'Thankful For Pain'

(Pastor James Scarborough, Donalsonville Assembly of God)

I took measures last week that should make me very popular in the sight of the ladies at church--I renovated the ladies' restroom. It was pretty much a complete overhaul: fresh paint, new sink and vanity, new flooring--the whole works. (Good timing too--just weeks before Christmas! The cakes and pies should be abundant.)

As usual, my work was not without incident.

As I have watched Josh, Heath and other "professional carpenters and repairmen" I have learned a few simple but all important rules of such work, one of which is to clean up as you go, so you do not get swallowed up by the debris of your own work. I must admit that I do not always keep my work area as clean as I should; sometimes it creates real hazards.

As I demolished the old vanity, which was a solidly built on-site version with lots of nails, I had several boards lying around as I continued my work. As I repositioned my foot on the floor to get better leverage to deal with some stubborn pieces of the old cabinet that refused to be removed, I felt a sensation in my foot that was not just right, and in a split second I realized a nail was passing through my shoe and into my foot. I reacted quickly and got the pressure off the shoe just as the nail started to pierce the bottom of my foot. It reminded me of my childhood when we would step on nails and have to go to the doctor for a shot because my mother was horrified of us getting what we called "lock-jaw" (Tetanus was not in our country vocabulary at that time).

As it turned out, the puncture was so small that there was no bleeding, but if I had continued to push against the nail I could have been in a lot of trouble in seconds. I was able to respond and avert the disaster because of the pain that my body sensed. While pain is not a desirable thing, it serves the important purpose of letting us know that something is wrong and action needs to be taken to prevent more severe problems.

Jesus Christ experienced great pain because of the sinful condition of humankind. In addition to the physical pain that He felt before and during His crucifixion, He felt severe spiritual and emotional pain before He went to the cross. Luke 19 records an example of Christ's response to the obvious rejection of God's plan. "As He approached Jerusalem and saw the city, He wept over it and said, "If you, even you, had only known on this day what would bring you peace-- but now it is hidden from your eyes"" (verses 41-42, NIV).

Christ's pain came with a plan to do something about the hopeless situation that He found among people. He fulfilled that plan and made the only way for sinful humankind to be reconciled to God.

Pain is not a bad thing when we allow it to cause us to seek a solution to the cause.

Christ is the solution to the sin problem. We are called to receive Him into our own hearts and then to share Him with others so they can experience the same.

Are you willing to have pain for those in need of Christ's forgiveness? Are you willing to have spiritual pain strong enough that it will motivate you to reach out to them and offer them the love and plan of Christ?