Rick Warren - Never Waste Your Pain
God has five purposes for your life. Number one, we know that God wants you to know and love him. You were planned for his pleasure. And that’s called worship, when you know and love God. We know that God wants you to learn to love other people. That’s the second purpose of life. You were put on this planet to learn to love, to learn to love God, to learn to love others. One is called worship, one’s called fellowship. Then the Bible says that we are put on this planet to grow up spiritually, to be like Christ. God’s goal is that you become like Jesus, not God, but become godly in character. You were created to become like Christ. And then the fourth purpose, we know that you were put on this planet to practice serving.
This is preparation for eternity. You’re gonna serve God in heaven. God wants you to practice now. And the way you practice now is by you serve God by serving other people. You can’t serve God directly here because you can’t even see him. The only way you can serve God on earth is by serving other people. And the Bible calls that your ministry, and that’s the fourth purpose of life. Worship, fellowship, discipleship, ministry. The fifth purpose of your life is you were made for a mission. And God has a life message that he wants to communicate through you. And nobody else can share your life message and God wants to use you to say something to this world.
Now, we all know those, those five purposes that God has for our lives. But what most people don’t know is that God uses pain to fulfill those purposes in your life. He uses pain, but you have to co-operate with God for that to happen in your life. And sadly, most people don’t do this. Most people waste their suffering. Most people waste their pain. Most people don’t profit from their problems. They don’t harvest their hurts, they don’t advance from their adversity. Most people, they don’t learn from their losses. They don’t improve from their injuries. Most people never gain from their pain. So tonight, what I want us to do, in this weekend, is to look at how to gain from your pain, how God wants to use whatever pain you’re going through, emotional, physical, financial, relational, spiritual, in any area of life, how God wants to use the pain in your life to move you toward his purposes for your life. And he doesn’t want you to waste it.
This is what Paul is talking about in the book of Galatians. In chapter 3, verse 4, he says this: «Have you gone through all of this for nothing? Is it really all for nothing»? You know, as I look at that verse, I just wanna ask you to answer this in your mind. I’m not asking you to publicly answer it. Have you grown from your pain or have you wasted your pain? Are you further down the road to where God wants you to be? Or have you just had pain in your life and it never made any difference? Well, maybe you say, «I don’t know how to learn. I don’t know how to grow. I don’t know how to develop from my pain». Well, it’s not too late to learn.
So let’s look at what God wants to do in your life as we wrap up this series. Pain can be used for all five of God’s purposes in your life. You might write these down. Number one, the first thing I know is this: I can use my pain to draw closer to God. I can use my pain to draw closer to God. Now, when anything bad happens in your life, you have a choice. You got a choice. You can either run to God or you can run away from God. Now, we by nature instinctively turn to God in pain. Whenever there is a massive tragedy, a bomb explodes, there’s, you know, a fire, a flood, a terrorist attack, people go, «Oh God». The first person they cry out to is God. Because by instinct, we know that we should turn to God. But some people turn away from God in this.
You know, when Matthew died, now several months back, it forced me to go deeper with God than I’ve ever had to go in my entire life. I’ve always spent time with God every day. I’ve had a quiet time for most of my life where I sit down and I spend time talking to God, reading his Word, listening to him, and talking to him in prayer. But I want you to know in the last several months, I’m a changed person, because I wasn’t spending a quiet time with God every day. I was spending hours, hours and hours, with God every day, just listening, thinking, meditating, praying, reading the Word, reading good scriptures, reading good books and things like that, because I wanted my pain to draw me closer to God, not further away from him.
Now, how do you do that? How do you draw close to God in your pain? Well, you tell him how you feel. You cry out to God. You argue with God, you trust God, you do all of the steps we’ve talked about in the last 7 weeks. In shock, you express your shock to God. In sorrow, you cry out in your sorrow to God. In struggle, you argue with God. And in surrender, you let go and you trust God. You take all of these steps. You can worship at every stage of the development. This is what our family has been doing now for several months. We’re doing what Paul did in 2 Corinthians chapter 1. Look at that verse. Paul says this: «We were crushed and overwhelmed and we saw how powerless we were to help ourselves; but that was good, for then we put everything into the hands of God, who could alone save us. And he did help us»!
