God and Pain
It’s really easy to believe that our big emotions, like sadness, anger, or fear are too much for God. We can believe that when we experience negative emotions it’s bad so we should just avoid it. This could be because of the way we grew up or because of what people have taught us along the way.
The truth is that God is not afraid of your pain. He doesn’t hold you at arm's length when things get messy. He is close to the brokenhearted.
Myth: My negative emotions are a bad thing.
“The Lord hears His people when they call to Him for help. He rescues them from all their troubles. The Lord is close to the brokenhearted; He rescues those whose spirits are crushed.”
-Psalm 34:17-18
A big lie that a lot of Christians believe is that experiencing pain is a bad thing. So many of us believe that it’s bad or even sinful to experience “negative” emotions. We look at our human emotions, like fear, anger, sadness, etc., and assume that these emotions are bad because they don’t feel good.
Truth: All emotions are a good thing.
Guess what? There is no such thing as “negative” and “positive” emotions. They’re just emotions! We are human beings and we’re going to feel a lot of different things. Joy, sadness, fear, peace, anger, surprise, etc.
Jesus who was perfect and sinless felt anger, fear, and sadness. When He was in the Garden of Gethsemane before He was to face the cross, He was in so much grief, agony, and despair that He sweat drops of blood (Luke 22). And if Jesus experienced deep sadness and fear and still knew no sin, then the same is true when we experience these things.
Experiencing these kinds of emotions is normal and isn’t bad. What truly matters is what we do with the emotion when it comes up.
What do I do when I’m experiencing (or have experienced) pain?
When we’re in places of pain and weakness, the last thing we feel like doing is sitting with it. Most of the time, we want to run away from our pain and pretend it’s not there. We try our best to move on and live our lives like nothing ever happened.
But, pain doesn’t really go away, does it? Unless we process our pain, it will sit there, below the surface. To process our pain, we have to confront it. The only way to deal with our pain is to go through it.
We don’t have to do it alone. The Bible says in James that if we draw near to God He will draw near to us. If we pursue Him in our moments of pain, He comes close and sits with us in the heartache. Our emotions are a beautiful part of our humanity. Inviting God into the places of pain in our lives is only something we will be able to do on this side of heaven. It’s a unique form of worship we can only give here on earth.
Take time to sit with the Lord in your pain. Invite the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit to come into your room and make themselves known to you. Then, allow yourself to think about the pain and feel the emotion. Ask the Father to show you what He thinks about this pain. Processing pain, though uncomfortable, is a key part when it comes to walking in freedom. Unprocessed pain and emotion can keep us stuck and hold us back from living the life that Jesus died for us to live.
If you find yourself getting stuck in the process or you don’t know where to start, that’s okay! You can find someone close to you whom you trust to talk to or you can see one of our Sozo ministers at the Transformation Center. Click here to get started.