Many of you are in situations where your pain lasts years. It might be one year, two years, it might be a lot longer than that. Whilst you are going through the pain you can’t see anything but the pain. And you're screaming ‘Why God! This hurts, why do I have to go through this, just make it stop!!
Perception
Our brain is wired for negative experiences. We remember negative experiences more than good ones. Events that caused fear and trauma are more ingrained in our memory than their positive counterparts. This is as a protective mechanism, designed to prevent us from repeating painful experiences. Our brain says pain is bad, negative experiences are bad.
But pain is not always a bad thing.
Positive outcomes
Take going to the gym for example. You go to the gym, you lift weights. On a biomechanical level you are actually tearing your muscles, and this is what causes the pain a few days later as the muscle works to repair itself. But when the fibres rejoin they are stronger, making them bigger and also allowing you to lift heavier.
And so then we lift more and we rip them again and they get bigger again. And we have seen that, in a pretty immediate response, by going through the pain we burn fat, our muscles get bigger, and we have improved satisfaction with our physical appearance.
Perspective
But we wouldn’t go through that if we didn’t know the benefit. No one would go to the gym if the pain didn’t produce some kind of positive outcome. People are motivated to go to the gym for the weight loss, the endorphins, the physique it provides. And these benefits is what makes it easier to wake up early and push through the pain when its occuring.
When we know painful experiences have a positive outcome, it builds our resilience and endurance to push through. It's the same perspective we must hold in the difficult moments in our life. When the work seems overwhelming, when the disability is impacting on our quality of life, when friends and family have let you down, we must look at the bigger picture and remind ourselves that this situation has an opportunity to create positive fruit in our lives. God can use all situations for good (Romans 8:28), and these situations are building our strength, discernment, resilience, and character.
Having a Kingdom mindset through our challenges allows us to inspire and impact others who are struggling in similar ways. The work becomes easier when you remember the impact it will have when its finished. Having the perspective of the bigger outcome helps us push through the tough moments as we 'press toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus' (Philippians 3:14 ESV).
Lasting fruit
We experience the world and our pain in terms of our earthly existence. But God views our pain in the lens of our eternal salvation.
We see how going to the gym for an hour a few times a week produces an outcome that lasts for a few months, even if we then stopped working out. The benefits of exercise last even after the exercise has stopped. In the same way, the positive fruit that can result from painful experiences can last years after the experience itself is over.
The goal of God is for everyone to know and experience Him. He is a God of love. Now take for example a situation where Person A is going through a hard time, and Person B can offer help and express love towards person A. What’s happened is now Person A has experienced the love and care of another person, and Person B has experienced the act of showing love towards another. So Person A has had a chance to experience the love of God and Person B has experienced how it feels to act selflessly towards another, with no personal gain, and also becomes closer to God.
So now, Person A’s pain has been used to help not only Person A become closer to God but also Person B. So we can see how Person A’s pain, whilst horrible and uncomfortable at the time, has had eternal outcomes on not only their life but the life of another. But you can’t see this perspective unless you view the pain experience in light of the long term benefits it achieves, not just the pain in the moment of it.
Running the long race
Many of you are in situations where your pain lasts years. It might be one year, two years, it might be a lot longer than that. Whilst you are going through the pain you can’t see anything but the pain. And you're screaming ‘Why God! This hurts, why do I have to go through this, just make it stop!!’. But God doesn’t just see this period of pain. He sees how this time, this stretching, ripping, tearing time will help rebuild you stronger in a way you weren’t before. We cannot build muscles unless we first tear them, and we cannot grow stronger in character unless our character is tested.
And the lessons we learn from that will help to strengthen and build those around us, so when they go through their own pain, they too benefit and experience God on a new level that they wouldn’t have before. And our testimony can benefit people around us for the remainder of our lifetime here.
And so we can say to God, "God im choosing to depend on your strength, because I can't get through this without you, but I'm trusting that this is teaching me something and helping me grow and stretch. And so I'm walking with you because I know you'll get me through this, and I know theres an amazing lesson on the other side." There might not be an immediate benefit, the pain might last for years, but the benefit of that strength could last for the rest of your life.