Sadly, there are to many churches in our
land that kind of give us this vibe "If we have enough faith, if we receive Christ, and
serve, and tithe, then we are not going to have any pain and suffering." That does not hold
Biblical water, I hope you know that. So I want an explanation in my humanity and the Bible gives
me just enough but I need to rely on revelation, the revealed promises of God in pain and
suffering not just on an explanation because if I say God explain to me, explain to me the
What's, and the Why's, and the How's, explain to me the suffering, explain to me, explain
to me, I would spend my whole life listening. Have you ever been at a party, you're in
a conversation and the conversation gets kind of boring? You're like, "This is just not
going anywhere." If you want people to really kind of freak out, just bring up the subject of
pain. They'll go screensaver on you. Just say, "I want to pivot and let's talk about pain."
People will nervously laugh and they might look down at their feet. Some will all of a sudden
go, "Excuse me, I have to go to the restroom." We don't like to talk about pain, do we? I
mean, let's be honest, pain. But if you ask people like these people in this conversation, if
you ask them several questions about their lives, after a while they'll reveal to you their
pain, the suffering that they have either gone through, they're processing, or
maybe they feel that's on the horizon. I think the pain question is definitely the
biggest beef people have against Christianity. It's called "theodicy". In other words, it goes
like this. How can a good God allow bad things to happen to good people? That's a question
I've asked before. People will ask me, "Ed, how about a school shooting? How about a child
dying with cancer? How about a bad report from the doctor?" How about you fill in the blank?
How could a good God allow pain and suffering? On an intellectual level, sometimes people are
really honest when they ask that question. I mean, that's a good question to ask. Other times,
it could be a smoke screen because the person throwing that at God, they've never really taken
a deep dive into the nature and the character of who God is. They kind of use that as an excuse
not to go to church or not to read the Word of God or not even open themselves to the things
of God. Still others, when they say that it's kind of a cry for the companionship of
God. They feel as though God is unfair, but they want him and they want the presence
of God in their life. Those are real issues. Thankfully, the Bible is not silent about
these issues. The Bible talks about pain. The Bible talks about suffering. If you look
at all the other world religions, they don't even compare to how the Bible talks about pain.
Just think about Job in the Bible. It's not job, it's Job. Job went through some hellacious pain.
Think about Joseph. He was thoughtfully accused of a crime he didn't commit, sold into slavery
and pain. How about the Apostle Paul who wrote so much of the New Testament? Paul had pain in
his life. He called it a thorn in the flesh. And three times he asked, "God, deliver me
from this pain" and the sovereignty of God, he didn't. Then you have Simon Peter,
again, a major player in scripture. Pain. I'm not trying to be sadistic or like, "Oh man,
this is such a doggy downer. Pain." I mean, yeah, pain is not fun. It's not easy, but God
allows it and God leverages it and uses it for his purposes. The Bible is not a book full of
explanations. We have to understand that. Now it explains a good bit of stuff, but it's really
about revelation. It's really about the promises of God. Why is there suffering and pain in the
world? Short answer, our world is not perfect, we live in a fallen and fallible place.
I am a self-centered sinner. I'm a worse sinner than I think I am, and so are you.
It's like when I ask God that question, "God, I deserve to really know. I mean, give
me the 411 here about why our daughter 2.5 years ago suddenly passed from this life to
Heaven. I mean, I'm a pastor. I've lived a, I think pretty moral life, not perfect. I've
only been with one woman, Lisa and all that. God, I preach sermons and what? Why? Why? Why?"
That's a real question. But we live in a place where the Bible says it rains on the just
and the unjust. The Bible says, "In this world, you will experience tribulation." We're going
to go through pain. We're all on a path, and that path will take us through pain: the path.
Have you ever thought about paths just for a second? A path. There are paths everywhere. Paths
are made of dirt, they're made of concrete. I would probably say the entire freeway
system is a bunch of paths. In Dallas, do we have some potholes in the paths or what?
