Every hour of every day

Have you ever been hurt?  Really, truly, deeply hurt?  Maybe you’ve been hurt or betrayed by someone you love. Maybe you’ve been hurt because of a certain situation in your life.  Maybe you’ve been hurt because of sin.  I’ve been hurt in all of those ways in my own life.  And my guess is that you probably have been too.   

I’ve been thinking about pain a lot the past couple of weeks - probably because I’ve been experiencing it.  I’m not talking about physical pain.  I’m talking about emotional pain - the kind of pain that hurts so much worse than physical pain.  I’m talking about heart pain. 

I’m not at liberty to go into any personal details at this time, but there is a situation in my life that has caused me a lot of pain over the past several years.  There have been many times when I thought the pain was gone – many times when I hoped and believed that I wouldn’t be hurt in the same way again.  But unfortunately that pain and hurt keeps creeping it’s way back into my life.  I say “unfortunately” because I don’t like it.  I don’t like being hurt.  I can’t imagine that anyone likes being hurt.  But as I’ve been thinking about pain the past couple of weeks, I have been trying to look at it differently.  Trying to realize that in some ways, it’s not ALL unfortunate. 

Now please don’t misunderstand me.  I am not trying to belittle anyone’s pain.  I am not saying that pain is something that we should all just say, “Thank you, God for this pain in my life!” and then smile and move on.  I know it’s not that easy.  Believe me, I know.  But as I’ve been pondering pain lately, God has been trying to give me new insight.

This hurt and personal pain I have been referring to, came back up a couple of weeks ago for me.  I sat at home alone, both in physical and emotional pain.  I was fighting an ear infection and sinus infection and I was miserable.  And then came the emotional pain.  I was crushed when it happened upon me again.  My heart was pounding and tears were streaming down my face.  Not only was I hurt, I was angry.  Really angry.  I found myself questioning God and wondering why he let this happen again. Things had been going so great and then, “bam!” I was at the lowest of lows.  As I sat there blowing my nose and wiping away my tears, I could feel the anger just welling up inside me.  At that moment, I knew I needed prayer.   So I sent a text to my dad and a close friend and asked them to pray for me right then.

Within minutes I could feel myself calming down and feeling less angry.  A peaceful feeling that can only come from God, washed over me.  I was still hurting, but I wasn’t angry anymore.  The chorus to one of my favorite worship songs, “Lord, I Need You” kept going through my head over and over again…

”Lord, I need You, oh I need You
Every hour I need You
My one defense, my righteousness
Oh God, how I need You”

In that moment as I was crying out to God, I was reminded of just how much I need Him - every hour of every day.  I was reminded that He is always there, that he knows and understands my pain, and that He will never leave me.

As I continued to think about pain throughout that week, I couldn’t help but think that without this hurt and pain in my life, I would not feel the need for my Savior as much as I do now.  If my life was pain free, I would not be able to understand and appreciate God in the way that I do.  I would not know the peace that He can bring in the midst of pain.  I would not know the feeling of comfort I experience from knowing Him on such a personal level.  My God, my Lord, my Savior, my Defense, my Redeemer, my Friend.  I know that God doesn’t want us to be in pain.  He doesn’t want that for any of us.  But I do know that He wants us to need Him.  He wants us to cry out to Him.  He simply WANTS us.  For some of us (like myself) pain is something we must go through to realize just how much we do need Him - every hour of every day.

Years ago, when I was dealing with this exact same pain in my life, I had grabbed my Bible, left my house and went for a drive.  It was raining and after I drove for a while I ended up in the Kroger parking lot.  I just sat there crying, praying and reading my Bible.  Before I drove home, I decided to call my dad who was thousands of miles away in Bangkok, Thailand.   He answered the phone and I just started bawling.  I finally got myself under control so that I could tell him what was going on.  We talked for several minutes and he prayed with me.  I remember asking him a lot of "why" questions.  Why is God letting this happen?  Why me?  And he said something that has always stuck with me - "Nat.  If it wasn't this, it would be something else.  We all deal with different kinds of pain and we all wish it was something else.  Anything else.  Even though we can't always understand why, everything happens for a reason."  

During these past couple of weeks, I have also been reminded of just how perfect God’s timing is.  The Sunday after I had this emotional, painful week, my pastor started a new series of messages called “From Pain to Peace.”  God knew exactly what was going to happen in my life the week leading up to that Sunday.  He knew that I was going to need to hear that message and it was EXACTLY what I needed to hear.  My pastor ended the message by saying, “God never promised that our lives would be free from pain. He promised that in our pain He would be present and that in our pain there would be purpose.”  I know that my pain is not for nothing.  I know that God is going to use it some day in a mighty way.  Knowing that doesn’t make the pain go away, but it does make it more bearable.  And I can be OK with that - because I know that He will be with me – every hour of every day.

If you would like to watch/listen to the first message in the series “From Pain to Peace”, you can follow this link:

http://vimeo.com/51472338 

My husband wrote an amazing devotional for our church that goes along with the “From Pain to Peace” series that you can read here:

http://yourlcc.org/2012/10/daily-devotional-99/