Is some pain waking up your spirit?

April 5, 2020

Maria Pain, Purpose, Revelation 21, suffering , , , , , , , 3 Comments

Firm roller I’ve been seeing a chiropractor for almost 3 months to help with severe pain in my left hip.  Four weeks ago, Dr Sarah suggested I use a hard, firm roller to ‘wake up my brain’, a technique designed to lessen the constant soreness in my glute.

“What do you mean, ‘wake up my brain’?” I asked Sarah.  She explained that by rolling sections of my legs, one at a time, with my full body weight pressing on this hard fat tube of cylindrical foam, those movements would send signals to the brain which would help alleviate pain in my hip! when I bend over to touch my toes or walk on the treadmill.

When one of the chiro tech gals showed me the movements, I learned what the IT Band was (“The ITB ,also called the iliotibial band or iliotibial tract, is a thick, fibrous tendon that runs along the outside of each leg “) and how working that tendon with the hard, firm roller would REALLY get my brain going and do something good.

Let me tell you what excruciating pain is like: rolling on my left outer leg with my full weight working the inflamed IT band ligament!!!!

This is supposed to help? Pain is going to stimulate my brain to send a message to my sore glute to calm down?

THAT didn’t make sense. Yet, I was committed to the healing process.  Pain is a great motivator. I also trusted Dr. Sarah.

But I have dreaded those 3-4 minutes each morning.  I know what is coming – the pain that ‘hurts like hell’!

But a month in, I am pleased to report that the pain on my IT band has subsided and I have increased the rolling time from maybe 20 seconds to 40 seconds, all without increasing the discomfort.  That means the inflammation is less.

Did you see my sentence above, ‘Pain is a great motivator’?

I see a parallel with the Covid-19 crisis.  Pain has grabbed our attention. All of us -believers, pagans and atheists alike.  When something hurts enough, we tend to reorder our priorities. Quickly.  Suddenly.

I faced such a crisis years ago in our marriage. We were approaching our 20th anniversary. (Now, we’re one week away from celebrating our 40th anniversary – Yay, God!!!) Mike told me he didn’t know if he loved me anymore.

That woke up my spirit AND my thinking for sure.  I dropped the ‘too many things’ I was doing like hot potatoes to focus on our marriage.  No praying about that.  No going through any decision analysis process. Values seismically sifted during an afternoon walk and talk.  By God’s grace and with much gladness, I can write today about that PAIN at the 20-year point of our marriage, attesting to His goodness and grace to us, a couple MORE in love with each other than we imagined standing at the altar in 1980.

I know what I'm doing, Mother! copy

Do you see what sickness, death and financial pain are accomplishing?  More people all over the world are reflecting on their mortality.  They are thinking about God, and about transcendent values. This is GOOD! If church-attenders who have long thought they were Christian turn to their Bibles to learn who the real Jesus is, that is good.  If complacent believers who function day to day like unbelievers turn back to the Lord, that is for their blessing. If those who have never considered Jesus start thinking about him, that is pure grace.

My meditations these days are not along the lines of:

  • when will this be over?
  • when will life return to normal?
  • when will we be able to travel and see our family?

I’m praying and pondering:

  • Father, may we learn your lessons for good!
  • Father, use this evil to bring many to eternal life!
  • Father, may more come to honor your name and love you through this suffering.

These sufferings are not new to humanity.  Just look in the Bible if you want clear examples.

Mike and I are journeying through the depressing book of Judges.  This year, the cycle of peace, complacency, turning to contemporary cultural idols, PAIN-producing subjugation and hardship, calling on Yahweh, rescue, thanksgiving, closeness to God ……with its numerous encores, FEEL REAL and close to home.

Here’s the most important question: Will Covid-19-produced suffering be enough this time to change our world once and for all?  That’s easy to answer – No!

Any serious Bible reader can you that.  But there is a world coming, Earth 2.0, when Jesus comes down with all the angels and those saints already with him. He has promised to redeem, restore and re-create His Bride and our Earth. And be with us forever.  So, take heart and let this pain, sovereignly planned and controlled by the one and only Living God, work its good in you. Let it awaken your spirit. Be bold. Share good news of great joy. Help whom you can. Pray and rejoice!

