LEARNING FROM OUR PAIN

Part 3

The next step in the process of Learning from Our Pain is to continue the Paradigm Shift we absolutely must successfully complete if we are going to turn our pain and suffering from a feeling of defeat to a position of true Victory.  As we have noted, the First Step is to ask the Question: Father, What do you want to teach me as You walk with me through this “valley of the shadow of death?”  The Second Step is to allow the Father to gather us up into His loving embrace where we can “be still and know that He is God” (that is, to be able to c come to a place of complete trust that He is in control of the situation.  We begin to look beyond the present moment to the future when we can look back on this painful experience and see how He has caused it all [the whole suffering, refining, learning process] to work together for our eventual “good,” because we do truly Love Him and know that we are, indeed, called to fulfill His purposes for our lives (Romans 8:28).

To conclude this teaching, let us “come full circle,” and say that we often learn the greatest lessons in life when we (a) go to the very extremities of our resources and then (b) “partner” with the King and experience true “on the job training” as we learn to rely upon and draw from the reservoirs of His wisdom, strength, and His very presence.  A great vocal artist of the mid-twentieth century named “Tennessee” Ernie Ford told the story of a teenage boy who was trying to dig up a stump to expand his family’s tillable acreage.  As the young man’s father approached the field by taking a short cut through the woods, he stopped at the edge of the tree line to watch his son as he strained to accomplish his task.  When he saw that his son was nearing the point of exhaustions, he stepped out from under the shade of the trees and called out, “Son, how is it coming along there?”

The young man straightened up and looked at his dad with an expression of frustration and fatigue and replied, “Dad, I’ve failed.  I just can’t get this stump out!”  His father then asked, “Son, have you used all of your strength?”

Emphatically, the big, strong lad wearily said, with a not e of defeat and despair in his voice, “Yeah, Dad.  I’ve used every ounce I possess.”  The young man’s father smiled, looked lovingly  into his son’s eyes and said gently, yet quite firmly, “No, Son – you haven’t.  You didn’t ask me to help you.”

That’s the Life Lesson the LORD God wants us to learn.  We have not brought to bear all of our strength, resources and abilities and applied them to the task at hand or employed them to relieve our pain and suffering until we have come alongside of and in the presence of our King, our loving Father until we have come to Him and asked Him for His help.

To be Continued . . . . next, our “Conclusion”