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Your Pain Has a Purpose

I was inspired to write this from recent experiences in my own life.

Its so easy to say “I give up” when you are hurting. The pain you’re experiencing could be coming from so many different places. Maybe you have a loved one who is sick, maybe you lost your job, maybe your relationship failed. There’s so many areas of our life where we experience pain.

Pain is so much a part of our lives. It is so prevalent, surely there has got to be a reason for it, right? Every human being on this planet is experiencing some form of pain, in some area of their life right now. I truly believe that.

Why does God allow this to happen, why would he do that? I can’t speak for God, I don’t know His thoughts, but If you have faith and you believe, then your pain has a purpose.

Sometimes its not easy to see that, but the pain you are experiencing is the most important part of God’s plan for you. You see, oftentimes God’s preparation for you comes packaged as pain.

God uses the pain we’re enduring to do something in us before he does something through us. The very thing that you’ve dreaded the most is what God might be using to develop you in a way that you can’t even imagine. In fact, the stronger the pain you are experiencing, the bigger the purpose is that God has for you on the other side..

Whatever it is in your life that you are going through, this thing you feel that is a betrayal – what if you just decided I’m not going see it as a betrayal anymore, but that God is preparing me.

Pain is an instrument in God’s hand to sow into you perseverance.

He puts you in pain but for a purpose – not to destroy you, but to build you. To sow into
you perseverance, and the ability to abide even under greater weight – there’s purpose in your pain

No matter what kind of pain you’re going to go through, it may be physical pain, it may be emotional pain, it may be spiritual pain, it may be financial pain, or relational pain. Its something we all go through.

God would not allow us to experience so much pain if there were not a purpose for it.

Seasons of pain do not last forever. All pain has an end. How the pain changes you is up to you – you can come out bitter or you can come out better.

You can come out with a chip on your shoulder blaming God or you can come out stronger with
a greater confidence in God. You can come out defeated, giving up on your dreams or you can
come out with a new passion, a new fire, excited about the new opportunities in front of you.

All of us experience pain. Our challenge is to not just go through it but to grow through it.
That difficulty is an opportunity to get stronger to develop character to gain new confidence.
Anybody can give up. Anybody can let it overwhelm you, but you do really want to be just anybody?

God doesn’t see you that way – you shouldn’t either.

Here is something you probably never thought of – God will leave things like pain in our lives to keep us grounded in His grace. He allows things to happen in our lives that can only be overcome by His glory & his grace. He does this to bring us back to Him, to bring us closer to Him. He did this very thing to Paul, in 2 Corinthians 12:

“Therefore, so that I would not become arrogant, a thorn in the flesh was given to me, a messenger of Satan to trouble me — so that I would not become arrogant. I asked the Lord three times about this, that it would depart from me. But He said to me, “My grace is enough for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.”

God will use the pain, the things that torment us, to transform us.

And through this pain we have a testimony. Every one of us has a testimony. Its why I am writing this today – because I have a testimony that others can relate to. God wants you to use your pain to become your ministry. In other words, when you share your pain it helps you to grow in Christ and when you use your pain to minister to others who’ve gone through the same thing or going through what you’ve already gone through, you are ministering to others and helping them grow in Christ.

So every area in your life where you’ve had pain, you have a testimony so don’t waste it. If you think you don’t have a testimony you do. If you’ve ever gone through bankruptcy then you have a financial testimony. If you have a failed marriage then you have a marriage testimony. If you’ve ever had a serious illness then you’ve got a physical testimony.

Don’t waste your pain, don’t waste your hurt, your pain has a purpose, not only in your life but in others – There are people all around you who are going through what you’ve already gone through and they will listen to your story.

Remember, the greatest demonstration of God’s love was not Jesus’s perfect life. It was not Jesus’ sermons. It was not the miracles He performed.

The greatest witness of God’s love was the suffering that Jesus went through on the cross.