The Necessity of Pain

Pain is something that nobody likes, but I find that it is one of those so called "necessary evils" in our lives.  There are basically two types of pain that we suffer through:  physical and emotional.   I want to deal with physical pain in this blog.

Pain in and of itself is one of life's greatest teachers.  When there is physical pain, it is usually an indication that something has gone wrong somewhere in the body.  What a lot of us do is to try to ignore the pain, but when we do that it can lead to something far worse.  Many people have died because of that very reason.  Some of the most dreadful diseases are those that a person has and doesn't have any symptoms to let them know that something is wrong.  By the time they find out it is too late for them to do anything about it.   My daddy died from a battle with prostate cancer, but there was no pain in the initial state.  He was thinking that he was healthy until he finally got checked and it was too late.  I watched this strong man waste away quickly and die. 

So, I am convinced that God created pain as a mechanism for our protection.  For example, if you didn't have any way of feeling pain in your hand and you place that that hand on a hot stove, you would let that hand sit there until it burned severely or somebody else rescued you.   The effects of the burn could take you out of here.  The pain receptors protect you from doing harm to yourself. 

If you look at the ministry of Jesus, for the most part, those that he set free were people who were plagued with physical pain such as:  the woman with the issue of blood, the impotent man at the pool of Bethesda, the young boy that was possessed with demons who would through him in the fire, and Lazarus whose pain was so bad that it took his life.  Jesus came to set the captive free!  We have to believe that he is the Great Physician, Jehovah Rapha, the God that heals us. 

Had they not had great pain many of them would not have tried to reach out to Jesus for help.  The pain caused them to come and know Jesus.  If you are in physical pain today, perhaps you can use that pain as a motivating force to reach out to Jesus for help.

We will talk about the mother of all pain; the one that is most difficult to deal with next time.