Do you struggle to find purpose in pain? Do you get to the end of a difficult season and feel like you just wasted that time getting nowhere in life? Read on to get 7 important reasons that we experience pain to move forward in life.
No one is immune to pain.
We all experience difficult circumstances that leave us feeling lonely, empty, hurt, and discouraged.
Whatever it is you are going through, your pain is valid.
You are allowed to feel upset and downtrodden.
As humans, we can’t be expected not to feel our experiences.
I am not here today to make you feel happy, but I do hope that this message can encourage you in the midst of your distress.
Along with sadness, we often ask, “What is the purpose of this pain?”
Pain is not something God ever wanted for you, but he does find a way to redeem the situation.
Pain itself is not purposeful, but with God’s intervention, he can turn it into something valuable and beautiful.
Furthermore, we can ask him for that in the midst of our suffering.
These circumstances that bring us to the brink of our sanity, that leave us crying ourselves to sleep at night, can be used to develop you and grow you into deeper maturity than you ever could have reached without it.
Today, I want to give you 7 truths that you can hold on to in the midst of your struggles to give you hope and encouragement. I hope they help!
7 Reasons that Seasons of Pain are Good for Your Personal Growth
Lesson #1: Without our pain, we would fall short of our potential.
Take fruits and vegetables, for example.
They are out in the fields day and night, subject to every brutal heat and every heavy rain. But when they’ve made it out of all the difficulty, they are the most delicious foods you could find.
Many people use different technologies to speed up the process and to make things a little easier on the plant. However, when we do this, the food always loses a bit of its flavour.
In trying to bypass the potential pain, the fruit no longer tastes the way it was made to taste.
In the same way, we can experience incredible growth when we experience seasons of pain. Without those challenging moments, we would remain the same bland and unchanging person that we were at birth.
We can find hope in the knowledge that our painful experiences are being used to mould us into something better.
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Lesson #2: We can find purpose in pain when we see that our pain can be a blessing to ourselves and those around us.
Consider a well-known tale called The Three Little Pigs.
It is a story about three brothers who built their own houses. In it, we see the consequences of refusing to accept pain into our lives.
The first two brothers found the lightest, cheapest material they could find. This is because they didn’t want to pain themselves with excessive work or heavy, difficult labour.
But the third brother chose quality materials and slaved over his house. As a result, he likely experienced a season of pain.
For example, he was mocked by his brothers, he suffered exhaustion on a daily basis, and he lost precious time doing other things he loved.
If you’ve already heard the story, though, you’d know that his pain was more than worth it in the end.
When faced with death, his sturdy house protected him and his (albeit lazy) loved ones.
Where can we find purpose in pain in this story?
His season of pain allowed him a season of comfort, protection, peace, and love after he made it through.
Not only did his pain develop him, but it served as a blessing for his family, as well.
I’ve often found that personal pain can be used as a place to help other people struggling with the same thing later on.
When you experience loss, for example, you can now be a greater comfort to those who need support in their own season of loss.
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Lesson #3: Our pain serves the purpose of paving the way for something new to grow in our lives.
There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under heaven.
Ecclesiastes 3:1
When you are in one season of life, it often feels like that is the only season you will ever be in.
It is hard to find purpose in pain at these times. But you can find hope in the knowledge that eventually, the season changes and the pain will become something new.
You can even see this pattern in the earth’s seasons.
For example, I’m not a winter person. I think the snow is pretty for a while, but eventually, the cold starts to get to me.
As a result of the cold, my mood gets low, I lack energy and appetite, and I have trouble seeing past the bleak skies of white.
I begin to feel like winter is all I’ve ever known!
Dramatic, I know, but then spring comes, I start to get hopeful for the light of summer to break through.
In the same way, we have emotional seasons ourselves. We have seasons of learning and trial, and we also have seasons of peace and abundance. Each season paves the way for the next.
Don’t try to fly south when the winter comes. Experience it fully and let it shape you into something better.
Lesson #4: Dealing with Pain Takes Practice- Lots of It!
When we teach children a new skill, it takes time.
But nobody learns to read in a day.
It requires constant practice, tons of repetition, and a thousand failures before they get it.
As a teacher, one of the biggest concerns I would get from parents was “My child can’t read higher levels yet. What can I do?” The best advice I could give them was to simply engage in reading as much as possible.
Usually, they would hate this advice and ask for worksheets to give the kids instead. But it is common knowledge in the education community that if it looks like a “quick fix”, it won’t work!
In other words, children need to engage in their learning.
They need to try, to fail, and to try again as long as it takes.
But children are incredibly resilient. They come back every day, ready to try again, excited for the day they can finally read that big book they saw their dad reading the other day.
Why can’t we steal a bit of that resilience in the midst of our struggle?
Our season of pain is also a season of learning, and eventually, we will ‘graduate’ much more mature than we were at the beginning.
But it takes practice. LOTS of practice.
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Lesson #5: The pain you experience is teaching you something and it is shaping you into someone who can handle bigger and better things.
Whatever you have learned or received or heard from me, or seen in me-put it into practice. And the God of peace will be with you.
Philippians 4:9 (NIV)
Some time ago, there was a study that addressed how long it takes to become an expert in something.
The general consensus was that it takes about 10,000 hours of practice to become highly proficient in any area.
Obviously, practice is important in every area of life.
But wait.
Later on, a stipulation was made to this guideline. Not only do you need 10,000 hours of practice- that practice time doesn’t count at all if you were just breezing by.
No, you need 10,000 hours of BRUTAL practice.
10,000 hours of working past your comfort zone.
10,000 painful hours of working through the parts you just can’t figure out.
Even skills require seasons of pain before you become proficient!
Seasons of pain help us grow and develop, and they usually require us to have multiple experiences with the same difficulties to help us fully develop into who we are meant to be.
But pain doesn’t just make us stronger; it takes steps in perfecting us to be the beautiful creations we were made to be.
Lesson #6: Our pain molds us into who we were meant to be.
Think of anyone who does sculpting from stone or ice. They are taking a chisel and scraping off every piece that is not needed. We have a chisel hammering away at our lives, too.
At times, it feels like we’re falling apart.
We watch the pieces fall off of us, feeling like we are losing a part of ourselves.
We may be losing a part of what we had, but it was not a piece that we needed.
In fact, the pieces that got chipped away were pieces that were stopping people from seeing the beautiful artwork inside.
When the sculptor has finished his work, all that remains are the pieces that were meant to be there, and we see the beauty of the finished piece, all of the bad things chipped away and left behind.
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Lesson #7: Our pain is an experience that adds value to our lives, even when we cannot see how.
Consider a puzzle.
All of the pieces are there, but they make no sense until they start coming together to create one picture.
Everything we experience in our own lives, whether pain or pleasure, is a part of our own puzzle.
Each experience on its own seems worthless, but as you start to collect those pieces and put them together, they create an amazing, cohesive, complete picture at the end.
In the midst of our pain, it often feels like we are holding a single puzzle piece, and we wonder how on earth it fits with anything else on the table.
But eventually, it finds its place and we can see the big picture.
And without that piece, the picture would have been lacking a vital part of the picture.
Even when you can’t find purpose in pain, you can feel confident it is there.
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If you are in the midst of a season of pain in your life, don’t lose hope!
Look at how far you’ve already come, what you’ve learned in the process, and what you might be learning through this trial.
You will not be left unfinished, but the molding will take a lifetime.
You can have confidence that even this painful time can be turned into something valuable and good.
This time of pain will certainly be unpleasant, and you are allowed to feel sad, but with prayer and a heart for the Lord, God can take this horrible time and redeem it. He alone can help you find purpose in pain.
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