am not where I thought I’d be.

But, am I where I was 2 months ago?

What if its more about the journey than the destination? What if God cares more about our hearts and us knowing his character than actually getting everything we think we should?

If it was all about the destination, I would not have experienced growth in the midst of the waiting.

Do I know what is going on half the time? No. Do I want to? You betcha.

But for whatever reason, God is keeping me in the dark and making this process EXTREMELY hard.

Ever been there?

God, why am I still going through this? Why can’t it just happen? Where are you? This is so hard, I don’t know how much more I can take.

In these places we are tempted to doubt God’s goodness and faithfulness. Surely, if he was going to come through for us it would have happened by now. Right?

How can it be God’s will to experience pain and suffering? If he is so good, why do I feel so bad?

This past season has been the most intense season I have had yet in my life. I was SO sure I heard God right. I believed and hoped and prayed and pressed in and had all my ducks in a row.

I found myself waiting. and waiting. and still waiting.

Who knew waiting could be so hard? Especially when you don’t want to be where you are at and want to be somewhere else SO bad.

In these places of intense waiting and pain is where the breakthrough happens. When you don’t give up in the midst of pain and continue to press into God, that is when we get breakthrough.

Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up. – Galatians 6:9

I had this viewpoint that God gives us pain during certain seasons in our life so that we can grow.

This held true until this past month when I was in so much pain that I sat there and actually struggled with feeling like God was cruel. I of course know he isn’t cruel – in my head.

However, it took that intense pain and hardship for that specific thing in my heart to finally come to the surface.

“Bri, lets deal with this right now. Don’t shove it under the rug. Why do you think I’m cruel?”

I looked up the word cruel and it means “willfully causing pain or suffering to others, or feeling no concern about it.” Whoa.

God started speaking to me about pain.

What if the pain isn’t from God? What if the pain is already there and God is healing us from it?

What if the circumstances in our lives – the hard, challenging, hurtful, irritating, “I don’t want to deal with this” circumstances are revealing wounds that we have carried and shoved under the rug for so long and that is what is causing us pain?

The pain is from a festering wound and God is using the circumstances in our lives to bring it to light so he can heal it.

He isn’t giving us the pain. He is healing us from it.

There obviously is a part of this where I think we just live in a sinful and broken world and horrible things happen sometimes – that’s not what I am talking about.

I’m talking about the day to day, season to season hardships like dealing with hard people everyday, losing a job or family member, or having to work somewhere that is really bad.

What if God is allowing those situations in our lives so that it unearths the festering wounds in our hearts?

The wounds that we are unloved, have to do everything ourselves because no one else will, or that God is cruel?

Those hard situations have a way of bringing out the worst in us. Why? Because there are wounds and lies that are lodged deep in our hearts. In God’s wisdom, he knows exactly the right circumstances to wear away the walls we’ve built to protect our hearts from getting hurt again and in the process shut out any sort of healing.

This place of waiting and intense hurting was so hard, and it was exactly what I needed to bring down the walls around my heart so God could come in and heal my wounds.

Its like we have these wounds we don’t know about that is covered up by armor. The wound is infected and we don’t even know it’s there. It’s started to heal into our clothing and we can’t see because we have the armor in place to protect us from further harm. What we have to realize is that its time to let our armor down. Since we don’t know how, God comes in and starts stripping away the hard outer shell to reveal whats underneath. He starts peeling away the cloth over the wound – and that hurts. Then he has to clean the wound – that hurts even more. Finally, we have to let the wound heal – which still hurts – every movement is going to bring pain because that area is sore.

Then a beautiful thing happens. We heal AND our armor is down. We can finally let love and life in. We can finally start truly living – before we could only walk because we were wounded. Now we can run because we are healed and whole and have a solid foundation in Jesus.

God isn’t giving you pain and then just taking a step back watching you sit in it because that’s what you need.

No. He is healing you. He is a good father and always sees us and leads us through his heart of love for us.

What is he trying to heal you from today? Maybe its time to surrender to the good physician. It may hurt a lot right now, but once you deal with things – just think how good that wind will feel blowing through your hair as you are able to take leaps and bounds like you never did before.

THAT’S where he is taking you beloved.