Don't Waste Your Hurt

March 15, 2024

Pain happens. Because we live in a broken world, this isn’t heaven and people are free to make their own decisions (good and bad), there will be pain this side of heaven. The good news is that God never wastes your pain. (We can waste it, but that is never God’s plan). 

God wants to use whatever pain you’re going through – emotional, physical, financial, relational, spiritual, in any area of your life to move us toward his purposes. 

Galatians 3:4 “Have you experienced so much for nothing? Surely it was not in vain, was it?”  

One way that God can bring good out of our pain is when you learn from it, then leverage your experience to help other people. It’s suffering for the benefit of others. It is the highest and best use of your pain.  

Follow me on this: If you’re going to be in pain because we live in a broken world and everybody has pain, why not at least get some credit for it? You don’t get credit for your pain by mumbling, moaning, complaining. You don’t get credit for your pain by pulling yourself into a self-centered person and ignoring the needs of other people. You don’t get credit for your pain by feeling sorry for yourself and having a pity party.

You get credit for your pain by using it to help other people who are in the same kind of pain. God says that is the highest and best use, and you will be richly rewarded for it. Rather than focusing on my hurt, my feeling, how I feel bad, I refocus it and I refocus on the pain of others.  

2 Corinthians 1:4-6, “God comforts us in all our troubles so that we can comfort others. When they are troubled, we will be able to give them the same comfort God has given us. For the more we suffer for Christ, the more God will shower us with his comfort through Christ.  Even when we are weighed down with troubles, it is for your comfort and salvation! For when we ourselves are comforted, we will certainly comfort you. Then you can patiently endure the same things we suffer.”

Who can better help a struggling veteran than somebody who’s been a veteran?  

Who better to help someone going through the pain of divorce than someone who has experienced that same pain?

Who could better help parents of a special needs child than somebody who has been a parent of a special needs child?  

Who can better help somebody struggling with a chronic illness than somebody who is struggling with a chronic illness? 

Who could better help someone recover from abuse than someone who has experienced that in their own life? 

Here’s the point. If you’ve been hurt in your life, I am so sorry.

But, you now have a choice. You can allow the enemy to continue to rob you and others of healing, OR you can let God heal it, and let God recycle it, and let God use it, and let God utilize it, and let God bless other people. 

Who can you help this week? Who are you a few steps ahead of in your journey toward healing? 

Don’t waste your hurt.