Promise for Today - God Won't Waste Your Hurt

Devotional by Pastor Rick

“These sufferings of ours are for your benefit. And the more of you who are won to Christ, the more there are to thank him for his great kindness, and the more the Lord is glorified.” 

2 Corinthians 4:15 (TLB)

When you use your pain to help others, God will bless you in ways you can’t possibly imagine.

The apostle Paul went through enormous pain in his life, which is why God was able to use him in enormous ways. He was shipwrecked, beaten, and robbed. He went without food, water, and sleep. Yet God used him to spread the Gospel throughout the Roman Empire. In fact, if you were to ask Paul, “How’d you put up with so much pain?” He’d tell you it was because he wanted to bring people to Jesus Christ. He wanted to help others.

Paul said in the Living Bible paraphrase, “These sufferings of ours are for your benefit. And the more of you who are won to Christ, the more there are to thank him for his great kindness, and the more the Lord is glorified” (2 Corinthians 4:15).

You may never suffer the same ways Paul did, but you will go through pain in life. So you might as well use your pain for good and not waste it.

There are actually three kinds of suffering God uses to help others: self-imposed suffering, innocent suffering, and redemptive suffering.

Some suffering is the kind you bring upon yourself. You cause some of your own problems by making poor judgements. You don’t always make the right decisions, eat the right foods, or respond the right way to others.

Innocent suffering is when, through no fault of your own, you get hurt by someone else. Whether you were abandoned, rejected, or scammed, everyone has been hurt by the sins of other people.

But the highest form of suffering is redemptive suffering. This is when you go through pain or problems for the benefit of others.

This is what Jesus did. When Jesus died on the cross, he didn’t deserve to die. He went through that pain for your benefit so that you could be saved and go to heaven. In the same way, God will use your pain to bring hope and healing to others.

Who can better help somebody going through bankruptcy than somebody who has gone through bankruptcy? Who can better help somebody struggling with an addiction than somebody who’s struggled with an addiction? Who can better help parents of a special needs child than parents who raised a special needs child? Who can better help somebody who’s lost a child than somebody who has lost a child?

God will never waste a hurt. God will work in your life so that He can work through you to encourage others.

Praise God and rejoice during trials, because suffering will build your endurance and help others in their pain. God can use all three kinds of suffering for good. Start by giving each of your hurts to Him and say, “God, I want you to use my pain to benefit others.”

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Prayer:

Father, 

          We want to remain teachable, and we know You don't waste anything. Whatever You have allowed us to learn in our sufferings and pain, we want to use also for those who are in pain around us. We want to love and serve like Jesus. And it's in His Name we pray. Amen

Promise for Today - Your Will

Your mercy, O Lord, is in the heavens; Your faithfulness reaches to the clouds.
Psalm 36:5 NKJV

What a powerful phrase! “Your faithfulness reaches to the clouds.” God's unwavering faithfulness is beyond our human understanding. Everything about Him is immense, boundless, and incomparable. He never forgets, never fails, and never breaks His word. To every promise or prophecy, the Lord has remained perfectly true; every covenant He has pledged He will fulfill, for “God is not a man, that He should lie; neither the son of man, that He should repent: hath He said, and shall He not do it? or hath He spoken, and shall He not make it good?” (Numbers 23:19). And in Lamentations 3:22-23, the prophet writes, "The faithful love of the Lord never ends! His mercies never cease. Great is his faithfulness; his mercies begin afresh each morning."

God's faithfulness is a key theme throughout the Bible, highlighting His constant and consistent reliability, trustworthiness, and unwavering commitment to fulfilling His promises and covenants. God's faithfulness should be the foundation of our understanding of God's nature and His relationship with mankind.

No wonder it's the very characteristic of God that satan tries to impugn! Think about it. The Word says God HEARS and ANSWERS our prayers. Now, as you read that, I wonder how many thought, "Not all of them," or "Not mine." 

See? That right there is an evil, subtle, and effective lie of satan - designed to destroy our faith in God and His willingness and ability and yes, His faithfulness to answer our prayers. If we believe God doesn't hear our prayers and doesn't answer them, how do we put our faith and trust in Him? Even when the answer is not the one we want, our prayers have been heard and answered. Sometimes the answer is no.

