Dec 19
Last week I shared with you my pastor’s thoughts on not being consumed with trying to make all our pain go away, but instead learning how to be invincible to it–“incapable of being conquered, overcome or subdued” by it. Those who accomplish this “are an unstoppable force,” Pastor Brian said.
I’ve been trying to be invincible over the last nine months, which–without going into detail–have been and continue to be a huge health ordeal for my husband and me. Suffice it to say, that next to having cancer and chemo in 1990, this has been the most difficult year of my life.
And unlike Superman I wasn’t born “invincible,” so today I’m sharing some more of Pastor Brian Jones’ “pain” blog including my thoughts at the end. His words (in italics) have been a great reminder to me during this season of suffering and I pray they will be to you too.
++++++++
I know this sounds counter-intuitive – but I want to challenge you to pray a prayer of thanks right now for the pain you’re going through.
Thank God for your trials.
Thank Him for the person these trials are helping you become.
Ask Him to help you reinterpret the pain you’re going through, from viewing trials as “signs of His absence” to viewing them as “opportunities for His goodness.” Allow the Holy Spirit to train your mind to be “invincible”–unstoppable–to pain by seeing God’s presence in any and all our circumstances.
Sometimes the goodness of an event can be recognized immediately. Other things like problems with kids or a sickness can take years to put our finger on any silver lining.
And let’s be frank, some events will never be able to be viewed as blessings during our lifetimes. It will take standing next to Jesus Himself and having Him show us the big picture before we’ll be able to make sense of what happened.
Until then, let’s pray for the courage to pick up our crosses instead of walking around them. 
+++++++++++
If you are like me, the last thing you really want to do is pick up a cross. But it’s an action required of all true Christ followers: “Then (Jesus) said to the crowd, ‘If any of you wants to be my follower, you must turn from your selfish ways, take up your cross daily, and follow me’.” (Luke 9:23, also Matthew 10:38, 16:24; Mark 8:34; and Luke 14:27).
I’ll readily admit that when it comes to my health–or my husband’s–I’m “selfish.” My prayers become very self-centered and self-serving: Heal me, Lord. Father, make this go away quickly. Jesus, restore him now (so I don’t have to be a constant caregiver!).
I’m always looking for quick fixes which will make me feel or my loved one better. But what if that’s not the cross God has for me to carry?
What if having to go to physical therapy so often causes me to develop friendships with people who need Jesus?
What if countless doctors’ appointment afford the opportunity for Christ to shine through me in those medical offices?
What if slowing down because of health limitations makes me rely more on the Holy Spirit’s power than my own strength?
What if all this waiting for test results and restored health is designed to help me be still and know that He is God?
What if the blessings I’ve been seeking are not as important as the ones my Heavenly Father has in store?
And as Laura Story sings in the video below: “What if trials of this life are Your mercies in disguise?”
“Always be joyful. Never stop praying. Be thankful in all circumstances, for this is God’s all for you who belong to Christ Jesus.” 1 Thessalonians 5:16-18
Brian Jones is the founding Pastor of Christ’s Church of the Valley in Royersford, PA, a graduate of Princeton Theological Seminary, and the author of four books. He’s also my pastor and most important of all, a huge Buckeye fan! Connect with him at https://brianjones.com
Dec 12
Guest blog by Brian Jones
Our goal as disciples of Jesus shouldn’t be to eliminate pain.
Our goal should be to craft the kind of life that is invincible to pain.
Those who learn how to be invincible to pain–“incapable of being conquered, overcome or subdued”–are an unstoppable force.
This is what Jesus meant when he said, “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me” (Matthew 16:24).
His challenge wasn’t to seek martyrdom – though that could certainly be part of the faith journey for a few – it was about being willing to endure pain as a disciple for his mission.
For disciples, being invincible to pain means they train themselves to view…
Instead of spending their days doing everything in their power to avoid all discomfort, they train themselves to no longer need comfort to function.
Think for a moment about how much of our lives is spent avoiding pain.
How much money have we spent on medications to drown out suffering?
How many vacations have we taken to distract us from our everyday problems?
Going to therapy to quickly stop a heartache instead of partnering with a therapist to teach us to sit with the pain a while and learn from it?
To be honest, I’ve wasted so much of my life trying to avoid pain that I have essentially earned a doctorate in pain avoidance. But that’s changing.
