James’ Experience
•Hospice Chaplain
•Military Medic
•Military Chaplain
•Therapist
•Relational Pain
•Loss of First Pregnancy
•Kathryn & Richard

•I can’t explain all of the intricacies of evil, suffering, the sovereign will of God, and what he permits.
•I’m not relying on the answers to ease your pain;
•I am challenging us to seek comfort in connection with God and with His Body even when we hurt.

Defining Hurt/Pain
An unpleasant sensory and emotional experience due to physical and/or emotional injury.

Many Sources Of Pain

Responses to Hardship

- Medicate/ Perform
- Isolate
- Bitterness
- Seek Connection/Comfort

Function of Pain
•Sends a signal to draw our attention and the comfort of others toward the pain.
•“When pain and suffering come upon us, we finally see not only that we are not in control of our lives but that we never were.” Timothy Keller

There is a purpose to it, and if faced rightly, it can drive us like a nail deep into the love of God and into more stability and spiritual power than you can imagine.

Timothy Keller (2013). “Walking with God through Pain and Suffering” p.29

Yes!

Jesus is Moved By Our Pain

When Mary reached the place where Jesus was and saw him, she fell at his feet and said, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.”When Jesus saw her weeping, and the Jews who had come along with her also weeping, he was deeply moved in spirit and troubled.“Where have you laid him?” he asked. “Come and see, Lord,” they replied. Jesus wept.

John 11:32-35

Jesus is Moved By Our Pain

Jesus went through all the towns and villages, teaching in their synagogues, proclaiming the good news of the kingdom and healing every disease and sickness. When he saw the crowds, he had compassion on them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd. Then he said to his disciples, “The harvest is plentiful but the workers are few. Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into his harvest field.”

Matthew 9:35-38

Jesus is Moved By Our Pain

Then a man with a serious skin disease came to Him and, on his knees, begged Him: “If You are willing, You can make me clean. ”Moved with compassion, Jesus reached out His hand and touched him. “I am willing,” He told him.

Mark 1:40-41 (HCSB)

Jesus is Moved By Our Pain

Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves receive from God. For just as we share abundantly in the sufferings of Christ, so also our comfort abounds through Christ.

2 Corinthians 1:3-5

Jesus is Moved By Our Pain

If we are distressed, it is for your comfort and salvation; if we are comforted, it is for your comfort, which produces in you patient endurance of the same sufferings we suffer. And our hope for you is firm, because we know that just as you share in our sufferings, so also you share in our comfort.

2 Corinthians 1:6-7

A.R.E

Accessible (Job’s friends…at first)
Responsive (move towards pain)
Emotionally Engaged (feel with)

Rejoice with those who rejoice; mourn with those who mourn. Romans 12:15

Various Views

Secular
•The highest ideal is personal pleasure and comfort.
•All pain and discomfort must be fought against, numbed, and outworked. (Ecclesiastes)

Atheistic View
•The universe has no design or purpose. There is no good and evil.
•There are only material forces in the world; if you suffer, it is merely by chance, and there is no meaning.
•We prolong suffering by not simply accepting that there is no purpose or meaning.
•The focus becomes learning to control your responses.

Spiritual/Moralism
•Life will go well if we honor the moral order and God or the gods.
•Karma
•Job’s Friends
•John 9: 1-5 (The Disciples question about the blind man)

Biblical View
•Suffering is real and often unfair.
•Sometimes we are hurt because of the consequences of our own choices (sin).
•Sometimes we are hurt because of the sins of others.
•Sometimes we experience hurt because we exist in a fallen world where sickness and death are still present…for now.
•The believer's response is to notice the hurt, reach for comfort in connection with God and others, and comfort others.

There is a purpose to it, and if faced rightly, it can drive us like a nail deep into the love of God and into more stability and spiritual power than you can imagine.

- Timothy Keller
“Walking with God through Pain and Suffering”

Satan and Evil

God’s Provision and Connection

Then God said, “Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.” So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them

Genesis 1:26-27

Temptation of Adam & Eve

“You will not certainly die,” the serpent said to the woman. “For God knows that when you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it. She also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it.

