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What to Do when the Pain Won’t Go Away

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None of us want to admit it, but we all have it. Or have had it at some point. Emotional pain that just won’t go away. Sometimes we think we’ve stuffed it, but then – bam – something seemingly innocent happens and it all comes crashing back.

Daniel was so past his divorce. He’d made his peace with it. Until he went to his nephew’s wedding. Emotions he thought were long gone were really only hiding. They rose up and slammed him out of nowhere. He drank way too much at the reception. And every night after that.

Melanie was over her abortion, or so she thought. No one knew, and she’d moved on. Until her best friend invited her to her baby shower. And it all came crashing back. She went and put on a happy face. No one knew she was dying inside. But she was.

Sometimes we can’t even begin to stuff it, and we just learn to live with it. Or better put, survive with it.

Lisa cannot remember a time when she wasn’t battling depression. She lives in a box, behind a mask, trying desperately to keep the outside world at bay, to stay in control. Where is the joy all the other Christians have? Are they just faking it, too? Or is there something wrong with her? She suspects the latter. She desperately hopes this next relationship will fix it all. Again.

Somehow we learn to cope. Maybe we self-medicate. Maybe we control. Sometimes we put on a face and pretend, hiding the real me. We’ve coped with it for so long we think it’s normal. But it’s not. Although it’s very common, just coping forever is not healthy.

God has something for us so much better than coping. He has a new-normal for us, without the pain. It’s called healing. But how do we embrace it? How do we move into that place?

The short answer is, Be the buffalo not the cow. Dude, what are you even talking about? What do bovines have to do with deep emotional pain? I’m glad you asked.

When there’s a thunderstorm on the plain, buffalo and cattle both panic. Both herds stampede, and you don’t want to be in the way! But there’s a major difference.

Cattle take off running away from the storm as fast as they can. If the storm’s coming from the west, they stampede east. This is the obvious, no-brainer thing to do to avoid the storm. The problem is, they’re running the same direction as the storm’s moving, and the storm always moves faster. So it eventually overtakes them anyway. And since they’re running the direction it’s moving, they actual maximize their time in the storm.

On the other hand, buffalo run straight at the thunderstorm. So if the storm’s coming from the west, they stampede west, right into it. This seems really dumb at first glance, but it’s actually brilliant. Since they’re running the opposite direction the storm is moving, they minimize their time in the storm. And they get rewarded with the yummy, just watered, fresh grass on the other side. Bonus!

Most of us run from our pain, like cattle running from a thunderstorm. But avoidance just maximizes our time in the pain when it catches up with us, and it always does.

John Sanford, founder of Elijah House Ministries said, “We need to embrace the fireball of pain.” Wow. Seriously, dude? Yeah, seriously. We need to go where it hurts, not avoid it.

Ok, you sold me. How do we “embrace the fireball of pain?”

I’m glad you asked. There’s 3 steps to start this process.

1) Start the journey with God.

Be honest. Don’t hide it or pretend it’s not there. Honestly tell God how you feel. It’s ok to hurt. It’s ok to not feel joy. Read the Psalms. Many of them are written from places of extreme pain. They are examples of God meeting people in the middle of extremely painful circumstance, doubt and fear. For a start, look at Psalms 3, 4, 5, 7, 10, 13, 17, 22, 28, 40, 120, and many, many more.

What gets scheduled gets done, so schedule time to pray and meditate each day with God, even if it’s just 10 minutes during a break. Stopping, unplugging, and getting alone with him, even if just for a few minutes, makes a huge difference.

2) Start the journey with someone else.

You don’t need to tell everyone everything. But you need to tell someone everything. So often the pain’s power over us is rooted in shame. Shame protects itself by isolating us. We think we’re the only one. But we’re not. Often, sharing our pain with someone else breaks the shame and that’s 80% of the healing right there.

