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Our 4 Postures in Pain toward God

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When we’re in pain, we often take one of four postures toward God. See if any of these sound familiar. Personally, I’ve done them all.

(1) Hiding from God

Sometimes in our pain, the shame ramps up, and we do anything to not be exposed.

Adam and Eve are the poster children for hiding from God in shame, after they ate the forbidden fruit in Genesis 3. They clothed themselves to hide from each other. And they hid from God. Their shame was in overdrive.

Shame’s lie is, “I am uniquely and fatally flawed. Uniquely – no one’s as bad as me. And fatally – there’s no fixing me.”

Both are lies. In the words of Tenth Avenue North, “you are more than the mess you made.” I write more about this here, but we are not what we do.

The beautiful thing about the Genesis 3 story is God’s response. God didn’t burst into the Garden, tearing off Adam and Eve’s fig leaves, with a vengeful cry of, “I know what you did!” Yet we hide from God because that’s what we expect, and what our shame fears the most.

Instead, he asks questions: “Where are you?” And when Adam admits he was hiding in shame, “Who told you that you were naked? Did you eat from the tree I told you not to?” Then when Adam performs the world’s first blame-shift by throwing Eve under the bus, God asks Eve, “What have you done?”

[Aside: I have a post here, with a 1-page worksheet, about starting a daily practice of answering 4 specific questions God asks us.]

Now, yes, God knew the answers to his questions before he asked them. He wasn’t asking for information. He was asking for relationship. He was asking for connection. His questions were an invitation to Adam and Eve to connect with him in the middle of their sin and their pain.

And, yes, God gives consequences to all involved, Adam, Eve, and the serpent. But it’s fascinating to me who didn’t get a question. The serpent. Because God doesn’t want relationship with him. That ship sailed when Satan rebelled against God and fell from Heaven.

But God asks us questions because he’s inviting us to stop hiding. Into relationship. To bring all of our sin and pain to him in an intimate, connected, relationship. We have a special opportunity that fallen angels do not. I encourage you to take it.

(2) Running from God

Jonah is the poster child for this one. There are times when we know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, what God wants us to do. Or maybe it’s something we know is wrong that we want to do anyway.

Sometimes we know what God wants, and, like Jonah, we intentionally head in the other direction. Running from God is telling him, “No, I’m doing it my way.”

You know Jonah’s story. God told him to go preach repentance to Nineveh, the capital of Assyria, one of Israel’s enemies (who would later destroy the upper kingdom of Israel). Jonah got on a boat going the other direction, was thrown overboard during a storm, and was swallowed by a whale (ok, technically, a huge fish).

It’s a misconception that the whale spit Jonah up on the beach of Nineveh. Jonah actually got spit up back in Israel, where he started. But don’t take my word for it:

  • Jonah 3:1-2 – The Lord tells Jonah (again!) to go to Nineveh. Why would he have to go there if he was already there?
  • Jonah 3:3 – “Jonah obeyed the Lord and went to Nineveh.” Again, the Bible wouldn’t record Jonah going to Nineveh if he was already there.

God gave Jonah a do-over. God had the fish barf him right back where he started from, so Jonah and God could try this again.

When we bolt, in his love and longing for us, God often allows painful situations to bring us back to a place where we can try it again.

And in Jonah chapter 4, when Jonah is angry and arguing with God, God asks Jonah questions.

  • “Have you any right to be angry?” (asked twice in slightly different ways)
  • “Shouldn’t I care about that great city (Nineveh)?”

God doesn’t rebuke Jonah. He invites Jonah into a conversation by asking questions.

If you are running from God, I encourage you to have the conversation with God. Bring all your fear, bring your pain, bring your anger. It’s ok. God can take it. He would rather have the difficult, ugly, messy conversation than see you bolt.

(3) Fighting with God

When I first sat down to read the Book of Psalms, I dreaded it. I thought it would be the most boring book in the whole Bible. “Reading the song lyrics on the jacket without the music. Swell.” But now, having read them, Psalms is my favorite book in the whole Bible.

Because the Psalms are so real life, so raw. The Psalms are more descriptive of real life than prescriptive. God gets us.

Here are some excerpts (my paraphrases, but you get the point):

  • Psalm 2: Why do the nations plot in vain against God? (Anybody following the news lately?)
  • Psalm 3: Everyone’s against me!
  • Psalm 6: I’m worn out from groaning, all night long I flood my bed with tears.
  • Psalm 10: Where are you God? Why are you hiding in times of trouble?
  • Psalm 13: How long, God? Will you forget me forever?!?
  • Psalm 51: Forgive me God!
  • Psalm 77: When I remember God, I groan! (This psalm was portrayed so beautifully in Season 3, Episode 8, of The Chosen.)