Circle the phrase, «but that was good». Paul says, «Wait a minute, we were crushed. We were overwhelmed. We were in over our heads. We were ready to give up. We were discouraged, we were defeated, we were dying». But he says, «That was good». Why? «Because it drew us closer to God, rather than away from God». One of the things that my family did in the last several months is we did a surrender retreat together. We went over to Rancho Capistrano and had Jamin Goggin who’s on staff as the spiritual director at our retreat center and had him lead us in a retreat of surrender. Why? Because we wanted to be drawn closer to God. Last night, I was speaking to the women of faith up at the conference at the Honda Center.
And while I was up there, I heard a story about a guy who came to Christ on 9/11, the actual day, 9/11. And I just got to think how many people do you know, have come to Christ out of pain? Maybe you did. Maybe you did. Maybe there was a divorce, a death, a disaster, a distraction, a difficulty, a disappointment. God says, «One of the things I can use this for in your life is I will draw you closer to me, if you let it». Many of you could say pain turned me to Christ. In 2 Corinthians chapter 7, verse 9, Paul says this: «I’m glad about the pain that these people went through. Not because it hurt you but because the pain turned you to God». That’s the first purpose. I can let pain draw me closer to God.
Second purpose. I can use my pain to draw closer to others, not just to God, but to other people. And this is the purpose of fellowship. And if you allow it, pain will deepen your love, your love for other people. It will mature your love. Suffering sensitizes you, suffering deepens you. Suffering turns you, it transform you. I’ve seen the most stubborn, self-centered, selfish, hard-bitten men turn into real lovers after a major tragedy in their life. God says, «I can use pain to draw you not only closer to me, but to draw you closer to other people».
Now, you know, the odds aren’t good for couples who lose a child. In fact, about nearly one third of all marriages where a child dies, like in the case, in my family, in our family, nearly one third of all those marriages ends in divorce once a child is lost. But I have to say, Kay and I are closer today than we were 4, 5 months ago. Closer today. I’ll just be honest with you, I am more in love with my wife than I have ever been in my life. And I just, well, I won’t go any further because I don’t wanna embarrass her. But I asked Kay today as I was preparing this message, I said, «Why do you think we’re closer today than ever before»? She says, «Because you’re so nice to me now».
Well, that might be part of it. But I think there were a couple of reasons and we actually would agree on this, is that after Matthew died, we knew the statistics that a crisis, a death, particularly the death of a child, often splits up a family. And we said, «We’re not gonna let that happen». And we intentionally worked at strengthening our marriage over the last months, intentionally worked at cultivating and deepening in it. We’ve been married now 38 years, but we said, «We’re gonna make this the best year of our marriage».
And I think another thing we did is we gave each other a lot of grace. And one of the things was we did not judge each other’s feelings because when you’re going through pain, your feelings go like this, they go up and down and they go all over sideways and you think strange thoughts and weird thoughts and have all kinds of emotions. And we just decided no emotion is a bad emotion, and Kay would say, «I’m gonna tell this to you,» and she would tell, and I would sit there in non-judgment and goes, «Well, that makes sense,» that there is no wrong feeling. Feelings are not right or wrong. Feelings are just feelings. How many arguments have you had in your marriage because you tried to convince your spouse their feeling was unreasonable? Don’t do the elbows right now.
So many of our arguments in marriage end up because we’re trying to talk each other out of feelings. Don’t. Don’t do it. Feelings are just feelings. They’re neither right nor wrong. They’re just feelings. And so by showing grace to each other, that brought us closer together. Do you remember a few weeks ago, I talked about that there are four levels of fellowship, and they go deeper and deeper. And we talked about how in your Small Group, the shallowest level of fellowship is the fellowship of sharing. That’s where, how’s your day, how are you doing, what’s going on in your life, how’s everything going?
That’s the fellowship of sharing and that’s okay, it’s just not very deep. To go a little bit deeper in fellowship, you go to the fellowship of studying where you study the Word of God together. To go a little bit deeper than that, you go to the fellowship of serving. And if you’ve ever had your Small Group go on a peace trip together, you know how much that binds you together. It’s when you’re serving together, you go deeper than studying or sharing. But the deepest level of all is the fellowship of suffering, the fellowship of suffering. And the only way you get to the fellowship of suffering is by being willing to be vulnerable. Take the risk of being vulnerable and share what you’re feeling.
Galatians 6:2, there on your outline, says this: «By helping each other with your troubles, you truly obey the law of Christ». What is the law of Christ? Love your neighbor as yourself. And he says, «When you help each other in your pain, when you help each other in your suffering, when you help each other in your troubles, when you enter into the fellowship of suffering,» he says, «then you’re obeying the greatest commandment: love your neighbor as yourself». And I just want to say to you that pain, if you will allow it, will teach you how to really love. You see, pain isn’t, I mean, love is far more than chocolates and roses and valentines. Real love changes bed pants. Real love changes, real love works. You know the meaning of that? God bless you.
Number three, the third purpose of pain. I can use it to draw closer to God. I can use it to draw closer to others. God says I can use pain to become more like Jesus. I can use pain to become more like Jesus. In other words, pain is always an opportunity to grow in character, to grow in the fruit of the Spirit: love, joy, peace, patience, gentleness, goodness, faithfulness, meekness, self-control. These nine qualities, how do you learn them? You learn them in tough times. You learn love in unlovely situations. You learn joy in grief situations. You learn peace in chaos. You learn patience, having to wait. You learn these things in the exact opposite situations. I can choose to let pain make me more like Jesus. But again, it’s a choice.
Some people, pain makes them bitter, and some people let pain make them better. Some people let pain be a stepping stone to progress, and others let pain be a stumbling block to failure. It’s choice. Proverbs 20, verse 30, look up here on the screen, says this: «Sometimes it takes a painful experience to make us change our ways». Anybody wanna give a testimony on that verse? Yeah. Sometimes it takes a painful situation to make us change our ways. Now, the fact is, and I said this a couple of weeks ago, God’s number one purpose in your life is to make you like Jesus.
Now if God’s gonna make you like Jesus, loving like Jesus, thinking like Jesus, being kind like Jesus, being truthful like Jesus; having the character, the integrity, the generosity, the humility of Jesus, if God’s gonna make you like Jesus, he’s going to take you through the things that Jesus went through. Hmm, were there times when Jesus was lonely? Yes. Were there times that you will be lonely? Yes. Were there times when Jesus was misunderstood? Yes. Will there be times when you are misunderstood? Yes. Were there times when Jesus was criticized, maligned, and judged? Yes, same for you. Were there times when Jesus was so tired and fatigued, he felt like he couldn’t go on another day? Yes. Were there times when Jesus was tempted? Yes. What makes you think God’s gonna spare you? He didn’t spare his own Son, so why would he spare you? He did not spare Jesus from pain. And if God is gonna make me like Christ, then he’s gonna take me through the same kind of things that Jesus went through.
Now, look at up here on the screen. The Bible says this, Hebrews 5:8: «Even though Jesus was God’s Son, he learned obedience from the things he suffered». The Bible says Jesus learned obedience from suffering. Jesus learned to do the right thing in spite of the fact that it wasn’t the easy thing to do. How are you gonna learn to do the right thing in spite of the fact that it’s not the easy thing to do? Same way, through suffering. Here’s another verse. Look at this verse, Hebrews 5:9 on the screen: «Suffering made Jesus perfect. And now he can save forever all who obey him». You say, «Well, suffering made Jesus perfect? I thought he was perfect». Well, the word «perfect» here literally means complete. And it’s saying it completed Jesus by going through suffering. There are some things, the only way you learn them is through pain. You agree with that? Some things you only, only learn through pain.
Now, Paul compliments the way the Corinthians, the believers in the city of Corinth in Greece, had handled the pain in their lives. Look at this verse, there on your outline: «Now, isn’t it wonderful,» Paul says, «all the ways in which this distress,» they’d been going through a tough time. «All the ways in which this distress has goaded you closer to God? You’re more alive, you’re more concerned, you’re more sensitive, you’re more reverent, you’re more human, you’re more passionate, you’re more responsible. Looked at from any angle, you’ve come out of this with purity of heart».