So often we the church do such a disservice to people by forcing them to either hide their pain or face our rejection. I know someone who, in a vulnerable moment, shared the pain in their life. They were actually told by their Bible study leader at church, “Well, Christians are supposed to be joyful, so if you’re not feeling joy, are you even saved?”

What rubbish! Jesus does not deliver us from pain, he delivers us through it. He never promised we wouldn’t have trouble in this world (in fact just the opposite, see John 16:33). He promised us he’d be there with us in the middle of it. So we should be there for each other.

If your church shames you for having pain in your life, find a different church. There are many churches out there that get this right. Find someone you trust that you can share your journey with, and who is willing to share theirs with you. You’ll find that, no matter how perfect they look, they have pain in their life, too.

3) Recognize the season.

Healing is a season, it doesn’t happen overnight. The season can be weeks, months, years, or even decades.

Sometimes, for whatever reason he alone knows, God doesn’t heal as we expect. I know some very strong Christians, men and women of deep intimacy with the Lord, faith and power, who have battled depression their whole life. It doesn’t mean there’s anything wrong with them or their faith. It means God is choosing to use that for his glory in their lives (see John 9:3). He is meeting them right there in the middle of it, just like he did the Apostle Paul, who, by the way, God also didn’t heal (see 2 Corinthians 12:7-9). So if this is you, you’re in good company.

I can’t promise God will eventually heal your situation. Often he totally does. But I can promise God is always good, and will meet you in the middle of it.

Personally, a moment of vulnerability here, I still struggle with self-hatred. But I’m getting stronger and it’s a lot weaker than it used to be. I’m learning how to not agree with it and instead agree with what God says about me. Jesus has been my deliverer in the middle of it. And continues to be.

So what about you? Where do you come down in all this? Tell us your story in the comments or shoot us an email. And please share if you think this would bless someone else.

Free Resources:

Do you know God wants to talk directly to you? Do you have trouble hearing him? Find out how to hear God with Dave’s free ebook “Hearing God and What’s Next: 12 Ways to Hear God, 3 Things to Do about It, and 6 Ways to Know You’re Not Crazy.”

Does your heart need healing? Learn the steps to inner healing with Jesus through a fun and engaging fictional story. Download Dave’s free ebook “The Runt: A Fable of Giant Inner Healing.”

The One Question that Reveals Our Heart

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When Jesus encountered a paralytic lying on a mat at the pool of Bethesda in John 5, he asked possibly the stupidest question ever, on the surface at least.

Really, though, this question, more than any other, reveals our heart.

Do you want to get well?

So here’s the deal with this pool. From time to time, an angel would stir up the waters. Then the first one in the pool got healed of whatever disease or ailment they had. The poor paralytic guy was paralyzed, so he couldn’t even roll and fall into the water. He just got to watch as people with lesser problems got healed. Can you relate?

Enter Jesus. The paralytic didn’t know it, but God set up his whole life for this moment. Jesus asks him the One Question. 

Do you want to get well?

I can think of a few humorous responses the paralytic could’ve used:

  • “Thank you, Captain Obvious.”
  • “No, Jesus, I’m just lying here getting a suntan. It’s time to do my back. Can you flip me over?”
  • “No, actually, I was hoping you could help me change the oil in my camel.”

All kidding aside, the paralytic tells Jesus the truth of his situation, that he’s got no one to help him get in the water. Then Jesus, breaker of protocols, did what he seems to do best. He broke the rules on a couple different levels all at once and miraculously healed the man on the spot. But he did it in a way that engaged the man’s faith. Jesus told him, “Get up, pick up your mat and walk.”

Now even with my limited knowledge of medical science, “get up” isn’t something you normally say to a paralytic. In the natural, it kind of reflects that Jesus didn’t quite understand the situation here. Or did he?

The paralytic could have responded, “Um, I’m paralyzed here. I can’t.” But instead, he took Jesus at his word (as crazy as it was), and tried. Maybe he felt in his body that he was healed. Maybe he wasn’t healed until he tried. But the point is, he accepted Jesus’ healing, did the impossible, and walked into a whole new life. Will you?