Rev 21:1-5

Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more.  And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband.  And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.” And he who was seated on the throne said, “Behold, I am making all things new.” Also he said, “Write this down, for these words are trustworthy and true.”

 

 

Why are we surprised at how American society treats Christians?

May 22, 2016

Maria 2 Timothy, Acts, Judges 6, Nehemiah, Persecution, Proverbs, Psalm 66, suffering, Trials , , , , , , , Leave a comment

When the angel of the Lord appeared to Gideon, he said, “The Lord is with you, mighty warrior.”  “Pardon me, my lord,” Gideon replied, “but if the Lord is with us, why has all this happened to us?”   Judges 6:12-13

As a marginalized Christian, do you ever feel like Gideon? The warp-speed of cultural change week to week has startled many, me included.  We feel less welcome to voice our values in the public sphere.  But it wasn’t that long ago that we FELT as though we fit in with the majority of Americans.   Not that we were ever in harmony with ‘mainstream’ America.  For we’ve accepted for years that we were as different as chalk and cheese when measured against the Hollywood or the academic and media names in the news.

However, these days a feeling of fear and despair is seeping under the doorways of our conscious mind and we find ourselves, if not anxious, at least bewildered.   Is this the way God treats His children?

Yes!!! and we should not be surprised. After all, God’s Word describes the very same situation throughout biblical history.

In my Bible-reading this morning I read two of the assigned psalms with much more interest and attention than previous years. The unnamed Psalmist minces no words as he describes how he and fellow believers suffered during what many commentators posit as the likely precipitating distress:  the siege of Sennacherib in 721 BC.

Psalm 66: 10-12

For you, O God, have tested us;
    you have tried us as silver is tried.
You brought us into the net;
    you laid a crushing burden on our backs;
you let men ride over our heads;
    we went through fire and through water;
YET you have brought us out to a place of abundance

Yes, the Psalmist is on the OTHER side of hardship, but 3 facts remain:

  1. God was the source or ultimate originator of the suffering
  2. The horrific and painful trauma was real and distributed to all the Hebrews
  3. God brought them THROUGH the tribulation to a joy-filled destination

Yes, that was then.  But do we American or Western Christians HAVE to suffer…like THAT…now in 2016?????

Let me ask this: Why should God treat us any differently than His chosen people?  He specifically selected the Hebrews out of whom would come His Messiah.  In the same way, He has chosen us, for His purposes.  We belong to Him.  He has the power and the authority and the very RIGHT as our Creator to do with us as He sees best.  We forget THAT ‘inconvenient truth’.

2 Tim 3:12 –  Indeed, all who desire to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted

But that is SCARY!!!!  We all shrink back from the idea of calamity, of hardship and real damage, whether to our reputation, our jobs and income, our families, our churches. or EVEN to the very liberties we once considered safeguarded by the US Constitution!

So why is God doing this?  Does His Word tell us anything?

Fortunately it does, but the reason might not be something we moderns like.

Psalm 69:7 – I am being mocked because of you. Dishonor overwhelms me

Psalm 44:22 – Yet for your sake we face death all day long; we are considered as sheep to be slaughtered

Acts 5:41- So they went on their way from the presence of the Council, rejoicing that they had been considered worthy to suffer shame for His name

Psalm 44:11 – You give us as sheep to be eaten And have scattered us among the nations

What we know is limited, but many verses tell us that for the sake of God’s name or character, those who follow Him WILL be mocked, persecuted and even killed.  And even though we don’t know ALL the whys or wherefores, we can take comfort that God does have a plan and IN THE END, those who mocked God and us shall be punished.

Prov 11:21 Be assured that the evil person will certainly be punished, but the descendants of the righteous will not suffer unjust judgment.

So how can we prepare ourselves to handle this suffering?

Here’s encouraging advice from a man who faced suffering with courage- Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Link here.  In short, he says that gathering with the local church to HEAR the Gospel truth preached and exposited gives us strength and perspective to endure with grace.

So ‘do not be grieved for the joy of the Lord is your strength’. Neh 8:10

 

%d bloggers like this: