Made for Pain

Well, I do want to welcome those who just joined us as we are now going into the sermon part of our service. We're glad that you could join us today. As we know, there's other services around the country where they have postponed them until next week. So we're glad if you took your time out on this Sabbath day to join us here in South Florida. The title of today's sermon is Made for Paint.

Made for Paint. Three hundred years before Jesus Christ walked on this earth, there was a Greek philosopher named Epicurus. Epicurus said nature, his way of saying, nature has placed mankind with the governance of two sovereign masters, pleasure and paint. Even Sigmund Freud brought this out over two thousand years later in some of his talks about what motivates individuals, what motivates us as human beings. I wonder, though, if that concept was really originated by Epicurus, who believed in the Epicurean idea was kind of founded by him of enjoyment and pleasure above all else.

Really, you go back to biblical times when God was talking to the children of Israel after they had left Egypt. And he brought out the concept in Deuteronomy 28 of blessings and cursings. And when you read blessings and cursings, you find out that God has promised you of life of pleasure or paint. And that they are not new concepts. He promised to bless you if you did this and that there would be cursings if you followed this way of life. Do we understand that simple concept today as people following God, people who profess to follow God?

Motivational speaker Tony Robbins brought this up to the 21st century when he would be discussing the two greatest motivations in life are pleasure and pain. Pleasure or pain? And that all decisions in life can come down to two decisions. Making that decision for pleasure or making that decision to avoid pain. You know, it's a concept that is taught today. I wonder if we truly understand that. I thought about that just the other day as I was coming through the airport in Montego Bay.

And as I usually walk through the airport, there's this stand that sells cinnabons. Cinnabon. In case you've never had one, they're a cinnamon bun humongous thing for you to eat. And the thing about cinnabons is you can smell them before you ever get there. And the smell and the icing and everything that they put on them, it kind of draws you to that as you smell that. Ahhhh! Cinnabon. Pleasure or pain? You see people who go and get them. Because the pleasure of eating them is much stronger than the worry of pain.

Because you have to understand there's almost 900 calories in this cinnamon treat that you would eat. 900 calories, 36 grams of fat in that roll. As good as it smells, that's the amount of grams of fat that's recommended for the entire day for the typical human being.

So as you can see, you wouldn't have to eat that and nothing else all day long. But then there are people who love to eat that, and they're willing to eat that. It's like working out. Whether you go to a gym and work out. There is pain involved in sometimes, especially when you get started working out, you're sore the next day. So it's like, oh, do I want to do this? But after you see, after a person has done it a while, they get pleasure out of it. Because they can then maybe eat more than they would any other time. They can feel better or they can feel stronger on their jobs.

Pleasure or pain? Most of us understand pleasure. Nobody has to explain pleasure to us because we know it when we see it. We know it when we feel it, and we know what makes us happy in life. And we tend to want to follow pleasure. But what rules us? Is it to gain pleasure or to avoid pain? Or do we look at pain perhaps differently than we should?

Are we afraid of pain? I want to go into that today and ask the question, were you made for pain? Were you made for pain? Jesus Christ, our model, our Savior, our Messiah, was made for pain. Have you ever considered that? Did He model some things for us that we would have in the human condition?

Think about it. The Scripture says that He was slain from the foundations of the world. Pain. Pain is what He was facing. But it's interesting because you take Christ when He was the Word, and He was with the Father. The Word weighed His deity, and our potential, and our potential weighed more than the pain He would have to suffer.

The pleasure He would have of seeing His family, the family of God, become all that they had planned, willing to be slain from the foundations of the world. Just think about that. Christ was born, even with pain. That was His mother. It was not necessarily pleasure that they had to get up and go to Egypt to flee because people were trying to inflict pain. They were there to kill the Christ child. Hmm.

Christ was born to suffer. If you read Psalm 22, the first 20 verses, you see there that it describes the suffering and the pain that the Messiah would have to go through to fulfill His destiny so that we as humans can fulfill our destiny. Imagine that.