In my latest book Finding Favor: God’s Blessings Beyond Health, Wealth, and Happiness, I share that…“Between the ages of eighteen and forty-two, I could count on one hand the number of times I went to the doctor. But when I turned forty-three, for no apparent reason, I developed a severe neurological condition that triggered nonstop debilitating pain in the back-left base of my head. I went to three different specialists, and they were all baffled. Unable to find a cause, they put me on antiseizure medication.
Over the next five years, I underwent three surgeries, five MRIs, three CAT scans, and more ultrasounds and EKGs than I can remember. I had nine different rounds of medication administered via epidural injections in my back and neck. I lost most of the hearing in my left ear. I gained thirty pounds. I became depressed. I suffered extreme panic attacks. I went on an antidepressant. The pain became so severe that I could only sleep in forty-five-minute stretches before being jolted out of bed in pain.
My life verse throughout all of this was Job 13:15: “Though he slay me, yet I will hope in him.”
The turning point for me came when I realized that the Bible teaches that pain can be a blessing.
Pain is to be embraced.
Lessons are to be teased out of these experiences. They come to us to instruct in the way of Jesus.
Suffering makes disciples better, not worse.
One morning I woke up and simply said, “I am completely healed” and began thanking Jesus for what I was going through. Within one year, many of my symptoms disappeared. Those that didn’t have stayed on as my personal trainer in being invincible to pain. What I was truly healed of was my need for comfort above my need for Jesus.
Think about it: if pain can’t stop you, what does the enemy have left to throw at you?
You’re unstoppable.
NEXT WEEK: PART II: “How to Train Yourself to be Invincible to Pain”
Brian is the founding Pastor of Christ’s Church of the Valley in Royersford, PA, a graduate of Princeton Theological Seminary, and the author of four books. He’s also my pastor and most important of all, a huge Buckeye fan! Connect with him at https://brianjones.com
Dec 05
Everybody feels homesick once in a while. Even our older daughter, a very independent, self-sufficient young woman, admitted she was homesick when she first went away to college
“It was in the fall of my freshman year,” Danielle recalls. “I remember I was homesick for a couple of hours…but it went away.” (I told you she was independent!)
I think many of us can feel a little–or a lot–homesick around the holidays. I know my Indiana daughter and her four kids are homesick for a Pennsylvania Christmas with all the rest of our family, but it won’t happen until Dec. 30.
And even though I have two wonderful daughters and three fabulous grandkids nearby this season, I’m homesick for a childhood California Christmas with my “little” brother and our parents. What I wouldn’t give for another holiday to celebrate with them.
Perhaps you are homesick for a loved one this year too. Or maybe you’re having a hard time facing the holidays because of health issues in your life or your family’s. Or financial struggles or relationship issues or any number of life trials. It doesn’t seem “fair” to be struggling at Christmas.
We have dear friends whose 30-something daughter was recently diagnosed with a malignant brain tumor. She’ll be getting radiation and chemo as her family prepares to celebrate her baby’s first Christmas. So not fair.
Another dear friend is trying to enjoy holiday festivities for the first time in 47 years without his beautiful wife by his side. So not the way he had imagined his retirement years to be.
Even if you haven’t been grumbling about struggles, you probably have heard plenty of others doing so. Did you know that every complaint is a symptom of homesickness?
Every time we growl that circumstances aren’t fair or we’re disappointed in an outcome or we bemoan how we’ve been treated, we’re acknowledging that we’re homesick.
In fact, we are all homesick for our real home…Heaven.
Ecclesiastes 3:11 tells us that God “has planted eternity in the human heart.” We all have an innate longing to live forever in a place where everything is fair, there are no disappointments and we never are mistreated. But we need to embrace the fact that is not going to happen here on earth. In fact the earth itself, like us, is “homesick” for the way it used to be.
Paul says in 1 Corinthians 8: “But with eager hope, the creation looks forward to the day when it will join God’s children in glorious freedom from death and decay.”
All this decay and death we–and the earth– are experiencing is not the way it’s “supposed” to be. It doesn’t feel right because it’s not. God’s perfect plan is still to come.
“We, too, wait with eager hope for the day when God will give us our full rights as his adopted children, including the new bodies he has promised us.” (Romans 8:23b)
Go ahead and put a “new, healthy body” on your Christmas list, but realize no matter how many remissions and cures we get here and now, one day we will leave these earthen vessels behind and get the new, immortal bodies our Heavenly Father has promised all Christ-followers.