Genesis 3:4-6

Temptation of Adam & Eve

Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they realized they were naked; so they sewed fig leaves together and made coverings for themselves.Then the man and his wife heard the sound of the Lord God as he was walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and they hid from the Lord God among the trees of the garden. But the Lord God called to the man, “Where are you?” He answered, “I heard you in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; so I hid.”
Genesis 3:7-10

Temptation of Jesus

•Then Jesus was led by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. After fasting forty days and forty nights, he was hungry. The tempter came to him and said, “If you are the Son of God, tell these stones to become bread.” Matthew 4:1-3
•Jesus stayed rooted in God’s Character, His Truth, and in His Identity
•Then the devil left him, and angels came and attended him. Matthew 4:11

Satan's Deception
•Wants us to doubt God’s care for us, and that we have to take matters into our own hands because we have been abandoned.
•You cannot be loved in your failure and weakness, so go away in shame or try to fix it yourself to be worthy of love.
•We are not valuable or loveable enough.
•Divide us from God and each other.
•I’m the only one who struggles like this.
•I don’t want to show this because I will look weak.
•This shows my lack of faith if I hurt like this.

Who has believed our message and to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed? He grew up before him like a tender shoot, and like a root out of dry ground. He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him, nothing in his appearance that we should desire him. He was despised and rejected by mankind, a man of suffering, and familiar with pain. Like one from whom people hide their faces he was despised, and we held him in low esteem.

Isaiah 53: 1-3

The Way of Jesus

Surely he took up our pain and bore our suffering, yet we considered him punished by God, stricken by him, and afflicted. But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was on him, and by his wounds we are healed.

Isaiah 53: 4-5

Sought Connection

Then Jesus went with them to a place called Gethsemane, and he said to his disciples, “Sit here, while I go over there and pray.” And taking with him Peter and the two sons of Zebedee, he began to be sorrowful and troubled. Then he said to them, “My soul is very sorrowful, even to death; remain here, and watch with me.”

Matthew 26:36-38

Sought Connection/Submission

And going a little farther he fell on his face and prayed, saying, “My Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me; nevertheless, not as I will, but as you will.”


Matthew 26:39

Sought Connection/Submission

Again, for the second time, he went away and prayed, “My Father, if this cannot pass unless I drink it, your will be done.”

Matthew 26:42

Sought Connection

And at three in the afternoon Jesus cried out in a loud voice, “Eloi, Eloi, lemasabachthani?” (which means “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”).

Mark 15:34

He Can Identify

For we do not have a high priest who is unable to empathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are—yet he did not sin. Let us then approach God’s throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need.
Hebrews 4: 15-16

He learned obedience through suffering.

During the days of Jesus’ life on earth, he offered up prayers and petitions with fervent cries and tears to the one who could save him from death, and he was heard because of his reverent submission. Son though he was, he learned obedience from what he suffered and, once made perfect, he became the source of eternal salvation for all who obey him

Hebrews 5:7-9

Made Complete

Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand. And we boast in the hope of the glory of God. Not only so, but we also glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope. And hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us.

Romans 5:1-5

Made Complete

Therefore, in order to keep me from becoming conceited, I was given a thorn in my flesh, a messenger of Satan, to torment me. Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take it away from me. But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me. That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong.

2 Cor 12:7b-10

And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.

Romans 8:28

“Disciples will not be weakened by suffering, worn down, and embittered until they are broken. Instead, they bear suffering, by the power of him who supports them. The disciples bear the suffering laid on them only by the power of him who bears all suffering on the cross. As bearers of suffering, they stand in communion with the Crucified.”

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Satan's Deception

•Wants us to doubt God’s care for us, and that we have to take matters into our own hands because we have been abandoned.
•You cannot be loved in your failure and weakness, so go away in shame or try to fix it yourself to be worthy of love.
•We are not valuable or loveable enough.
•Divide us from God and each other.
•I’m the only one who struggles like this.
•I don’t want to show this because I will look weak.
•This shows my lack of faith if I hurt like this.

•What do you believe about God and yourself when you are going through pain and suffering?
•What does Satan try to say about God or you when you are suffering?
•What do you need to confess to God about your beliefs about Him or your identity in pain and suffering?
•Ask God if He cares about what you are experiencing.
•What do you sense Him saying to you?

And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Look! God’s dwelling place is now among the people, and he will dwell with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God. ‘He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death’ or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.”

Revelations 21: 3-4

And the God of all grace, who called you to his eternal glory in Christ, after you have suffered a little while, will himself restore you and make you strong, firm and steadfast. To him be the power for ever and ever. Amen.

1 Peter 5: 10-11