Pain Makes you Strong

Pastor Burcham’s Sermon
Sunday, May 29, 2011

[Video] “The day finally came for the young man to leave, traveling on from the people of Me. ‘Must you go,’ they asked. ‘We want you to stay. Our hearts feel hurt when you walk away.’ ‘I’ve taught and you’ve learned. Now I really must go. Others must learn all that you know.’ ‘We’ll miss you, sir. You’ve opened our eyes. This pain will be rough but in God we will rise.’ ‘I love you, my friends. Don’t forget what you know. ‘Til another day, for now I must go.’”

No pain, no gain. That’s the cliché. More than likely, you’ve said that to somebody else. Maybe you’ve even said it to yourself. “You have to go through a little bit of suffering. You have to go through a little bit of pain, but you’ll come out on the other end and you’ll be stronger. You’ll be better.”

So when you look at the title for this weekend’s message, that pain makes you stronger and it’s supposed to be in the context of upside down thinking, that is, things that are counterintuitive, you say to yourself, “I don’t know about this one. I think you missed the mark. It sounds pretty much like conventional wisdom to me. You have to go through pain if you’re going to get stronger.” More than likely, you’ve probably told that to somebody who’s going through a rough time in life. You’ve come up behind them and say, “I know it’s rough right now but, you know, in the end you’ll be better. Pain makes you stronger.”

Tell that to the people of Joplin, Missouri or Mapleton, Iowa. Tell that to the woman who had her baby ripped out of her arms never to be seen again. Tell that to the teenage boy whose friend was sucked out of the car. Tell that to the thousands of people who’ve lost everything. Tell it to the families who’ve lost loved ones who made the ultimate sacrifice for our country. Tell it to the mothers and fathers who worry every night about their sons and daughters in uniform. Tell it to the woman who’s battling cancer, the man who’s struggling to get over a stroke. Tell it to yourself when you have to deal with death, disease or disaster. Then all of a sudden, the little cliché of “no pain, no gain” seems pretty empty.

As I was preparing the message for this week, I had every intention of starting out on a much lighter tone. In fact, it was going to be another one of those incidents when I was going to try my hand at a little bit of humor. But then I read the paper and I saw the pictures of Joplin and I heard the stories. There’s nothing light about this. There’s nothing easy about this. The only thing that I came to the conclusion is, it’s universal.

Every single one of us has had to deal with pain, I mean, real pain in our lives. And no doubt, we will have to deal with real pain again in our lives before we reach heaven. So I don’t think that we could just flippantly say, “Well, hey, no pain, no gain. Pain makes you stronger.” You know what? I don’t think pain does make you stronger. How you react to pain, how you deal with pain, that’s what makes the difference because pain can either make you bitter or it can make you better.

Pain in your life can either rip you apart or it can mend you back together. What we learn from scripture and what Jesus demonstrates for us is that when we face pain in faith, indeed it can make us better, not bitter. When we face those struggles in our lives in faith in Christ, indeed that pain can result in us being stronger. But it’s all in how we deal with the pain, how we react to it.

So as I looked at the teachings of Jesus and I looked at other parts of scripture, I saw really three components that were three principles, if you will, but the difference being this time is they’re not stand alones. They all sort of get mixed up together. They’re all happening at the same time. This morning, we’re going to walk through those three things but, if you will, keep in mind they’re all working together at the same time. If we’re going to face pain so that we would come out of it better instead of bitter, if we’re going to face pain so in the end we’ll be stronger and not weaker, I really believe that these three principles have to constantly be at work in our lives.

The first one is patience. If we’re going to come out of this better instead of bitter, you have to have patience. It’s required. But I don’t know anybody who’s going through a struggle that does well with this. Anyone who is trying to get through a rough part in life, they don’t have a whole lot of patience. They want it done sooner rather than later. The victims of tornadoes, they want to put their lives back together now. They want to heal from the hurt now. Those who are seeing doctors, they want the test results now and they want the treatments to be over yesterday and they want the pain to stop now. Those in relationships want the arguing to end tonight. We don’t have a great deal of patience when it comes to going through pain in our lives. There’s just one question that’s on our lips. “How long?” “Alright, God, you said I have to go through this. I have to have patience but how long? How long do I need to suffer with this?” And that’s not just our quickfix society either. Go back to the beginning of time. Forever. Mankind has always asked “How long?”

I looked just in the book of Psalm. In the book of Psalm, there are 23 incidents of the writer crying out, “How long?” All kinds of different incidences they’re going through, different kinds of pain but it’s the same question, “How long, O Lord? How much more do I have to put up with? When is this going to end?” Patience is not easy for us to do, but patience is required if we’re going to come out better instead of bitter.

