Pain

I would have lost heart unless I had believed I would see

the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living. Psalm 27:13

     Pain- an inevitable part of life.  What I've learned is that hiding it from God is not.  What I do with my pain will depend on what I believe God thinks about it.  The devil wants to make us believe God is mad at us or disapponted with us because we hurt.  It's a lie to keep us from turning to the only one who can heal our pain.  Our pain is not the result of not loving God enough or not having enough faith, our pain is a result of being human and living in a fallen world full of other humans. That we hurt isn't a measure of our spirituality like the enemy wants us to believe. We don't need to be ashamed of our pain or feel guilty for it but I acknowledge that unfortunately too often this is what is conveyed in some churches however unintentional and this is the reason so many people have learned to put on their 'It's Sunday I am going to church' mask'. God is not put off by our pain or our disappontment that some things in our lives didn't turn out the way we expected.  To be sure He only is the way to healing and wholeness. 

     The enemy wants so much to sabotage any expression of Gods image in our life.  It is the image of God he hates us for.  If he can conceal it under pain, guilt and shame he will.  The only way he can is through deception, making us think God feels about us the way we feel about ourselves and our pain. What a lie! The key is to guard our heart so we don't allow our pain to cause our view of God and His heart to be anything other than what lines up with the truth revealed in His word, regardless of external circumstances.  Our circumstances are not the truth and neither is how we feel in the midst of them.

     I have found God is the safest place  to express what I'm really feeling, He doesn't love us any less for it.  We think that He does because we've been conditioned to love ourselves less for it or to love others less for it, but God's love is based on who He is, not what we are which is why it never changes, ever. God is love. His love is eternal because He is eternal. Imagine....there has never been a time when God did not exist, He has always been.