The Pain of Life

In November of 2006, the Father said to me, "I am going to completely re-frame your relationship with Me...the way you see your life." In the few weeks following that announcement, He called me away from every ministry activity I was involved in to join Him in a wilderness experience for a season. It was to be just Him and me.

Soon after that I wrote this in my journal: "Out here in the desert it's hot, dry, no water, not much plant life, scorpions and rattlesnakes. No place to hide...I'm fully exposed. I don't like it here. There is nothing to hide behind or depend on. Only God..."

But then He began to reveal more of Himself to me. I imagined a picture of Jesus (from John 1:18) sitting in his daddy's lap prior to coming to earth. It was this kind of fellowship He was inviting us into...to sit in the lap of the Father, resting your head on His breast, feeling His heartbeat and the warmth of His breath coming down on you. Yes! I want that!

But just a few weeks later, I experienced something that was devastating to my heart. It wrecked me in the deepest of ways. As I took this to the Father, He began to hint that this was fitting very nicely into His plan to re-frame life for me. I then noticed several things in scripture that surprised me. In wondering what the heartbeat of God felt like, I began to realize a big part of His heartbeat is experienced through pain and grief. For example, the very first reference to the Father's heart in all of scripture is Genesis 6. When God saw wickedness running rampant throughout the earth, He was grieved in His heart. Then I noticed that Jesus used the word Abba ( the most tender expression that can be used for a father) only once. It was in the garden of Gethsemane just after it says he was grieved in His soul to the point of death.

Now I know this is starting to sound morbid, but hang with me just a little longer. I was beginning to see that I had entered into the room of abandonment, where in order to enter you must abandon all that is dear and precious to you. It is the room where you go to search for God...the room where you go to find God. He is in there...all alone. And to find Him, you must go in...all alone.

Some have referred to this as the dark night of the soul...a time or experience of much pain and agony, of feeling spiritually dry and abandoned by God. However, that really isn't the case. That phrase comes from a poem written in the 16th century by St John of the Cross. Here it is for you to read for yourself:

One dark night,
fired with love's urgent longings
- ah, the sheer grace! -
I went out unseen,
my house being now all stilled.

In darkness, and secure,
by the secret ladder, disguised,
- ah, the sheer grace! -
in darkness and concealment,
my house being now all stilled.

On that glad night,
in secret, for no one saw me,
nor did I look at anything,
with no other light or guide
than the one that burned in my heart.

This guided me
more surely than the light of noon
to where he was awaiting me
- him I knew so well -
there in a place where no one appeared.

O guiding night!
O night more lovely than the dawn!
O night that has united
the Lover with his beloved,
transforming the beloved in her Lover.

Upon my flowering breast
which I kept wholly for him alone,
there he lay sleeping,
and I caressing him
there in a breeze from the fanning cedars.

When the breeze blew from the turret,
as I parted his hair,
it wounded my neck
with its gentle hand,
suspending all my senses.

I abandoned and forgot myself,
laying my face on my Beloved;
all things ceased; I went out from myself,
leaving my cares
forgotten among the lilies.

Copyright 1991 ICS Publications. Permission is hereby granted for any non-commercial use, if this copyright notice is included.

Wow! This guy was not captured by life's negative circumstance. He was engrossed in being loved. But to get there he had to enter the room of abandonment. Maybe that's why Jesus said those who are spiritually destitute, who mourn, and who hunger are the ones who are blessed. Maybe that's why He dwells with the broken and contrite.

When we spend our time trying to manage our lives, making this life work for us, always seeking escape from pain or trouble, we are in reality running from a prime opportunity for the greatest gift...intimacy with Father. Maybe we should learn to embrace the pain that comes our way. Let it have its perfect work and result in our lives. James says to endure trials, as opposed to escaping them. And to let that endurance of trials have its perfect result, that we would be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing. What can complete us any more than intimacy with our Father, enjoying His love for us and learning to live in that love?