As much as we hate to admit it – pain is a fact of life.  We all travel through pain sometimes.  So – what is it, what causes it and what can we do about it?  Well – surprising as it may seem, God actually has a lot to say about the pain in our lives.  And some of it, we can avoid altogether.

I think we all have a packet of aspirin or some other form of painkiller in the cupboard.  And that’s okay for the occasional headache.  But these days, we’re into the instant fix. Rapid relief.  And when it comes to deep pain, emotional pain – we sometimes focus on the symptom … but what about the disease?

I suspect that there’s not one of us who doesn’t have at least one packet of pain killers at home in the cupboard somewhere. In fact most of us probably have more than one packet. These days there’s the ordinary every day pain killers, aspirin or paracetamol based. The ones we grew up with.

But then they came up with the extra strength pain killers. Often containing something much stronger like codeine or something else. And the latest thing is the rapid action pain killer. Well lets face it none of us wants to have a headache any longer than we have to so we pay almost twice as much for half the number of tablets on the basis that they’re supposed to treat the pain quickly.

Now we don’t really know whether they do or not. We’ve never stopped and measured the pain relief response time but we do know that we don’t want the pain so we’ll just cough up the extra cash because, well we have a strong felt need to get rid of the pain quickly.

In fact we’ve become a generation of pill poppers and whilst there’s no doubt that pain killers and other drugs are an absolute necessity in medical treatment, no doubt about that at all, I wonder, well I wonder whether we don’t go to the cupboard for the pills just a bit more often than we should. Well?

Now every now and then you and I have a headache. Of course it makes sense to grab a pain killer or two and when we have a cold or flu we’ll take some pills that minimise and mitigate the symptoms. Bring the temperature down, dry the nose up a bit, reduce the coughing, that’s good stuff.

And I for one am incredibly thankful that these drug companies have done the research to bring me that level of convenience and relief. But here’s the bottom line. Pills reduce the symptoms, they don’t treat the disease. Let me say that again, I know it’s really obvious but often we don’t think about it and it is really, really important.

The pills reduce the symptoms, they don’t treat the disease. Of course there are some drugs that do treat diseases. Antibiotics, lots of them. Chemotherapy is still one of the very best ways of treating cancers. The drug, in many cases, does treat the disease but with pain killers generally, in fact almost always, it only treats the symptoms, they just help us manage the pain, they don’t cure the disease.

Now the reason we’re talking about that is that this week on the program and in fact over the coming weeks, we’re exploring this whole thing of pain. Why? Well because pain happens. In many respects it’s an unavoidable part of life. We all travel through pain, emotional, physical and spiritual in our lives. It’s a fact of life full stop.

And so I’ve called this series ‘Pain Relief For The Soul’ and the easiest thing for you to think when you hear that title, ‘Pain Relief For The Soul’, is ‘Ah great. I can just reach out for this short ten minute message by Berni when he talks about something’. Or this one or that one. Bit like going to the cupboard and grabbing a couple of aspirin for a quick fix.’

But well you know, I’m not sure that’s what God wants in our lives. I’m not sure that God is so much into the quick fixes by managing the symptoms. My hunch is He wants to treat the disease. Pain is a sign that something’s wrong and God wants to treat that thing in us that’s wrong.

Pain is often a consequence of something that’s wrong within us. Pain is God’s messenger oft time to get our attention. And sometimes, as it was in Job’s case in the Old Testament, pain is God’s tool in our lives for reasons we don’t quite understand. When bad things happen to good people as they did to Job, pain is the place of testing to prove our hearts.

And in that case it’s not so much about avoiding the pain, it’s unavoidable, so what it’s really about is knowing how to live through that pain in a way that honours God. Which ever it is, pain caused by us or pain that comes from some cause completely outside our control, God wants us to grow and to learn and to develop through that pain and come out the other side of it a different person.

Have a listen to this on pain and suffering. Romans chapter 5 beginning at verse 1.

Therefore since we’re justified by faith we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Through whom we’ve obtained access to this grace in which we now stand. And we boast in our hope of sharing the glory of God and not only that but we also boast in our sufferings knowing that suffering produces endurance and endurance produces character and character produces hope.

And hope doesn’t disappoint us because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who’s been given to us.