Reading that scripture, reading that scripture, or the many that were in Psalm 22, as a child, perhaps Christ read those.

Knowing that was His future, the pain that would be involved, that He was reading writings that were written a thousand years before Him about the suffering He would have to go through.

Perhaps that is what He even discussed with the leaders when He was 12 years old at the temple. He asked them questions and they talked back and forth and they were amazed at the spirituality of this young 12-year-old. It must have weighed on His mind. I mean, think about it. The time He was born to the time He died, He experienced pain. We experience pain in different levels, in different ways, but what about the pain? Think about God calling the greatest man He could find on the entire planet to be the stepfather of His Son.

Had to be an incredible individual because He had the whole planet to pick from.

And He chose this man to help raise His Son.

And by the time we know that Christ was 30, He was no longer in the picture.

And most theologians say He died somewhere between that time.

So Christ, as a young person, had to deal with death. Death of someone that He loved. Death that was someone that His mother came together and was with before He was even born.

And imagine how it affected her. And Christ saw this pain. Had to have inexperienced it. And then, not long after that, the another greatest man on the face of the earth, born of woman, as Jesus Christ Himself said, that happened to be Christ's first cousin, was taken and beheaded.

Was there pain?

Pain in all of John, but pain for Christ, as this was not only a relative, but one that was appointed by God to come before Christ in His ministry.

And then we have the ministry that He was doing.

And when you really read the Gospels, you find that His whole entire family, from His mother to His brothers and even His sisters, they were embarrassed by the ministry in which Christ had come to earth to give. They were embarrassed because the leaders were all against the spiritual, the religious leaders, I guess you'd have to say religious more than spiritual, were against this against these teachings, against this this ministry that Christ was doing. And you find it wasn't until after His death did Christ's family actually begin to understand what He was doing and why He did what He did and became followers of His ministry. But imagine standing before thousands of people and the religious leaders at that time called you a bastard, said that you were born of fornication! Painful, I'm sure. Mentally, yes, as He was trying to do the work, He had to fight a battle spiritually, mentally, and physically even at the end.

Remember the test on the mountain by Satan? The spiritual battle that had to take place and how Satan came and tested him, tempted him after 40 days of fasting, physical pain by that time, and then mentally trying to to to have the foresight to know what to say and how to say it, even though he was God in the flesh. He found out how weak the human condition can get after fasting, being weak physically, something he had never, I'm sure, even experienced or even tested or even thought about before that time. And the spiritual battle as Jeff mentioned earlier, we cannot wrestle against flesh and blood. How about us?

Are we preparing to be made for pain because it is going to happen? I think about the historian Tacitus, the Roman historian, and in one of his writings he talks about this supposed Jewish Messiah that he he had heard about, and so he heard about that death that happened in Jerusalem. So he went and interviewed one of the guards, one of the centurions, who was there where the crucifixion took place. And the only thing the man really remembered was that the mother of Christ came where those three men were hanging on a piece of wood, and she looked up and she asked the centurion, which one is my son?

Because she couldn't even recognize him. He was beaten so badly that the mother couldn't even identify him. Pain? Yes. This is what he endured for us. We bring this out every year at Passover. We talk about what he did for us. But imagine your life being full of pain.

He prepared himself for that. Let's look at Luke 24. Let's go to the Bible. You have your Bible, pull it out. Let's go to Luke 24. Verse 46. This is after he died, after he was resurrected, standing with his disciples. And then he said to them, Thus it is written, and thus it was necessary for the Christ to suffer, sending them of pain. It was necessary for Christ to have pain and to rise from the dead the third day. He knew he was going to do that. And that repentance and remission of sin should be preached in his name to all nations, beginning at Jerusalem. And you are what? Witnesses of these things.

