For many of us, our mundane lives are marked by ongoing, chronically painful experiences. We’re not strangers to suffering because it’s become “normal.”
Our hearts cry out to God, “But I am afflicted and in pain; let your salvation, O God, set me on high!” Psalm 69:29).
God’s word gives us many assurances when we experience pain in this life. Here are just two of them:
- Jesus is with us in our pain.
We have the assurance of God’s presence and peace as we persevere in faith even through our suffering because Jesus has already gone before us.
In Hebrews 5:8 it says that even though Jesus was a Son, our pioneering Savior “learned obedience through what he suffered.” The Son of God was perfectly holy from eternity past. How much more can we, sinners yet saints, learn obedience to God even through our suffering? How much comfort we can draw from Jesus’ words that he is with us “even to the end of the age” (Matt. 28:20)!
- Jesus delivers us from our pain.
Sin, pain, and death are evil. But Jesus is setting up a Kingdom where these things will not be present. In this holy city “he will wipe every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away” (Rev. 21:4).
Forever we will worship the Lord in spirit and in truth. “No longer will there be anything accursed, but the throne of God and of the Lamb will be in it, and his servants will worship him” (Rev. 22:3).
Christ’s return is our Blessed Hope! And in the meantime while there is yet pain in our mundane, we can still taste and see that God is good, praising him in the midst of pain.
Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, has gone before us. He endured the pain of the cross and despised its shame for the joy that was set before him (Heb. 12:2). Jesus has given us the Holy Spirit to comfort us and help us as we walk with God through our pain (John 14:16).
And One Day… he will deliver us completely and we will have eternity to continue to praise him.
“So I will bless you as long as I live; in your name I will lift up my hands” (Psalm 63:4).