Do you want to get well?

Jesus could’ve said, “Ok, I’ll help you get in the pool first the next time the water’s stirred.” He had twelve disciples. Jesus could have had them block everybody else while he was getting the paralytic in the water. But he broke the local protocol.

He also broke the national protocol by having the guy carry his mat on the Sabbath, getting himself in trouble with the Jewish authorities. Again. What does a healed guy need with a mat anyway? Why didn’t Jesus have him leave it at the pool for some other sick guy? What was with that whole “pick up your mat” thing anyway? It’s almost like Jesus went out of his way to shatter people’s rules and expectations.

Do you want to get well?

I know a pastor who had someone ask for prayer after church. They had a disability hearing coming up that week. The person wanted to pray for a favorable outcome, so they would continue receiving their disability payments. This was important — it was their livelihood. The pastor asked them, “How about if we pray for healing? Then you won’t need the disability hearing.”

The person didn’t want healing. They wouldn’t let him pray for that. That would disrupt their entire life, which was built around protecting their entitlement. The person had a legitimate disability, and it’s good that our society provides a safety net. I’m not knocking disability payments or making any political point here. 

But if God broke the protocol and healed this person, it would change their life. Their livelihood would have to change. They’d have to get a job. That’s scary when you’ve lost your skills and your confidence over years of disability. 

The paralytic’s livelihood had to change. He could no longer beg, and maybe that’s all he knew. What was he supposed to do now? Thanks a lot, Jesus. Are we so comfortable with our wounding that we turn down Jesus’ healing?

Or do we believe in God’s goodness more than the safety of our wounding and victimhood? He’s got something better than begging, entitlements, and woundedness for us. Is God allowed to shatter our protocols and our expectations? Who does our heart really trust for our provision?

Do you want to get well?

John Sandford founded Elijah House as a ministry mostly for pastors caught in repetitive, often sexual, sin. Some pastors experienced tremendous freedom, never looked back, and their ministries took off. Other pastors appeared to get free, but kept falling back into the same sin-cycle over and over again.

John asked the Lord what made the difference. The Lord showed John some people wanted healing and freedom because they understood their pain, wounding, and sin interfered with serving Jesus to the fullest. These were the people who got free and stayed free — those who wanted freedom so they could serve the Lord the best they possibly could. 

But others recognized their pain only as an obstacle to living the good life. Those who only wanted freedom so they could live the good life were the ones who kept falling back into habitual sins. They were the ones who never got healed of their wounding.

Do you want to get well?

We see it all the time in the volunteer work we do at our local crisis pregnancy center in post-abortive ministry. People come to us for help because they want to be free from the pain in their lives. But some aren’t willing to leave the lifestyle that caused the pain. Some people aren’t willing to do the hard work of working through their denial, anger, unforgiveness, and right to victimhood. So they stay stuck living their lives as emotional, spiritual, and moral paralytics, looking for someone to blame for not helping them into the water.

But we’ve seen other people, sometimes with much greater wounding, do the hard work. They’ve confronted the anger, forgiving those who don’t deserve it and so released themselves from prison. They’ve worked through the denial, repenting and receiving God’s forgiveness, sometimes for the first time in their lives. They experience God’s restoration and true freedom. They never look back.

Are we willing to die to ourselves, laying down our right to be a victim? Are we willing to “pick up our mat” of scary freedom, trusting someone else, God, with our future, maybe even our livelihood? Or do we need to be in control?

Do you want to get well?

That’s the question Jesus has for all of us. Prison is a known quantity, with lots of comfortable certainty and predictability. But there’s a downside. It’s prison. 

Are you willing to let Jesus heal you? Are you willing to die to yourself and let go of the upsides of prison? Are you ready for scary, but exhilarating, freedom? Are you ready to live, instead of just existing? Do you want to get well?