You saw everything he was telling his disciples. You saw me in pain. You saw the resurrection. You saw everything that was done. Now prepare yourself. Prepare yourselves, because he had a job for them to do. So let's go to Acts 5. Acts 5. It's a little after Christ, after Pentecost, and you had the disciples gathering, and what were they doing? They were preaching. Reaching, and they pulled them in. You can't do this. Actually, if you read earlier in chapter 5, they wanted to kill them. Let's get together, because we don't want them doing what Christ did, and hear this. We need to put them down. We need to kill them, except for Gamalia, a great rabbi at the time who happened to be the grandson of the heralded Hillel. Told them, no, no, because if it's of God, we can't stop it.

But if it's not, it'll die of its own. And then we come to verse 40. And they agreed with him, this Gamalia, and when they had called for the apostles, and what? Slapped their hands. No, beaten them. They took rods and beat them across the back, many, many times. After they had beaten them, talking about physical pain, they commanded that they should not speak in the name of Jesus and let them go. So what happened? So they departed from the president of the council, rejoicing, rejoicing, yeah, hey, rejoicing that they were counted worthy to suffer shame for his name.

Because it was a shame to be, not only physically, but mentally, as people were talking about this.

They were counted worthy. They enjoyed. They were like, yes, we were able to suffer because they saw what Christ had done for them. The weeks earlier, the months earlier. And now, they were following his example, and they could be like him. Why? Because these disciples were made for pain. How about Paul? So look at that. If you'll turn in your in your Bible to Acts 9 and verse 16 here, Ananias was brought and said, hey, you got to go talk to this blind man that I blinded over here. Because Paul, he's a vessel I'm going to use. And God then said, for I will show him, Paul, how many things he must suffer, suffer, pain, pain. Why? For my name's sake.

Paul was made for pain. Yes, was he going to be painful? Yes, but he would endure. He would endure it all. He would endure to the end. And brethren, that's our job also. Can we endure to the end? Can we be examples like Christ, like the disciples, like Paul was? Are we prepared? Can we handle physical, mental, spiritual pain? That is before us. So Christ was made for pain. What about you? What about you? Have you considered this? Or is it like, well, I have a low tolerance for pain.

Well, physically, how are you mentally? Well, I have a low tolerance for mental pain. I don't really want that. What about spiritually? Are you strong when it comes to Satan attacking you and realizing when he has had the best of you? So you, me, we should be made for pain. We have to be prepared for pain because it's a condition of life. Yes, we know about pleasure, but what about this pain? Are we willing to face it? Are we willing to do the things we need to do? Let's go to Psalm. Let's talk about you and me. You and I. Let's talk about that. Psalm 34 verse 15.

This just feels so good. When you read this, it's like empowering man. I feel good. This is a pleasure. This is a pleasure when you read those scriptures. The eyes of the Lord are on the righteous. We strive to be righteous. We need to be righteous. We have to be righteous. It's something that we need to be working on every day. And if we are, and his ears are open to our cries. Wow! Verse 16. And the face of the Lord is against those who do evil. Man, that's a pleasure to me. Man, I can feel good. I can get up every morning and go, all right!

God's got this. To cut off the remembrance of them from the earth. Sounding better. 17. And the righteous cry out, and the Lord hears. Wow, this is David's writing, so he knows. He cried out, and the Lord hears, and delivers them out of their troubles. Doesn't that sound good? But, wait a minute. You mean, I thought, why do I have to have troubles?

Wait a minute, troubles is in there. Oh, wait a minute. I like the other part. I like the pleasure part. Delivers them out of all their troubles. Oh, man, that's, that gives me something to think about. Let us go to 18. The Lord is near to those who have a broken heart and save such as have a conjurite spirit. Well, that makes me feel better. I'm back in a pleasure zone again. Oh, yeah, God's, oh, yeah, me and God, we'll stick with this thing. But then, you go down to verse 19. Many are the what? Many are the, many are the, oh, afflictions. Wait a minute, that has something to do with pain. That has something to do with pain. Many are the afflictions of the righteous. Well, wait a minute, I'm righteous. I thought he handled all this. He says he takes you from your trouble, doesn't say he keeps you from it. Did it? We get ourselves into some. Frankly, we deserve some.

But many are the afflictions of the righteous, but the Lord delivers him out of them all.