We're all on paths. And Jesus said, "We're all on either one or two paths." Either you
could call it path A or path B. Jesus said in Matthew 7 that some are on ... In fact, He said,
"Most are on the wide path." The popular path, the cool path. And Jesus said, "That leads to
destruction." Then He said, "The other path, my path, the road less traveled is a narrow path.
It leads to eternity." Both lead to eternity. One in Heaven, one in Hell. Jesus though talked
about paths, and if you want to talk about pain, think about Jesus. The best and the worst
thing happened to the best ever. The symbol of Christianity is a cross, an instrument of pain.
So we live in a fallen place. I've caused some bad things to happen to me. So have you because
of my shenanigans. Other times I've been on the receiving end of the pain or evil in other
people's lives. Yet within it all, here's what is so amazing. We have a choice, don't we? We
have a free will. I was thinking the other day, if we didn't have a choice, life would be
meaningless. We would just be robots. I used to do that dance back in the day. It's pretty
good still, isn't it? Thank you very much. What do we do though when we're walking on a
path? What do we do when we're walking through a path of pain? All of us deal with pain.
I was in the hospital a while back. I had open heart surgery. I was born with a mitral
valve prolapse and had to have that valve tweaked and they had to cut me open to do it.
I remember in the hospital room there was this little sign and it had a pain scale, which I
thought was interesting. 1 to 10. At the bottom, one kind of a smiley face, the top. Well,
there I am in a hospital and I'm going like, "Ah, it all hurts, man. I don't know. Am
I 2.5 or a 7.3? I don't know. It hurts." Whenever we go through pain, maybe you're
going through a divorce, maybe you're going through depression, maybe you're fighting an
addiction. And you go, "No one understands the pain I'm going through." I get it. I understand
that. No one understands your pain. I don't, and I cannot totally identify with your pain. You
can't totally identify with my pain. God though, can. Jesus experienced the ultimate pain, pain
like we can't even wrap our brains around. And he did it to secure our salvation. So really
the pain draws us to Jesus, the pain of my self-centeredness, the pain of my sinfulness. Then
God sent Jesus to go through unbelievable pain, separation from God for three days, then He
rose again. My pain leads me to the cross and it leads to salvation. That's a heavy thing to
think about, isn't it? Think about your pain. Do a pain audit. What are you going through right
now? It's all pain. What are you going through? I'm going to challenge you to ask yourself in
today's opening session about pain, just four simple questions about pain. That's right. Just
four questions. What? What is the pain and what should I do? Why? Why the pain God? When? When
should I tackle this pain? Should I just continue to swim laps in the pool of regret? Would have,
should have, could have. That was very much of a temptation for Lisa and I when LeeBeth died for us
to swim in the rivers of regret or swim upstream, and you just play out all these scenarios of what
I should have done and I could have done this. And that's real. You have to do that. But we have
to understand that Jesus is extending his nail scarred hand out to us when we're in that pool,
when we're in that river and he wants to pull us out. We have to have a time, and I'm going
to talk about this, where we move on. It's not that we don't still walk with the limp, but we
have to move through our pain. That's one of the reasons why we wrote this book, not only about
our pain, but the pain that everyone deals with. What, why, when and where? Where is this pain
taking me? Because my outlook determines the outline of my life, and then that leads to the
outcome. If we do it God's way that He desires, and that's the best outcome that we
could ever, ever dream of. My outlook, what's your perspective? What's my perspective on
pain? Then when I say, "Okay, God, I'm going to look at it the way you look at it," then suddenly
I see God's outline for my life, his priorities. And as I've said and written about many times,
we don't even have to argue about priorities. They're in stone. The Bible has them there.
If I'm in the right outlook and then I'm living by the outline, then the outcome is going
to be awesome. It might not be exactly the way I would script it, but when I move from this life to
the next, I'll look back and go, "Wow, it was all for the glory of God." I don't though understand
why God allows all of these things in our lives. I can give you some reasons, but I don't
understand it all. If God did explain everything to us, we don't have the bandwidth to
even understand it. And we think in our humanity, "Oh, I could understand it." No,
no, no. And we're going to talk about that in a second. So what should I do?
