Sacrificial Suffering

I would tell it to my journaling class last Friday night.  The personal experience I had with terrible physical pain a couple years ago. 

Pain that almost took me out.

Because let’s face it, the enemy would like nothing more than to take me out of the game.  Make me unusable.  And cause me to forfeit all I’ve worked so hard to attain in my personal history with Jesus.

But in the pain I remembered.
Remembered His suffering.
And remembered how in it, Jesus maintained a spirit of honor and an attitude of privilege.  (Luke 22:42)
In His human form He was able to leave for us, a representation of holiness made possible by a determined will to only DO what He saw the Father do, and SAY what He heard the Father say.  A resolution to bring His Father glory in the midst of great agony and suffering.

And I would think of it when I laid there in the hospital room just following a surgical procedure that left me in enormous pain and with the realization that I had not only gotten behind in my pain medication unknowingly and even before I left the recovery room, but there was also a “hospital-wide shortage” on the very drug that would serve to alleviate my pain the fastest.

And in that moment I had a choice.

Because even in suffering we can glorify Him.

I would lay in that bed and whisper the only words I knew how to say in the moment of agony, “I can do hard things.  I CAN do HARD things.”

The words weren’t easy - but they were possible.
Because Jesus.
He suffered well.
And in the face of evil, He left us with the greatest example of doing hard things well.  And in it all - glorifying His Father in heaven.

In that moment I had a choice to make.
And in every consequent suffering, we have a choice to make.

I can take this pain.. this discomfort… this suffering… and choose to position it at the altar of praise.  I can make it bow in the mighty name of Jesus and I can declare boldly with the lips, “I CAN DO HARD THINGS.”

Because here… now… it’s the only time I get to make pain a sacrifice that I relinquish over to Him to do something with.  Because suffering doesn’t exist there.  In heaven.

And so today.. with any amount of suffering I am experiencing… I can give it over to the One who is masterful at turning it into grace.  I can deliver my difficulty onto the feet of Jesus and glorify God in the middle of my sacrificial suffering.

He knows.
He sees.
He understands.
And He honors all that we entrust into His hands to hold.

He is a good, good, good Father!

Give it all to Him today.
Bring Him all of your brokenness so that He can use it for our good and His glory.