Is our perspective of pain in our life the same as God’s? Do we need a new way of understanding pain?
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Story of God Narratives © 2003-2006 Michael Novelli & Caesar Kalinowski, all rights reserved.
3 Comments
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I find in God’s Word that God’s perspective on pain is definitely not ours, naturally. It is good to get HIS take on it, or we’re all sunk!
Proverbs 3:11 says,
“My son, do not despise the chastening of the LORD, nor detest His correction;
For whom the LORD loves He corrects, just as a father the son in whom he delights.”
If you’re a true believer, pain is promised. It’s as simple as that. It’s for God’s purpose to have a people (soma) of His very own! We can’t follow a suffering Savior with no suffering of our own. We are called to identify with Him. There’s no other way around this.
Romans 8:16,17&18 says,
“The Spirit Himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs–heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ, if indeed we suffer with Him, that we may also be glorified together. For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us.”
Then, Romans 8:28 says,
“And we know that He caused all things to work together for good to those who love God, to those who are THE called according to His purpose.”
God causes suffering for His elect (Rom 11:7) so we’ll cry out to Him. He even uses the suffering we cause ourselves and to ourselves. Very important stuff. It doesn’t mean all things are good… just that God works all things FOR good. His good, for His good pleasure. Everything is for a reason… HIS reason! :)
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Romans? Suffering Savior??? I don’t remember those in the story. :)
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I think that God’s perspective of pain is one of grief. In the previous story of The Flood we saw that when he saw the sin of the world and decided to wipe out much of his creation he was grieved, distraught. I think the case is the same in the story of Joseph. All these horrible things kept happening to Joseph.
However, I think we miss the point when we think this story is only about pain. I think it is mostly about the empowerment of Joseph. He experienced all these people turning on him, his brothers, his boss’s wife, yet his response was always one of integrity. And as reward for choosing integrity, God made him the second most powerful man in the world. This is a story of Joseph overcoming his pain.
The understanding of pain that we can learn from the story of Joseph is to endure through our pain. To trust in God and to strive for lives of integrity. We will emerge stronger on the other side of our pain.