Does this resonate? Please share this post if it would bless others. And tell us your story in comments. We’d love to hear from you.

2 Steps out of Self-Condemnation and into Believing in Yourself like God Does

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Too often we listen to self-condemning lies because we don’t understand how God sees us. We put ourselves under pressure to be perfect. But God never designed us to bear such pressure.

We can understand how God really sees us by looking at how we, as good parents, interact with our children. Let’s look at a couple examples:

First Steps

It’s that magical time. Your baby is about to take his first steps. He can stand and balance (mostly). You can tell he wants to walk, but he’s not sure about this balance-while-moving thing. It’s a lot to balance just standing still!

But you don’t want to miss those precious first steps. So you plop Mr. Wobbly down a few feet away and hold out your arms. “C’mon! Come to mommy!”

He smiles, wanting to come to you. He wobbles a bit, trying to figure out how to lift a foot and still balance. Then he drops to his knees and crawls to you.

“What’s the matter with you? How could you make such a mistake! You never do anything right!” Said no mom ever.

No. What do you do? You laugh, pick him up, give him a big smoochie kiss, and plop him right back down in the same spot again. “C’mon! Come to mommy!”

Do you care how often he drops to his knees and crawls to you? No, not at all, you’re not even counting! You’re just loving the process of watching him learn to walk, doing something he’s never done before. You love participating in it with him.

First Hit

How about this. Your toddler’s ready to start hitting a whiffle ball. You’ve watched baseball games with him and tossed a ball back ‘n’ forth. Now you got him a plastic bat and you’re pitching to him. You toss him his first pitch in the living room, much to your wife’s chagrin. It’s only a plastic ball. What could happen?

It’s the first pitch he’s ever been thrown, and he misses it.

“What’s the matter with you? How could you make such a mistake! You never do anything right!” Said no dad ever.

No. What do you do? You toss him another one. You don’t even have to retrieve the first ball because you bought a bucket of them. You knew he’d miss most of them. “Great cut! Keep swinging like that and you’ll be in the Majors! Keep your eye on the ball; here’s another one!”

Eventually he hits one. It tinks on the carpet a foot in front of him. “Run! Run!” you shout as you make a big show of diving for the ball. He runs around the living room and, as you barely “miss” tagging him, he scores his first home run! You swing him around the room to celebrate singing “Take Me out to the Ballgame”. Then you get ready to pitch some more.

Eventually he connects and smacks a line drive that breaks the lamp. Who would have seen that coming? But you realize your wife was right and take Slugger outside so he can really hit.

God Celebrates Our Learning

We celebrate our children’s learning. We understand their mistakes and failures are part of the learning process. And we celebrate those mistakes and failures along with their successes. We get that their mistakes, even their failures, are not sin. They didn’t do anything wrong. They’re just learning. It’s all part of the precious process of helping our children learn. We get that and we love to be in the process with them.

So why, we when we make an honest mistake, do we tell ourselves, “What’s the matter with you? How could you make such a mistake! You never do anything right!” God, our good parent, doesn’t say that! He just wants to hug us and love us and plop us right back down to try it again.

We put pressure on ourselves that God never does, that no good parent would. He just wants to toss us another ball. He’s not counting how many we miss; he’s actually expecting us to miss a bunch while we’re learning. If we bomb a situation, don’t worry, he’s got plenty more lined up.

It takes a lot of practice to learn to walk—to balance with one foot in the air while moving forward. To hit a thrown ball with a stick. To live a healthy, godly life in an unhealthy dangerous world. You know your child needs practice. God knows we need practice.

You’re not Failing, You’re Practicing.

Honest mistakes, even honest flat-out failures, are not sin. There’s nothing wrong with making an honest mistake. We’re just learning. Why can’t we give ourselves the same grace that God does? The same grace that we give our children?