He sees the end zone, not the 50-yard line. And sometimes we have to go through 50 yards of of pain, 50 yards of afflictions, because there's something about the righteousness that will come out on the other side that he's all about. And that's something most of us, we have experienced that before. You know, no one likes pain, but people live with pain. And the sad part I was just talking to Jeff Newell the other day about it. The older you get, the more pain you have in your life physically. Now, maybe there's some out there, but for the majority of us, the older you get, the more pain you have in life, because this physical tent, this body, is wearing out. And when we're younger, we don't think about it wearing out. We just want to do whatever we want to do. That's why I have two bad knees, a bad back, and a lot of other things that I didn't really have affected me 10 years ago, 15 years ago, and 20 years ago. But I do now. And it's amazing how, as you get older, you learn to live with certain things. You learn to manage pain. You begin to think about it. This is just a bump in the road. I can deal with this. You've learned to manage it, like pleasure and pain. When we're younger, oh man, I just want that pleasure. You know, when you're a kid, I remember my parents, I would get so upset because we'd have a day of playing out in the yard playing in a playground. And then they'd go, come on, we got to go home. No!

I'm having such a good time. I don't want to stop. What's wrong with you people? Well, we got to go home. We got to go to work. Well, quit work. Enjoy pleasure. Don't cut me short.

When you're a teenager, wow, staying up and doing this, watching movies, playing games, all these kind of things, it's just like, you can go till two in the morning, three in the morning. I remember those times because it was, I didn't want to go to bed because I love the pleasure.

But as you get older, you begin to know the pleasures can still be there, but in smaller increments because you have life to live. And then life, as we live it, you begin to see that there are certain conditions that exist. You have to work for a living. Sometimes you have to work a long hour. Sometimes you have to work two jobs. In the Caribbean, we have a lot of people work two jobs just to get by, and that wears you down. And it's sometimes painful getting up and going to work doing these things. In the United States, we have an elite group of men called the Navy Seals. The Navy Seals, they are the top of their field. They have incredible training.

And I've read two or three books because I admire the tenacity. I admire what they go through. Not that I'm promoting you need to be a Navy Seal because most of us couldn't. They're so elite.

But they are our soldiers, the top of the line soldiers. And they go through incredible training. And it's amazing because one of them said that to get through and to be a Navy Seal, pain must be your friend. You must learn because they put them through such rigorous training.

It's getting up early in the morning. As a matter of fact, at the end when they're going through buds and when they're in the last week of their training, which most of them drop out, very few get to be a Navy Seal because physically they put you through tests that every man just you want to quit. And they want to see if you have the tenacity to stay through.

But they not only test you physically, they test you mentally. The last week you go through this grueling workout. And so the last week you get six hours of sleep in seven days.

Stay up and keep doing. They intentionally have you go to sleep for 30 or 40 minutes and then wake you up and go! And you just have to be at risk. And as many of those said, it was, you know, your mind. The only thing that's controlling your body is your mind. Because your body can't go, but your mind's telling it it can. Because your body is in such pain, but your mind is controlling your body. That's what God says as a man. Think as so he is. So we also are like spiritual Navy Seals. We're being trained now to endure, to be tested, to be spiritually strong, to be mentally strong, and even to the point of physically strong, where we don't give up.

One Navy Seals said, painting is training. It's just what they do. And they do that till they are out of the Navy Seals. As a matter of fact, in Seal Team Six, one of the phrases they use when they go out to fight terrorism or whatever and they're in a ground fight. One man called out because he was surrounded by three or four of the enemies and they heard a shot and he heard him go, ugh! And so his commander called and said, are you hit? He says yes.

He says, are you okay? And normally you would say, well, this, but he said, paper cut. Paper cut! Paper cut! It was their word. It was their phrase, which means they took a bullet all the way through them and came out the other side and all they did was put a patch on both sides and let's continue the war. We all know what paper cut is. Always have one. Imagine that type of paper cut.

