In the blurred agony of severe nerve pain, I cried to our Lord. “How can I endure a lifetime of this? You kept me alive through Your miraculous intervention of a brain surgeon’s repairs. But nerve pain is now its thorny after-shock, and I don’t know how I can love You and others when it fires into my body.”
God’s tender answer is Jesus, who endured far worse throughout His earthly life. When pain overtakes me, I need to abide in His love, remain there. I need to fix my thoughts on my Redeemer, who is holding me within every moment of suffering.
How can He be redeeming the suffering itself? For me, He’s producing less focus on “doing” or “outcomes” and more on “being” and “belonging.” That’s a radical change for this “productive” woman! This has become His “how” for me.
A new life, in union with Jesus Christ
Like all humans since Genesis 3, I was born into sin. I deserve judgment as a sinner. I deserve death.
Just as everyone dies because we all belong to Adam, everyone who belongs to Christ will be given new life (1 Cor. 15:22 NLT).
But now? I belong to Jesus, my Lord. He literally took all the judgment for all my sin. Why?
Redeeming love has been my theme
Since the miraculous day that…
I heard an old, old story, how a Savior came from glory!
(“Victory in Jesus,” Bartlett, E. M., 1939)
Redeeming love has been His answer. In that love…
Suffering is helping me to know our Father’s intimate and affectionate love more and more, His adopted-in-Christ daughter who belongs to Him.
Suffering is shattering my idol of productivity, as He’s changing my desires from within.
My Suffering Servant is helping me to love Him and others, in and through the suffering I’m experiencing…but with Him and in Him.
What a freeing victory…a new layer of cleansing, transforming, redeeming love, in union with our Lord Jesus!
Emmanuel is with me as I suffer
Once again, William Cowper, my suffering buddy, sings the same answer our Lord gave him in his agony of lifelong depression.
There is a fountain filled with blood,
drawn from Immanuel’s veins…
(“Praise for the Fountain Opened,” Cowper, W., 1772)
Jesus answered him, “If anyone loves me, he will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him
and make our home
with him” (Jn. 14:23 ESV).
and sinners, plunged beneath that flood,
lose all their guilty stains.
In Christ, I’m now and forever reconciled to my loving Abba Father!
The dying thief rejoiced to see
that fountain in his day;
and there have I, as vile as he,
washed all my sins away.
As we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal (2 Cor. 4:18 ESV).
God’s redeeming love is continual, ongoing as we suffer
For your steadfast love is great to the heavens, your faithfulness to the clouds (Ps. 57:10 ESV).
E’er since by faith I saw the stream
your flowing wounds supply,
redeeming love has been my theme,
and shall be till I die.
So we have come to know and to believe the love that God has for us. God is love, and whoever abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him (1 Jn. 4:16 ESV).
God’s redeeming love is powerful, as we suffer
But you, beloved, building yourselves up in your most holy faith and praying in the Holy Spirit,
keep yourselves
in the love of God,
waiting for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ that leads to eternal life (Jude 1:20-21 ESV).
Then in a nobler, sweeter song
I’ll sing your pow’r to save,
when this poor lisping, stammering tongue
lies silent in the grave.
Redeeming love will save and sanctify every member of Christ’s body!
And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains,
but have not love, I am nothing (1 Cor. 13:2 ESV).
Dear dying Lamb, your precious blood
shall never lose its pow’r,
till all the ransomed church of God
be saved, to sin no more.
Love is patient and kind;
love does not envy or boast;
it is not arrogant or rude.
It does not insist on its own way;
it is not irritable or resentful;
it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth.
Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things (1 Cor. 13:4-7 ESV).
A playlist to fix our thoughts on the redeeming love of Jesus in our suffering
We don’t want to sin; we want to love God and others as He calls us to. As we suffer. Loving as Christ does. He is helping us to bear, believe, hope, and endure…all things, including our sufferings.
How? In His love, His Spirit is continuing to cleanse us from sin, shaping us to be more loving, like Jesus. Our God is teaching me—every bit of this maturing life as a suffering believer is all about His LOVE!
How is our loving God changing you in your suffering right now?
As a retired music therapist and forever church musician, I’ve professionally curated a “Fountain of Redeeming Love” worship music playlist for the worst suffering moments. When my pain escalates to a 10, I need to abide in His love with music that sings of His love for me in Christ…for it then helps me…
to love Him and others!
If it would bless you to sing of His love to your hurting heart, sign up here, and it will come to your email with my love. Other resources are below, which I’m creating in moments when He lifts the pain.
YouTube channel of Scripture devotionals, calming hymns, and video encouragement from Lauri
Devotional Bible study prayer journals, available on Amazon. Click for details.
Praying God’s Promises Into Suffering
Singing the Gospel to Job: Finding Hope in Suffering
Near to God: A Devotional Bible Study of God’s Character in Our Suffering
0 Comments