Proverbs 3:5-6 (NIV-1984). What should I do? Why, when and where? WHAT? "Trust in the Lord with
all your heart," That's the first thing. Trust. And we all trust. And this word trust means to
lie helpless before God. Isn't that crazy? It's the picture of a defeated soldier at the feet of a
general. We've all tried to win our way. We've all tried to do life our way. I have. Self-sufficiency
leads to self-deception. And that doesn't work because if we stay with it, it'll lead to
self-destruction. That's why God says trust. "Trust in the Lord with all of your heart,"
What does the word heart mean? The heart is the center of everything. The heart here
in the Hebrew literally means our will, our mind, our emotions. It's the totality
of who we are. We trust God with it. Solomon was writing this. Solomon had Elon Musk
type money. The guy had 40,000 horse stables, billions in this trust fund, billions in that
trust fund. He wrote over 3,005 Proverbs. He was like the man. He wrote this, most scholars
believe in his late 30s, early 40s as a father writing to his son. So he's saying, "Son,
you're going to go through difficulty. Son, you're going to go through great times
and difficult times. What do you do? You trust in the Lord with all your heart."
I don't know about you, but I'm kind of an emotional person. I don't know if it has to do
with ADD, and when I trust my emotions, they don't always take me to where I should go. But it's
so sexy these days to say, go with your heart. I met this guy online and he has a full head
of hair and a Rolex watch. I'm just going to trust my heart. I understand the romance. I
understand how cool that sounds. In reality, we have to trust God with our heart, trust Him
with our emotions, trust Him with our will, trust Him with our intellect. That is what
Solomon was driving at. So what? Trust. Trust. The next question, WHY? Why should I trust God?
I'm a "why" guy. I want explanations. Why? Why? Because I don't understand. The Bible says,
[Proverbs 3:5 (NIV-1984)] "and lean not on your own understanding;" If I leaned on this lectern,
it's going to fall over. And too many times I've leaned on my own understanding. When I do that,
for example, some of the pain and suffering that Lisa and I have gone through, when I do that,
I can go down that rabbit hole and stay in that rabbit hole. Why? Why? Why? Don't get me wrong.
It's fine to say why. It's great to say why God, but very quickly you have to move
from why God to what now? I mean, what do I do? What do you have for me?
Because the enemy wants us to stay buried in that rabbit hole trying, as I said earlier,
to understand. We're not going to comprehend it totally. In fact, most things in life that
we trust, we don't even understand anyway. Do we really understand gravity? Not really. What?
Trust. Why? "Lean not on your own understanding." WHEN? When should I do this? [Proverbs
3:6 (NIV-1984)] "In all your ways..." not some of them, "acknowledge him," This word
acknowledge, you're probably talking about it today over morning coffee. This word acknowledge,
is pronounced in the Hebrew yada. I like that. Yada means I submit totally God to you. What's
interesting about Jesus. Jesus talked a lot about people who didn't trust and He said, "Man, you're
missing it if you don't trust me." He also talked about people who had one foot in and one foot out.
One foot on the rock and one foot in quicksand, which I'll talk to you about in a second,
quicksand. And He said, "Those people are almost as wheels off as the ones that totally
don't trust." So this is like I'm putting all the chips on the table. I'm playing all my
cards. I give it all to you. In all of my ways, I acknowledge you. That's when the Bible
says, "Today is the day of your salvation." WHERE? [Proverbs 3:6 (NIV-1984)] "and He will
make your paths straight." God will make your paths straight. The picture behind this, if you
know anything about travel, in ancient days, the roads were really treacherous. Again, like some
of our roads here in Dallas-Fort Worth, potholes everywhere. And there were robbers and there were
all sorts of just gnarly things that could happen. So when a king would travel, his posse would
go before him and remove all the roadblocks and stuff and take care of the robbers so the advance
team would make the kings' paths straight. I've got some good news for you. Our great God is going
before you, He's going before me, making our paths straight. I don't know exactly how He does it, but
He does. This word PATH, I want you to think about this word path. It's a PURPOSE that ALWAYS TAKES
us to HIM. God's purpose for your life, it always takes us to Him because we're here to glorify God.