But patience, my friends, is relative. It’s relative to our situation and it’s relative to who we are. Case in point: Mark tells the story of a woman who has been suffering for over a decade with a medical condition, 12 years. I wonder how many times in those 12 years did she cry out “How long?” I wonder how many times in those 12 years she threw up her hands in despair. I wonder how many times she said, “You know, God, are you even listening? God, do you even care?” Twelve years. That’s a long time to wait. That’s a lot of patience that was required of her before she finally found relief for what she was struggling with. But what’s interesting about the story of the woman suffering for 12 years is it’s actually a story inside a story.

I’ll demonstrate what I mean. we go back to Mark 5 and we start at Verse 22. This is the first story that gets interrupted. Then one of the synagogue rulers, named Jairus, came there. Seeing Jesus, he fell at His feet and pleaded earnestly with Him, ‘My little daughter is dying. Please come and upt your hands on her so that she might be healed and live.’” That’s where the story begins. This synagogue official comes to Jesus. His daughter is dying. “Please come and heal her.”

Jesus agrees. Everything is going fine. There’s a whole crowd of people who want to go, and they want to see Jesus heal this little girl. So they’re walking through the streets and Jairus is leading the way and then the story gets interrupted. All of a sudden, Mark jumps over and here’s this woman in the crowd who reaches out and touches Jesus’ clothes and Jesus stops and says, “Who touched me?” I think this had to be a weak moment for the disciples because they’re a little disrespectful to their teacher. “Who touched you? Who didn’t touch you? How can you even ask such a question? You have this whole crowd of people around you. How can you ask who touched you?”

Undaunted, Jesus keeps looking for the woman. Now I don’t know about you but as I’m reading the story, I’m like, “What are you doing? There’s a little girl dying over here and you’re going to stop and worry about a woman who’s been dealing with something for over a decade? I think she can wait ten more minutes.”

How about Jairus? What do you think is going through his mind? He’s jumping out of his skin. He’s thinking to himself, “My daughter is dying over here. You’re looking for someone who touched you. Are you kidding me? What happens if she dies, Jesus? Then what are you going to do?” Yeah, what’s He going to do then?

Don’t we want to put God in a box, put Him on our time schedule? “God, I’m not sure how much longer I can last. I need you to get me out of this before it’s too late.” Too late for what? Are we somehow saying that God isn’t capable, that after it reaches a certain point, God can’t help us anymore? Patience. Waiting on God. But it’s relative. For the woman, 12 years was a long time. For Jairus, 12 minutes was an eternity.

My friends, if we’re going to go through pain and come out of it better instead of bitter, you have to exercise patience and patience is this: It’s waiting just a little bit longer than we thought was possible. That’s patience. Patience is waiting just a little bit longer than we thought was possible.

Patience means that we reach a point where we’re willing and ready to put everything on God’s shoulders. It’s when we finally surrender to God and say, “I don’t know how you’re going to get me out of this. I don’t know what’s going to happen here. It is beyond my control.” It’s when we finally get to the point where we’re willing to trust in the promises of God alone. That’s what the patience is getting us to.

Let’s pick up on the story again. Jesus heals the woman and tells her to go on her way. It says this, “While Jesus was still speaking, some men came from the house of Jairus, the synagogue ruler. ‘Your daughter’s dead. Don’t bother the teacher anymore.’” I love this line. “Ignoring what they said, Jesus told the synagogue ruler, ‘Don’t be afraid. Just believe.’” That’s where Jesus was trying to get Jairus, to that point where he could look Him in the eyes and He says, “Don’t be afraid. Just believe.” When you finally get to that point, you understand that it is beyond your comprehension, beyond your control, don’t be afraid, just believe. It takes awhile for us to get to that point. Patience. Patience to wait on God.

We also have to know that there’s a purpose. Through faith, we have to believe in our hearts that there’s a point to what we’re going through, that there’s some purpose that God has in mind, that somehow God is going to use this. When you’re dealing with a decade-long condition, you’re dealing with a daughter who is knocking on death’s door, when you’re talking about total devastation of a town, you’re talking about medical conditions, you’re talking about people dying and relationships ending, you’re talking about all terrifying examples of what it means to live in a sin-filled world, what it means to live this side of heaven in a corrupt world that is filled with pain, if there is no point to it, if there’s no purpose to it, if we think we just have to live through it, we just have to endure it, all that leads to is bitterness, bitterness towards life, bitterness towards individuals or bitterness towards God Himself and then the devil has won a major victory.

