My Pain, Another's Gain.

2 Corinthians 1 v3-11: Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves receive from God. For just as we share abundantly in the sufferings of Christ, so also our comfort abounds through Christ. If we are distressed, it is for your comfort and salvation; if we are comforted, it is for your comfort, which produces in you patient endurance of the same sufferings we suffer. And our hope for you is firm, because we know that just as you share in our sufferings, so also you share in our comfort.

We do not want you to be uninformed, brothers and sisters, about the troubles we experienced in the province of Asia. We were under great pressure, far beyond our ability to endure, so that we despaired of life itself. Indeed, we felt we had received the sentence of death. But this happened that we might not rely on ourselves but on God, who raises the dead. He has delivered us from such a deadly peril, and he will deliver us again. On him we have set our hope that he will continue to deliver us, as you help us by your prayers. Then many will give thanks on our behalf for the gracious favour granted us in answer to the prayers of many.

When I read this passage, the thought struck me that we can so often get the idea in our heads that the apostles were so in touch with God that they were somehow immune from the things we experience day to day. However not only in this passage we see that even a giant like Paul felt complete hopelessness not only when he was in the province of Asia but also, we read that prior to being shipwrecked in Malta these words are recorded in Acts 27 v20:

When neither sun nor stars appeared for many days and the storm continued raging, we finally gave up all hope of being saved.

Here we see that the writer of Acts along with all those on board that ship whilst it was being tossed about on the Mediterranean concluded that only a watery grave awaited them. What an encouragement I got from reading those words, as it made me realise that feeling this way is not something to beat yourself up about. Also, as believers we must realise that when we or our brother and sisters in Christ are in that place of total despair it is not something to berate them for as having a lack of faith.

All of us throughout our lives will ask God the question ‘Why?’ when we find ourselves in situations from which there seems to be no escape and not even the slightest hope of temporary relief.

We just like so many others wonder if God is just the twisted vivisectionist that gets pleasure in seeing His precious children suffer?

Yes, this an age-old question for which there are never any easy answers. If we look we will see that this is an age-old question and when we realise that the oldest written book in the Bible is Job, deals with this matter as it is a tale of one man’s suffering. If I am honest, I do not think that we are going to fully understand the rough times we go through it until we get to heaven, all we can hope for here is just the faintest glimpse of the purpose of such times.

Let me tell you a tale of when I was a young Christian working with the man who led me to Christ, Haydn Dennis. We were talking one day about heaven, and he said to me ‘Think, when you are in the presence of Jesus, He will explain things like why one day you chose one path over another.’ My response was this: ‘I did that on the night of 5^th April 1986, I had a choice to walk down an unlit lane or take the long way round. I took the long way round and got beaten up by a gang!’

So, what did that achieve? Well for one thing it demonstrated the love of my family, especially my Dad who promptly went out of the house and flattened the ring-leader! Also, the church I then belonged to demonstrated such love and compassion to me, the like of which I had never known as I just thought that I was nothing more than a face in the congregation.

At the time of writing this I have repeatedly asked God the question ‘Why’ in so many forms over the past nearly three years.

‘Why didn’t you…………….?’

‘Why did you……………….?’

‘Why won’t you…………….?’

‘Why has this………………?’

‘Why have you.……………?’

But God answered me with the same question that He asked Moses at the time of his calling in the wilderness.

Exodus 4 v2: Then the Lord said to him, ‘What is that in your hand?’ ‘A staff,’ he replied.

Again, I refer back to another conversation Haydn and I had, this time when we were carrying out a measured survey of some industrial greenhouses. We were walking back to the car and Haydn picked up a long branch that was lying on the ground. He mentioned the verse above verse in Exodus but added this: ‘This was a staff that changed into a serpent, the staff Moses struck the Nile and turned it to blood, the staff he held over the Red Sea to part it and the staff he used to bring water out of a rock. Just a staff?’

So, what was God getting at when He asked me what I had in my hand? In a nutshell it was my life’s experiences both good and bad. If we put the experiences of our lives that made us who we are into the hand of the Almighty – the possibilities are beyond what we could ever imagine.

This causes me in my current situation to ask myself this: ‘How can these painful experiences be used by God?’ I imagine just about every believer has asked this, we are in good company as it appears that Paul did too, but he gives us the answer in the text – ultimately, we are to use it for the comfort of those we come into contact with each day.

Here’s an example of being able to do this happen. I was in work the other day when a customer came to me asking for a certain product. Unfortunately, we were out of stock and despite this she made obvious her disappointment. However, I could see that she seemed quite flustered as though something else was bothering her as she went on her way. It wasn’t long until she returned asking for something else we were out of stock. I was beginning to feel quite awkward about our lack of produce to say the least. It was then she blurted out ‘I was diagnosed with cancer several years ago and had to have an operation. I’ve been told I have developed breast cancer.’

Its things like that which put everything in perspective and my heart really went out to her as I lost my aunt to breast cancer many years ago and my mother was diagnosed with it too, both around this time of year. I had a pretty good idea of what she was going through as I was with my aunt the day she got the news the cancer had returned. I’d seen the shock, the disbelief and all that goes with such news first-hand.

Just what could I do? I felt God prompting me to stick my neck out, so I said to her ‘I don’t know how you are going to feel about this, but I am going to say it anyway. Would you like me to pray for you?’ I explained my experience of what she might be feeling, and I could see the relief come over her so I asked whether she would prefer me to do it here and now or privately. Understandably she asked for me to do it privately as prayer meetings in the bread aisle of Waitrose are not that commonplace. In addition to this I told her the important message that Jesus loved her and that He was there for her whatever, all she needed to do was to turn to Him. I just hope and pray that the lady not only comes to a living relationship with Jesus but also experiences His healing power.

For me in that moment I got a slightly better understanding of Romans 8 v28:

And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose. 

I must admit that whenever some well-meaning Christian has trotted out this verse one to me in the last few years it has always seemed a bit trite! On this occasion however it put my previous experiences to use for the comfort of another. In the same way that Paul and other believers were able to comfort others.

In the greater scheme of things we must realise that God is well used to using pain and suffering for His purposes. The pain and humiliation of the cross is the ultimate demonstration of this. In human terms the cross wasn’t just a defeat it was a rout if you were viewing it through the eyes of those who up until then had followed Jesus as the Messiah.

But this was a situation that God was in complete control of even fulfilling the minute details of prophesies written centuries before as soldiers gambled for Jesus’ clothing, whilst He hung there paying the price for my sin. This apparent defeat was all to be turned on its head come the resurrection morning!

Being able to use those painful experiences for the comfort of others is one of the many Christ-like actions we can carry out as he entered this world and as Hebrews 4 v15 says:

For we do not have a high priest who is unable to feel sympathy for our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are – yet he did not sin. 

Jesus was a man who experienced the full gamut of the human experience so we or anyone else can say that He does not understand out circumstances. In all honesty I have very little idea at this present moment in time as to how my recent experiences are going to be used to minister to others, perhaps I am already doing it, I don’t know – but I can trust that the whole matter is with a God who does know and does understand.