No Pain, No Gain

For your thoughts are not My thoughts, nor are you ways My ways, says the Lord (Is. 55:8).

I’ve been having some pain in my neck and shoulders recently, so yesterday, I made an appointment and went for a massage after work. This was a new place for me, as the place I’d been going to has recently gone out of business – another casualty of the economic downturn.

The place I went to is run by a couple of young ladies from Korea. Linda, the masseuse, was phenomenal. To look at her, you wouldn’t think she had the strength she does. But she made bread dough out of my back. At times what she was doing was painful as she discovered knots in some muscles that I didn’t even know were there. I could feel the tension melting out of my body. The concept of causing pain to relieve pain seems strange, but in a mysterious way, it does work.

As I was driving home afterwards, I thought about how God works with us the same way. At times, He will allow us to experience things that can be painful, in order to excavate from us some habit or attitude that is not in line with His plan. As happens with the massage, you have two choices. You can fight it, thus causing even more pain, or you can relax and go with it, and the tension will ease. If we surrender to God’s plan, we find that He gives us everything we need to endure whatever painful experience we are going through, and to come out victorious on the other side of it.

Earlier this year, I was experiencing a lot of difficulty in one particular area of my life. Being a project manager, I tend to think long-term when it comes to planning. That’s fine for work, but in the spiritual life it doesn’t serve me so well. Over the summer, a good friend was visiting from Colorado. When I shared with him some of what I was going through, he told me about a book he’d been reading, and strongly urged me to read it. The book is called He Leadeth Me by Walter Ciszek. I won’t go into the details and spoil the story except to highly recommend it, and to say that it gave me a completely different perspective about long range planning when it comes to my spiritual walk. It really hammered home what Jesus meant when He said, “Can any of you by worrying add a moment to your life-span?” (Lk. 12:25).

It took a painful experience to get me to simply allow God to take care of me day to day instead of worrying about next week or next month or next year. But at the same time, He gave me what I needed (via the book) to help me get there. It has been a tremendously freeing thing, and I have found in the weeks since finishing the book that I enjoy the things that are right in front of me so much more. That, in turn, causes me to give praise to God more often and more intensely. It’s a lot less stressful to live life this way!