Dec 17, 2021
Overcoming Pain
We can choose to validate our ability to be victorious despite anything & everything!
You may wonder why God allows you to experience pain. If He was really all-powerful and loving, wouldn’t He stop us from experiencing trials?
God gives me a vision of a book sitting on a table, closed. As we go through life, we turn each page of this book. However, before we even pick up the book, it is already written — meaning, everything that happens in our lives is predecided. Does that mean we have no free choice?
Of course we have choice, and we need to take responsibility for our decisions. What it does mean is that God knows about all of the times that we will stumble along the way, and He still loves us.
So has God planned in advance the trials we are to face in this life? When we are facing difficult circumstances, it can be easy to wonder whether God is really for us. We may feel abandoned by Him, we may wonder if we disobeyed Him, and we may seek validation from external sources.
Yet, I believe that God allows us to walk through the Valley of the Shadow of Death so that His goodness can be displayed. He intends for us to be overcomers so that He can bless us abundantly and perform miracles in our lives. So that He can strengthen us and prune us into who we are meant to be.
“I am not invalidating your pain. I am validating your ability to overcome it. To overcome it means to overlook it.” — Marianne Williamson
Have you ever felt invalidated? Or, rather, have you ever craved validation? It is our flesh’s reaction when we have been wronged. But be careful not to fall into a mindset of being wronged. It is easy to always look to be offended. Yet, God is never offended. He is always looking for the good in us.
It is when we deviate from thinking like God that we quickly fall into a state of being that deviates from righteousness and light. Thus, let us allow ourselves to see things differently — see things as God sees them.
We have all experienced difficulties. What matters is whether you are ready to actually choose to overcome. Jesus wants us to overcome… isn’t that what it means to have eternal life? The thing about seeking validation from anything or anyone other than God is that it can never be enough. You can never be satisfied. You will only receive the validation you seek when you look to Jesus Christ.
“Everyone who drinks of this water will thirst again, but whoever drinks the water I give them will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give them will become in them a spring of water welling up to eternal life.” (John 4:13–14, NIV).
God sent Jesus Christ to the world to save us from our sins. He wanted to give us the opportunity to forgive ourselves, and to forgive everyone.
When we choose to overcome the pain of this world, we are able to live without need. We do not receive validation from anyone or anything because we receive all the validation we need from God. Our only need becomes to act as God would. We show appreciation and grace at every opportunity. We are eternally blessed by everything.
