Month: March 2020

The Purpose of Pain, Part 2

Samuel’s Birth (1 Samuel 1:1-6)

“But unto Hannah, he gave a worthy portion (some translations say a double portion), for he loved — Hannah: but the Lord had shut up her womb. And her adversary (Peninnah) also provoked her sore, for to make her fret because the Lord had shut up her womb.”

Peninnah’s cruelty stemmed from her insecurity. She knew Hannah was loved more. Had Elkanah been a wiser husband, he could have united his two wives. Hannah could have been like a sister to Peninnah. Instead, because of Elkanah’s lack of wisdom, Hannah was seen as an adversary and hence Peninnah’s cruelty. 

Often I wonder which actions we choose that might bring out the worst in others. You can see this in close relationships, husband and wife, parent and child, employer, and employee. These are all interactions where our blindness or lack of care can reappear in a cutting reply, a cold shoulder, or doing work poorly. Or even worse, a lack of intimacy in marriage which can open up a Pandora’s box of problems. If you have not asked the Lord to reveal to your unintended but negative actions, you should. It could be as simple as being more encouraging. Expressing faith in someone can turn a page in their life and your relationship. Be prepared to be a little shocked, we all have blind sides and need the help of the Holy Spirit to reveal them to us, and it may be that we go to that person and ask them. 

“….for to make her fret because the Lord had shut up her womb.”

In Hannah’s case, the Lord was the author of the pain. He purposely was causing this, making it so Hannah could not conceive. At times our shallow understanding of God is based on how we think He should be, blinds us from seeing the bigger picture. And because He doesn’t act like we think He should, we stop believing. With this one action, we have become God of God. 

Before my brother’s drowning, my dad used to go to church with us; afterward, it was just my mom, brother, and I. It felt wrong to me as an 8-year boy, but it became one of my new realities. Death of a child is almost death to a marriage. Invariably each spouse blames the other or themselves unless the end was clearly out of each parent’s hands to control. I knew when an argument was particularly damaging when I would hear my parents blame the other for Bobby’s death. It was awful. Please, if you have suffered losses, seek counseling. Argument periods are hard on the kids, but ones of this nature are super damaging, especially if the child is already blaming himself. In times like this, I would lose it and start punching holes in my bedroom wall or door. I was out of control. My dad would have to come and hold me tight until I calmed down. I have never shared this with anyone, so in writing this, the pain and tears come back – I guess I will never ultimately be over this, though I am much better. 

Changing gears, let’s continue with our story. As if things were not bad enough for Hannah, now she gets accused of being drunk by the high priest. Even those in roles that are supposed to lead and comfort, falter. Such is man; we are not perfect.

1 Samuel 1:9-15

So Hannah rose up after they had eaten in Shiloh, and after they had drunk. Now, Eli, the priest sat upon a seat by a post of the temple of the Lord.

And she was in bitterness of soul, and prayed unto the Lord, and wept sore.

And she vowed a vow, and said, O Lord of hosts, if thou wilt indeed look on the affliction of thine handmaid, and remember me, and not forget — thine handmaid, but wilt give unto thine handmaid a man child, then I will give him unto the Lord all the days of his life, and there shall no razor come upon his head (these were the words that the Lord was waiting for).

And it came to pass, as she continued praying before the Lord, that Eli (the High Priest) marked — her mouth. Now, Hannah, she spoke in her heart; only her lips moved, but her voice was not heard: therefore, Eli thought she had been drunken.

And Eli said unto her, How long wilt thou be drunken? Put away — thy wine from thee.

And Hannah answered and said, No, my Lord, I am a woman of a sorrowful spirit: I have drunk neither wine nor strong drink, but have poured out — my soul before the Lord.

All the pain she endured came down to these words, “I will give him unto the Lord all the days of his life…” The only other figure in the Old Testament that was to be a Nazarite from birth was Samson. The vow of the Nazarite was shown by no shaving of the head and no wine. He was to be set apart unto the LORD from birth. This was the agreement Hannah made with God. In reality, this was the agreement that God was waiting for from Hannah. He finally got it after years of Hannah being childless. 

We have to ask ourselves, have I been going through pain? Does it seem as though God doesn’t hear or care? It’s not true! God always and cares and hears. We are learning there was a purpose behind Hannah’s pain. We could name it “spiritually engineered pain.” The Lord, in rare circumstances, is the author of the pain, but more often than not, He uses existing pain to draw us closer to Him, such as in my case.

With Hannah, making this vow was because of pain, and it was as serious a pledge that any human being could make. Through the pain, God is seeking to bleed from the heart all the worldly desires and ambitions one has until they all pale in comparison to just being His. 