You know what I love about this? The Apostle Paul experienced way, way more than his fair share of pain and suffering in his life. And what he learned through all of that is that pain and suffering lead us back to God if we let them. Suffering leads to endurance.

In fact it’s only through the pain that an athlete learns endurance and that endurance produces character, it changes who we are. It makes us stronger, it gives us compassion for those in need and as our character develops, you know what happens? We start experiencing hope.

And it’s not the sort of fleeting hope, it’s a hope that never disappoints. It’s not about me wallowing around saying, ‘Oh woe is me’ and carrying on. No, no. Because we’ve gone through suffering we get endurance, endurance produces character and the character produces hope and we rise above the pain.

Instead of being the victim we are the victor. Just like the athlete who’s broken through the pain barrier to win the race. And you see this hope that God talks about here through Paul never disappoints us because God’s poured His Spirit and His love into our hearts.

We meet God in the middle of our suffering. In fact as we grow through the suffering, as we leave the whole me, me, me thing behind we discover that God’s really already there ready waiting for us to live in Christ because He’s brought His Spirit into our hearts.

Friend, let me ask you this. Does that sound like a quick fix solution to you? Does that sound like, ‘Oh well I’ll just pop a pill and bingo in 10 minutes the pain will be gone’? NO, it’s not at all. Pain is so often a tool in God’s hands. And how skilful and how loving His hands are to lead us through that pain to develop endurance and from that character and from that hope.

A hope that never fails, that’s what God’s trying to do. With all that I am, let me say this, the times of the greatest pain in my life were the times I discovered God. Pain was the greatest opportunity that God ever handed me. To discover Him in a real way in my life.

And as much as I wouldn’t wish any of my pain, the pain that I’ve had to travel through, onto my worst enemy. You know something, I don’t think I’d swap it for anything in the world. I remember one time in particular a decade and a half ago, a time of great pain. And it was in the middle of that that I decided to search out this Jesus.

Now looking back on it now I know that this was by God’s grace that He put that desire in my heart. Back then I didn’t know that though. I just went looking for God in my pain. And ever since then I’ve discovered the powerful truthfulness of these words that the Apostle Paul writes out of his own trials and pains and afflictions and sufferings and imprisonment and beatings.

God isn’t interested in treating the symptoms, He wants to deal with the disease. He is in the business of cutting the cancer of sin out of our bodies so that we can be free indeed.

So as we look at the subject of pain over these coming weeks please don’t expect a quick fix. We’re not treating the symptoms, through God’s word we’re going straight to the disease.

Not sure if you’ve ever noticed, but growing up – well, growing up is hard work.  Going from this little baby completely dependent on our parents, to a fully-fledged adult.  And there are growing pains along the way.  Why is that – what causes that pain, why did God make it like that?  And what can we learn from it?

Can I tell you? One of the hardest things I’ve ever done in my life, in fact no, it’s more than that, without a doubt absolutely the hardest thing I’ve ever done in my life is, well it’s something we all have to do. It’s called growing up. Just stop and think about it for a minute.

We come into this world completely helpless. Absolutely dependant on our parents for everything, for life itself. I mean if they were to leave us completely alone within just a few days we’d be dead. And almost immediately the process of growing up begins.

Within a few months we’re smiling. By age two we want to throw tantrums and demonstrate our independence. We learn how to use cutlery, we learn how to take ourselves to the toilet. We go to school, we learn to read and write. And on and on it goes.

And I think the hardest part of that growing up is going through those teenage years. Leaving childhood behind and becoming an adult. But have you ever stopped to wonder why is it that growing up is so hard sometimes? Why are those teenage years so difficult? What’s this growing up all about?

Well here I think is the answer. Growing up is about moving from complete dependence on our parents to independence. And then from independence to interdependence. In other words when we’re children we’re dependant on mum and dad for food, clothes, a place to live, travel, love, nurture. All those things.

Little by little we learn to do things for ourselves and then, once we know how, we’re expected to get on and do those things. I remember when our kids were learning to read and write. Before they knew how they’d ask, ‘Daddy, what does that sign say?’ When they saw some bill board that grabbed their attention.

But once they could read and write, if they just got lazy and asked me to read a sign for them my answer was, ‘Well no, read it for yourself, you’re capable,’ because my job is to help them to grow up.

