The story is told about the baptism of King Aengus by St. Patrick in the middle of the fifth century. Sometime during the rite, St. Patrick leaned on his sharp-pointed staff and inadvertently stabbed the king's foot. After the baptism was over, St. Patrick looked down at all the blood, realized what he had done, and begged the king's forgiveness. Why did you suffer this pain in silence, the Saint wanted to know. The king replied, "I thought it was part of the ritual."
We have all experienced painful situations throughout our lives. People have hurt us, and to certain extent we have suffered self inflicted pain. There’s a lesson to be learned in the midst of pain…some learn quickly, others take longer to realize that there is a lesson to be learned. Pain is a test. I’ve seen individuals lying on a hospital bed paralyzed from the waist down and the doctors would perform pain tests to see if the nerves would respond. The hope would be that pain would be present to indicate life.
The fast learners see every situation as an opportunity to grow. Learn and move on. This is usually a result of this individual’s upbringing, but sometimes it’s because they have experience so much negative in their life that they have elected to be over comers. “Life is what I make it”. Slow learners see disappointments and disparaging situations as rejection and validation that they are a failure.
I can honestly say that I have been both of these people at one point or another. Depending on where I was in my life and the level of my dependency on other people, I allowed myself to believe that I was not the person that I thought I was. Nor would I ever be the person that I was striving to be. Where the pain comes in is when the person saying this is the person that you had hoped would help you get to where you wanted to be. How can I get there when this is who I am? It must be true because I trusted this person to help me get there…it’s a lie.
Something we should all know is that insecure individuals strive to keep others from achieving what they themselves cannot. It’s a self justification mechanism to insure that their lack of ability is not recognized as long as no one else achieves the mark. The only device they can use to hold you back are words… that’s it, words. Words they use to discourage you and its words that are used to discredit you to others. The mistake that we often make is that we add too much weight and belief behind the words that others speak about us. We often feel as if we can never recover. The easy thing to do would be to combat those false words with words of our own, but the spoken word is not defeated with more of the same but with the opposite…SILENCE! The insecure word is always defeated with silence and is overcome through a consistent, continual striving for the mark that you were pursuing.
Have you ever been in a situation when someone offered an allegation against you when you possessed the evidence to the contrary, but something told you that there was nothing to gain from it? I found myself in a situation recently when someone I trusted chose to throw my name and reputation under the proverbial bus and I had so much evidence to clear my name and reverse the allegation to destroy them. I had the evidence in my hand and I was ready to strike. I would right a wrong and I would come out the innocent party. Jesus was in much the same situation as Judas brought the accuser to the garden. Jesus had all the evidence he needed to condemn His accusers, but he chose a beating and a cross rather than expose Judas for what he was. Judas was doing a great job of that on his own!
I have watched my accuser walk a bitter road since our situation. The struggle to retain control of a failing life plan caused this person to go to extremes that cost him any false credibility he had. After a lifetime of trying to find his way, he was reduced to the hollow shell that he had hidden and protected. You see, this man’s life started in pain. It’s all he ever knew. It was his normal. He thought it was everyone’s normal and when he exercised that which he knew, he caused even more pain to people that loved him and even respected him. He was taught to inflict the same pain on others that he had come to expect in his own life.
I am learning to accept the pain with the gain rather than give into the temptation to accept the rejection and weightless words of the broken spirited. It’s easy to take on other peoples fractured thinking and become Pain Stations ourselves distribute the same poison that we loath in our own lives. It’s a vicious cycle, but can be broken through a healing of one’s spirit.
Pain is not always a bad thing. It’s an indicator that we’re alive. It means that we can feel, we can be affected and we can affect others. If we learn from the pain, then it was worth it. If we don’t learn then we die from the infection and bitterness that grows as a result.
I heard Professor Bruce Waltke describe a Christian's response to pain this way: We once rescued a wren from the claws of our cat. Thought its wing was broken, the frightened bird struggled to escape my loving hands. Contrast this with my daughter's recent trip to the doctor. Her strep throat meant a shot was necessary. Frightened, she cried, "No, Daddy. No, Daddy, No, Daddy." But all the while she gripped me tightly around the neck. Pain ought to make us more like a sick child than a hurt bird.
Embrace your pain without bitterness and let God fight your battle and preserve your name! It is as we yield ourselves in the spirit of humility and brokenness, that we will begin to pray for those who have despitefully used us and persecuted us. Our hearts are yielded as vessels of intercession for them and we pray for the mercies of God to be renewed to them. What a sweet savor of victory!
