Job 5:17-18 – the Process of Pain and Healing

  "Behold, blessed is the one whom God reproves; therefore despise not the discipline of the Almighty. For He wounds, but He binds up; He shatters, but His hands heal."

Job 5:17-18 (ESV)


It's not inherent of pain to make sense to us, but it’s inherent of pain to bring us back to God.

Preaching on how the Lord uses pain to build us up can feel easy when we reflect back on how He's done it in the past. Talking about it during the process of healing can feel impossible. Especially with wounds still fresh, and especially when that cut isn't clean.

Pain always hurts, but sometimes it feels deserved, or even necessary... 

Sometimes, it doesn't. 

Sometimes, a painful experience is awkward. Sometimes, a painful experience also involves something we've done ourselves and regret. Sometimes, a painful experience is a loss that comes out of nowhere, maybe even the loss of something that looked only like a blessing from God. Even a memory of something that made us happy, and warm, can be painful depending on the circumstances. When pain looks ugly like this, healing isn't simple - because the pain wasn't simple either. I don't live a particularly tough life, yet in only 23 years, I feel like I've experienced so many unique kinds of pain. God has disciplined me in a lot of different ways – you can shatter a vase a thousand times, but the pieces will always be shaped just a little differently.

Job was utterly destroyed. And he wasn't punished for doing evil – he was disciplined in order for a future that he was completely incapable of predicting. Yet here he is calling himself blessed! Blessed for losing his children, and presumably his wife. Blessed for losing his home, and everything he owned. Blessed for his health decaying, bringing him down to a shamble. He had faith that the Lord could work beyond anything that he had worked his entire life to build – including those things that God blessed him with, that he thanked Him for!

If anyone reads this and feels like I couldn't possibly understand the pain that you're in – you're right. I've never felt it, and it's possible I never will. But a lot of the things that I write, I'm writing because I'm also speaking to myself. 

The breaking of the heart is painful – but the healing of the heart feels so much worse. 

But I don't have faith in God because God leaves me unharmed. I have faith in God because He's good. When all is miserable – still – all is well.

"Teach me not to prevent the pain, but to accept the healing every time. Do whatever You have to – I will be faithful always."

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