And so many more. Yet in all of these desperate psalms, God meets the writer. In the middle of the pain, and the abuse, and the ugliness, and the sin, and the hurt. God wants to walk with us through it.

“Conflict is growth trying to happen.” – Jill Savage

I encourage you to have the confrontation with God. What are you angry about in your life? Have it out with him, he can take it. David, Job, and Jacob, just to name a few, had it out with God. And God did not rebuke them. God met them.

Many psalms are beautiful examples of having it out with God, and through that process, strengthening relationship with him. The psalmist always ends closer to God than when he started. So will you, if you have the conversation.

(4) Seeking God with Trust

Eventually, we want to land here. Hiding and running are ways we avoid seeking God. And fighting with him is a messy way to seek God.

But what if there’s a healthier way?

Jesus modeled a healthy way to seek God in the middle of suffering in Gethsemane. Well, that was Jesus, so it was easy for him! Um, no, not so much. He sweated blood (Luke 22:44). There were no rainbows and unicorns.

Jesus modeled seeking God in a healthy way in the middle of hardship like this:

  • He told God what he wanted. “Take this cup from me.” (Matthew 26:39)
  • He named the messy emotions. “My soul is overwhelmed to the point of death.” (Matthew 26:38)
  • He deferred to God, trusting God’s plan: “Yet not as I will, but as you will.” (Matthew 26:39,42)
  • He received (and accepted!) the supernatural strength to do what he needed to do. An angel from Heaven appeared to him and strengthened him. (Luke 22:43) You will receive the supernatural strength you need too.

But Jesus is God, so he could do that! Yes, Jesus is fully God. But he’s also fully human. In becoming human, Jesus emptied himself of his divinity (Philippians 2:6-8). He did everything as a human, as an example for us. So we can do everything Jesus did, and even greater things (John 14:12), if we have the same relationship with the Father he had, which is available to us who believe through the Holy Spirit.

“We can never be challenged by a negative, but only by the character of God.” – Graham Cooke

In every trial on this earth, God wants to reveal to us, personally, an attribute of himself that we haven’t experienced yet (or at a deeper level than we’ve experienced in the past). So in the midst of trials, can we learn to ask, “Father, what do you want to reveal to me about yourself in this?”

What attribute of God do you need right now?

Your Turn

Does this resonate? In pain, which of these 4 postures do you lean toward? Tell us in the comments. What you have to share will help others. And please share this post with everyone it will bless.

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

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[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.

Entering God’s Rest

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The best analogy I’ve heard about entering God’s rest is from Graham Cooke, one of my favorite teachers. This is my (admittedly poor) paraphrase of his vision/dream.

Orcs were chasing me. I ran up mountains and through forests, and was nearing total exhaustion. They would catch me soon, and my one sword would not be enough. I was running across a grassy plain, about to collapse, when I saw a tent in front of me and ran inside. It was strangely peaceful. There was a fire pit of burning coals in the center, from which I could sense the presence of the Lord. I turned to see my pursuers running full speed, close to the tent. Unable to run any further, I drew my sword.

Gently and softly from the fire behind me, I heard the Lord say, “You won’t need that.”

The orcs ran right past the tent as if they couldn’t see it. In fact, when they moved onto the space the tent occupied, they didn’t come inside but instantly appeared on the other side, as if in their dimension the tent wasn’t even there! They were shouting angrily at each other for losing their prey (me) who was there just a moment ago. In the middle of a grassy open plain, where could he have gone? And they loudly and with much cursing blamed each other.

Meanwhile, I heard the Lord, softly chuckling from the fire. He was laughing at them!

Where was I? Safe, yes, totally, but where was I? I was in the Lord’s rest.

From Graham Cooke’s vision on The Way of the Warrior Series CD series. (You can get your own copy here , and Graham’s general website is here. Very much worth a browse. BTW, these are not affiliate links. I get no commission if you click them or buy from Graham. This is an honest recommendation.)

So what exactly is God’s rest?

God’s Rest, “rest” in Hebrews 3 and 4, doesn’t mean physical rest or sleep. It’s the opposite of being anxious. It’s the opposite of being fearful.

It’s that place of quiet confidence, believing the Lord would do what he said. Believing his presence in my life is enough. A place without striving. A spiritual eye in my very real hurricane of life.

Hebrews 3:19, talking about those Moses rescued from Egypt, says they were not able to enter God’s rest because of their unbelief. Earlier in chapter 3 the writer quotes Psalm 95, “Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts as you did in the rebellion,” and “So I (God) declared on oath in my anger, ‘They shall never enter my rest’ ”. Then he says in 3:19, “So we see that they were not able to enter, because of their unbelief.”