The vow of the Nazarite has been my vow as well. I couldn’t have been more severe and more longing for strength to cope with my pain when at 19, I took this vow. It’s serious stuff. I lost friends and some sweet dates (super important to a 19-year-old man) because of this. I was too “radical,” even for Christian girls. It hurt, but I was not going to change. 

Hannah did not change. Elkanah was thrilled to have Hannah conceive finally. However, Hannah must have told Elkanah that “his” son was not his son; he belonged to God 100%. How he felt we would never know, but we can imagine that initially, he probably had a deep sense of loss. “Finally, after so many years of trying to get pregnant, and the joy of that child growing up in our home is not to be ours?” A commitment that costs you nothing is probably not much of a commitment. I know that if Hannah could give her first son over to the Lord that Elkanah would soon come to support her decision. An agreement with God is an agreement that cannot be broken. 

What agreements have we made with the Lord? There is one that all believers have made, and that is to accept Christ as our Lord and Savior. How are you doing with that? Is He Lord and Savior, or just Savior? As Savior, it’s like having “fire insurance.” The idea of having my salvation intact because I accepted Christ is great, now it frees me up to live as I chose – pursuing my dreams and ambitions. As Savior and Lord, my aspirations are His ambitions, and my thoughts are His dreams or my dreams and goals are subservient to His. My role is to serve Him. As Savior, His role is to save me, answer my prayers. When He doesn’t, I become offended and question Him. 

This type of relationship is excellent for Satan, for it creates an open door for him to get in and slander God, creating doubt. Becoming offended by God demonstrates the shallowness of our relationship with Him and our understanding of a life of faith. Becoming upset with God because I didn’t get that new job, or promotion that I have been praying about or He didn’t protect us from that car accident or hasn’t healed me, or our house flooded, or it burned down losing everything are some of life’s more difficult trials. 

However, to blame or be angry at God for that is telling. We can go through life’s hardest difficulties with or without God totally depending on our relationship with God. I refuse to be God of God, that’s scary. I find many of us struggle with God when life becomes tough. How will we ever know Him to trust Him if we spend little to no time getting to know Him? When do we want to start to know Him? During a crisis? Unfortunately, many of us seem to need a crisis to get our clutches off the things of the world to value God. Ideally, it is more advantageous to start developing trust and knowledge of God before a major crisis. 

What is the right attitude? That is a good question. In Job 13:15 & 16, we have a fantastic comment from Job has suffered the loss of his family, all his possessions, even his health. The Lord Himself testifies to Job being a very Godly man. In this part of his story he is in much pain and if that was not bad enough his friends have become his accusers because of their own personal theology of God did not include pain. They believed that if you dotted your “I’s” and crossed your “T’s” with God that God would bless you. Since Job had been very successful for many years before things becoming awful, they assumed that Job had a secret sin going on. That would be the only plausible reason for why all these things were happening to him. 

Some today have this same theology. However it is not correct as we shall learn. The whole book of Job shows how God uses life circumstances and even Satan to purify His saints, and we see this purification process with Job. Though his friends were an affliction to him and an insult to God, Job was willing to forgive them. Now bear in mind that Job’s life, like Paul’s, is on the extreme side of testing. However, the more extreme the trial, the more beautiful is its fruit. This next statement from Job is as gold tried in the fire. It is as close of an understanding and reverence for God that tested faith will have.

“Though he slays me, yet will I trust in him: I will maintain my ways (my integrity) before him.

He also shall be my salvation: for a hypocrite shall not come before him.”

I have pondered Job’s response for some time, and how I understand it is if God in His righteousness found it necessary to take Job’s life, Job was willing to accept it, and his trust would not waver. Job’s humility was as gold. How about us? 

Who else had this same attitude when faced with their death? Let’s see if you remember your Bible stories, 

Daniel 3:15-18

“Now if ye be ready that at what time ye hear the sound of the cornet, flute, harp, sackbut, psaltery, and dulcimer, and all kinds of music, ye fall and worship the image which I have made; well: but if ye worship not, ye shall be cast the same hour into the midst of a burning fiery furnace; and who is that God that shall deliver you out of my hands?

Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed-nego answered and said to the king, O Nebuchadnezzar, we are not careful to answer thee in this matter.

If it is so, our God whom we serve can deliver us from the burning fiery furnace, and he will deliver us out of thine hand, O king.

But if not, be it known unto thee, O king, that we will not serve thy gods, nor worship the golden image which thou hast set up.”

***

For these men and Job, God was not only SAVIOR but LORD. 

Unfortunately, there are not many that have this caliber of faith. The “temper” of our steel bends in the heat; we need steel that has been tempered by the fire and will not bend when tested. That all the impurities, our sexual weaknesses, and self-interest will burn away, and now our steel (faith) is pure and able to stand firm. That the trials that life brings only serve to make us stronger and more committed. Our security and self-esteem are not founded on anything in this world but founded solely on Christ. And that from the ashes of trials and hardships Christ paints His image over us.

