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 ]

The Dark Night of the Soul

Dear Friends:

I read a very interesting article on Mother Teresa taken from Time Magazine, Sept. 3:2007. In is described the deep inner struggle that she went through all the years of her ministry to the poor of India. Those who wrote the article were trying to understand with the natural mind a spiritual reality.

In 1951, according to the article, taken from the recently published work on her previously unpublished letters, quoted one of the letters to a confessor saying, "I want to ... drink only from His chalice of pain." All of her life needs to be seen as God answering that prayer.

A dear friend of mine for many years, met her one time in India. His statement was that, from his discernment she was clearly a saved woman. She knew God in a dimension that very few did. Like many of us, she went through her doubts, fears, and struggles concerning God. Because she was honest about her inner life, the some who comment in the article try to say there is no God and that people who try to explain away her comments are deluded. That argument, in many senses, does not deserve an answer. Just as we, who believe go through times of doubts concerning the things of God, so the doubters, agnostics atheists go through their times. Do their times of doubt prove God? We could go around that mountain a number of times.

The reality is that many go through this struggle. Although God placed the hole in us that can oly be filled by a relationship with Himself it is the struggle from the inside that causes growth. This is the way in all plants, animals, and human relationships. No child or plant can be caused to grow by externals. They may be situlated by them, but it will not grow them. All growth comes from something happening inside.

In the natural world we all understand the 4 seasons in some senses. Spiritually we go through the same type of thing. The problem being that it is not recognized in our spiritual lives and it also does not necessarily follow the "calendar year". The season principles do apply though, and growth does not occur unless we go through their spiritual parallels.

There could be extensive teaching on that, but, I also would like to comment, further on the main point of this. There is a sense in which, according to Ecc. 3:11, that the world is in our hearts. Taking the simplicity of that statement, there are many different climate zones in the natural world. Depending on where you live, depends on the severity and length of the seasons.

There is a place or two on the globe where it is only milder, but never above freezing and very few live there. It is a life of hardship and continual difficulty, it would almost seem that, internally, that is where Mother Teresa lived.

Just those two thoughts give pause for reflection and meditation, so I will leave you to it.

Dr. Bill