IT’S TIME TO LET GO OF THE PAIN
INTRODUCTION: When we come to salvation in Christ we are made new. The slate has been wiped clean; we’re starting over fresh and clean. Yet that doesn’t mean it’s easy to just release all the wreckage of the past. Being reborn doesn’t mean we automatically get rid of the all the pain of the past. However, if we are going to be successful in moving forward in our Christian walk then we’ll need to let go of all that useless, heavy baggage.
1) Throw it off.
Heb. 12:1-2, “Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles, and let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us. Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy set before him endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.”
“Throw off everything that hinders”. Holding onto pain is one of those things that hinder us from running our race. The remedy is given in vs. two-we need to fix our eyes on Jesus. We need to concentrate on Jesus when we’re getting bogged down by our pain. Carrying around burdens slows us down. We can’t think straight when we’re angry; we can’t function right when we’re depressed. We haven’t got time for the pain because we’ve got a race to run; we’ve got a purpose to serve.
We think about the heroes of the faith who went through a lot and dealt with many difficulties and frustrations-endured a lot of pain-physical, emotional, psychological and perhaps even spiritual. But they didn’t give up; they persevered. They worked through it; they overcame it. We need to be motivated by their examples.
We look at the pain and suffering Job went through yet he pressed on. We look at the Psalms and we see David pouring out his pain before God and we become inspired by his faith. We see the pain of Paul with all his persecutions yet he maintained his joy.
We see Jesus-our perfect example of how to adequately deal with pain. He was rejected and betrayed; he felt the pain of disappointment and abandonment yet what did he do? He got outside of himself and chose to serve; he chose to help other people with their pain. There were moments where Jesus went off to be alone with the Father. I’m sure part of that time included pouring out his pain and the Father replenishing him.
We need to follow the examples of the people we see in scripture and throw off every pain that hinders us and get busy running our race with perseverance.
2) Fugedaboudit.
Isa. 43:18-19, “Forget the former things; do not dwell on the past. See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the desert and streams in the wasteland.”
Jesus said in Rev. 21:5, “I am making everything new.”
We experience pain from our old life. Satan reminds us of our sins and we experience that pain all over again. But we shouldn’t hold onto that. It isn’t us anymore. We were made new. The old has been done away with; that’s not who we are anymore.
There’s a post I saw that said, “Satan knows your name but he calls you by your sin. God knows your sin but he calls you by your name”.
Therefore, when Satan wants to drudge up our past and make it painful again, we need to resist it and fugedaboudit.
Isa. 50:8-9, “He who vindicates me is near. Who then will bring charges against me? Let us face each other! Who is my accuser? Let him confront me! It is the Sovereign LORD who helps me. Who is he that will condemn me? They will all wear out like a garment; the moths will eat them up.”
Satan is our accuser but God has forgotten our sins. Heb. 8:12, “For I will forgive their wickedness and will remember their sins no more.” The fact that God has let go of our sins should motivate us to do the same. When we find ourselves in pain over our past mistakes we need to cry out to God and trust in what he has done.
David prayed in Psalm 69:29, “I am in pain and distress; may your salvation, O God, protect me.” When the past creeps up on us and we are in pain and sorrow we need to be reminded of our salvation. This will help us to remember what we are now verses what we were then. And these reminders will protect us from the taunts of the enemy. When it comes to the pain of our past we need to forget it.
3) Change your focus.
Sometimes the hurts of the past are seen when we get older and we recall the strength of our youth. We get discouraged because we remember what we used to be able to do verses where we are now. This is when we need to replace the pain with joy by considering the truth of 2nd Cor. 4:16-18, “Therefore we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day. For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.”
When we’re focused on the physical, the seen, we remember how vibrant we used to be compared to our current, drooping selves and we get depressed. But, if we fix our eyes on the spiritual, we can be encouraged to know that we are actually in a position to improve and get stronger. So we shift our focus from remembering what we used to be able to do physically to what we are now able to do spiritually. We fix our eyes not on what is seen but on what is unseen. We see our physical bodies diminishing but we instead choose to focus on our spiritual bodies becoming stronger.
We see the troubles of this life, which are temporary, but we fix our eyes on Christ and our next life which is eternal. We change our focus from what was or even what is to what will be. Looking ahead, knowing there is a bright future on the horizon, helps me to alleviate the pain-past or present.
Let’s face it; even if we get rid of the pain of the past, new pain will come. This is simply because we live in a fallen world and people will disappoint us and mistreat us. But, we can still rejoice because we know there is a day coming when all that pain will be gone.
Rev. 21:1-4, “Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and there was no longer any sea. I saw the Holy City, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride beautifully dressed for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Now the dwelling of God is with men, and he will live with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God. He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.”
When we get caught up in being weighed down by either the pain of the past or the pain of the present, we can shift our focus and be hopeful because the outlook is not bleak; it’s beautiful.
4) Look to God.
• For hope. Psalm 42:1-4. Here we see David pouring out his heart to God. He is suffering. He has not been able to go to church and he greatly misses it. He laments in verse three as he dramatically recalls how his tears have been his food day and night.
Have you ever been in this type of pain before? Cried yourself to sleep? I was talking with someone recently about the Carly Simon song, "I Haven't Got Time for the Pain". He thought that would be a good idea for a sermon-and it is. But in looking at the lyrics of the song I saw that there's some good stuff there. The song begins, “All those crazy nights when I cried myself to sleep; now melodrama never makes me weep anymore.”