So they are physically and mentally strong. Are we like that? Training is a part of their life.

But brethren, if we're spiritual navy seals, we're the elite on this earth when it comes to the spiritual realm. That's what God called us for. If we're not elite, he's not going to give us the Holy Spirit to give us that extra power, to give us that extra endurance to overcome pain spiritually, mentally, physically. He wants to see what we've got because he's called us to make us the best. We're not the best when he calls us, but he wants us to be the best when he's through with us. Are you prepared for pain?

Is it to you just a part of life? There's a story that the assistant, one of his assistants that he had in the martial arts field, one of the greatest martial arts people of all time, he's considered the apex of martial arts, was Bruce Lee. Bruce Lee, assistant, tells a story.

Since Bruce died at a very young age, I think he was 32 when he died. I like a picture of Bruce Lee.

Look at the stomach. I wish I could take my jacket off and show you what that looked like, but you I this is not humorous, so I won't do that. But he trained. His body was a fine-tuned weapon. Physically, he was in great shape, condition-wise. He would get up every morning, every single morning. The first thing he did was took his two his four fingers and thumbs like this. He jumped down and did 200 push-ups on this. Try 200 push-ups like this or this and it's still but two fingers, 200 in the morning. First thing, and as soon as he got done with that, he laid back and did 500 sit-ups or crutches as fast as he could. 500! He was just amazed when he when he saw Muhammad Ali, this fighter, this boxer fight because he said, you know, the way he moved and the way he did everything. So he was he said, give me I need to go see him trained because I got to see how he does it. And so he went to Muhammad Ali's training facility, embed him and said, wow, champ, you're, you know, I'm impressed and I saw how you do this because he was standing there. And as he came in, Ali just had his hands up like this and had a man punching him in the stomach. Had him just punching in the stomach for a long time. And so he he's amazed. And so after the champ stopped, he comes over and he goes, you are in incredible condition. How many I got to know, how many sit-ups do you do each day? Muhammad looks at him, says, I don't know, 10, 15, maybe 20 if it's a good day. And he goes, that's impossible. How could you how could you have that? And he, Muhammad goes, well, let me show you. So he drops down on the ground and he starts doing crunches and sit-ups and sit-ups and sit-ups. And he's into 80, 90, 100 and then Bruce Lee goes, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, wait a minute. You said you only did 10 or 20. What is this? He goes, I don't start counting until I feel the pain, intense pain.

And then I start counting. Brother, what an example to us. Do we look at life as that way to where we actually get some we actually get some some training so that we become stronger, physically, spiritually, mentally, so that we can not only do this ourselves but help other people?

There is this famous African proverb I'd like you to see now. I'd like you to just look at these words for a few minutes. I'd like you to to dream on them, to think on them because it says that smooth seas do not make skillful sailors. Think about that. Smooth seas do not make skillful sailors. It's similar to what J.W. Merritt said. The stronger the breeze, the stronger the trees. I've never forgotten that since I heard it because the breeze makes a strong tree stronger, just like the ones behind me here. I mean, they take a lot of breeze, but the more they do, the more they become stronger, and the roots go down further.

I like it that Benjamin Franklin said, there are no gains without pain.

Are we prepared for that? William Shakespeare says, pain pays the income of each precious thing.

Something to think about, but Neil Strauss said, great things never came from comfort zones. So greatness will not be achieved because we have no tests in front of us.

Anyone that's ever built a business knows that, you know, there's great rewards for building your own business, but you put in a lot of hours. You sometimes work days for free. You'll work for nothing. You'll spend that time, and you have trouble, and you have problems, and it confronts you, but it just makes you a better business person. It makes you a stronger business person. God is making us stronger spiritually, physically, and mentally, because we're preparing for the job He has for us in His kingdom, and He's preparing us now for the job that He's given for us to do on this earth, just like Jesus Christ. Think of all the things that Christ did. He never stopped. He never stopped doing these things.