There's some questions we need to ask ourselves about pain. What? In my pain, trust. Why? Because
we're not that smart. When? In all my ways I submit to you everything God. Where? In the paths
of life, you're going to make the paths straight. I've always been intrigued by jungles. I don't
know why. I grew up watching Tarzan. I love the Discovery Channel. And a while back, I decided
to go to a jungle, I'd never been. So I went to a jungle in Central America. I mean the real deal.
Pythons. There was a snake in this area called the Fer-de-lance, a two-step snake. If it bit you, you
have two steps, you're out. Saw water crocodiles, quicksand. I told you I'd bring up quicksand.
All of this stuff that would mess you up. There was a plant called the Chechem, this thing's
from Hell. If you just rub up against it, it would rot your skin to the bone. And I had
this backpack on kind of thing, and I fell. That's another story. While I was walking down
this path and I just rubbed up against Chechem, I knew I was in trouble when the little Mayans
were like, " Chechem, Chechem." And I watched it rot this bag right in front of my eyes. Yes.
So I'm like, okay, I want to hike in this jungle. So again, I was with several Mayans
and they didn't speak English that well, but they were about this tall, strong as mules.
These Mayans in their way told me they were going to take me through this path. And one of the
Mayans had a machete and a car battery on his shoulder because we were going to this thing
called a panga, a wooden boat, and we're going to travel in this swamp or whatever at the end of
this trail. So I go into the jungle with the lead Mayan and the Mayan in the back, he was carrying
this electric motor. Now I know why he was there. He was there to kill snakes and crocodiles
and pull me out of quicksand or whatever. I'm just following these guys, but I'm following
the main guide. And I knew he was telling me to step where he was stepping. So I'm like, "Okay,
I trust you, my man." So I walk in, I'm just covered with mosquitoes. And so he steps there
and I stepped there, and I'm thinking to myself, I wouldn't naturally step there. That's weird. And
then I find out, well, it's quicksand there. It's pretty good. So then we stepped over here and
that's when I kind of fell, remember the time, and I got the Chechem on me and he quickly pulled
me up. And so I'm still walking, following him. I'm in his footsteps. And at the same time, he's
carrying this battery. He is just chopping these massive branches and all this vegetation.
He's literally cutting a path out for me. We got to the end of the trail and got in the
boat and everything was cool. But think about what was taking place. Was I trusting him? You
better believe it. What if I'd have said, "No, no, no. I understand the jungle. I've seen
these television shows and just let me do what I want to do." I could have gotten
killed. I mean like that. I followed him, I submitted myself to him, and he made the
path, straight as best you could in the jungle. This is what Jesus does in pain and in suffering.
That's what Jesus does. Through sickness, through questions, through death, through
separation, through addiction. That's what Jesus does as we walk. Here's the key.
Through this path that so often has pain. It's our prayer during this series today, this
Wednesday and next Sunday, that we'll do that pain audit, that we'll ask these tough questions
and answer them God's way. Because remember, God's path and God's purpose will take you
places that you never dreamed possible. Lord Jesus, thank you for this message. I
thank you for every single person here. God, you know the pain. You know what we're
all processing, whether it be emotional, whether it be relational, whether it be
occupational, recreational, whatever it is, God. We just trust you in it right now. I pray
that we lean on your understanding. Not that we check our intellect at the door, but that we
lean on you and lean on your church, your people to walk with us. May we submit, I know that's
hard for us to do, our lives once again to you, and I thank you in advance for where you're
taking us, God. You're taking us through it to a place of glory and honor and power, like
our best plans can't even attempt to explain. If you're here and you've never asked Christ into
your life, I'm going to challenge you to give your life to Him. Give to Jesus all you know about you,
and He will give you all you know about Him. Just ask Him to come into your life. Just say, "Jesus,
I repent. I know it's by the power of the gospel, that I have this ability to do this. And
right now I respond to that." So Father, continue to guide us and direct us as we
worship you and as we meet with you in the middle of the week, and then next week. We
ask all these things in Jesus' name. Amen.