Rebellion

Yes, there are mistakes and failures that are sin. If your toddler throws the bat at you or whacks the coffee table with it (after having been told not to), that’s different. That’s rebellion. That’s sin. You wouldn’t handle that by tossing him another pitch. You’ve got to re-orient him to the pillow you’re using as a make-shift home plate, and get him, as a hitter, back in right stance, in the right orientation, or relationship, to you as the pitcher, waiting to hit your pitch and not trying to hit anything else.

And yes, as humans we’ve perfected rebellion to an art form. Our society has normalized rebellion, and even celebrates certain forms of it, transgender being the hot one right now. If I decide I’m going to be someone other than who God’s made me to be, that’s spiritual rebellion. The truth is there is tremendous wounding in that person that God wants to heal, but that’s a subject for another post.

Sometimes we try to pitch so God can hit, and we’re shocked when he doesn’t swing. God deals with rebellion by bringing circumstances into our life to remind us who’s pitching and who’s hitting here. He invites us to get reoriented, back into right relationship, with him as the pitcher, and us as the batter, waiting to hit his next pitch.

2 Ways out of Self-Condemnation

If you’re truly chasing, longing, after what God has for you, if you’re partnering with him for your life, honest mistakes are just learning. Be gentle with yourself.

The truth is, all that negative self-talk, all that condemnation, is really from the enemy. We often don’t recognize it as such though, because the sneaky bugger talks to us in our own voice. He disguises his hellish lies as our own thoughts.

But if we’re alert to it, we can recognize that condemnation for the lie it is. Often, that’s enough. But sometimes, even when our head knows it’s hogwash, it’s lodged in our heart somewhere. And when we believe it, it has power over us. Here are 2 ways out of self-condemnation:

1) Ask Somebody to Pray with You. Please talk to someone. That’s what God put them in your life for, so they can help you in these times, and likewise. Don’t suffer alone. Tell someone how you’re feeling, if you just can’t shake it, and ask them to pray with you. Not for you. With you. Right then and there.

There is no shame in counseling. Counselors teach you the life-tools your parents should’ve, but (out of their wounding) didn’t.

There are a lot of options here. A phone call with a friend. Counseling. A talk with your pastor. Regular coffee with a mentor. Inner healing. Deliverance. (Inner healing and deliverance need to be from trained individuals who know what they’re doing.) Give yourself all the tools in the toolbox you need; everyone needs a different mix of these. Here are some resources. If they are not in your geographical area, call them anyway and ask if they can recommend resources that are. (None of these are affiliate links.)

Counseling:

Spotswood Biblical Counseling Center (Fredericksburg, VA)

Dominion Counseling and Training Center (Richmond, VA)

Inner Healing:

Elijah House Ministries (HQ in Coeur d’Alene, ID, with trained resources across the US and around the world)

Restoring the Foundations (HQ in Mount Juliet, TN, with trained resources across the US and around the world)

Deliverance:

The Church Unchained (Stafford, VA)

Christian Healing Ministries (Francis & Judith MacNutt, Jacksonville, FL)

2) Replace the Lie with the Truth. Ask the Holy Spirit for the opposite of the lie. Speak God’s promise over yourself out loud.

My lie was, “I don’t deserve better.” For me, the opposite is Psalm 139. On bad days I read it out loud. There is power in the words you say. They define the atmosphere around your life. And while you’re at it, tell that lying spirit of self-condemnation to go soak its head in a bucket of ice water. You’re not listening to it anymore.

So How about It?

Are you ready to step out of self-condemnation and into the adventure God has for you? Tell us about it in the comments or shoot us an email. We’d love to hear from you. And please share if this post would bless someone else.

What Fast-Tracks Inner Healing?

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Our inner healing often takes a season, just like physical healing. God, in his great mercy, only goes as fast as we can handle. Certainly our unwillingness or wrong motivations can slow it down, but if we’re willing and our motivations are right, is there anything we can do to speed it up? Is there something we can do to fast-track our inner healing as much as possible?

