Releasing Pain

Releasing Pain

A man walks through the door at a small church.  He’s carrying something in his arms.  He caresses it gently as if it were a child.  He’s wrapped it in cloth and talks to it gently.  Walking up the center isle he moves cautiously towards an old rugged cross.  As he approaches the cross, his checks are covered with streams of tears.  Weeping, he begins to set the small package down at the foot of the cross.  He slowly turns toward the door, not taking two steps before turning back to look at the package.  When he turns back toward the door, there is Jesus standing at the doorway.  He begins to walk toward Jesus, but overwhelmed by the emotion of his loss, he runs and throws himself in Jesus arms.

He exclaims, “It hurts so bad!” 

Jesus replies, “I know” as he holds him in His arms. 

“I really wanted to keep it”, says the man. 

Jesus again says, “I know”. 

As the man weeps in the arms of Jesus, he then says, “I love you, Jesus”.

When we go through pain and sorrow, there is a process that we need to apply.  This process is how we release it.  Anytime someone hurts us or makes us angry, we have to take it to God.  It is our sole responsibility.  Anger, many times is caused by hurt.  If someone hurts you there are several responses you might have.  Anger, malice, you might just cry, you might just want to hide away where no one can see you or find you.  As Christians we are not allowed to hide away and not face the issue.  We must bring this to God or we will never be able to be healed of it. 

In the story I use a vivid illustration.  The small package is our hurt feelings.  When we bring it to God, we realize we are bringing it to drop it off.  Our natural tendency is to want to hold it, caress it, nurture it, make it feel better and then protect it from happening again.  So, we don’t want to just drop it off.  It’s painful to take these things to God because when we do we have to examine them, relive them again.  We take it to God all the same and drop it at His feet.  Usually there is some point we do look back at it, but we turn our backs on it and press into God.  We tell him how much it hurts and he knows.

When we drop these feelings off, we drop off parts of ourselves; our rights and privileges.  That part of our self dies there with the pain.  This is one of the hardest things we do as his follower.  We realize that we do not belong to our self but we belong to Him.  As we bare our feelings to Him that part of us goes missing and the Holy Spirit begins to fill it with Himself.  Then our focus comes off the feelings and back on to Jesus and we are healed.  The next time something similar happens, we know we should be in pain but we feel numb instead.  We don’t feel anything because that part of our self is missing and all that remains is Jesus.  We have died to our self so that we might live to God.  We have decreased that He may increase.  Please, don’t hold on to your pain, give it to God.