Psalm 41:3
The Lord sustains him on his sickbed; in his illness you restore him to full health.
Pain to Healing
The psalmist once cried out for help in healing, and the Lord answered him (Psalm 30:2), but are there times when your pain brought you healing and then you looked at pain altogether differently? When someone is in pain and they receive healing from the Lord, they look at pain differently because they see God differently. Paul asked for healing three times, but the Lord told him that God’s grace was sufficient for him (2 Cor 12:8-9). This messenger from Satan was allowed by God to show Paul that in his weakness, he really is strong (2 Cor 12:9-10), so Paul learned something from his pain without being healed. How much more might we learn from our pain if we are healed?
What Pain Teaches Us
One thing we do know is that God is always near to those who are crushed and broken in spirit, so our pain can draw us closer to God (Psalm 34:18). Job sensed that his pain would make him more determined to never deny the Words of the Holy One (Job 6:10). Paul wrote to the church at Rome that there is nothing we can experience in this life that can compare to the glory that is going to be revealed to us someday in the kingdom (Rom 8:18). Our earthly suffering cannot detract from our ultimate destination with the Lord (1 Pet 5:10). Paul again showed us that our suffering produces character, which then produces a hope that in the end brings us no shame (Rom 5:3-5).
Obedience Through Suffering
In Hebrews 5:8 we see that Jesus, even though He was sinless, learned from the things that He suffered. By His being crushed and pierced for our sins (Isaiah 53:5), we learned that death couldn’t hold Him because He was sinless (Acts 2:24). His obedience, even though being already perfect, led to the death on the cross (Phil 2:8), which must have been the greatest suffering that any person has ever experienced in all of human history. What did Jesus learn from this greatest of pain? He became acquainted with grief so He would know what we experience when we suffer, but, of course, not to such an extent as He suffered (Isaiah 53:3). This made Him the perfect High Priest because He learned, became familiar with, and could sympathize with our own weaknesses, and He faced the same kinds of tests that we all face, yet without fault or sin (Heb 4:15).
A Closing Prayer
We can all learn, oh Righteous God, from our pain, and even when we are healed, we can look back and see what the purpose was (Rom 8:28), even though at the moment we might not understand it. Thank You for Your healing of those who are sick. Thank You for the ultimate healing: the taking away of our sins so that we might have fellowship with You by having our sins removed in order to be in Your presence some great day at Christ’s return. In His name I pray.
Amen
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