Help with Pain

The Wonder and Awe of God brings calm and victory!

The Wonder and Awe of God even in pain, loss, and evil brings calm and victory!

How so?

First, seven ways that God uses pain, loss, and evil:

1. to correct those who have gone astray
2. to show His power in the one weak
3. to test the loyalty of person who is in a covenant relationship with Him
4. to purify
5. to grow/move the person or those around
6. to move a person to the cross and salvation
7. to slow evil

Pain, loss, and evil can cause one to feel hopeless:

Psalm 31:9-13
O Lord, for I am in trouble;
My eye wastes away with grief, Yes, my soul and my body!
For my life is spent with grief, and my years with sighing;
My strength fails because of my iniquity, and my bones waste away.
I am a reproach among all my enemies, but especially among my neighbors,
And am repulsive to my acquaintances; those who see me outside flee from me.
I am forgotten like a dead man, out of mind; I am like a broken vessel. (Ps. 88, Jer. 17:5-8)

Jesus on the cross, Peter in prison (Acts 12), the nation Israel trapped at the Red Sea (Exodus 14), Elisha trapped by an army (II Kings 6), Joseph in prison, Jonah in the fish, etc.  The dark and deep can seem endless and help distant or even non-existent.  Hopelessness sets in.

But know that the end is what matters – yours and theirs!

Psalm 13:1-5

1  How long, O Lord? Will You forget me forever? How long will You hide Your face from me?
2  How long shall I take counsel in my soul, having sorrow in my heart daily?  How long will my enemy be exalted over me?

3  Consider and hear me, O Lord my God; enlighten my eyes, lest I sleep the sleep of death;
4  Lest my enemy say, “I have prevailed against him”; Lest those who trouble me rejoice when I am moved.

5  But I have trusted in Your mercy; My heart shall rejoice in Your salvation.
6  I will sing to the Lord, because He has dealt bountifully with me.

Psalm 37:9, For evildoers shall be cut off; but those who wait on the Lord, they shall inherit the earth.

When in pain or loss or evil due to sin – fix it!!

Psalm 32:3-5, confess…

3  When I kept silent, my bones grew old through my groaning all the day long.
4  For day and night Your hand was heavy upon me;
My vitality was turned into the drought of summer. Selah
5  I acknowledged my sin to You, and my iniquity I have not hidden.
I said, “I will confess my transgressions to the Lord,” 

    And You forgave the iniquity of my sin. Selah