One of the people I look forward to meeting in Heaven is someone I never knew on earth: my paternal great-grandmother May Andrews Peirce. She was a prolific poet and I’d like to think my writing ability came down through her genes. In 1928 when she was nearly 60, she wrote a poem she called “HOME.”
In childhood’s days, our thoughts of Heaven
Are pearly gates, and streets of gold.
But in the gathering years,
When time, within its fading leaf
With eyes, perchance be-dimmed with tears,
And hearts oft’ overwhelmed with grief,
We look beyond the pearly gates,
Beyond the clouds of sin’s dark night,
And see a place where loved ones wait,
A place all beautiful and bright.
And over all, we’ll see the face of Him
Who’ll bring us to our own—
Not to some far-off, distant place.
For Heaven is, after all, just HOME.
To enjoy Chris Tomlin’s “Home” music video, open in your browser or use this link https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=twL3v5r8s6o
Nov 21
It’s Thanksgiving week and most of us are pretty busy getting ready to eat lots of food…I mean, say lots of thanks. So instead of me pecking away with only one hand (yep, broken wrist still healing) to write words you don’t have time to read, I’m posting a couple songs of thankfulness. You can listen to them while you roll out pie crusts or mash sweet potatoes or double-check your turkey cooking instructions to prevent salmonella!
Or crank up the volume, have a seat and take a break from your holiday preparations to, (especially if you’re not really feeling well).
However or whenever…just please take few moments to be blessed by these songs of gratefulness. I’ve included the lyrics so you can sing along if you like 🙂
“Always be joyful.
Never stop praying.
Be thankful in all circumstances for this is God’s will
for you who belong to Christ Jesus.”
–1 Thessalonians 5:16, 17
No matter what we’re dealing with this Thanksgiving, we have a God who loves us and proved it once and for all when He sent His Son to save us from our sins and defeat our greatest enemy, Death. Let’s give thanks to Him in all our circumstances.
Nov 14
It’s been a little more than three weeks since I fell down a couple of steps and broke my wrist in two places, necessitating surgery. Even though it’s not my dominant hand, there are so many things I cannot do at all and so many more that require tons of extra time to accomplish with only five digits. And not being able to carry out tasks in the normally fastest way possible really drives me crazy.
I’m the kind of person who finds the shortest route to my destination and always uses it (although surprisingly I don’t exceed the speed limit.) All of my life I’ve tried to be fast, rapid, swift, speedy, expeditious and any other synonym you find for the word “quick.” Second place has always seemed like the first loser to me.
So what am I learning/relearning during these weeks (maybe months?) of recovery and forced delays? That hurrying through my to-do list may not be God’s best plan for me, and I need to take more time to savor my Savior.
How about you? Has life forced you or your loved one to slow down? Whatever is weighing you down–a health crisis, natural aging, financial worries, family strife, or unfair circumstances–believe and ask God to use this “interruption” for His good. And if you’re still going full-speed ahead, I recommend you voluntarily ease back and give God time to transform you into all you were meant to be.
In college I had the following poem on my apartment wall and I needed to read it again today. Perhaps it can be your prayer, too. ( And please don’t miss the music video at the end, “Slow Down” by Chuck Girard. It’s the real message I wanted to share today–I picked it before I had even written a word. )
SLOW ME DOWN, LORD by Wilferd A. Peterson
Slow me down, Lord.
Ease the pounding of my heart
By the quieting of my mind.
Steady my harried pace
With a vision of the eternal reach of time.
Give me, admidst the confusions of my day,
The calmness of the everlasting hills.
Break the tensions of my nerves
With the soothing music of the sighing streams
That live in my memory.
Help me to know
The magical restoring power of sleep.
Teach me the art
Of taking minute vacations of slowing down to look at a flower;
To chat with an old friend or to make a new one;
To pat a stray dog,
To watch a spider build a web;
To smile at a child;
Or to read a few lines from a good book.
Remind me each day
That the race is not always to the swift;
That there is more to life than increasing its speed.
Let me look upward
Into the branches of the towering oak
And know that it grew slowly and well.
Slow me down, Lord,
And inspire me to send my roots deep
Into the soil of life’s enduring values
That I may grow toward the stars
Of my great destiny.
Amen.
(To view the music video, open in your browser or use this link https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u3FzAk5dgUc
I’m a newspaper reporter-turned-author. And I’m a passionate encourager, but always a truth-teller. I worked for nearly two decades in a unique position as a patient advocate in my oncologist’s office and the Cancer Prayer Support Group I founded in 1991 is the country’s oldest such faith-based group.