Matthew 26:39 NLT, Jesus praying in the Garden of Gethsemane, “My Father! If it is possible, let this cup of suffering be taken away from me. Yet I want Your will to be done, not mine.” Jesus had done everything right - everything God had told Him to do. He did not deserve to be punished. He did not deserve to be crucified. Jesus had never sinned once. Not one time! And as a man, Jesus did not want to suffer the whole crucifixion ordeal. He hadn't done anything to deserve it! He prayed and pleaded more than once to not have to do it, yet always ended with "Your will be done."

Do we understand that without Christ's perfect submission to our Father's will and plan, all of mankind would have been eternally lost?!? There would be no forgiveness of our sins! There would be no redemption! There would be no way back to right-standing with God!

Not everything bad that happens in our lives is from satan. Sometimes, it's part of God's plan and can be used for God's glory when we submit it to Him. To witness to someone, to point someone toward salvation. An opportunity to cross paths with someone who needs to be a witness to God's love in action. Pray as Jesus taught us to pray, "My Father! If it is possible, let this cup of suffering be taken away from me. Yet I want Your will to be done, not mine." By all means, pray and ask God to deliver you from it, but like Jesus, "Yet I want Your will to be done, not mine."

Prayer:

Father, 
           We pray as Paul prayed in his letter to the Corinthians. We are pressed on every side by troubles, but we are not crushed. We are perplexed, but not driven to despair. We are hunted down, but never abandoned by You. We get knocked down, but we are not destroyed. Through suffering, our bodies continue to share in the death of Jesus so that the life of Jesus may also be seen in our bodies. Father, that is why we never give up. Though our bodies are dying, our spirits are being renewed every day. Open our eyes to see that our present troubles are small and won’t last very long. That they produce for us a glory that vastly outweighs them and will last forever! Lord, be the Lifter of our heads so we don’t look at the troubles we can see now; rather, we fix our gaze on things that cannot be seen. For the things we see now will soon be gone, but the things we cannot see will last forever. Thy will be done, Father. In Jesus' Name we pray. Amen

Accusing

God might kill me, but I have no other hope. I am going to argue my case with him. But this is what will save me—I am not godless. If I were, I could not stand before him.
Job 13:15-16 NLT

I'm reading the Bible in chronological order this year, and currently studying through the Book of Job. It has always been my least favorite book of Scripture. I can't say that I've ever studied it before. I've read through it, but after the first time, at best, I skimmed through, much like we often do with the "begets" - you know, "the son of Zerubbabel, the son of Shealtiel, the son of Neri, the son of Melchi, the son of Addi, the son of Cosam, the son of Elmadam, the son of Er..." Although as I've gotten older, I'm more interested in the biblical genealogies. And now, I am also interested in Job.

There is no one I know who will deny Job's tragedies were horrendous. And it's where casual believers begin to question God's goodness when they read how Job's heartaches began. I won't go into all the he-said-then-he-saids other than to say, through the first 13 chapters, all of the monologues had some Truth in them. (I thank God for www.biblegateway.com. I admit, it helps me to use the Easy-to-Read version so I can grasp a better understanding.)

However, I will fast-forward to the here and now because God's Word is eternal and is always relatable. When most people suffer loss, the first thing they do is accuse God. By and large, people mistakenly believe that living a Christian life exempts us from suffering. Au contraire... There are no Scripture references to support that thinking.

It is in the dark times that our faith grows - if we will turn TO God instead of away from Him. It is in the loss, the suffering yet continuing to hope in God that we find His strength and Grace. The Word assures us that ALL things work together for our good. The good and the bad. The sun and the rain. The pruning and the fertilizer...

Prayer:

Father,
            Forgive us for judging anything You do. Open our eyes to see Your goodness and embrace Your process for us. We pray as David prayed, Make us to know Your ways, O Lord; teach us Your paths. Lead us in Your truth and teach us, for You are the God of our salvation. Remember Your mercy, O Lord, and Your steadfast love, for they have been from of old. Remember not the sins of our youth or our transgressions; according to Your steadfast love remember us, for the sake of Your goodness, O Lord! In Jesus' Name we pray. Amen

Through It

From then on Jesus began to tell his disciples plainly that it was necessary for him to go to Jerusalem, and that he would suffer many terrible things at the hands of the elders, the leading priests, and the teachers of religious law. He would be killed, but on the third day he would be raised from the dead.
But Peter took him aside and began to reprimand him for saying such things. “Heaven forbid, Lord,” he said. “This will never happen to you!”
Jesus turned to Peter and said, “Get away from me, Satan! You are a dangerous trap to me. You are seeing things merely from a human point of view, not from God’s.”
Matthew 16:21-23 NLT

Christ told them plainly what would happen - but Peter didn't like the idea and Peter in his humanness was trying to protect Jesus and wanted to change it. Peter couldn't see where any good would come of that plan of action. And yet it was a major part of The Plan to provide salvation for all of mankind. Had Christ not laid down His life to redeem us, where would we be? The crucifixion was crucial to God's Plan.

