Moulded Through Pain

 Transcript

Welcome to redemption, a blessed state. All our pain, the process, the problems, the struggles that we are going through today is not going to be in vain. It is going to be such that heaven will use it for God’s glory. Heaven will use it to shape our relationship with God, how we treat our environment; circumstances; people around us.

In 2 Corinthians 7:9, Apostle Paul is writing a second letter to the Church and he is explaining why he wrote such a harsh letter prior to this, which caused a lot of pain to the Church at Corinth. It was the kind of sorrow that God wants his people to have. Paul was not unaware of the consequences of what he was doing. The reason he was okay with it was because he saw how the outcome is going to be for their benefit, their blessing, to realign them to do the will and the purposes of God for their life. There are certain things that God would allow in our homes, lives, relationships which are going to be painful in that moment. Such a pain in that moment is meant to teach us something. God is going to use pain to teach us, treat us, mould us, so that we become sensitive to the things that are damaging to us. If he protects us from every pain, we would grow insensitive, become numb in our heart, become emotionally and spiritually unaware of what is happening in the world around us.

A hardened heart will never have a relationship with God, it cannot be moulded, cannot be taught. That is why it is okay for our hearts to be hurt, in pain, rather than for us to expect the pain to be taken away and slowly, we become numb, stone hearted, people who are unteachable and resistant to change. The very fact that we can still feel pain is a sign that we can be redeemed, helped, provided for, and that God can work in our lives.

Paul says – this pain that you felt led to repentance. Let’s pray that the pain that we are going through will lead us to a place of repentance, depending more on the Lord, sold out at his feet; it will lead us to God, not away from him. Judas ran away from God in his pain. Peter ran to the Lord in his pain. As desperate as we are, we can cry at his feet. As hurting as we are, we can hurt at his feet, we can express our pain by repenting from our ways, changing our lifestyles, changing our responses to our environment. Because, that is what the Lord is intending to do when he allows certain painful seasons, people, occasions, and some times even painful, physical hurts. He is using some of them to make us more and more sensitive to his heart and his plan for our lives.