It turns out there is, and it’s illustrated best by buffalo and cattle. This analogy may seem way off-topic, but hang with me and I’ll bring it home.

When a herd of cattle on the plain see a thunderstorm coming, they run away from it. They are naturally afraid of it, and they quite logically run the other way.

Buffalo, on the other way, run toward the storm. They don’t fear the thunderstorm any less cattle do, but they’re just smarter about how to deal with it. They run directly through it. Since they are running the opposite direction the storm is moving, they minimize their time in the storm. Pretty smart, huh? They exit the storm as quickly as possible and get to the freshly watered, tender grass and clear weather on the other side.

The cattle, meanwhile, can’t outrun the storm. And by running away from it (that is, the same direction it’s moving), they actually maximize their time in the storm. The storm passes them by very slowly. They spend a lot more time it in, and get a lot more wet, cold, and uncomfortable than the buffalo.

What about us? John Sandford, the founder of Elijah House, which is one of the key ministries that taught the Church how to do inner healing, said, “We must embrace the fireball of pain.”

What?!? Sounds pretty crazy, doesn’t it? But it’s a buffalo strategy. God doesn’t need us to re-live the pain and re-traumatize us all over again, but we need to get in touch with it so God can open it up enough to heal it. He’s the great physician, and any surgeon has to open the wound in order to heal it.

When we embrace the pain, when we trust him enough to go there, we fast-track our healing. Be a buffalo.

I can testify that embracing the pain, letting God open me up like a Christmas turkey, really hurt. But it was over really fast, and I made progress in one or two sessions that could’ve otherwise taken years. And this was for big-deal stuff, life-wrenching stuff, like a marriage falling apart. I feel so much better now than before being healed. The freedom I gained was so worth it!

Does this resonate? Can you think of a time where you either embraced the pain or in vain ran from it? Which worked better for you? Are you still running? Share your story in the comments or shoot us an email. And please give this a share if you think it would help someone else. You can click on the Facebook button below (or the other social media buttons) to share really easy and fast.

What Blocks Inner Healing?

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Ever wonder why some people just can’t seem to get unstuck? Christians even? They’ve been going through inner healing for 10 years and look like they’re going to be for another 10 years, but they never seem to make any headway? Or they seem to making progress, but then stumble and fall in the same devastating sin all over again (for example, having an affair, or caving to an addiction, etc)? Why can’t they get really free and move on? What’s blocking their healing?

Meanwhile, other people that are wounded much more deeply sometimes get totally healing over a season of their life and totally move on – free and never susceptible to the same sins again. Why is that?

John Sanford, the founder of Elijah House, asked the Lord this question. He and his wife Paula ministered to a large number of people over the course of their ministry, and saw many people with an equal level of wounding. Some would get total freedom and never look back, while others would appear to get healing only to fall back into the same sins over and over again. What made the difference?

This is my paraphrase of what the Lord told John Sanford. It depends on the motivation of the person seeking the healing, why they are seeking freedom from their pain.

“If they are seeking healing because they realize their wounding is keeping them form serving me fully,” the Lord said to John Sanford, “and their hearts desire is to serve me with their whole being, they will get complete freedom and keep it, because they are seeking to serve me.

“If, on the other hand, they want relief from their pain only so they can live the good life, their healing won’t stick, because they aren’t really seeking me. They just want to live the good life.”

The Kingdom of God is so upside-down from how we naturally think. This illustrates what Jesus said in Luke 9:24, “Whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will save it.”

If we seek the good life, we’ll never find it, and our lives will be one endless, meaningless, futile search. But if we’re willing to sacrifice the good life in favor of living for God, accepting suffering gladly to see his Kingdom advanced, then we’ll find a life better than we ever thought possible.

How about you? Have you seen this at work in your life or that of others? Have you experienced giving up something and then having the Lord give it back to you redeemed, different, but better than you ever thought it could be? Tell us in the comments? And please share (buttons below for your sharing convenience) if you think this thought would be helpful to someone else.