When you think about it growing up is about shifting responsibility and effort from our parents to ourselves. We take on more and more to the point that one day we’re ready to go out there into that big cruel world and take a job and become part of society and for most of us bring our own children into the world and start the whole cycle over again.

And the difficulties in the whole growing up process, the more I think about it, are in the transfer of responsibility from our parents to ourselves. Sometimes we kind of want to run ahead of that and sometimes we want to lag behind it.

For instance, what teenager hasn’t rolled their eyes in the back of their heads when their parents told them, ‘Now you’re not allowed to watch that movie or go to that place or stay that late’ or whatever it was. We think we know better. We want more freedom and that’s the currency of those who are immature, freedom.

But their parents are trading in a different currency. They’re trading in what? Well they’re trading in responsibility. And sometimes we want to lag behind. Sometimes we want to be lazy and have our parents serve us hand and foot, doing things that we’re more than capable of doing for ourselves.

Mum, can you get me a drink? I’ve often heard a teenager say in our house to which I would answer before mum could get off the lounge, ‘Get it yourself’. Why? It’s time to take responsibility. To each of my children somewhere along the line I’ve said this, ‘Don’t expect to be able to act like a child and then be treated like an adult’.

If you act like a child you’ll be treated like one. If you act like an adult, in fact if you demonstrate by what you say and do, with your attitudes that you’re growing up, that you’re maturing. That you have the wherewithal to deal with things then more and more we’ll treat you like an adult.

Teenagers want the best of both worlds. I did when I was a teenager. They want freedom and servants. It doesn’t work that way, at least it shouldn’t. That, that one issue is where 99.9% of the tension lies between teenagers and their parents.

The problem is many parents don’t teach their kids that and so they never ever grow up. I know of 30 year olds who live at home and don’t pay board and their mother still does their washing and ironing and cooking and cleaning. It’s time to grow up.

Now what if anything does this have to do with pain relief which is what we’ve been talking about over the last couple of days on the program. Well here it is. Emotionally some people never ever grow up. And when we don’t grow up, when we have a immature attitude to life that causes us a huge amount of pain, huge.

Have a listen to this; it comes from the New Testament, James chapter 1 beginning at verse 2:

My brothers and sisters whenever you face trials of any kind consider it nothing but joy because you know that the testing of your faith produces endurance and let endurance have it’s full affect so that you may be mature and complete and lacking in nothing.

Do you see what growing up is all about? Trials, tests and pain, all the things that come at us we’re supposed to grow up through them. We endure through them. And as we endure we become, listen to this, we become mature and complete and lacking in nothing.

I see many, many adults who are adults according to their age but children in their emotions. They throw tantrums, they want their own way, they can’t draw boundaries so they become victims. They don’t learn from their experiences. Being a teenager is painful sometimes, it’s about growing up through the trials and the pain and coming out the other side with a level of maturity.

But if we don’t do that, if we don’t grow up we end up caught in patterns of behaviour where over and over and over and over again we repeat the same mistakes with the same consequences and the same pains over and over. I love that bit that when we have trials that produces endurance and that endurance, when it has it’s full affect, makes us mature and complete and lacking in nothing.

In fact it makes us self sufficient. Sometimes, in fact often times, we experience pain because of our own immaturity. We haven’t learnt to handle difficult people with love and compassion and firmness and security in who we are as adults. So we experience emotional pain. We haven’t learned how to forgive people and so we carry around these hurts and we experience pain.

Now we’re all different you and I, perhaps you’re more of an emotional person than I am or perhaps you’re a logical thinker or perhaps you’re one of those happy go lucky personality types while I’m someone who’s more focused on crashing through using my strength.

We all have our different brands or styles of immaturity. A hard person can wallow in their emotions. A logical thinker hasn’t discovered that the rest of us aren’t like them so they get all frazzled with us. A happy go lucky person who likes to be liked is mortally wounded when the rest of us don’t pay them the attention that they desire.

And me, I operate mostly through my strength, I’ll just roll straight over the top of you if I’m having a moment of immaturity. Listen carefully, much of our pain in life is how we react to things and if we come at life through immaturity, if we haven’t grown up, if we don’t yet understand our weaknesses and just keep on living them out over and over again, listen, it’s going to be a painful life.