Entering God’s rest doesn’t change the circumstances around us, but it changes the power those circumstances have over us. Our fear gives them power. When we’re not afraid of them, because we’re in God’s rest, they have no power over us. We can think clearly and act from the wisdom of the Spirit.

Today’s Action Step: When things are crazy around me, I will enter God’s rest by choosing to believe him over the fear my circumstances are trying to inspire.

I’m learning to enter his rest more and more. What are your experiences with God’s rest? How do you personally enter it? Tell us in the comments; we’re looking forward to learning from you. And please share on social media if you think this would benefit someone else.

How to Live from Your Future, Not Your Past, with Two Simple Lists

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Most of us live from the pain of our past. We try to medicate it with addictions. We try to bury it by being busy doing good things. We try to drown it with a constant buzz of media, entertainment, and self-gratification. But none of it works because God, in his great love and mercy for us, doesn’t let it work. He has a better way for us to live. God’s calling us to live from our future.

How do you think God sees you? What face does he make when he thinks of you? Many of us think of God frowning and disappointed over our mistakes. We think God’s pre-occupied with our shame because we are. But he’s not. He sees us from the perspective of our future destiny.

Here’s why. God doesn’t experience time moment after moment, like we do. God experiences all the moments at once. So when God sees our future, it’s not some cosmic fortune-teller thing. He’s just telling us what he’s experiencing in that other moment.

Think of it like this. You’re in a house with walls but no roof. You’re in one room with a radio to a guy in a helicopter hovering over the house. He’s telling you what’s going on in another room. You wouldn’t think, “Wow, he’s got supernatural powers and can see through walls!” No, you’d just understand that from his perspective, he can see all the rooms at once.

That’s how God experiences time. From his perspective, he experiences all the moments at once, just like the guy in the helicopter sees all the rooms of the house at once.

So God is experiencing our future right now, and he speaks to us from that place, reminding us who, from his perspective, we really are.

When God thinks of you, experiencing your future, he has one of two different emotions.

Regardless of the pain in your life, which God weeps over right along with you, God smiles when he thinks of you. For those who have, or will, accept the love of God, he smiles a lover’s smile. He laughs a lover’s laugh. An intimate smile, an intimate laugh, reserved just for you. He calls to you from your future, that place of mature authority to which he sees your present suffering is bringing you. He tells you just enough now to encourage you and light the way to the destiny he created you for.

Look how God calls Gideon in Judges 6:12. Gideon, the weakest person in Israel’s weakest tribe (see verse 15), was threshing wheat in hiding, living in fear of Israel’s cruel, oppressive, and powerful enemies. But when the angel of the Lord shows up, he greets Gideon with Gideon’s true identity, “Hail, mighty man of valor!”

I’m sure Gideon turned around to see who the angel was talking to. Realizing that, indeed, there was no one else there, I’m sure Gideon was like, “You talking to me?”

God was experiencing Gideon’s future, where Gideon, with just 300 men defeated an army of tens of thousands. He was speaking to Gideon from his future and inviting him into it. It was Gideon’s choice. Gideon had to work through some doubts, which God is totally okay with. But in the end, Gideon chose to follow God into his destiny.

But there are some people who, no matter what God does, will never respond to the love of God. For these people God weeps. By refusing his love, they’ve chosen to be separated from him forever. That’s called hell, the only place in existence where God has chosen to withdraw his presence, which is why it’s so torturous there. We don’t like to think about it, but that’s reality apart from the love of God.

This may sound strange, but the most loving thing God can do for those who absolutely will not accept his love is allow them to go there. Think about it. How would it be love for God to force people to spend an eternity with someone they’ve spent their whole life trying to avoid?

For these people God weeps. But he continues to woo them, romance them, and call them into the glorious potential he has for them, if they will just accept his healing love in the midst of their pain. He brings circumstances into their lives that make it very hard for them to not love him back. Because that’s what love does. It never gives up.

So how do we live from our future? You can start with two simple lists. This is a simple but powerful exercise I learned from Graham Cooke.

This first list goes really fast. Make a list of everything wrong with you, everything you’re ashamed of, all your faults. Give yourself two minutes. Go.

Then make a second list on a second sheet of paper. For every item on the first list, ask the Holy Spirit what the opposite is, and write that on the second list. 

Maybe you wrote anger on the first list. For one person, patience will be the opposite. For someone else, it might be sensitivity. For someone else, maybe gentleness. That’s why you have to ask the Holy Spirit. Write the first thing that pops to your head. God so wants to talk to you about this.

Then throw the first list away. Rip it up into little pieces. Do it right now. Enjoy it! Rip up that thing! That list is not you. It doesn’t exist in Heaven, so it shouldn’t exist on this earth. Don’t we pray, “on earth as it is in Heaven?”

