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From Pain to Blessing, Through the Father's Love
From Pain to Blessing, Through the Father's Love By Daniel Parkes January 24, 2001As I woke up this morning, I was overcome by pain and affliction in both my physical body, as well as in other parts of my being. I will describe these "other parts" as simply my 'soul and spirit' -- those parts of me that are connected in with the eternal realm, and are not simply of the earth (our spirits are born 'dead' according to the Bible, and are 'made alive in Christ' at the moment we are born again into a new, and dynamic relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ. This is an act of our faith, and simply happens when we confess and receive Christ as Lord and Savior of our lives on account of what Christ did in suffering on our behalf on the cross). So then I was in pain. I was in agony, so to speak. Now you have to appreciate the power of prayer, and God's grace, and God's gifts, at this point, because, it is only through means like these that I was able to 'see properly' to be able to really discern what was going on. I prayed. And I prayed some more. I knew that, as a Christian, God desired to bless his people with peace. But I did not have peace. I had pain and affliction. I was being overcome by something in the spiritual realm, I wanted to know, but I wasn't quite sure what it was! Something was speaking to me (I believe it was God). "Pursue this thing. Don't settle for pain and affliction when you can have my comfort and assurance. Right now you don't have it and you need it." So I pursued praying. I felt the Lord speaking this very clear word to me, "Something is blocking you. You can have much more peace than that." I could almost 'see' that something was blocking me! I wasn't panicky or anything like that. I was simply assured that in the midst of the affliction, that God had the answer, and that I didn't need to settle for being in the midst of this affliction when, in fact, God had peace for me. I continued to pray. As I kept praying about it, and simply being 'open and honest' with God about what I was feeling (and trying to follow his leading as he presented that to me in prayer), all of sudden I remembered something that I had dreamt during the nighttime. It was a picture that I had picked up in the dream, and I was showing it to someone. It was a picture of my mother and father and brothers and sisters and other relatives. It was roughly and 8"x10" photo, and my mother and a few others were standing away from the rest off to the right, alienating themselves. When I picked up the picture, it had shattered glass on it! A very small piece of the glass got in my finger and I said to my wife, "Honey, I need to find some running water to rinse this off!" Now look at that! In a dream, the Lord had already shown me the problem of why I was in pain! I was in pain over my mother's rejection of my father -- how she stood afar off in the picture, and that had brought me pain. The good news was that it was only a 'sliver' in the dream -- not a great big deal. At that point, when the Lord showed me this (as I was praying), well, you guessed it, I began to have 'peace' once again. Both the physical, as well as the psychological/spiritual/emotional pain that I had been experiencing began to instantly diminish! Praise the Lord! What is the moral of the story? I think this. First, God loves us all and intimately desires to have a wonderful, Holy Spirit filled relationship with each and every one of us. However, there are often 'issues of pain' in each of our lives. God wants to resolve that. More than 'want' to resolve it, I believe that he is actively pursuing each and every one of us who believe in him in order to resolve it -- for example, he gave that wonderful dream to me during the night. But, look what happened! Because of the pain, I was 'blocking out' the revelation that God had already provided! Has God provided a solution to the problem that you are facing today, perhaps, without you actually knowing about it yet? I pray that you might pursue him with all that is in you, so that you might know the truth, and, as Jesus said, the truth will set you free! (John 8:32,34) View Comments | Add Comment
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