And often that's the case when we are walking through trials in our own lives. We try to walk around it or get out of it, or find some other way... and sometimes we even just give up. We listen to other well-meaning but misguided people telling us if we were following the Lord correctly, this wouldn't be happening. Or if we would just _____________, then we could avoid all this. Or there's always another way...

However, Romans 5:3-4 NLT encourages us, We can rejoice, too, when we run into problems and trials, for we know that they help us develop endurance. And endurance develops strength of character, and character strengthens our confident hope of salvation.
James 1:3-4 NLT tells us For you know that when your faith is tested, your endurance has a chance to grow. So let it grow, for when your endurance is fully developed, you will be perfect and complete, needing nothing. (In other Bible translations, endurance is translated as patience for both Scripture passages.)

The Truth is that sometimes the only way through the trials and tribulations of life is to go THROUGH them to the other side - to learn what God is trying to teach us through the suffering. If we ask Him, He will tell us.

Prayer:

Father,
         Jesus told us that in this life we would have trials and tribulations, but to be of good cheer because He has overcome the world. Help us to keep our focus on that Truth. Help us also to be of good cheer. Holy Spirit, guide us into all Truth and show us what we are to learn in every circumstance. Help us to pray also, Nevertheless, Thy will be done. In Jesus' Name we pray. Amen

Through the Bible in a Year
Reading for February 2nd
Exodus 15:19-17:7
Matthew 22:1-33
Psalm 27:1-6
Proverbs 6:20-26

Q&A

For our present troubles are small and won’t last very long. Yet they produce for us a glory that vastly outweighs them and will last forever! So we don’t look at the troubles we can see now; rather, we fix our gaze on things that cannot be seen. For the things we see now will soon be gone, but the things we cannot see will last forever.
2nd Corinthians 4:17-18 NLT

The question is, When we are grappling with pain - physically or emotionally; when trials come at us in seemingly never-ending waves, do we perceive that as God ignoring us or not paying attention to what is going on? As punishment? Do we see that as a reason or excuse to not be about our Father's business?

The question is, When we've done all that we know to do, are we still going to stand on His Word? 

Paul did, and I dare say he suffered more after becoming a follower of Christ than any of us have. Paul gives us the highlights in 2nd Corinthians 11:23c-28,

...in far more labors, in far more imprisonments,

beaten times without number, often in danger of death.

Five times I received from the Jews thirty-nine lashes.

Three times I was beaten with rods,

once I was stoned,

three times I was shipwrecked,

a night and a day I have spent in the deep.

I have been on frequent journeys,

...in dangers from rivers... dangers from robbers... dangers from my countrymen... dangers from the Gentiles... dangers in the city... dangers in the wilderness... dangers on the sea... dangers among false brethren...

I have been in labor and hardship,

through many sleepless nights,

in hunger and thirst,

often without food,

in cold and exposure.

Apart from such external things, there is the daily pressure on me of concern for all the churches.

None of those things stopped Paul. None of them combined deterred him from his purpose of spreading the Good News - the Gospel of Jesus Christ. He didn't question God over it. The truth is he saw it as a ministry tool! (see Philippians 1:12-16)

The question is... Can we believe in the midst of it all that God is working something eternal which we can neither see nor hear? That God causes everything to work together for the good of those who love God and are called according to his purpose for them? (see Romans 8:28 NLT)

And our answer is...?

Prayer:

Father,
           We pray as Moses prayed, Teach us to realize the brevity of life, so that we may grow in wisdom. O Lord, come back to us! How long will You delay? Take pity on Your servants! Satisfy us each morning with Your unfailing love, so we may sing for joy to the end of our lives. Give us gladness in proportion to our former misery! Replace the evil years with good. Let us, Your servants, see You work again; let our children see Your glory. And may You, Lord our God, show us Your approval and make our efforts successful. Yes, make our efforts successful! In Jesus' Name we pray. Amen