If I am in debilitating pain, what can give me hope? - Pain - TouchPoints

1 Corinthians 15:51-53Let me reveal to you a wonderful secret. We will not all die, but we will all be transformed! It will happen in a moment, in the blink of an eye, when the last trumpet is blown. For when the trumpet sounds, those who have died will be raised to live forever. And we who are living will also be transformed. For our dying bodies must be transformed into bodies that will never die; our mortal bodies must be transformed into immortal bodies.

Revelation 21:4He will wipe every tear from their eyes, and there will be no more death or sorrow or crying or pain. All these things are gone forever.”

You will one day be like the risen Christ. You will not be equal to him in power and authority, but you will be like him in character and perfection, for there will be no sin in those of us God welcomes into his Kingdom. You will never again be in pain or experience sorrow, and evil will be gone forever. In the meantime, break down your response to pain to the shortest timeframe you can handle—one minute, one hour, one day at a time. Ask God to show you his presence and give you endurance for that particular moment.

Luke 15:14-19“About the time his [prodigal son’s] money ran out, a great famine swept over the land, and he began to starve. He persuaded a local farmer to hire him, and the man sent him into his fields to feed the pigs. The young man became so hungry that even the pods he was feeding the pigs looked good to him. But no one gave him anything. When he finally came to his senses, he said to himself, ‘At home even the hired servants have food enough to spare, and here I am dying of hunger! I will go home to my father and say, “Father, I have sinned against both heaven and you, and I am no longer worthy of being called your son. Please take me on as a hired servant.”’”

Pain often gets kids to run back to their parents. Could God send pain in order to get us to run back to him? That’s one of the points Jesus is making in his parable of the lost son. Painful circumstances may be the only thing that can break us out of a cycle of self-destructive behavior. Pain teaches us that there is something that needs to be fixed, to be paid attention to, to be healed.