Don’t Waste Your Pain

(by Michael Larsen)

Pain is an unavoidable part of life. We experience grief, disappointment, illness, financial difficulties, broken relationships, loneliness, and loss. We may not be able to choose whether we suffer, but we can choose what we do with our suffering.
The Bible teaches that God has purposes for our lives: to know and love Him through worship, to love others through fellowship, to grow spiritually through discipleship, to serve others through ministry, and to share the Good News through our mission. What we sometimes overlook is that God can use our pain to move us toward each of these purposes.
The question is not simply, “Have I suffered?” It is, “What am I allowing God to do through my suffering?”

1. Pain Can Draw Us Closer to God
When suffering comes, we can run toward God or away from Him. Drawing closer to God does not mean pretending everything is fine. We can honestly tell God how we feel. We can cry, question, struggle, and express our sorrow.
Paul experienced times when he felt overwhelmed and powerless, yet those experiences taught him to depend more completely on God. Our pain can do the same. Suffering can deepen our worship as we learn to trust God when life no longer makes sense.

2. Pain Can Draw Us Closer to Others
Suffering can also deepen our relationships. When we have experienced pain ourselves, we often become more compassionate, gracious, forgiving, and less judgmental toward people who are struggling.
Galatians 6:2 tells us to carry one another’s burdens. Some of the deepest fellowship happens when people walk together through suffering. Instead of isolating us, pain can teach us how much we need one another.

3. Pain Can Make Us More Like Jesus
Pain can develop our character. Qualities such as patience, peace, compassion, faithfulness, and self-control are often learned during difficult circumstances.
Pain can make us bitter, or it can make us better. One important quality suffering can develop is resilience, the ability to get back up after being knocked down. Paul endured tremendous hardship but refused to give up because he viewed his problems from an eternal perspective. Our troubles are temporary, but what God is doing in us can have eternal significance.

4. Pain Can Help Us Serve Others
God can also “recycle” our pain. Second Corinthians 1:4 says God comforts us in our troubles so that we can comfort others.
Often, the person best able to help someone who is hurting is someone who has experienced similar pain. What once wounded us can eventually become a source of encouragement and ministry to someone else.

5. Pain Can Become Part of Our Witness
Finally, suffering can give credibility to our message. People notice how we respond when life becomes difficult. Honest faith in the middle of pain can sometimes speak more powerfully than displaying our strengths.
Paul said that what happened to him actually helped advance the gospel. In the same way, God can use even our most painful experiences as part of our life message.
Pain will come. The choice is whether we waste it or allow God to use it. Our suffering can draw us closer to God, closer to others, make us more like Christ, equip us to serve, and give us a story that can bring hope to someone else.

Don’t waste your pain. Let God give it purpose.