Devotional by Tiffany Thompson, Tower of Hope Ministries Graduate, 2019
“That is why we never give up. Though our bodies are dying, our spirits are being renewed every day.
For our present troubles are small and won’t last very long. Yet they produce for us a glory that vastly outweighs them and will last forever!
So we don’t look at the troubles we can see now; rather, we fix our gaze on things that cannot be seen. For the things we see now will soon be gone, but the things we cannot see will last forever.”
2 Corinthians 4:16-18 NLT
I don’t know about you, but when I find out something involves pain, I try to go in the opposite direction. I try to search out how I can acquire the good thing that I desire without traveling down a path of pain and suffering. More often than not, I have found that this is impossible.
As the Lord began to heal and grow me through TOHM, He has shown me that pain produces the healing that you need. Sounds backwards, but consider the truth in this statement. 2 Corinthians 4:17 says that our pain is producing a glory that far outweighs the pain we had to go through to get it.
From this we see that we should embrace suffering, not run from it.
But take heart, God is so faithful! He says in Isaiah 66:9 that He will not allow there to be pain without allowing something new to be born. Think about a mother giving birth to her baby. The birthing process is filled with great turmoil and pain, but when that mother holds her newborn baby, all she can think about is the overwhelming love and joy she feels as she holds her beautiful baby. Out of her greatest pain comes her greatest joy.
The same is true with us. From our greatest pain, God will produce our greatest joy. Trust God through your suffering, and count it all joy because God is working in your suffering to produce your purpose.
As we learned yesterday with Life Lessons with Living Hope, we have to go through the pain of healing so we can experience the peace of healing. I encourage you today to continue to process those painful traumatic memories and events so you can experience peace, joy and healing on the other side!
Don’t run from suffering. It’s only for a season and it will soon be over. You will not die here. God is holding you up in the midst of it all. He’s with you every step of the way. Your pain is not in vain, it is producing an eternal weight of glory that will make it worth it all.