How to Overcome Life’s Pain

I want to give a Word of comfort and hope, and encouragement for all of us. I want to talk about how to overcome the pains of life and endure, and overcome in the midst of trials, and I am going to use two passages.

One is found in Second Corinthians chapter 4, Second Corinthians chapter 4, verse 7. The apostle Paul, who wrote these passages, despite being a man of great power, greatly blessed by God, was also a man who endured many trials and difficulties; he was not exempt from suffering and affliction even though God had chosen him for one of the greatest spiritual works in the entire history of Christianity. Nevertheless, Paul was a doctor of hardships, suffering, and affliction.

But what always impresses us about him is that this note of victory and confidence, and faith in the Lord, rises above all the other notes of his life, and reminds us that, even though we may go through tribulations and struggles, we are not forsaken, but the Lord is with us, and that we must always declare victory in the midst of everything.

And we can begin, for example, with verse 7. Second Corinthians 4 says: “But we have this treasure.” The treasure of which Paul speaks in Acts is, in fact, God’s blessing within us, the Gospel God has given us, the wonderful revelation we have through Christ Jesus. All the wonderful teaching contained in Scripture, the inheritance that each one of us has as children of God.

Paul says: This treasure, however, we have in what kind of vessels? “Earthen vessels.” In other words, it is as though you took millions of dollars and, instead of putting them in a safe or in a very beautiful and well-adorned chest, you put them in humble, breakable, fragile clay jars. And Paul says: “We have this treasure of the Gospel in earthen vessels, so that the excellence of the power may be of God and not of us,” so that God may be glorified, not us, always; so that we may always have to seek Him.

“We who are troubled on every side”—but what?—“yet not distressed; perplexed, but not in despair.” How many of us sometimes despair, lose hope, and think something like: There is no longer any hope for me; there is no future for me? Rebuke that in the Name of the Lord. The Christian is never in despair. He may be troubled, yes.

I believe that sometimes we can be troubled, we can be distressed; that is natural. I do not believe in that edict going around among many Christians: Oh, that... For example, that little chorus—with the best of intentions, and I have no problem with it; if you want to sing it, amen—“A heart that has Christ cannot be sad.” I know what it means; it is almost like a rhetorical declaration: “A heart that has Christ should not be sad.” But the truth is that sometimes we are sad. Sometimes the trial is overwhelming, and who has lost a loved one without becoming sad and distressed? It is natural, but what we must not do is lose hope, lose our assurance in God.

“We are perplexed, but not in despair. We are persecuted, but never forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed, always carrying about everywhere in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be manifested in our bodies.”

And why not also read a little of verse 16 there in Second Corinthians 4? It says: “Therefore we do not lose heart. Rather, though this outward man of ours is wasting away, the inward man is nevertheless renewed day by day; for this light, momentary affliction produces in us an ever more excellent and eternal weight of glory.” In other words, what the apostle Paul tells us there is that the tribulations we experience, instead of striking us down, destroying us, boxing us into a dead end, make us stronger; they produce in us an ever more excellent and eternal weight of glory. They make us weightier in the positive sense of the word; we have more spiritual weight in the Lord.

Then, in the Epistle to the Philippians, in chapter 1, Paul is in prison in chains, with two guards in front of his prison. Some say that he even had a soldier chained to him so that there would not be one of those miracles Peter experienced and he might somehow escape mysteriously. He is not sure whether he is going to die or live, whether they are going to crucify him or execute him; he is not completely one hundred percent sure whether he will get out of that prison alive. It was there that he wrote this Epistle to the Philippians, which is an epistle overflowing with joy, hope, gladness, and victory.