S1|E2: Pain and Brokenness

[Bell] Follow your dream, they say. But most often our dreams lead to nothing more than frustration and failure. Look out for number one, they say. But you can have it all and still be miserable. Get over it, they say. But pain suppressed is still pain. Be yourself, they say. But sometimes it's hard to know who you really are. We all want answers to the ultimate questions. Can they really be found? I'm Gabriel Miller and this is the purpose of your life. [Music] Pain is painful. Nobody likes it. Everyone tries to avoid it. It can preclude happiness. It can obstruct love. There are different kinds of pain. Pain from injury. Pain from sickness. Pain from aging. Emotional pain. Pain from tragedy. Pain inflicted by evil doers. Even the pain that comes when you pursue pleasure to the end of the line, only to find that it never really satisfies. Why do we have to endure pain? Wouldn't it just be easier to live in a world without it? You've probably never heard of CIP syndrome. It's so rare, only a few hundred people in the world have it. That's less than one in 25 million. CIP, congenital insensitivity to pain. Imagine your five-year-old daughter just got bit by a rattlesnake and didn't even know to cry for help. Imagine your 18-year-old brother is bound to a wheelchair because unrestrained by the threat of pain he decided to play daredevil and jump off the roof of a building. Imagine you were in the ER preparing to undergo an amputation because you accidentally leaned on a hot stove but had no way of knowing you were in danger. And now your hand is cooked. Imagine your spouse just died of appendicitis and never once had a warning sign. Those who have lived with CIP understand something the rest of us almost never consider. On some level, pain is a good thing. Ask anyone with CIP and they'll tell you they wish they could feel pain. They wish they had the comfort of knowing there was an internal mechanism that offered them protection and restraint. As painful as pain is, most pain is good for us. No pain, no gain. For the gym rat, it's a sign of progress that growth is around the corner. For the cook, getting burned on the stove, it's a sign of protection to stop that action. For the guy with appendicitis, it's a sign of warning to go get help. Like it or not, pain is a part of our world and it becomes a factor in our quest for purpose. What good can come from this pain? How do I harness it? Process it and let it lead me forward. At this point, we need to bring up the idea of God again. God has seen fit to allow pain. Does he like pain? No. Does he enjoy watching us suffer? No. But what God does with the pain is he comes on the back side of it and from it weaves together whatever good byproducts he can. He fashions the silver linings. He writes happy ending after happy ending. Where one story ends in tragedy, God stands ready to draft the sins and the end of redemption. He's behind the scenes but he's way more involved than you ever imagined. The old saying goes, "What doesn't kill you makes you stronger." God's in that. He's in the growth that comes from pain and he can accelerate that growth if you'll let him. Why did I get cancer? Maybe you'll never know why, but when you beat it and then your friend gets it, now part of your story has become an indispensable tool in helping someone else. You're a voice of compassion in a way you couldn't have been before. You're a voice of understanding in a way you couldn't have been before. You're a voice of counsel in a way you couldn't have been before. Does that mean you're glad you had cancer? Maybe not. But at least you have a sense of peace that it wasn't all wasted. The same can be said for pain caused by tragedies, natural disasters, accidents, and even harm caused by evil people. Pain inflicted with evil intent is the hardest to deal with. In addition to whatever other physical and emotional pain is involved, the soul cries out for justice. And sometimes justice never comes. In this life, sometimes the best thing to come out of that tragedy is nothing more than a story to tell, a comfort to share, a new bond to forge with another hurting person. And even though that's simply not enough, it is something. Pain properly processed leads to compassion, empathy, and growth. Pain improperly processed leads to anger, bitterness, and decay. Either way, pain leaves us broken. Brochanus is not a word we hear every day, but it's an important word. And it's a word that has two different, almost antithetical meanings. I always explain brokenness with a very simple analogy. You can be broken like a car, or you can be broken like a horse. A car goes from functional to dysfunctional in the breaking process. And what do I mean by functional? I mean having the capacity to fulfill your purpose. [Music] Some people respond to the pain of life by spiraling downward. It's just a feeling of pain. Some people respond to the pain of life by spiraling downward. It's just too much. They can't cope. They can't forgive. They can't move past. They become broken like a car. Broken down. Of no use, unable to fulfill their purpose. It's the saddest thing there is. That's not the way God wants it. He's not happy about your pain, but he is willing to pick up your pieces and put you back together stronger, healed. If God created you, then God can heal you. God is looking for people who will run to Him in their brokenness, and not run away from Him. Those who run to God in their pain are broken like a horse. Life has crushed them, and they find they have no place to turn, but to the only one who can make a difference. That's the point at which God can transform you into a person who is able to fulfill your purpose. You're broken like a horse. You're able to be used. You're able to serve God and serve others. To be part of His master plan to make all things new. If you haven't figured it out yet, brokenness has a synonym, humility. When I say broken like a horse, I really mean humble. While we're on the subject, let's go ahead and talk about the steps that follow brokenness. These steps are called obedience, conviction, and repentance. Technically, I'm jumping ahead by talking about this, but