I lay there on my bed with my leg, fully encompassed by a plaster cast, sticking straight up in the air like a submarine periscope. This was the only position that gave me some degree of relief from the pain.
I had shattered my leg playing soccer. My shin had broken in 3 places and was bent at a right angle when they loaded me onto the stretcher to rush me to emergency. They had set it 3 times, and now I was in a full length cast.
The breaks were painful to say the least, but it was the nervous damage that was the most agonizing. The breaks were so violent they damaged the nerve to my foot and nearly severed it. Have you ever really smashed your funny bone and had that shooting, overwhelming nervous pain run through your arm? That was what my leg felt like on an ongoing basis.
As I lay in my bed immobile for days on end with my great white periscope, I had much time to reflect and talk to Jesus. I knew the “suffering” I was going through was part of the Lord’s work in my life. I was desperate to learn what He wanted to teach me.
“Lord, please help me to learn what you are trying to teach me – I don’t want to have to go through this again.”
As I cried out to the Lord to help me to learn, I felt like He whispered something very simple to me,
“You cannot miss what I am doing in your heart if you simply surrender to me.”
So I didn’t need to figure it out? I didn’t need to try hard not to miss the lesson?
No. I needed to simply ask the Lord to do His work in my heart.
“Lord, I offer my heart to you. Please do all you want to do in me.”
I needed to journey with Him through the pain, through the sorrow, through the suffering and He would work His purposes in me. I needed to not try to get out of this situation, but to meet Him in it.
When we’re experiencing pain, suffering and sorrow we often ask the Lord to deliver us from it, instead of asking Him to accomplish His purposes through it. We want out of it instead of meeting Jesus in it. The fact is, we often meet the Lord in the midst of suffering. It is our times of greatest grief that are often our times of greatest growth.
This life is filled with both joy and sorrow, deliverance and suffering. Is God’s heart for us to live in freedom, joy, hope, peace, strength, faith, love, deliverance and wholeness? Yes. Does God heal and deliver? Yes. Does He also invite us into pain, suffering and sorrow to discover more of Him? Yes.
I read a book when I was in my 20’s called Don’t Waste Your Sorrows, by Paul Billheimer. What a great gift this book was to me. After reading the book I actually wanted to suffer so I could better know Christ. It helped me to gain an eternal perspective on painful experiences. It enabled me to see how God has planned for the church to be trained through these kinds of circumstances. It is our proper response to the difficulties in life that enables us to grow in Jesus, if we don’t “waste our sorrows”.
Are you in the midst of a great sorrow, a difficult circumstance or some sort of suffering? Invite Jesus into your situation and meet Him there. Ask Him to help you discover Him in the midst of the circumstance and to work His will in you.
Make growth your primary objective, not escape. He will deliver you – in His timing, not yours.
I have heard it said, “The will of God won’t take you where the grace of God can’t keep you.” He is able to make grace abound to you, in every circumstance.
Don’t waste your sorrows – meet Jesus in the midst of them and discover His heart for you and for others through you.
Hebrews 12:11
“All discipline for the moment seems not to be joyful, but sorrowful; yet to those who have been trained by it, afterwards it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness.”
Romans 5:3-5
“And not only this, but we also exult in our tribulations, knowing that tribulation brings about perseverance; and perseverance, proven character; and proven character, hope; and hope does not disappoint, because the love of God has been poured out within our hearts through the Holy Spirit who was given to us.”
Philippians 3:10, 11
“That I may know Him and the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death; in order that I may attain to the resurrection from the dead.”
2 Corinthians 4:17, 18
“For momentary, light affliction is producing for us an eternal weight of glory far beyond all comparison”.