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Articles
The Value of Pain
I heard this phrase the other day from a brother I was talking with. He had lost his mother about a week ago to several health problems, she was about 67 years old. One does not have to live very long in this world to see, hear, and experience the painful things in life. Yet there can be value in pain if we are of the frame of mind to shaped by it. In Psalms 119:67&71 we read, Before I was afflicted I went astray: but now have I kept thy word. . . It is good for me that I have been afflicted; that I might learn thy statutes. Pain can get our attention sometimes when words, warnings, all the talk in the world does not seem to be getting through our thick heads. Someone has said that suffering is God's megaphone to a morally awake society. Indeed the many painful things of life can cause us to reflect about the ultimate issue of life, death, judgment, and eternity. Now of course the devil so often has his hand in the painful things of life. His goal and hope, is that people will become bitter and turn from God. Consider Luke 8:13, They on the rock are they, which, when they hear, receive the word with joy; and these have no root, which for a while believe, and in time of temptation fall away. Job's wife wanted Job to renounce God. Then said his wife unto him, Dost thou still retain thine integrity? curse God, and die. But he said unto her, Thou speakest as one of the foolish women speaketh. What? shall we receive good at the hand of God, and shall we not receive evil? In all this did not Job sin with his lips. Job 2:9-10. Pain can be a constructive thing in our lives or a destructive thing. It depends if we are attuned to the service of God in faith, or if in our unbelief we listen to lies and distortions of the devil. The same event can happen to 2 different people, and can have 2 totally different outcomes. Like sunshine on butter melts it, and sunshine on clay hardens it, but it is the same light hitting both. The value of pain is if we let it make us better. My brethren, count it all joy when ye fall into divers temptations; Knowing this, that the trying of your faith worketh patience. But let patience have her perfect work, that ye may be perfect and entire, wanting nothing. Jm.1:2-4. Do you see the value of pain?