Now notice, Paul’s talking to a group of people who’d just gone through the wringer. Their life had just been hell on earth. They had gone through amazing persecution, amazing suffering, amazing pain. And he says, «There are seven things that have come out of this. You’re more alive, you’re more concerned, you’re more sensitive, more relevant, more human, more passionate, more responsible». He lists these seven quality. Wouldn’t you like to have those in your life? Wouldn’t you like to be more alive? Wouldn’t you like to be more compassionate, more passionate, more sensitive, more responsible? Then you need to ask God to use the pain in your life for good and choose to co-operate with him.
See, the fact is pain transforms us. It never leaves us where we started. It will either be better or bitter, as I said. It won’t leave you where it picked you up. It will take you to another place. Now, I want you to listen very closely what I’m about to say. I want you to win in life. I want you to succeed in life. I want your life to have meaning and significance. I want your life to be all that God wants it to be. The secret of every winner, whether it’s winning in business, winning in sports, winning at love, winning in relationships, winning financially, spiritually, or any other way, the secret of every single winner is one word. It is the word «resilience».
Resilience. It is the ability to bounce back. Why? Because everybody goes through tough times, everybody has failures, everybody has flops. Nobody goes through life with unbroken success. Nobody goes through life with no problems. Nobody goes through life with it just a breeze and everything’s handed to them. There are problems, pains, pressures, difficulties, in everybody’s life and the difference between winners and losers is that winners get back up. It’s the only difference. The only difference between a winner and a loser is resiliency. Losers stay down. «I’ll never let another man hurt me». Dumb idea. Because you shut yourself off to hurt, you’ve just shut yourself off to a love and you will live a loveless life the rest of your life. «I will never let another employer hurt me». «I will never let another,» whatever, «hurt me».
You build a wall and you fill the moat and you pull up the drawbridge and you build a prison, a self-imposed prison, that your heart stays in and you become a little clod of a person. That’s what a loser does. Winners have resilience. Winners keep on keeping on. Winners keep going. Winners get knocked down but they get back up. Winners have the same problems losers do. They just have resilience. And I think more than any other quality, I want you to develop resilience in your life because life is tough. Everybody agree with that? It’s tough and you can let it beat you down and you can get down and then stay down the rest of your life and you may as well die. God may as well take you on home right now because you’re not gonna live, you’re just gonna exist. But if you have resilience, you learn from your losses, you profit from your pain, you gain from the pain, you advance from your adversity. All of these things happen when you have resilience.
Now, how do I get resilience? Well, you need to do what Paul did. I want to read you three passages. They aren’t on your outline, they’re gonna be on the screen. Three passages of Paul that show that he was probably the most resilient person who ever lived. Now, the first one is 2 Corinthians chapter 11, verses 23 to 28. Let me read it to you. It says this.
This is Paul’s personal testimony: «I’ve been put in jail more often, been whipped times without number, and faced death again and again. Five different times I was whipped with thirty-nine lashes. Three times I was beaten with rods. Once I was stoned. Three times I was shipwrecked. Once I spent a whole night and a day adrift at sea. I’ve faced dangers from flooded rivers, dangers from robbers, dangers from angry crowds, mobs. I’ve faced dangers in the cities and in deserts and even on stormy seas. I’ve faced dangers from people who claim to be Christians but aren’t. I’ve lived with weariness and pain and sleepless nights».
This is the guy who wrote most of the Bible you read, the New Testament. «Weariness and pain and sleepless nights. I’ve often been hungry and thirsty. I’ve often gone without food. I’ve often shivered with cold, without enough clothing to keep me warm». He said «often». «And besides all this, I’ve had the daily burdens of all the churches I’ve started». And you think you had a bad day, all right? Now, if anybody has a right to complain, it’s Paul. That laundry list of the terrible things that have happened in his life, while he’s trying to serve God, by the way.
Now, here’s another verse. This is not on your outline. 2 Corinthians 4:8-10 says this: «We are pressed on every side by troubles, but we are not crushed and broken. We are perplexed, but we don’t give up and quit. We are hunted down, but God never abandons us. When we get knocked down, but we get up again and keep going». «I’m knocked down, but I’m not knocked out,» he’s saying. «Through suffering, these bodies of ours constantly share in the death of Jesus so that the life of Jesus may also be seen in our bodies». Now, that’s what I call a resilient person.