As hard as it may seem some people are travelling through pain because of their immaturity and for some of us it’s time to grow up. Growing up is hard but when we make the effort a lot of the pain evaporates because we’ve become mature and complete and lacking in nothing and that my friend is Gods plan for you and it’s Gods plan for me.

Going from childhood through to adulthood – well, the idea is that we’re supposed to grow up.  To mature – but the reality is that many of us actually never grow up – at least in some parts of our lives.  And that immaturity – well it’s a pain.  It causes us pain – and, just quietly – it’s a pain in the neck for everybody else.  

Yesterday on the program we were chatting about the fact that growing up is hard work. Moving from complete dependence on our parents to independence is a process and there are going to be bumps along the way. Sometimes we want to have a little tantrum and make like a kid.

Other times we wanted to pull ahead and have freedoms when we didn’t yet have the maturity to take responsibility. That’s where the tension lies when we’re growing up, especially in those teenage years. As teenagers we were trading in the commodity of freedom but our parents, they were trading in the currency of responsibility.

And so that’s why teenagers are often pulling against their parents. And the reason for chatting about this in the context of this series of short messages called ‘Pain Relief For The Soul’ is that many, many of us don’t ever really grow up. We carry around a lot of immaturity with us, we expect the world to revolve around us and that immaturity causes us pain.

James chapter 1 beginning at verse 2:

My brothers and sisters whenever you face trials of any kind consider it nothing but joy because you know that the testing of your faith produces endurance and let endurance have it’s full affect so that you may be mature and complete and lacking in nothing.

You see the point is we’re supposed to be mature. Maturity is a place of strength and compassion. A place of peace in the middle of the storm. Instead of clacking around like chickens with our heads cut off God wants us to be mature, complete and lacking in nothing.

Question is, where do we get it? Where do we get this maturity? How do we grow up?

A while ago I taught a series on air called ‘Wisdom That Works’ and that was all about the getting of wisdom. A core part of that, in fact the starting point comes to us in the Book of Proverbs. Proverbs chapter 9, verse 10:

The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom and the knowledge of the Holy One is insight.

And I guess what that really says to me is that growing up, becoming wise starts with honouring God. And that’s a huge come down because our natural position is that we’re in charge of our own lives. It’s that attitude of I’m in control that caused us to turn away from God in the first place.

The beginning of wisdom is a teachable heart. I want to talk about having a teachable heart today because this is a huge thing. When we’re open to learning, to instruction, to God’s wisdom, to reproof and to discipline that’s when we’re in a position to mature and to grow up. And when we do that a lot of the pain in our lives goes away.

Let me just give you one example before we dive into the teachable heart thing. I used to be very touchy, incredibly touchy about criticism. I always wanted to be right, I always wanted to win an argument, I always wanted everyone to agree with me.

Now I hope you’ll agree with me at this point, this is something of an immature position to have right? Wandering through life with that kind of immaturity, well it’s kind of like painting a target on your chest, you’re just going to get hurt because people just can’t help taking aim at that sort of stupidity and immaturity.

Now that was my brand of immaturity or at least one of them, there were definitely more and there are still some I’m working through. I’m sure that you have your brand of immaturity too, that place in your character where if you’re given half the opportunity you rather behave like a child than an adult.

Perhaps it’s a day by day victim mentality. Perhaps it’s always being hurt because people don’t meet up to our expectations and how we think we should be treated. It’s pretty much an endless list. But do you see how the immaturity that we carry around opens the door to a world of pain?

The world out there kind of expects us to be grown up and when, inside, we think and feel and behave like a child, well it’s bound to hurt. Maturity means growing up, it means a significant reduction in the pain that we’re going to experience. Can I just say that again? Maturity means growing up and it means a significant reduction in the pain we’re going to experience.

The question is, since we all have one or two specific flaws, specific areas of weakness in our different make ups. How do we go about growing up? Well let me bring you back at this point to the idea of having a teachable heart.

It dawned on me a decade and a half ago when I gave my life to Jesus. That as smart as I thought I was and as much as I’d relied on my own wits and my own strength and as much as I thought that I had my life pretty well on track, if I was completely honest with myself I had to admit that in many areas I’d made a complete hash of it.

