How to Find Meaning in Your Pain by Doing These Two Things

[Author’s Note: Many thanks to Elijah House. Many of the concepts in this post are from their teaching on The Spiritual Development of the Believer.]

There’s a part of the Gospel that we too often neglect. It’s uncomfortable, and our modern world is all about catering to our comfort. But this forgotten part of the gospel is critical to living a deeply satisfying, fulfilling, and thriving life. That type of life only comes from spiritual maturity. And maturity, spiritual or otherwise, only comes from this.

Suffering and pain. Doh! There, I said it! Don’t bounce! Please keep reading!

What if Laura Story was right?

“What if the trials of this life, the rain, the storms, the hardest nights, are Your mercies in disguise?” – Laura Story, from the song Blessings

What if God works through the pain we suffer in this life—whether from our own sin, someone’s sin against us (which is never your fault!), or just the pain of living in this fallen world—what if God is working through it all for our good, to bring us into maturity? Isn’t that in the Bible somewhere? (Hint: See Romans 8:28.)

“Maturity and wisdom only come through a suffering experience.” – John Sandford

In my youth, I used to be very judgmental and very naïve. I was judgmental toward people I didn’t know well. Why can’t they straighten up and fly right, and live righteously like me? After I suffered through a 20+ year emotionally abusive marriage, my wife left, and I found myself getting a divorce, then I had a lot more compassion for people with broken marriages.

Conversely and naïvely, I gave a blank check to people I knew personally. I took for granted they brought the same objectivity and selfless motives to the table that I did. I found out very painfully, both through my divorce and in a failed church I was part of, that people aren’t always trying to solve the problem in the best way for everyone involved. Sometimes people are just trying to win.

Experience is a cruel teacher of both compassion and truth.

That sounds contradictory, but it’s true. Suffering makes us:

• More humble, yet more bold.
• Less defensive, yet more vulnerable.
• Repent quicker and forgive quicker.
• Give up self-centeredness in favor of self-sacrifice.
• Able to speak the truth in love.

Although we try, we are genuinely not able to speak the truth in love until we’ve experienced suffering.

There’s nothing like a cruel dose of reality to drive all the fanciful rainbows and unicorns out of your head. Experience teaches us truth. Without truth, we’re just all permissiveness and victimhood.

But experience also gives us empathy. Because we’ve actually been through the hard situation, we now have compassion for others in that same situation. Without love, we’re legalistic.

Neither permissiveness nor legalism are the gospel. God brings us through suffering to work these things out of us, and replace it with maturity. Maturity is not a spiritual gift. It is earned through suffering.

Without maturity, spiritual giftings are actually dangerous. A lot of damage has been done in the church by immature people with tremendous giftings.

The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law. – Galatians 5:22-23

Maturity is marked by the fruit of the Spirit, not the gifts of the Spirit. The fruit of the spirit are attitudes, not behaviors. Look at that list again. Those are all internal character qualities. Yes, they produce outward behaviors. You can fake the outward behaviors, for a while. But if you don’t have an inner attitude of patience, for example, you’re not going to be able to fake patient behavior for long.

Here are two things we can do to find meaning in our life’s pain.

1) Get healing

Your pain needs healing. God doesn’t want to remove the memory of the pain. Healing doesn’t change history; God doesn’t give us holy amnesia. But God wants to heal the memory of the pain, and its effects in our lives.

God wants to give you beauty for ashes. I encourage you to pursue healing for the pain you’ve been carrying. Here are some resources for you. If they are not local to you, they can probably recommend something that is, or at least point you in the right direction.

Elijah House (inner healing)

Dominion Virginia Counseling counseling and inner healing)

The Church Unchained: LukeNine1&2 Ministries (deliverance)

Rachel’s Vineyard (post-abortion healing)

Grief to Grace (sexual abuse)

Restoration 1:99 (sex trafficking, sexual abuse & other trauma)

2) God, who do you want to be for me in this?

Everything we need in this life is found in the person of Jesus, in the character of God. So in every trouble and pain in your life, God wants to reveal something about himself. He wants you to experience some attribute of his character, maybe something you know about him intellectually but have never experienced at a heart-level.

“The only struggle we have is against the goodness of God.” – Graham Cooke (my paraphrase)

Graham Cooke says, as believers, we can’t actually be challenged by the enemy. As if! Graham says we can only be challenged by the goodness of God. In this horrible situation in my life, is God still good? Is he still faithful to me, even in this? Is he still strong for me, even in this? What attribute of God’s character is he revealing to you in the middle of your dark night of the soul?

I’ve asked that question over and over, with many tears, in the blackness of the night, in the heat of the battle, in the middle of all the pain. Because even the darkness is not dark to God (Psalm 139:12).

Your Turn

What has the pain in your life taught you? Share your story in the comments; it will help others. What are you going through now? Tell us in the comments; there’s a community here to support you. Or shoot us an email if it’s too personal. We’d love to pray and stand with you. And please share this post if it would bless others.