In faith, we have to know and believe that there’s a point. Then believe God can use every situation for our good. He says to Jairus, “Don’t be afraid. Just believe.” Or the writer James says this, “Consider it pure joy, my brothers, whenever you face trials of many kinds.” I don’t know about that, but let’s go with it. He says, “Because you know that the testing of your faith develops perseverance. Perseverance must finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking in anything.” There’s a point to it, in other words, God says. There’s a purpose to it. God doesn’t like the pain in our lives. God doesn’t send the pain in our lives. He doesn’t enjoy watching us struggle through difficult situations but God says, “I will turn it around.” God says, “There is a point. There is a purpose to this and I will use it ultimately to your good.” That’s His promise to us. In faith, we have to cling to that. The only way we’re going to get through the pain is to know and believe that God is still at work.

Sometimes, God even lets us see it. You’ve been there. You can look back right now over your life at some things that you’ve gone through and you can see how God was at work. But I doubt that any of us can see the full extent of how God uses those times in our lives.

Case in point, the woman again. She suffered for 12 years. Yet here it is, 2,000 years later and we’re learning from her life. How about Jairus? What was the point? You tell me, which has more impact, if Jesus would have walked into the room of a sick little girl and healed her or if Jesus walked into the room of a little girl who has died and walks out with her alive? Which one will be remembered longer? Which one will have more of an impact on Jairus’ faith and the faith of the whole crowd. You see, there’s a point. There’s a purpose to it and, in faith, if pain is going to make us stronger, in faith we believe and trust in the promises of God, there is purpose.

But the only way we can do any of this is through the power, that is, the power of God in our lives. And that begins when we surrender ourselves to God’s power. We’ve come all the way full circle back again to patience because it takes time to get us to the point where we’re willing to surrender to God. Because before we do that, each and every one of us will exhaust all of our possibilities. We’ll give all of our efforts into it. We’ll try to come up with a solution on our own until finally, they’re all exhausted and then we turn to God.

The woman it said spent every last dime that she had, saw every doctor possible, all to no avail. Jairus? You know that Jairus is on his last leg here. He’s a synagogue official and he’s come to this rogue rabbi, the guy who’s not very popular with the leaders of the day? You know that he’s exhausted every other possibility because now his daughter is knocking on death’s door. So now finally, he comes to Jesus. That’s part of the point. God brings us to that point in our lives showing us we can’t do it on our own, that we don’t need to do it on our own.

I absolutely detest one cliché. “God helps those who help themselves.” He never said that. You won’t find it in here. God stands ready, willing and able to help us and to give us strength at any moment, at any time. Sometimes, He just has to bring us to the point where we finally give up and we throw ourselves at the feet of Jesus and say, “We can’t do it.” We rely on His power.

He’s demonstrated that power for us. He’s demonstrated it through the life of Jesus, through His teachings, through His miracles but most dramatically, through His death and through His resurrection. In His death, He got at the root cause of every pain that you’ve ever suffered. He got at the root cause of every disaster that this world has ever had to live through because on the cross, He dealt with sin, sin that infected this world, that corrupted this world, that infected you and corrupted you. Every cause of pain comes from that sin and on the cross, He faced that sin and defeated it. Through His life and through His blood, He defeated sin. Then they tossed Him in the grave for three days and He walked out and He defeated death.

My friends, if Jesus can defeat sin and He can defeat death, He can defeat your pain. If He has power over sin and has power over death, He has power over your pain. And that’s good news because every one of us has to deal with pain.

This side of heaven in this world, we’re going to have to deal with pain. Either it’s going to make us bitter or it’s going to make us better. Through faith in Jesus Christ, that pain can make us stronger. If we have the patience to watch God at work in our lives, if through faith we see there’s a purpose and a point to what we’re going through, if we totally rely on His power in our lives and surrender to Him, all of a sudden, that pain, how we react to it, how we deal with it, makes us stronger.

I think it was on Thursday night, I was watching the news, kind of halfway watching the news and they had reporters on the scene in Joplin, of course, and they were interviewing this one woman who her teenage son had been missing for I don’t know how many days and, as they were talking to her, the sheriff arrived to tell her that they found her son and he was in the morgue. Somehow, she got the courage to come back on camera because she wanted to declare that her son was in heaven. It would be alright. The pain wasn’t any less for her, but the power of the cross had come through for her. She’s going to come out of this not bitter but better. The pain will be real and severe. She’ll be stronger.

That same promise is for you when you’re dealing with death or disease or your own disaster. Through faith in Jesus, pain will make you stronger. Amen.