Session #2 - Hear Jesus Speak to...the Pain that Can't be Prayed Away

Here are the notes from the 2^nd session at Women Discipling Women.  It was both REALLY convicting and encouraging.  The speaker’s notes that were given to us are italicized (and bolded at times) and my added notes/thoughts are in regular print.

Session #2:  “Hearing Jesus Speak to…the Pain that Can’t be Prayed Away” by Nancy Guthrie

Have you ever sensed that God has said “no” to you?

Did you know that Jesus prayed a prayer that God said no to?  Did you realize He said “no” to Paul, the apostle?

The Pain Jesus Could Not Pray Away

Matthew 26:36-30: Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane the night before He is crucified.

Sometimes, when we’re going through something hard, we begin to think that no one around us “gets it.”  We think that no one has ever hurt like we are hurting, that no one really understands how hard the simplest things of life are these days.  But Jesus does.  Jesus is not a distant diety who knows nothing about the pain of disappointment and death.  He knows firsthand.  He understands.  Hear the words of Jesus: “My soul is overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death.”  Hear Jesus speaking, saying that He knows what it feels like to hurt, and let that shared experience draw you closer to Him.

Jesus understands.  H understand because He was fully God and fully man.

Earlier that week He had said, “Should I pray, ‘Father, save me from this hour’?  But this is the very reason I came.” (John 12:27)  Yet we hear Him cry out to His Father, asking if there is another way, any way at all, to avoid this.  A second time, then a gain a third, He pleaded for an alternative to the horror of abandonment by His Father.  As you hear Jesus repeat this agonized prayer three times, hear Jesus saying that He knows what it’s like to pour out repeated prayers to the Father.

It would seem to me that if anybody ever deserved to have His prayers answered in the affirmative, it was Jesus.  Here He was in the garden of Gethsemane, pouring out His repeated request to His Father, asking Him to accomplish the salvation of sinners in some other way.  Yet God, through His silence, said no.  Hear Jesus speaking saying that He too, has heard God saying “no” to His prayer.

Jesus knows what it feels like to bring a heartfelt, passionate prayer to God and to hear God say, in effect, “I’ve got something else in mind.  I have another plan.  And that plan is going to require intense suffering on your part.”  God didn’t say “no” to Him because He was asking for something He never should have asked for or because Jesus didn’t prey hard enough or get enough other people praying for Him.  God said “no” to Jesus so that He could say, “yes” to you for all eternity.  Jesus wrestled with God’s plan for His life even as He sought to submit to Him.

But even though Jesus was struggling as He told God what He wanted, He was resolute about what He wanted MOST OF ALL.  Hear Jesus saying that He knows what it means to submit His own will to the Father’s will.  He said “Not as I will, but Your will be done.”  Jesus had a GREATER longing than to avoid pain and separation from the Father…His desire was to fulfill God’s purpose.

You see, Jesus was able to submit what He wanted to what He wanted more.  He had a greater longing that trumped and trampled His desire to avoid enduring the judgment of God.  And that was to fulfill the purpose and plan of God.  Jesus’ confidence in the perfect plan and purposes of God put His own desires into proper perspective.  And this is the perspective that you and I need.  We need our confidence in God’s goodness and justice to loom so large that we, too, can entrust ourselves to our Father without fear and without resentment.  We must have FULL confidence in God’s goodness and justice.

Here is the hope we find in hearing Jesus speak into our own struggles: it is possible to overcome our own wants, to push through them to surrender.  We are given the grace we need to face whatever comes; we can learn obedience from what we suffer—as Christ did.

What we need most is not to hear God say yes to our requests.  What we need is to be filled with such deep confidence in the character of our Father that when He says “no,” we know He is doing what is right and good for us.  What we need most is the faith to trust Him.  We must be filled with confidence that when God says “no,” He is loving us and doing what He sees is BEST for us.

As we bring our wants and pour them out before our Father, He gives us the courage we need to surrender, so we can say along with Jesus, “I want Your will to be done, not mine.”  And He gives us the grace we need to say it not through gritted teeth but with open arms.  Faith is measured by our willingness to submit to God’s will.  Will we still love, obey, and call God good if He doesn’t give us what we desire?

