Tag Archives: pain

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The Score Has Been Settled

Bad things happen to good people. That’s all there is to it. I don’t know why God allows the enemy to do some of the horrific things he does. It could be to stretch or increase our faith, love, or call us back to Him… the possibilities are endless. We have to remember that faith will always require us to accept unanswered questions, and we must come to the place where we’re satisfied to know the One who knows and place our trust in Him.

James 1:17. Everything good comes from God. God is good, and He cannot be anything else. Furthermore, He isn’t one way one time and another way another time. He doesn’t change. He is good, and that’s the way He is.

When we experience terrible tragedy, being angry with God is quite common. People frequently ask, “If God is good, all-powerful, and full of love for us, why didn’t He stop the thing that caused the pain?” And honestly, this is where Satan seeks to build a wall between God and the hurting person. The devil seizes the opportunity to say, “God isn’t good, and He can’t be trusted.” However, we know according to the Word of God, the truth is not in Satan, he is a liar and deceiver.

If someone has hurt you, don’t spend the next ten years of your life hurting yourself by hanging on to that offense. Most likely, the other person isn’t even thinking about you, while you dwell on the incident for years. That only hurts one person, you. When we walk in unforgiveness, we’re essentially “keeping score,” viewing ourselves as better than the other person. There’s a place it all goes in our minds and hearts that eats away at our love. Every new thing they do ‘wrong’ gets added to this list, and grows until it becomes a bitter giant consuming the heart.

When we walk in God’s love, we find freedom by keeping “no account” of wrongs done to us. If you’re hurting from the pain, ask Jesus to help heal you and let go of the bitterness, knowing God has already settled the score with Satan. If you claim Him as your Almighty God, you can claim the victory that’s found in Jesus over the sin that plagues this world we live in.

God, I don’t want to keep score anymore and let my unforgiveness hurt me. I release it to You and claim your healing over this burdened heart. I ask You to help me walk in Your love, which keeps “no account of the evil done to it.” God, I may not always understand why bad things happen, but I know that You are good. When I don’t understand why, I will find my comfort in You.

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God’s Plan For Hope

For I know the plans I have for you… plans to prosper you and not harm you, plans to give you hope and a future. – Jeremiah 29:11

God knows, right down to the final nub, exactly where you are in life. He sees. He cares. He is aware. And best of all, He is touched by it.

The enemy of our souls wants you to think differently. ‘God doesn’t care. He’s left you in this mess for so many months. How unfair! Those around you, those at work, your neighbors, live like the devil, and they’re making it fine. And here you don’t even have a job. You don’t even have enough to cover the credit card bills. What kind of God is that?

Or maybe some young mother-to-be, stretched to the limit already with other young children and crushing responsibilities, cries out in her heart, ‘My situation is more than I can bear!’ And God replies, “My daughter, I know what I am doing. I know the pain of your heart right now. I know you feel overwhelmed, overloaded, pressed down. But believe Me, I am touched with your situation. And I have a plan! I am working out the details of your deliverance even now. Trust Me!”

-Charles Swindoll; Moses, A Man of Selfless Dedication

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The Sting and The Salt

There are times when the things of the past, our former ways, come to the surface of our ’new being created in the likeness of Christ’. And in repentance of this old nature, we feel the pain and sorrow grieving God for the choice we made. 1 Corinthians tells us sin/death will ’sting’.

Today, God’s living word began to stir in my heart, revealing attitudes and ways of a former self in need deliverance. I crawled to my knees in abandonment as His mighty hand held my heart. A Godly sorrow poured out the pain in many heavy tears as I renounced this ’old’ self. And as each teardrop fell, I felt a literal sting slide down my face containing carried pain and burdens I’ve been harboring. One after another, my sorrows streamed across my cheeks like the sting of salt on a wound.

Two days ago, I received a medical chemical peel on my face. The old calloused and conditioned skin is now dead and has mostly peeled off, revealing a newer, fresh, more pure and sensitive face. I heard God say this: “Those tears represent each burden and pain of an old nature. The sting of those sins are felt only to the new creation I have revealed.”

You see, a man stuck in his ways cannot feel the sting of death carried in his sin; he is conditioned and calloused to its ’pain’-just as the outer layer of my face had become conditioned for those salty tears. But when a new creation is revealed, the ’sting’ of an old nature can truly be felt.

“The newness” of Christ has covered me. God didn’t create us for the sting of death/sin. When we are renewed in Him and “put off the ways of our former self”, we become more sensitive to the ’sting’.

For me, I am reminded of this: In each of those tears I shed, there were burdens… and there was the salt. Jesus IS the Salt. And this much i know, though it stings in the moment, Salt heals like no other! Amen!

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Never Give Up

3 words, never.give.up. This life that we live is a fight to the finish. I was watching the Olympics the other night and they flashed back to 2008 where one of the female runners who was doing hurdles stopped almost toward the end of the race, fell to her knees and cried. She didn’t even finish. I said, “Wow, that is horrible. She didn’t even finish and now she is being ‘glorified’ as a strong runner?” I heard a voice inside. How many times have I fell down during the race to my knees and sobbed? Poor me, I did so horribly, I failed, I didn’t have the victory. And I stop right there in the middle of it all. But God… He encourages us as His children to get back in the race. To train harder for the next go around. To face forward with our eyes on the prize. To be determined. To realize the fullness we have when we are running as opposed to when we are not. Sometimes it takes a coach, an encouraging peer whom God will place in our lives to get us on track. But many times, as I have found in my own life, it is God Himself. He knows it all, He knows us through and through better than we know ourselves. And when we are straining and agonizing as we feel pain and pressure in our race we have to remember the victory in order to press on. The other side of the line. Never.Give.Up.