We learn about pain. I remember when I was single, I had an iron, and I had a shirt, and I didn't want to take the time because I was ready to go. I had the iron plugged in, but I didn't want to take my shirt off when I realized how how wrinkled it was. And so I'm like, well, okay, let me walk over there, and I'll iron it on myself, and it'll be so much faster I can get out of here in one minute.

I had pain. I had pain instead of the pleasure of getting out there. I found out that that's not a good idea. How many of us learn about pain from touching a stovetop?

It's hot. Don't put your hand there. We tell little kids that. Don't do that.

How about car crashes? I almost totaled three cars in two years when I was 19 or 20. In fact, I remember my little brother coming out. He must have been eight or nine years old after my second car wreck, and there were two cars in the driveway, and they were both wrecked. He goes, you're going to get another one so you can wreck it?

But I learned so much. Not that I wanted to do that, because two times I busted out windshields with my head. I guess I never really revealed that to Mary before she married me. That may have meant something she would have thought about, but I busted out two windshields. Why? Because I didn't need because it was a pain to put on seatbelts. No, I found out there was pleasure in putting on seatbelts, and there was pain for not putting on the seatbelt. How about a betrayal of a friend? Have you ever suffered that mental pain where somebody that you trusted, maybe it was even a mate, maybe it was a family member, maybe it was a friend, maybe it was a minister who really betrayed your trust or betrayed you in some other way and you were just hurt?

And you're saying, why should I have to do that if they were family, they were friends, or they were someone in the church? Amen, minister. What did Christ do?

You imagine he knew the pain he was about to suffer.

It was going to be excruciating, but as he walks through, Judas betrayed him, someone that he loved. Peter then denied him as he could see that.

Yes, he went through. Mentally, that's tough, and it's tough for us, but it helps to make us stronger, stronger so that we can help other people. No one likes pain. No one likes to have to go through pain, but it's kind of like it's a pain to have to endure pain.

But what is it doing for us? What is it doing to us when we're able to come out on the other end?

We used to, in basketball training, after practice, the coach would have us run suicides. Any of you guys know what suicides are? You might have run them in gym, but you start at one side, and you touch different points, and you come back and forth as fast as you can. That's after practice, and you're just dying at the end. You're just, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, and you think your body can't go anymore. He says, one more time, then go another time. And here you think this is crazy until towards the end of the season.

You're not that tired. You know your body's being conditioned to go longer, to go further, to pull that strength, inner strength, from you. We had a coach, Coach Thomas, and he would always pull the guards out at the end of practice. After we'd already had a two-hour practice, and he would say, now it's time for you to, you two to go shoot free throws. And they were so tired.

They would shoot the free throws. He would stand there and have somebody send it back to him. They're going, Coach, why do we have to do it? He said, because at the end of the game, you're going to have the ball. At the end of the game, if we're ahead, they're going to foul you. And you need to know what it feels like to be tired and walk to that free throw line.

Brethren, that's us. To get to the finish line, we need to know what it is to go through many of the same things that Christ and the disciples went through. That's the thing about you. That's the thing about me. That's what we're called to do. You know, he said the road wasn't going to be an interstate all the way. It's going to be up and down. There's going to be curves all through it. It's going to be difficult is the way. But that's why he called us. We are. We are his spiritual Navy SEALs ready to endure, ready to take on whatever this world brings us, whatever Satan wants to give us. He's trying to train us so that we're spiritually, mentally, and physically strong.

So we can handle it. But it's not always what we do. My only question, the problem is, we don't know what we can take, but he does. Because he said, the Bible says he will not test us beyond what we can stand. We don't know what we can stand. He does. He knows what's in us, and he knows that the Holy Spirit's in us. So guess what? We have a lot more in reserves than we think we have.

Take these tests. It's not always easy, but what does it do? Painful experiences makes us stronger.

It helps us be able to help others who are going through things. No one can talk, as we had the feast this year. We've had three widows up in our widows meeting there. No one can tell and explain to someone what it's like to lose someone of 40 or 50 or 60 years you're made. Except someone who's done that. Another widow. They can, because they've been through that pain.