Was I some kind of complete fruit cake or complete failure? No. By the worlds standards I looked pretty successful but on the inside where I lived and in my relationships, man I had made a mess of things. Can I tell you? That was not a happy realisation for me. It wasn’t something I enjoyed back then but it was a realisation that I’m benefiting from right now.

Because it was a step of humility that would never before have been possible. The realisation that I was making a hash of some of the things in my life was what got me to step down off my high horse and to admit I needed help. That was the beginning of wisdom for me. God’s way is right, I was getting it wrong.

And at that point I gained something I really had never had before. I gained a teachable heart. A heart that wasn’t primarily concerned with being right and what other people thought about me, that’s what kept me bound up in my immaturity in the first place.

Now it became a heart to honour God and to do that I had to relearn some of the things that were ruining my life. All of a sudden I wasn’t touchy anymore about criticism. Criticism is the opportunity to learn, to grow, to mature. Not all criticism is valid but some of it certainly is. Have a listen to this, Proverbs chapter 17, verse 10:

A rebuke strikes deeper into a discerning person than a hundred blows into a fool.

Don’t you love that? When we have a teachable heart a rebuke can be a huge blessing. When we’re closed people can beat us over the head with the same thing a hundred times and it still makes no difference. We stay there wallowing in our foolishness.

Admitting that we’re wrong is never fun, it’s never easy but when we do we’re open to a new way, a better way, a way that works, a way that leads us through our trials, through our suffering into maturity. And as we mature we suffer less. Pride keeps us immature; humility is the way to maturity.

Listen to this, a prayer of King David when he was turning back to God after having committed adultery. Psalm 51, verse 17:

The sacrifice acceptable to God is a broken spirit, a broken and contrite heart O God you will not despise.

Contrition, humble heart, ready to learn from God, there is the beginning of wisdom, there is the beginning of growing up, there is the beginning of maturity, there is the beginning of removing a whole bunch of pain from our lives and that contrition, that open teachable heart that hungers to honour God, that’s something that God blesses.

Isaiah chapter 66, verse 2:

All these things my hand has made and so all these things are mine, says the Lord, but this is the one to whom I will look. The humble and the contrite in spirit who trembles at my word.

God shows mercy to the humble but He always, always opposes the proud. So, how about it? Is it time to grow up?

Sometimes we make the same mistake over and over and over again.  With exactly the same disastrous results.  A bit like Pavlov’s dogs.  Stimulus – response.  Stimulus – response.  A vicious circle and it causes pain repeating the same mistakes all the time.  So how do we break out of that cycle??

Back in the 1890’s Russian scientist Ivan Petrovich Pavlov was investigating the digestive system of dogs. He was collecting their saliva to see what response it had to food under different conditions. It’s not for everyone I guess but hey it’s a living.

Now what he noticed was that dogs tended to salivate before the food was actually delivered to their mouths. Now he decided this was far more interesting than the saliva itself so his research headed down this different path. And he discovered what he called conditional reflexes.

That is reflex responses like salivation that only occurred conditionally upon specific previous experiences of the animal. Now this became hugely well known, who would have expected it? But Pavlov’s dogs today are still talked about and generally are pretty well known.

And it’s all about stimulus and response. Dogs received a certain stimulus and they naturally reacted in a certain way. In fact it was even possible to have them learn that a stimulus that in and of itself had nothing to do with food was nevertheless a pre cursor to food being delivered. And at the sign of that unrelated stimulus they would begin to salivate.

That’s called associative learning. Stimulus – response, stimulus – response, stimulus – response, over and over and over again. So what if anything do these dogs have to do with you and me?

Well these early experiments formed the basis of human behavioural research and therapies. There was another well known experiment called the Little Albert Experiment. Here’s the Wikipedia entry on this, have a listen.

John B Watson founder of behaviourism demonstrated classical conditioning empirically through experimentation using the Little Albert experiment in which a child, called Albert, was presented with a white rat. After a control period in which the child reacted normally to the presence of the rat, the experimenters paired the presence of the rat with a loud jarring noise caused by clanging two pipes together behind the child’s head.

