Pain and Prayer

Pain is a theme in nearly every book of the Bible, and as Christians experience pain, those pages come to life in a new way. Like Job, David, Solomon, and even Jesus Himself, we pray for relief from pain and trials. And this is not a wrong reaction to pain. God wants His children to bring Him every concern and need in prayer, and we are given wonderful examples of this in Scripture. But Scripture gently prompts us to consider a truth that can be hard to swallow: sometimes the relief we seek isn't as beneficial as the message God may be conveying through our pain.

In the hands of a good and sovereign Father, pain is never meaningless. From our limited perspective, it can feel frightening, chaotic, and even cruel, but it is not random. God does not allow His children to pass through meaningless trials while He stands at a distance unmoved.

In a hymn written in 1787 entitled “How Firm a Foundation,” the hymn-writer reminds the Christian that their suffering is never endured alone, nor is it pointless.

Verse 3

“When through the deep waters I call thee to go,
The rivers of sorrow shall not overflow;
For I will be with thee, thy troubles to bless,
And sanctify to thee thy deepest distress.”

Verse 4

“When through fiery trials thy pathway shall lie,
My grace, all sufficient, shall be thy supply;
The flame shall not hurt thee; I only design
Thy dross to consume, and thy gold to refine.”

Life’s troubles purify us and sanctify us, like gold refined by fire. We may want to escape, and God may grant it… But His desire is primarily that we be transformed.

The prayer of Jesus

But how can we align our hearts and minds to the will of God in those situations? We may not be able to in the moment. That kind of clarity often comes later, after the pain has passed or the trial has been endured. Thankfully, God has provided us the ultimate example in the account of Jesus in the garden of Gethsemane.

On the night of His betrayal, on the very threshold of His suffering on the cross, Jesus prayed to His Father. He prayed with such intense need that we are told His sweat was like drops of blood. And His prayer was one of the most shocking prayers recorded in the Bible: “Father, if You are willing, remove this cup from Me.”

Jesus, God the Son, praying that God might find another way, a way to accomplish the work of salvation that did not require that particular suffering. This was a God-honoring and truthful prayer. Not symbolic or a mere formality. It was the prayer of a Man who knew the character of the God He was praying to, and enjoyed unbroken closeness with Him.

But Jesus did not stop there. In a posture of obedience that we could not possibly understand, He said, “Nevertheless, not My will, but Yours be done.”

This is not just inspiration or an example for the suffering Christian, not just a heroic image to aspire to or a high standard to attain. Jesus prayed this prayer for those times we cannot. His perfect, honest, unflinching, all-feeling obedience, even to death on the cross and suffering unimaginable, is applied to us because we will and always do fall short.

When God looks upon His trembling, confused, hurting children who do not know what to pray, Jesus is there beside Him as a reminder that His perfect obedience is to be considered ours. This is where we can find rest in the storm… not that we will think or feel perfectly as we should, but we can grasp onto Jesus, who is perfect for us.

Faith in a God Who is good

But when we come out of the storm and can see more clearly, that is when we can see God without the distortion of our subjective experience. Jesus called Him Father. So should we. He is not cruel. He does not delight in hurting His creatures, and certainly not His children. We only have to look at the cross to banish that lie. God is always good, compassionate, merciful, delighting to give His children good things that they need, heaping so much love and grace upon this world so that all its sin and wickedness is far outweighed.

We can hold all of this and still honestly acknowledge that not all pain or trials are good in themselves. Evil is still evil. Jesus wept at the tomb of Lazarus, even as He knew the resurrection was only moments away. Grief and sorrow are not signs of weak faith, for even God is sorrowful over sin. When we pray for relief from pain, we aren’t doing something wrong. God will often answer those requests by removing or relieving the pain.

However, a prayer that is honest about who God is will request something greater: for the heart to be aligned with God’s will. God sees a bigger picture than we do, and if He is the kind of God who dies on a cross for His enemies, we can expect nothing but goodness from Him.

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