We're here to help people. We're here to seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, but after that we're here to help others wherever we can. Whatever experiences we've gone through, whatever tests and trials that made us stronger, that helped us to come and bring it all in.

Mindsets. We live in Miami. I'll give the Caribbean. Had a minister a few years ago help us assist us down in Trinidad. He was from the state of Michigan. He told me as I was talking to him, I said, well what do you think? He goes, how can you stand this heat? How can you stand this humidity? I feel like I'm melting here. He didn't come back to the Caribbean, the feast. But then again, we have people that really don't want to go to Michigan because it's cold up there. But the people up there, is it cold? No, we're going out, we're going ice skating, we're doing this stuff. What is it? Is it not painful? No, they've learned to adapt. They've learned to overcome these things that might be physically discouraging for them. Or, well, I really don't want to take this.

I want you to look at another quote. I'd like you to think on this one.

Because it does, it made me think.

There are two types of pain. One that hurts you, and one that changes you. Look at this, man, I want to keep it there. There are two types of pain. One that hurts you. That means you cannot let it go. And one that changes you. We see that in David's writings. He went through a lot.

Which one are you? Which one will kind of define you? Will it be those things that really change you? Because you know what? Yourself to go through that pain, or you don't want to hurt anybody else. As I wrap this up today, I want to ask you a question. Your greatest pain. Think about it for a second. If you've got a piece of paper, write it down. Your greatest pain that you've ever had in your life. I have one or two that stand out in my mind. That I need to move on from that.

Because it occasionally comes up. I thought I'd have it down, but it was something that I did when I was 18, 19 years old. And it still comes back occasionally. And so, hell, I don't want it taking space in place in my head anymore. What about you? How did you get through it?

The pain. Was it time? I was saying time heals all wounds? No. No, it doesn't ask somebody. I lost my father seven years ago. I still think about him and miss him. Time does help. Time helps us get it through. It's kind of endurance. But maybe one of the things that help you get on the other side of pain is your faith. Reading scripture. This is so powerful. It can help us. That's part of my my cure. That's part of my pill I take when I have pain or when I feel pain mentally, spiritually, sometimes even physically. I go to his word. It's my cure. It helps me to get through this pain.

Perhaps it's friends because friends can, especially in the church. Friends can help you get through things, especially if they've been there before and say, well, you know, it's going to take a little time. Well, you might want to do this. You might want to just talk and do that. It's a way.

Some people turn to alcohol. They drink their way through it or they take drugs or even sex.

They try to solve problems. They try to solve pain instead of letting pain change them and teach them. I know people who let people rent space in their head and never pay rent.

Have you allowed that? Maybe it's a minister that's in your head. He doesn't pay rent.

Maybe he's done something. Maybe he's disappointed you or whatever, but you can't get that out of your mind. That's something we need to be able to overcome. Our betrayal of a family member. That happens. I deal with that quite a bit. Families, well, I thought I was closer. Well, a good lesson.

But don't let it take up space in here. God wants you to use an incredible mind that He gave you. It's the greatest mind that's ever been created. There's no animal on this earth that has that. There's no computer better than our mind. Don't let it take up space. Don't let things get to you.

You have a job, and God has called you to do this incredible job. Don't get bogged down by mental, physical, and spiritual pain. That mental stuff is not worth it.

One saying is, don't sweat the small stuff. It's all small stuff. Well, that's kind of what God really talks about. His goal for us is so much more important than anything else.

So, brethren, as I wrap this up, I'd like you to go with me to one scripture.

One incredible scripture that tells us in Romans 8 and verse 18. Do you think of this? It says, For I consider that the sufferings of this present time, pain, are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us. If you do not know this scripture, write it down. Put it in your arsenal for when you are having to suffer pain, when you're having to go through things, as you will come out on the other side. Because he says that you can't even compare what we might go through now to what our reward, our life, the glory which he has promised us is his glory.

Brethren, we are made for pain.

Made for pain. And why are we made for pain? Because if you look in this, pain is a family tradition.