I think previewing it here will be worthwhile. And to explain the relationship among brokenness, obedience, conviction, and repentance, I need to give you another analogy. Operating in brokenness, obedience, conviction, and repentance is like fielding a baseball. I don't presume you're a baseball fan and you don't need to be to get this metaphor. If you've seen at least one game, you've got enough background to be able to follow along. When a batter is preparing to swing, the fielders are also supposed to prepare themselves to field anything that's hit to them. This is known as being in the ready position. For infielders, this generally means knees slightly bent, feet apart, hands out, and most importantly, eyes on the ball. Being ready means you're ready. Okay, here's the metaphor. The ready position is brokenness. You haven't done anything yet, but you are postured to be able to do something. You're postured to be able to take action. When you're broken like a horse, you haven't done anything yet, but you're ready to do something. You're ready to be useful. You're ready for God to get something out of your life. You're ready to begin fulfilling your purpose. Then the ball is hit. From your ready position of brokenness, you spring into action. The actual fielding of the ball is obedience. This is the stage where we get to do something. We were ready, and now we've been given orders, and we go carry them out. So you catch your ground ball and you throw it first, you get the guy out, and you go back to brokenness, perpetually ready to spring into obedient action again. Well there's another piece to this cycle, and that's conviction and repentance. Conviction is the realization that a course correction is necessary. Repentance simply means changing your mind. If I start heading to work and then I decide to run by the store first, that's repentance. It's a changed mind. We must be repentant toward God to be acceptable to God. And there's a general repentance toward God that precedes even obedience. Presumably the pain of life and the dissatisfaction with your own efforts has brought you to the place of brokenness. And in that brokenness you repent. You have a general mind change toward God, and you remain in a state of brokenness from that day forward. See, once a horse is broken, it stays broken. There's no going back to the untamed, useless form. So in the state of brokenness, in the ready position, having your mind turned toward God in a general sense, you move forward in obedience when the ball is hit. And now, even in the middle of obedience, sometimes you are convicted that a specific incidence of repentance is needed. To illustrate, let me describe for you my favorite baseball play of all time. When I was a kid, my favorite player was Ozzy Smith. He was the gold glove shortstop and future first ballot Hall of Famer for the St. Louis Cardinals. Ozzy was one of those guys that just seemed to make a jaw-dropping play every game. But the one that stands out to me the most came in his rookie season with the Padres. A ground ball had been hit hard toward second base. From the ready position, Ozzy spraying as quickly as he could to his left in an attempt to intercept it. He had to lay out for it and being right handed, he reached his gloved left hand out to snag it. Just one problem. The ball hit a clump of clay right before bouncing to him. And all of a sudden, the entire trajectory had changed. The ball jumped up above his body and he had to reach up with his bare right hand to grab it. All of this of course occurred in a split second while his body was flying through the air parallel to the ground. And oh by the way, after landing, he quickly got up and made the accurate throw to first base for the out. The next day, radio talking heads were calling it the greatest play they'd ever seen. Well Ozzy was in position and he's spraying into action. But then something happened to make him realize his angle of pursuit would not end in success. He was convicted that a course correction was necessary. So he repented. He changed his mind about how he was going to approach the situation. He was successful not only because he was broken and obedient, but because he continued steadfastly to see if there was anything else that needed to be tweaked along the way. And he made adjustments when they were called for. At this point, I've given you some idea of the ongoing cycle of brokenness, obedience, conviction and repentance that is part of the fabric of the life of every fulfiller of purpose. And I think I've made it clear that the obedience we're talking about is obedience to God. What I haven't explained is what that obedience to God entails. And I'm not going to. But yet we will get there. We have to because obedience to God will be essential if you're going to fulfill the purpose of your life. And I won't leave you hanging on how to go about doing that. If I can summarize the message of this episode, it's that God can use our pain to shape us and bring us closer to him. Now it's one thing to accept a statement like that. It's another thing altogether to understand why the pain had to come in the first place. Knowing that something good can come from your pain does not mean the pain itself was good. Maybe you've experienced a life of pain and haven't seen much of anything positive come from it. When your pain outweighs your gain, it's easy to assume God is just cruel. After all, if he's all powerful, he could have prevented your pain in the first place. Your life could have been better. Knowing that he can use your pain to bring about good just isn't enough to satisfy because you haven't seen enough good come from your pain to make it worth it. You need a better answer than that. You need to know why God made a world of pain in the first place. Let's talk about that next time. The purpose of your life is written and produced by Gabriel Miller. Cover art is by Sam Petty. Music and sound design by Gabriel Miller. Additional music in this episode by Albert Fong-Titzer and Frederick Chopin. The podcast is mastered by McFable Mastery. The purpose of your life is a production of all people's ministries. Thank you for listening. [Music]