God Uses Pain - Part 2

And that our little inch of time-suffering isn't worthy of our first night's welcome home to heaven. Yes, God goes with his child through pain. Here's another thing I want to say.

God uses us to his glory and our blessing. You see, first, he has some promise exemption. Secondly, he goes with us into it.

And now third, he uses it to his glory and our blessing. God uses pain to make us trust him more. In verse 9 of this tremendous passage, we had the sentence of death in ourselves that we shouldn't trust in ourselves, but in God, who raises the dead.

And what happens is simply this. God takes us to the very end of our tether at times, simply in order to make us trust him as the God of resurrection. You see, you and I are so prone to self-confidence and to self-trust and to self-obeisance.

And the old nature dies so hard, we're so boastful, so confident, so sure of ourselves. And then, right into our life, God sends suffering. He permits Satan to buffet us.

He sends us far, and he brings us very low. Why? Just to help us to trust him more and to see him as he is, the God, the God of resurrection life, the God who has life in himself. And God uses pain also in order that we might be able to comfort others.

And that's what Paul is stressing here. Experience shows us, he says, that the more we share in Christ's sufferings, the more we are able to give of his encouragement. And how true this is.

We can comfort another, like one who has passed the same way before. Who? Pain? God uses pain in order that we will comfort him. God uses pain in order that we will be able to comfort others.

We'll be able to say, well, this is what happened to me. I was in that kind of experience. And you're not just saying it for the sake of duplicating what is happening.

But you're saying it to the glory of God. And you say, I was in that kind of experience once. But God did something different.

I cried to the Lord, and he helped me. Oh, how wonderfully true this is. Humbly I asked of God to give me joy, to crown my life with blossoms of delight.

I prayed for happiness without a lie, desiring that my pathway might be bright. I sought these blessings to attain. And now I thank him that he gave me pain.

For with my pain and sorrow came to me a dower of tenderness in act and thought. And with the suffering came a sympathy, an insight that success had never brought. Father, I had been foolish and unblessed.

If thou has granted me my blind request. Help others when you can tell them that God was faithful to you. That against his promise you put the words or the letters T and P, T and P. I don't need to remind you what that means.

Tried and proved, tested and proved the promise of God. And I believe that God gives to us pain as a token of trust, as a symbol of his trust in us, as a token of his confidence. As F.B. Meyer, great saint of God, who in the days of his great powers preached from this very pulpit, and whose books are still books to be bought up if you ever see any of them anywhere.

F.B. Meyer, trials are God's confidence in us. He uses pain. I love the way in which the Overseas Missionary Fellowship speaks of this, when one of their number is laid aside in sickness, or two or three or a dozen.

This is how they phrase it. So and so has been, quotes, entrusted with sickness, end quote. Made a trustee of pain.

Yes indeed. God hasn't promised exemption from pain. God goes with us right through our pain.

God uses pain for his glory, our good, and the blessing of others. One final word. God delivers us from the evil at the heart of pain, because there is evil there.

And Satan, by every measure of his ability, will endeavor to overturn completely the work of God in us. He'll try to destroy it. What God undertakes when he makes suffering a test, a stern and rugged test, and it can be exceedingly grievous, no chastening for the innocent is pleasant.

Afterwards it may yield the peaceful fruits of righteousness, but once you have passed through it, it is most unpleasant, most unpleasant. And you have to bear and forbear many things. I think of a man in terrible pain.

Two weeks ago, he'd been in terrible pain, agonizing pain for 24 hours. His wife, out of consideration for the doctor, called the doctor during the night and called him. Just about 7.30 in the morning, the doctor was able to get round quite quickly and didn't know anything.

He was in the hospital. And the pain was getting worse. And he was admitted to emergency.

And when he was admitted to emergency, the nurse said, Well, we can do nothing for you just now. All the nurses here have gone for lunch. Isn't it strange, the kind of thing that can happen? I think it's true of all of you, of how many of you, certainly.

And God forgive us that we are uncharitable, if we are uncharitable in our judgments. Very often, very, very often, those who are lying in beds of real pain suffer so much at the hands of those who are supposed to be helping. And also, so much at the hands of their friends who come to visit them, who haven't the sense to see the agony of their dear one.

Why, not so long ago, a dear friend of mine said, one day, I think it was the lowest day of all my sickness, he said to me, there were a couple who came in and they stayed for a couple of hours and I just couldn't bear the pain. I just couldn't bear it. And they sat there and they talked for two hours.

And they kept on asking me questions and I was wishing they would just jump out the window. It was suffering. And they didn't see it.

There are many ways in which this can happen. I was very wise. I've been talking with Dr. Carl Henry.

I remember lying in a hospital bed with some pain. And Dr. Henry came to see me. And he said, now, you know as well as I do what the rules are in this.

I'm not going to sit down because it will be more difficult for you to see me. I'm just going to stand up and I'm going to stand at the right angle for your eye. And he said, I'm not going to stay long.

We're just going to... I'm just looking in, just... But he stayed long enough. Long enough. Do you see the infinite courtesy, do you see the infinite wisdom of that man? Not even sitting down, just setting himself at the right angle for my eye.

And stood at a certain point of the bed and then waited just so long. Word of prayer, he was gone. Thank God for wise men and women who understand.

And this is really all in the nature of an aside, but I mention it because at some time or another you're going to be touching other lives who are passing through this very situation. Sometimes the greatest comfort is absolute silence. I tell you the greatest distress that can be caused to any Christian when they are really suffering is to be told that they need not be suffering in faith to believe.

God will deliver, God will deliver from the evil at the heart of pain. And that's what Paul means when he says our light affliction which is but for a moment is working up for us a far more excellent and exceeding weight of glory while we look not at the things which are seen but at the things which are not seen. For the things which are seen are temporary but the things which are not seen are eternal.

And this is victory with a capital V. God giving us the holy confidence in himself so that we know and trust that he knows what he is doing and what he is doing is best and he will yet perfect that which concerns us. Remember every testing brings with it the possibility of defeat. Pain, even for the Christian, can harden his heart but God will deliver if our trust and confidence is all together in him.

He will deliver. God in the Bible, the living God, he will deliver. He will deliver.

He will keep you from falling. He will keep to the end. What a Savior.

What a wonderful friend. Let me pray. Gracious and merciful God, some here have passed through very grievous pain and still are passing through it.

Some have passed through the pain of great bereavement. Have mercy for them today. Oh, make thyself known unto them in great power.

And if for us there is appointed in David the pain and the suffering, we would naturally flee. Oh, deliver us. Oh, preserve us.

And be glorified. And make us a blessing. Christ our Lord we pray.

Amen.