A Quote...

I think this goes well with my last post on pain:

"God uses broken things. It takes broken soil to produce a crop, broken clouds to give rain, broken grain to give bread, broken bread to give strength. It is the broken alabaster box that gives forth perfume…it is Peter, weeping bitterly, who returns to greater power than ever." Vance Havner

Pain has a purpose...

I was at the doctor last week Wednesday and had three different tests. My body was forced to do things that it has long forgotten how to do. You could say, that for my body being in the condition it is in, yesterday was the equivalent to someone running a marathon with no training. I was pushed to my limits.

Thursday and Friday I was feeling the effects and it hurt to just breathe. I could hardly hold my head up or stay awake.

Sometimes I’d like to ask God, “Does this really serve a purpose?” “Does it really have to be so hard?”

Those are good questions and the answers are yes. I’m not really willing to admit it when the pain is so bad I can’t think straight, but yes, it does serve a purpose and, yes, sometimes it is going to be that hard.

So, what possible reason does God have for allowing this pain in my life?

Pain makes me humble. Pain makes me more sympathetic to other people’s pain. Pain makes me yearn for heaven. In pain I can find fellowship with Christ and I can better understand His pain and the price He paid for my salvation.

Pain is healing me. It is healing me of pettiness and pride. It is healing me of self-reliance and reliance on earthly goods. It is healing me of perfectionism and empty pursuits. It is teaching me to find everything I need in Him. Through pain I am drawn closer to Him, because I need Him more in my pain.

God is using me, in the midst of my pain, to draw people to Him and to glorify Him. It’s easy to praise Him in the good times, but what really makes people take notice of Him… is when people see us praising Him in the midst of the bad times.

These heroes of faith really say it best, so I will let them speak as I close today’s blog.

"God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pains; it is His megaphone to rouse a deaf world." C. S. Lewis

“All who in this world render true service to God or man receive a preparatory training in the school of sorrow.” Ellen White, Education

“No healthy saint ever chooses suffering; he chooses God's will, as Jesus did, whether it means suffering or not.” Oswald Chambers, My Utmost For His Highest

On Disability...

I realized something this week. Everyone has a disability. Wait, really?

Wikipedia says, “A disability may be physical, cognitive, mental, sensory, emotional, developmental or some combination of these. Disabilities is an umbrella term, covering impairments, activity limitations, and participation restrictions.”

I would say, that the loose definition of disability is brokenness.

If we have a Christian worldview, we believe this world is broken and that we as people are broken. If that really is true then it makes sense that everyone has disabilities, or, places where they are broken.

Mike Warnke once had someone tell him that Christianity was a crutch. Mike told the guy that when you’re crippled you need a crutch. Mike knew that as humans we are crippled. We are crippled because we live in broken bodies in a broken world.

So, the church is really disabled people who have found their strength and support in Jesus Christ. The difference between the unsaved and us is that we have seen our need and found a savior and they haven’t. That’s all really.

People are disabled by many things: broken bodies, broken marriages, broken childhoods, broken dreams, broken relationships, broken homes, broken expectations, broken spirits, etc.

Some of our brokenness Jesus heals in this life, but healing for some of the brokenness will have to wait for heaven. Some of our brokenness will leave scares in this life, scares seen and unseen.

Most people can hide their disability, but I can’t, the wheelchair is kind of a giveaway, but don’t think that I’m the only one with a disability. As humans living in a broken world we all have disabilities, we are broken people, and only in Christ can we find the crutch to help us move forward in this world and to find a new world, after this one, where we will find the ultimate healing.