Now take the second list and pray over it. Dwell on it. Keep it with you. Look for opportunities to practice those things in your life. The second list is your game plan for what God wants to do in your life. Not all at once, don’t panic. Pick one or two and focus on those.

When something on the first list pops up in your life, pray a moment and thank God he’s giving you an opportunity to practice the corresponding item on the second list. Focus on the second list. That’s the future God wants you living from.

Say you wrote anger on the first list and patience on the second list. Then you find yourself going into one of your rages. Don’t pray, “Lord, help me not be angry.” If you pray that way, you’ve just spoken over yourself what God says you’re not. You’re focusing on the sin that died on the cross with Jesus.

Instead, pray, “Lord, help me be patient.” Now you’re speaking over yourself who God says you are. You’re partnering with him working patience into your life. You’re focusing on what he wants to do.

Yes, you can do this. This is the empowering grace Jesus bought for us through the cross.

When we live from our future, we practice the habit of becoming. God loves this process. Just like a parent loves watching their child learn to walk, God loves watching us become who he knows we are.

We chose the picture we did for this post because that mom dressed her baby in a powerful identity, and he has no idea what it means. What identity has God dressed you in?

Who are you becoming? What future is God calling you into? What’s on your second list? Tell us in the comments. And please share if this would bless someone else.

Your Worst Enemy Is Also Your Best Ally

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Does that title seem strange? That’s because so often we really don’t know who our real enemy is. Let’s discover that first.

Not Other People

We often confuse people who hurt us with the enemy. But they are not our real enemy, even if they think they are. When people hurt us, they are acting out of their own wounding. Hurt people hurt people.

In fact, out of his great love for us, God often uses other people’s sin to refine us. That’s why Proverbs 27:17 says, “As iron sharpens iron, so one person sharpens another.”

Have you ever said, “That guy, he just pushes my buttons!” Those buttons are actually sin in us that God is using the other person to highlight. God wants us to give him our buttons.

“But you don’t know what they did!” God will deal with them; that’s not your problem. Let God deal with you.

Not the Devil or Demons

Now, don’t get me wrong here. Satan and demons are very real. They want to, at minimum, derail the calling on our lives, and at most, kill us outright. That qualifies as an enemy. They certainly are. In Christian literature, when we speak of “the enemy,” that’s who we’re talking about. I’ve done it lots on this blog, and there’s nothing wrong with that language. It’s accurate. But they aren’t our worst enemy.

We don’t want to take them lightly or ignore them, but as Christians we don’t have to be afraid of them either. I love Graham Cooke’s attitude toward the devil and his minions: “If you don’t fight me, you’re going to lose. If you do fight me, you are so going to lose. Sucks to be you.”

Our Worst Enemy

Demons have no power over us that we don’t give them by our agreement. We empower what we believe.

We’re not our own worst enemy, but the negativity we believe is. When we speak negatively over our own lives or agree with the negativity others have spoken over us, we empower that reality. But the reverse is also true.

We are made in the image of the Creator God. As such, we have the power to create our own reality around ourselves and others within our sphere of influence. God created us with this power so we could bless ourselves and each other. But as is common with most tools, our beliefs can either give us unstoppable momentum forward or be an incredibly destructive weapon.

Our Best Ally

Yes, our belief is a tool. What we believe is either our worst enemy or our best ally. No force on the planet, for good or ill, can overcome the power of your beliefs about yourself, either positive or negative.

Although he is totally sovereign, not even God will override our beliefs. Instead, he engineers situations in our lives that overload our elaborate structure of lies. He wants to bring those negative, limiting, prison walls we’ve built around ourselves, to keep us safe by our own power, crashing down. And he is, in each situation, constantly giving us the choice of what we will believe: His uncharted goodness, or our comfortable lies?

Our lies keep us safe, as safe as a ship chained to the dock. Always yearning for, but never actually, riding the waves it was designed for. How sad. How tragic. What a wasted life.

On the other hand, God’s goodness wants us to sail out into the uncharted waters of our destiny. God has something unique that he’s created you to do in this world. And if you don’t do it, no one will.

Yes, it’s bigger than you. In fact, it’s impossible. God’s calling, the destiny on your life, is always impossible without him. He’s built divine partnership into the fabric of the universe. You follow your heart’s cry, and he’ll handle the impossibilities.

What makes your heart sing? Are you afraid to listen to that song? Are you afraid to go there? The only thing stopping you is what you believe. Once you believe what God believes about you and your calling and your destiny, there will be no stopping you.

So how about it?

What does God say about you that makes your heart sing? Tell us in the comments. What’s your calling? Are you pursuing it? Please share this post if it would inspire others.