I’ve gone through a fair amount of physical pain lately, which made me realize something: Pain is one of the biggest prioritizers in my life. Physical pain will cause us to stop whatever we’re doing and go to the hospital. Traumatic emotional pain will shut off our mind almost completely as we attempt to deal with the onslaught of feelings or numbness. And as scripture tells us, the pain of being distant from God or being disobedient to Him can have drastic consequences both immediately and eternally.
One of my favorite quotes from my wife is about pain, and what its purpose is: “Pain is your body’s way of telling you to pay attention to it.” It’s a very simple, but very applicable, lesson to most things in life. Pain = attention. When something goes wrong long enough to grow into a big problem, or when an intense event happens that immediately stops the normal function of something, some sort of pain is usually the result. It’s a big neon arrow that says “YOU SHOULD PAY ATTENTION RIGHT HERE.”
So what should we pay attention to exactly?
I believe there are four elements that we need to pay specific attention to when it comes to pain in our life, whether it be physical, mental, emotional or spiritual. Here I focus mainly on the spiritual side as I feel its the most important:
1) What causes the pain
2) The long-term effects if the cause continues
3) How to stop the pain
4) The long-term effects if the pain stays away
These can apply to all areas of our life where we experience pain, but is specifically important to our spiritual life. For example, if we fail to be in God’s presence through prayer, reading of scripture and gathering together for worship, we may experience the pain of feeling like God is far from us. If it continues on, the long-term effects could be a loss of faith or connection with the body of Christ. On the other hand, if the initial pain causes us to give it the focused attention it needs and we prioritize it, we can correct it or seek help in order to stop the pain fairly quickly. Additionally, the long-term effects mean that we’ll not only prevent the pain from coming back, but that we’ll grow resilient to it by strengthening our priority to put God first.
Example: Most people (including myself) have some sort of habitual or pesky behavior they do on a regular basis that puts some sort of wedge between them and God. This wedge is spiritually painful. We feel like God is not there, is deliberately far from us or just doesn’t care. If we use a
