What About Pain?

Many years ago, I wrote 2 courses on "Spiritual Parallels to The Natural Body". At that time three books came into my possession by Dr. Paul Brand. He was a leper surgeon in India for 18 years. His ability to draw spiritual parallels from his work still remains a classic foundatio0n for understanding the work of God in the Corporate Body of Christ. Although he was an Anglican/Episcopalian his insight was beyond what many Charismatics, Pentecostals and 'End Time Saints comprehend even today.. 


It is because we do not understand some of the basic principles of those three books that we remain stuck in our current spiritual ruts. 


It seems that historically the Church has moved forward by a sovereign move of God starting a fire on their altar of sacrifice, then, because they felt they were beyond anything known at the time, the fire died out. Under the Old Covenant, the priest were required, after God lit the fire by sending flame out from the Holiest of All in the Tabernacle, to keep alive the flame. The fire had to be tended by adding wood to it to keep it continually burning. 


God's heart today is that we continue to move into all that He has for His Church. That means the current emphasis of God is the Corporate Body of Christ. God is getting ready to bring forth a people who will move and flow fluidly in all that He has purchased for them on the cross. It will be a concert of the Holy Spirit with no man or women taking the spotlight or the glory for what happens. God has endeavored to do this in each move, but the vessels used were not willing to give up their prominence in order that Jesus would be seen.

. In coming back to our question, we find many of God's people in situations that produce questions in our minds. The major question being "Why Lord?" This is a cry from their soul and often their spirit as new levels of pain are experienced exposing areas that have never been healed or dealt with. It also exposes lacks in a church that has tried to present itself as having answers. 


My heart is in grief right now in the natural for the lose of my youngest daughter. A month ago she slipped into eternity after a brief illness. Yet the pain I feel is not something that can be medicated. It is a pain of the soul, heart, and emotions. It has exposed to me areas that I do not have answers for. This can make me either ignore and blame, or, seek God to be able to reach out and help others, after I have identified the source of the pain and what will heal it. 


The deeper we go into the revelation of God's fearfully and wonderfully made creation, the less we understand about the whole human condition. It becomes more and more evident that we must depend on the Maker and His manual to grasp what He is doing in restoring us to His likeness and image. 


Pain in the body is a warning sign. It is actually a blessing and a gift. This is the axiom that Dr. Brand in his book "The Gift of Pain" orginally titled, 'Pain, The Gift Nobody Wants'. 


As I have been going through the grief process with the lose of my daughter, I have recognized that one of the greatest sources of pain was not having answers for her when she asked questions that might have helped her handle the stress that built to a loaded heart that eventually broke under the stress and resulted in the heart attack the results of which eventually took her life. The pain of a dad who did not have the answers for his baby girl. I could blame God, blame others for not responding quick enough, but, blame will not heal any of that pain, only delay dealing with it.


Then there is the pain of having a very close spiritual daughter ripped out of my life with her children. The question that remains unanswered at this point in time is, God Why?

In all of this I have come to one conclusion, though I do not understand why: God's Word is always right. My lack of understanding how He has applied the principles of it is part of the problem I wrestle with.  He is ever increasing my knowledge and understanding of His ways as I take the stand that He is in control and knows best, even when I do not understand.


The pain I feel in my emotions right now is an indication of an area that He wants to correct in my heart. Remember we have come in the Body to a time when God is not just dealing with sin, but the weights as well. A weight is something that is good, but will slow me down in the race I am called to run. Just as a runner in a race does not wear a suit and tie, it would be an unnecessary weight for him or her, so there are good things in each individual's life that are weight that slow him/her down from being able to give it their best. These things God wants to remove. 

Sometimes the only thing that will manifest what that is, is pain in the area of the weight. That pain can be emotional, mental, in my will, or in my spirit. Because it is so foreign to most of us, pain in the spirit is the most agonizing. Often that is because we do not recognize it is spiritual pain and think it is soulish or emotional in some way. It may manifest through those vehicles of our soul, but it is spiritual.

There is much for us to learn and along the way I will write more, but it is enough for now to realize that it is possible and ask God to give us the discernment to recognize it and bring it back to Him for revelation and healing. 

In closing there should be a fresh understanding of 1 Cor. 14
  1 Corinthians 15:44

44 It is sown a natural body; it is raised a spiritual body. There is a natural body, and there is a spiritual body.

There are spiritual parallels to all of the things the natural body goes through. 

(Books to read by Dr. Paul Brand: "Fearfully and Wonderfully Made", "In His Image"-Authored with Philip Yancy, "The Gift of Pain" authored by Dr. Brand.)[Dr Hurst courses are available through www.drwmjhurst.com ]

Swimming with the Sharks

Have you ever felt like God threw you in the deep end or into the ocean where "all thy waves and billows have gone over me"?

