Credit: Creative Commons, Chantel Baggley

Show me a man’s wounds, and I’ll show you his purpose. ~via Jimmy Evans

Do you believe your pain is preparing you for something greater?

My conviction is that we should not only believe this, but EXPECT it! Throughout Scripture (& history), God uses the hard edges of pain to etch out His future ministry for people…

God molded Joseph’s heart & character in a jail cell for 13 years. He taught this immature teenager how to be faithful in an unlikely place (as manager over Potiphar’s household & then the prison he lived in), which prepared Joseph to steward faithfully in a world torn by severe famine.

God molded David’s heart through King Saul’s sadistic & abusive behavior towards the shepherd boy. Young David learned how to lead (and NOT lead) & how to love his enemies by living under Saul’s poor, ungodly leadership (two lessons that served David time & time again as king!).

God’s molded my heart to encourage hurting people due to my darkest times – years when I was hard-pressed to find a close friend to help me through. I now have radar for people walking a similar journey & seek to lift them up however I can.

God’s likely doing a similar work in your life to bring joy – even passion – out of your difficulty. If we’ll be patient, we may just see Him reveal a glorious new purpose & vision through our trials.

Pastor Jimmy Evans (of Marriage Today Ministries) made an excellent point in a recent article:

Whenever Satan sees someone born with a unique talent or ability, he instinctively understands that God must have a special purpose in mind for that person—and he goes on the attack.

Why does God allow this pain? It’s to prepare us for His purpose.

God has a dream for your life, and He has a dream for mine. Realized dreams are almost always the product of gifts and wounds working together in the human heart. God uses both to make us into what He wants us to become.

On the other side of pain, we find our purpose. I believe in every human heart, we long to see redemption of the hard places we’ve walked through – divorce, a child dying, abuse, financial stress, illness.

After tough times, our instinct is to seek out & encourage people experiencing similar pain. Many families of the deceased set up foundations in their name to help people with similar ailments. In this way, they honor their loved ones & find new purpose in their heartache. This is how Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD) and Tony Dungy’s All Pro Dad got their start.

It is a beautiful thing ~ our desire to redeem the hurt places in our past ~ and perhaps it’s part of God’s design for our lives. Maybe He lets us walk through challenges today because He knows tomorrow someone will need our godly perspective, our compassion, or our help.

I don’t believe God causes every loss & trouble we encounter, but He knows what we’ll walk through in life & has a plan to redeem every dark place for a cause beyond ourselves.

God promises to redeem even our toughest times. I find such hope & encouragement in this! Even when I’ve felt most defeated (many times!), God’s used that pain & struggle to mold me into a stronger woman than I would’ve been had life always gone my way.

Maybe we can begin viewing our biggest challenges as signs pointing us to God’s greater purpose for us in it. Instead of saying “Why me?”, maybe we can start asking God “Who can I help?”

Well-known Christian financial guru Dave Ramsey experienced complete bankruptcy & near divorce in his early years, and he’s said publically that this is what drives him to help others discover how to manage money biblically. He’s used his former heartbreak and the collapse of everything he once depended on to rebuild his life (a better way) & teach millions of Americans how to achieve financial freedom, too.

That’s the kind of story I want. That’s the kind of story I believe God is weaving in my life and yours. I don’t want to fight the process, even when I don’t understand it. I want to be a vessel He one day uses to touch other people’s lives because I gave Him permission to use my hardships for His purposes.

I’m encouraged that I don’t suffer for naught, and neither do you. He is repurposing our pain, if we’ll just give Him the reins. 

There is a famous quote that says, “God can heal a broken heart, but you have to give Him all the pieces.” So will you trust Him with it?

Who knows what beauty He will create out of the ashes of your past. I’m just excited to see it unfold.

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction, with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God. For as we share abundantly in Christ’s sufferings, so through Christ we share abundantly in comfort too.

~2 Cor. 1