The Pain Paul Could Not Pray Away

2 Corinthians 11:24-27: Paul explains the difficulty upon difficulty he experienced.  But as much as Paul had suffered, there was still more suffering in store for him.

2 Corinthians 12:7-10: Why would God give Paul difficulty on top of difficulty? we want to ask.  Hadn’t he endured enough?  But interestingly, Paul didn’t ask why.  He knew exactly why the thorn in the flesh had been given to him.

[Side Note: this thorn in the flesh wasn’t like a small rose thorn stuck in your thumb that is annoying and uncomfortable.  The translation from Greek to English is lost…the thorn means more of a large, wooden state for impaling; it would have caused an unrelenting agony.]

Paul saw his painful affliction as God’s provision to protect him from what would be even more painful and destructive—using his incredible spiritual experience to make himself look good.

Hear Jesus speaking, saying that He has purpose in your pain.

Paul looked at the thorn and recognized in it the loving hand of God reaching into his life to prevent him from falling into the sin of boasting.  And at the same time, in the same thorn he saw the destructive hand of Satan, seeking to wreak havoc on his faith.  Paul was tormented by the temptation to resent God for allowing the thorn to pierce his already pain-ridden life.

Paul’s experience shows us that what Satan sends to destroy our faith can, at the same time, be sent by God to develop our faith.  What Satan inflicts in an attempt to make us turn away from God in resentment, God intends to strengthen us as we turn toward Him in dependence.

My friend, if you belong to Christ, your pain is not meaningless or random.  It is purposeful.  God intends to use it in your life for His good purpose.  He may or may not reveal that purpose to you, but that doesn’t mean He doesn’t have one.  The essence of faith is being confident in what we can’t see.  You might not be able to see how or when God is using your suffering for good.  But you can still be confident that He is.  Romans 8…God promises to work all things together for good, BUT He doesn’t promise to explain why.

Paul asked God to take away what was causing him agonizing pain.  Then he asked again.  And then he asked again.  And finally he heard Jesus himself speak to him.  But what Jesus said was not what Paul wanted to hear.  And it’s not what you and I want to hear when we go to God with our desperate prayers.  Jesus responded to Paul, not by giving healing, but by giving HIMSELF.

Jesus spoke into Paul’s agony, and He speaks into your agony promising that He will be enough for you in the pain He does not take away.

When Jesus says that His grace is sufficient enough, He’s not talking only about the grace that extends pardon for what we’ve done in the past.  He’s talking about grace that is a present power.  This grace Jesus gives us is the power to go on when we think we can’t make it one more day.  It is the power to believe when doubts and questions are crowding into our conscious thoughts.  Grace gives us what we need to take hold of God’s Word and rest in it amid the voices around us and inside us that tell us God cannot be trusted.

Jesus doesn’t give this power to people who keep saying “I’m fine.  I can handle this.”  He gives it to people who turn to Him because they are facing something that is beyond their own ability to handle.  We must surrender and admit this to God!  God WILL give us more than we can handle ON OUR OWN!!!!  He does this so that we WILL turn to HIM.

We like to think that the way God can get the most glory is by doing the miracle we’ve put on order.  We’d much rather have Jesus display His power in our lives in the form of healing and wholeness, success and accomplishment, rather than dependence and weakness.  We want escape from weakness, not power in weakness.  But Jesus is saying that He wants to display His power in Paul’s life not by removing the thorn BUT by sustaining and satisfying Paul as he lives WITH the thorn.

Paul continued to pray about the thorn in his flesh, but his prayers were no longer that the thorn would be removed.  Now he prayed that the pain would be redeemed.

He prayed that God would help him achieve all WHILE he had the thorn.  He learned to say “I am content (I delight in…OR I take pleasure…) in weaknesses…” (Philippians 4)

Oftentimes we are more interested in getting more FROM God than more OF God.  Jesus satisfies our deepest and most important need…salvation. 

God will give us the grace to say “I want YOUR will to be done” and to truly mean it!  He will give us the grace in the form, timing, and quantity that we need it to live faithful and well.

GOD will be enough for what He allows in our lives.