The Purpose of Pain, Part 1

Samuel 1:1-6 tells the story of a man who favored one wife (Hannah) over another, but the favored wife could not get pregnant. The other wife (Peninnah) tormented her.

For those of us that have had a problem or are having a struggle getting pregnant, you can relate to Hannah. It is so painful to go out to the malls or playgrounds and see everyone with babies and children. Hannah faced this daily, and the jealous taunting accusations of Peninnah made it worse. The household was a mess because of this. It seemed like God didn’t care.

In those days, children were a sign of God’s blessing, displayed as wealth, much like us driving around in expensive cars or wearing an extra size “rock” on our hands. This experience was harrowing for Hannah, and especially painful when they went to Shiloh to offer sacrifices to the Lord. A time of supposed rejoicing became a time of shame and pain. A woman who could not provide her husband with a son would not be welcome among the other women. It was probably on par with being an outcast (people with leprosy were outcasts.) It was her “fault.”

This bullying was such a terrible burden for Hannah to carry.
Where was the Lord, why did He not hear her many prayers? She probably exhausted herself, praying to no avail. Did God not care? Was He not a good God, loving in all His ways? How was this being loving, or was He using this intense pain for a much greater good?

At this point, I want to break from the storyline. It would be rather presumptions of me to say that all pain will be for this conclusion. I could not say that. There are many reasons for pain; some of it is our own doing. Other pain is inflicted upon us by others, and pain can come through natural disasters, a car accident, or a work injury, etc.. There are different types of pain, physical and or emotional, and many times it’s both. Therefore our goal is not to answer every reason why we experience pain, but why Hannah experienced it to see what we can apply to our own life. If not now, I’m sure the opportunity will come because God seems to use pain to get our attention.

Proverbs 18:14 has an interesting comment, “The Spirit of a man will sustain his infirmity (sickness) but a wounded (or broken) Spirit who can bear?

A broken spirit can happen for many reasons. A divorce can cause it; the loss of a child, rejection or betrayal by a friend and the list goes on. It has occurred numerous times throughout my life.

As a child I was blamed for my younger brother’s drowning, my mother regrets having said that but it has taken me thirty years to come to terms with it and forgive myself – that’s a long time for a child to carry such a weight. The upside is how God has used it in my life. Without trying to sound morbid, death is genuine to me. Having gone through that, I have no anchors in this life. I have committed 100% to The Lord. I tread lightly in this world and abundantly in the world to come. That has become my “coping mechanism” for what was once excruciating pain.

I have also struggled with deep insecurity, not because I was not loved growing up, but for years of my adult life, I felt God had rejected me, or at the least found me unfit. I have forever wanted to be a pastor, and to this day, I have the same desire. God had called several of my friends, but He never called me, so the enemy took that and turned it into rejection or and unfit vessel for such holy work. I needed to overcome that because it was breaking my Spirit, much like Hanna wanting to have a child.

The Holy Spirit sat me down one day after years of struggling with it and forced me to look at the Cross. He lovingly but firmly made me know that His lack of calling me into the ministry had nothing to do with being “fit or unfit,” we are all unfit. He said, “I didn’t want to lose you.”

At first, I was confused, how would you lose me, I am in the ministry, it’s all about You. His response was telling, ” because you would put the job of ministering and teaching before me, you would study the scriptures to preach a sermon but not to know me. You would get your sense of worth from the ministry but not from just simply being my son.”

I cried, so profound were His words to me and so tender and yet so right, a truth that I didn’t even realize about myself. His “no” had been anything but rejection. Now I am no longer interested in being anything other than His Son. My self-esteem would no longer center on what I did, my title, or any worldly praise or ambition, but it would come solely from His approval over my life; being His adopted son by Grace would become the sole joy of my life. From the heavy weight of inferiority and guilt to wings of freedom and happiness, that day, long in coming, changed my whole life.

Learning to be His son has become the adventure of my life, and it’s education. Nothing else matters. As His son, I seek to be not just good, but excellent in all that I undertake; caring for my wife and family, caring for His people, being a boss, performing my job as a landscaper and creating great designs and caring for my clients. Taking the high road in all things is what a son of the Most High King could not help but do.

Paul said he was constrained by the love of Christ, in 2 Corinthians 5:14,
“For the love of Christ constraineth us;”

As if to say I have no choice in the matter, this is the path I must travel; there are no other options.” I have no options, nor do I want any. The narrow road with all its constrictions, pain, and struggle is just fine for me because, with each difficulty or pain, my “sonship” grows deeper.
Often we think someone close to the Lord does not have the normal every day struggles with family, work, neighbors, etc. I have come to find that the opposite is true. Closeness to God comes as a result of these struggles.