In the previous Psalm (41) David points out in vs. 9 that a close friend has betrayed him. That could very well be part of the reason for the pain David’s currently in. His enemies were all around him. Perhaps he was wondering if he had any real friends or supporters left. Have you ever dealt with that type of pain? Feelings of loneliness or abandonment?
Vs. 9-10. Here we see more of David’s angst as he is in so much pain he wonders if God has abandoned him too. He wonders why he has to go on mourning like this. He can feel this anguish deep in his bones as he hears the taunts of his foes.
But then we have David coming out of the emotional turmoil and sort of coming to an epiphany; not once, but twice in this psalm. What was so important that David wanted to communicate it twice? Vs. 5 &11. And that’s what it’s about. It’s as if David is saying to himself, “Wait a minute? Why am I so downcast? Why am I so disturbed? Has God changed? Has he become unreliable? Has my situation become hopeless? Sure, I’ve seen brighter days but there are still plenty of reasons to praise God. He is still my Savior; he hasn’t forgotten me; he hasn’t abandoned me.”
When we find ourselves in painful situations like David we need to see that we can have a tendency to look at our situation as dire and hopeless. Although our situation might be traumatic and painful it is not hopeless. And when we are in the midst of our pain it seems all we can focus on is what is wrong and we don’t see that the reasons to praise God are still there. When we get consumed with our pain we won’t see things in the proper perspective and because of that we will be tempted to put our swords down and give up the fight.
Depression and pain are time stealers; they rob us of opportunities for success and advancement. Are you depressed? Are you troubled? Put your hope in God; trust him and praise him.
• For comfort. 2nd Cor. 1:3-4, “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 have received from God.”
When we are suffering and in pain God is there to comfort us. God sympathizes with our weaknesses; he is compassionate toward us when we are down. That doesn’t mean he will coddle us but he will comfort us. And what are we supposed to do in return? God wants us to pay it forward and comfort others. We are to share with others the comfort we receive from God. We help others through their pain and suffering. God will help them but he wants us to be there for them too. A big reason we are comforted in our time of need is so that we will reach out to others in their time of need.
God’s word is our comfort. Psalm 119:49-52, “Remember your word to your servant, for you have given me hope. My comfort in my suffering is this: Your promise preserves my life. The arrogant mock me without restraint, but I do not turn from your law. I remember your ancient laws, O LORD, and I find comfort in them.”
Painful moments come. Trials and sufferings invade our lives but they do come and go. What remains a constant; what remains steady and unchanging are God and his word. No matter how bleak our situation looks God is our solid rock who will never let us down. Times of despair may come but our comfort is in knowing that God loves us, cares for us and died for us so that we would have the hope of eternal life.
No matter what kind of suffering we are dealing with, we can get through it because we have God and his promises as the anchor for our soul. When we’re in pain God and his word are great comforts for us.
• For deliverance. When God revealed himself to Moses and told him of his plan to use him to rescue his people from the Egyptians he said this in Ex. 3:7-9, “The LORD said, “I have indeed seen the misery of my people in Egypt. I have heard them crying out because of their slave drivers, and I am concerned about their suffering. So I have come down to rescue them from the hand of the Egyptians and to bring them up out of that land into a good and spacious land, a land flowing with milk and honey—the home of the Canaanites, Hittites, Amorites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites. And now the cry of the Israelites has reached me, and I have seen the way the Egyptians are oppressing them.”
I’m sure the Hebrews were wondering if God cared since it appeared he was doing nothing about their pain. Sometimes we might be tempted to think the same when we are suffering. But God does see and he wants to rescue us from oppression; he wants to set us free from all that pain. Sometimes our oppression is literal and physical but sometimes it’s just mental and psychological. When our minds are oppressed we go through the pain of mental gymnastics.
Carly’s song continues with, “You showed me how to leave myself behind; how to turn down the noise in my mind.” Satan wants to fill our minds with thoughts of pain and anguish. He wants us to see ourselves as the people we were; not the people we are now. So, we need to leave our old selves behind and embrace our new existence as children of God. God has delivered us from the penalty of spiritual death and he wants to deliver us from the pain of oppression too.
Carly’s song says, “Suffering was the only thing that made me feel I was alive”. She had two states of existence-suffering and numbness. Some people might feel this way; that if they’re not feeling pain in one form or another then they are feeling nothing. That’s a sad state to be in. There’s a price to pay when this is our emotional state. Holding onto pain will deplete us; it will drain us. We find ourselves plodding through life; we find ourselves existing-not living.
That is, until Christ comes in. The song continues, 'Til you showed me how to fill my heart with love. How to open up and drink in all that white light pouring down from the heaven." I don’t know if she’s attributing her recovery to God but the truth is that’s what it takes in order to bring us out from underneath pain’s covering.
The love of God sets us free from pain’s trap. Knowing Jesus as Savior and Lord releases the choke-hold that depression has on us. So, when we turn to God for deliverance we can say along with Carly, “I haven't got time for the pain, I haven't got room for the pain, I haven't the need for the pain; not since I've known you.”
When our focus turns to serving God we realize that we don’t want to waste time dwelling on pain; we have a better purpose for our time now. And when we want to fill ourselves up with the things of Christ there is no room for negativity. So, if you’re someone who’s been holding onto pain it’s time to let go and move on.