This is defined in scripture as "when my heart is overwhelmed, lead me to the Rock that is higher than I."  This precludes a number of things.

1. I feel like I am drowning.
2. I have somewhat lost my way.
3. The journey out of here must be lead by the Spirit.
4. The direction of that journey is uphill.
5. God's heart in this is that I come to The Rock as a solid place in my life and circumstance. 

If we were to look into the depth of this it could be in any area of my life.

There are times in your life, for your growth and development, and because of your cry for God, He allows a situation to come upon you that  causes in you a sense of being overwhelmed.  It is not God forsaking you, although it definitely feels that way in your emotions. It is God answering your cry for Him and a deeper knowledge of Him. Can He not do this by revelation to you, is your question? Yes He can and sometimes does. But, in saying that there must always be an anchoring of that revelation in and experiencing of the Word's operation in you.

This experiencing of His applied Word in you, gives you authority in the given dimension of testing. Job was thrown in the "deep end of the pool". His only way to deal with it was cling to what he knew of God and let everything else shake. It caused him to ask multitude of questions and shook him until he said, "Though God slay me, yet will I trust Him."

Even though it is quite a journey through this, Job never lost his trust in God and he did come out on the other side with a greater understanding and revelation of God. I pray that we too come to that place in our current circumstance.

I cling to, "will not the judge of all the earth do right?".

Can I rant? :)

My heart is hurting today as I have watched how the enemy of our soul endeavors to bring division and tear apart relationships. I wish there was some way we could learn outside of experience. We know the theology, and theory of the enemies tactics but it is a very different matter when you watch him do it in your emotions and the emotions and minds of those you love.

There is a cry arising from my heart as we watch this at microcosm level in one relationship and know that it is going on throughout the church of God. Lord show us how to take that which the enemy clearly meant for evil and turn it for good. 

Lord Jesus, somewhere your church has to get out of the rut of fear of dealing with the devil and make it through to seeing victory in individual relationships and in local assemblies to the whole Body of Christ. Lord we need to learn how to build up ourselves in the most holy "faith", so that we go from faith to faith. 

Going from faith to faith is not an easy task, in fact it gets more difficult as we go along. Because we past the last test, the current test is more difficult. Attitudes are tested. 

If we take that those that came to Jesus saying "Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in Thy Name and in Thy Name cast out devils" were right, that they had done those things, then He was after more than the works of God. He said that in the doing of those things, there is a knowing of Him that is essential. There is a coming and learning of Him that is imperative to doing the "Works of God", that gets acceptance from God.

Lord, I present myself to you to Learn of You while doing your works. That is, I ask for a revelation of Your Person as those works are done through me.

While working in the Kingdom, let me get to know The King. No matter what I go through, I want to "know Him" and "Learn of Him" while making that journey through.

The question could be asked, "Where is God in all of this?" That is the question we must ask Him until He reveals Himself to us in all that we go through.

Jesus where are you and where is the revelation of your person in what I am experiencing?

Soul Man

In the days we live in God is dealing with our soul man. Yes, He is also dealing with our spirit, but most men and women live in their soul, their will, mind, and emotions.

The heart of man is defined in scripture as the mind and emotions. God's heart is that these two might be in balance. In most of us, one or the other rules us most of the time. There are those who feel the emotions are evil and that we should try to eradicate them. This is imbalance.

There are others who are ruled fully by how they "feel", their emotions. This is also imbalanced.

It came to me the other day that we do not truly know balance. Man was balanced before he fell. When he fell, he lost his balance and understanding of it. Only God can teach us what balance is. If we will depend on the Spirit of God, He can bring us back to balance. It takes a revelation from on high to know true balance.

The will, in a sense, is the arbitrator of decision. There are times when the mind prevails. At other times the emotions short circuit the process and over-rides the rational of the mind causing the decision to be made with only emotional imput. Again, this causes an imbalanced decision.

Dr. Colman of Harvard University, some years ago wrote a book called "Emotional Intelligence". In it he talks about the emotions ability to override the decision making process. It undergirds something I felt God say before the book came out. It had to do with the effect of a wounded spirit on our decision making process. Often that emotional override comes out of an unhealed wound in either the soul or the spirit.

We will be making comment on this in later writings, but, for now it is important to at least expose us to the teaching on the wounded soul. Our soul can be wounded through childhood events in which there has been abandonment by parents, friends, or vital influencial relationships in our lives.

These wounds, if not dealt with and healed, become infected with rejection, abandonment, and possibly even bitterness. In intense situations, these emotional infections can override all rational and cause us to make wrong decisions based on the emotional infection, rather than the real facts of the situation.

How do I know when that happens? I know when this may be a factor is, when my reaction is far greater than the situation.

Question for pondering: Can I think of any time that this could have been the case in my life?

Dr. Bill