A commentator on Abraham’s Lincoln life said if it had not been for the churlish ill-nature of his wife, he would not have had the character and the capacity to hold the struggling nation together. Those years of his presidency were difficult and dark. The struggles in his marriage drove deep his dependence upon the Lord, building within him a character that was able to endure and provide the leadership the divided nation needed.

In my family, wife, and two girls, we have had our struggles. My oldest left home at eighteen with a broken spirit. I knew that in that condition, she would be an easy mark for any lies or traps Satan would put before her, and he did. For three years, I cried daily, so deep was the pain.
I never cried like this before; I cried inside. I still needed to get up and run the business, meet clients, etc., yet I was so conscious that my inner person was continuously weeping over my daughter as if she had died. I could not understand the pain.

As I sought the Lord to understand it, I saw in my mind cows getting branded on a ranch. I saw the red hot iron of the brand, and I heard the cow crying as the brand marked its skin. I heard and felt it. The branding though seemingly cruel, scored the cow; it belonged to that ranch now, and from that ranch came its provision. It wasn’t just any cow, it had an identity, a home, and it belonged. God was using the pain to brand me as His.

I accepted that, but then the pain intensified, and I cried out to Him again. I saw myself on a table in a surgery room, and yet I saw the red hot brand with my chest exposed, and then I saw the doctor plunge the red hot brand unto my chest, and everything in me freaked out, the pain was beyond anything I could imagine. I cried, shouted for it to stop, but steady was the doctor’s hand as he keeps the force of the brand on my chest.

I fought with all my might, but in time I grew exhausted. All I remember thinking is that this nightmare had now become my new reality. Where I found the strength to get up and go to work, I will never know other than it was God’s supernatural strength that was carrying me during those years. My steps were heavy, and my interaction with others was limited as I sought to do only what I had to do. I found that the more I spent time in prayer, the more I was able to cope with life and the pain.

Prayer became an hour-long event each day after dismissing the crews to work. Rain or shine, cold or hot, it didn’t matter. I had a place in front of my shop where I walked that became my meeting place with the Lord.
I began to pray for other parents having struggles with their kids, my brothers, and sisters in the faith that suffered persecution in communist or Muslim countries also. And finally, after months of prayer, the Lord gave me another picture.

I saw the figure of a man with a shovel in his hand. He was digging into my heart, and with each plunge of the shovel, piercing pain ensued. I cried out to the Lord to tell the man to stop. He replied that He was the man. He was using the pain to dig a well in my heart so that I could hold more of His love. I cried, never anticipating that answer, and though the pain did not lessen, knowing the reason allowed me to welcome it. He wanted to love me on a deeper, more intimate level, and He was using this hardship for this reason.

I did a lot of crying during this period. It was unlike any period in my life. God was doing an upheaval, dethroning Arthur and placing Himself squarely on the throne of my heart with a much larger capacity to receive His love for myself and, in turn, to genuinely love others.

The pain continued as if I was in mourning, and my prayers continued to be my source of strength. I felt His presence with me. Upon ending my prayers each day, I felt as though I had to come back to earth, so focused on the realm of worship. I often thought that I was before His throne. I had never felt that before these times. I learned that He cried with me. The Holy Spirit was leading me through a “desert period” of my life where intercessory prayer became my source of life and strength coupled with the Word.

Through prayer, I was able to participate with the Spirit in bringing my daughter back home. She would come over to visit and tell Lisa that she could not understand why she didn’t enjoy “sinning” like her friends; she just wasn’t into it.

Those exact words would be my focus for the week. I shared my prayers with no one, so I knew that this was God encouraging me. If Satan was going to mess with my daughter, he was going to get the fight of his life. I grew bold and more confident as the Lord continued to confirm to me He was hearing my prayers and not only for my daughter but for other parents as well.

It has been a long process, but now I can confidently say, “Greater is He that is in me than he that is in the world.” I have no fear now, whereas before, I feared greatly.

In the third year of this period, my youngest daughter lost her finance in an auto accident. He was a police officer and was run over by a drunk driver. I loved him and grieved for him, but I was grieving for my daughter. I felt as if Matt died twice in my heart. I was “trained” in personal death given by background, but I had never anticipated grieving for my daughter’s loss.

All pain has a purpose when you commit it to the Lord. It doesn’t have to crush you. It can be the very thing that gives you wings toward Heaven. Loss or pain comes in stages. We are not able to cope with it all at once; it’s God’s protection mechanism for us. Therefore know that it takes time, and the time it takes is personal for each one of us. Following the pattern I shared, making time for prayer and the Word, drawing close to the Lord is where you will find your strength. God’s presence is the most essential healing mechanism we have.

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