As the trials progressed the child began to show signs of distress at the sign of the rat even when unaccompanied by the frightening noises. Further more the child demonstrated generalisation of the stimulus associations and showed distress when presented with any white furry object even such things as a rabbit, a dog, a fur coat and a Santa Claus mask with hair.

Isn’t that fascinating stuff and whilst I’m no psychologist it kind of really rings true with me. We learn things in our life, for better or for worse, there’s no formalised curriculum on growing up, we just grow up. We learn some good things and we learn some bad things too.

Sometimes there was a person or a situation in our childhood that caused us pain. Perhaps a teacher with severe looking glasses. I had one such teacher, Miss Williams, in 3rd grade who had such a pair of dark rimmed glasses. Bakelite, severe looking glasses over which she appeared to me to scowl down her nose at us.

To this day and I’m now over the 50 year mark, to this day when I see someone with a pair of glasses that look like Miss Williams glasses I have to work against having a reaction to them and being deeply suspicious of them. Isn’t that amazing?

We’re amazingly complex and so we learn these responses to different stimuli and we’re prone to repeating them over and over and over and over again in our lives. And so often those responses bring pain.

Let’s say you suffered rejection from someone you loved as a child. Chances are that the moment there’s a sniff of rejection from anyone now that you’re an adult, all sorts of protective responses come trotting out. Withdrawal or aggression. However you learned to cope with rejection back then is bound to repeat itself again today.

And one of the places where we learned many if not most of our responses was through our parents. And they learned them from their parents and their parents learned them from … well you get it right? Isn’t it obvious how bad behaviours can get handed down from generation to generation, stimulus – response. Just like Pavlov’s dogs.

And so many of us live our lives just like little Albert. He sees a harmless fluffy white rabbit and cringes because he associates it with something bad. Now call me crazy and some people do, but I just don’t think God wants us to live our lives that way, do you? I just don’t think that’s good for us.

Because it means that the pains of the past are alive and well and thriving in our lives robbing us of the good life that Jesus came to give us. It’s one thing to know that this is happening. A lot of people know that they’re caught in a repetitive trap of anger or the feeling of victimisation or disappointment, whatever it is but the question is, is there some way out or is it a life long trap?

I want to take you to two Scriptures today to show you that not only is this cycle in God’s eyes already broken but also that there is a way out. The first is the position that you’re in after you’ve put your faith in Jesus Christ. 2 Corinthians chapter 5, verses 16 and 17:

From now on therefore we regard no one from a human point of view even though we once knew Christ from a human point of view. We no longer know Him that way so if anyone is in Christ there is a new creation. Everything old has passed away, see everything has become new.

In other words stop looking at this from a human point of view, from a natural perspective because if we keep doing that then we have to come to the conclusion that there’s no way out. But when we look at ourselves from God’s perspective, through His eyes, well it’s completely obvious.

Anyone who believes in Jesus is a new creation. It’s as though they’ve been born again. All the old things have passed away and look, says Paul, see everything is made new. In other words I don’t care what it looks like from a human stand point, the past is completely irrelevant. It has no power, no hold, no dominion over anyone who believes in Jesus. That’s God’s truth.

And the second thing is, well how do we appropriate that truth? How do we lay hold of it, own it, live it, benefit from it? The answer, not surprisingly, is also in God’s word. Romans chapter 12, verses 1 and 2:

I appeal to you therefore brothers and sisters by the mercies of God to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God which is your spiritual worship. Don’t be conformed to this world but be transformed by the renewing of your minds so that you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.

Two things. Firstly give your life over to God holus bolus. Everything, be a living sacrifice and then, instead of conforming to the worlds view, the same old same old stimulus response like Pavlov’s dogs, instead of living life like little Albert get God to transform you by the renewing of your mind.

Then you’ll figure it all out, then you’ll know His will for your life and my friend, without knowing it that’s exactly what started to happen in my life. I went to God, I gave it all to Him but then something else, I started spending time in His word, actually reading it, thinking about it, listening to others speaking, thinking about that and that’s how He changed my mind.

If we had another few hours I could share with you all the things He set me free from. Now when a stimulus comes along I’m able to break the cycle and come up with a different response. Not because I’m clever but because God’s word became part of my DNA.

God’s word is written on the very fabric of my being. Now I truly am a new creation, old things have passed away, all things are new.