What do we do with pain? I really believe we only have two options, although the way these present can look different. The first option is to allow it to control us, whether by trying to deny or ignore it, or by focusing on it entirely and allowing it to tell us who we are. The second option is to allow God to bring life from death, creating the Great Reversal in our lives.
When we decide that we are no more than our pain, it controls us. It tells us we are worthless, rejected and hopeless. We believe it, and receive messages from whoever caused this pain in our lives. We basically allow these people who have done damage to completely define us, and thus continue to have power over us. We may be in complete denial of the way the pain has affected us, but it still controls us. It’s sort of like a “dry drunk”—instead of continuing to focus on alcohol by drinking it, the focus is on abstaining from alcohol. The obsession is still there, and the addiction still controls.
If we are trying to explain away our pain or pretend it’s not there, we live as a distortion of ourselves. We want to believe that we are free, but having never faced the pain and pushed through it, we continue to be controlled in a different way. I can’t tell you how many people I talk to who still believe messages that were given to them by rejecting or abusive people 30, 40 or 50 years ago. If we never recognize who is speaking these lies, we assume they might be true because they are in our heads and run freely in our thoughts. When we understand the control that this pain still has in our life and in dictating our identity, we can confess that and kill the lies. Then, the truth has a chance to be heard.
This is the other option. We ask Jesus, our compassionate high priest who has suffered in unimaginable ways for us, to show us how He is bringing beauty from ashes, life from death, freedom from chains. He is not limited to the way we see circumstances, and He never defines us in the way that these people who have caused pain have done. Instead, He calls us by name, speaking truth and identity over us.
The Great Reversal is a concept that operates throughout Scripture, and I didn’t come up with it. I’ve heard numerous pastors and teachers talk about this, recognizing that what we thought was going to kill us was really bringing us to new life. When we start to ask for God’s perspective on our pain, He will never condemn or shame us. He will, instead, invite us into His reversals, demonstrating His miraculous power to turn everything right-side up in an upside-down world. Now, this doesn’t mean it will look like we expect. In fact, my experience is that it probably will be completely the opposite of what I expected. But God will bring the Great Reversal in your life and my life just as He does in so many of those in the Bible.
Now, sometimes we get the idea that God bringing life from death means that we should be happy about the death. I don’t think that’s true. I think we recognize that death, pain, suffering—all of it stinks and is extremely difficult. But we also realize that these aren’t the end, for nothing ends in death when it comes to God. Beauty from ashes doesn’t mean the ashes aren’t ashes. It means God isn’t limited to bringing beauty only from beautiful things—He can bring something out of nothing. This is resurrection life in action. The new, the sweet, the free, the beautiful, the hopeful, the healed, the living. All of them are a result of God’s work through the opposite, reversing the very thing meant to kill us or put us into completely shut-down, which is essentially dying while living physically.
We no longer need to be afraid of anything because God can bring goodness from any painful, traumatic, awful circumstance. Not because the circumstance is good, but because He is. This is how He works everything together for good (Rom 8:28)—not because everything in this world is good, but because He can bring freedom and life out of any slavery and death. Ask Him how He is bringing the Great Reversal in your own pain, offering you freedom and hope no matter what you have suffered.
So we are convinced that every detail of our lives is continually woven together for good, for we are his lovers who have been called to fulfill his designed purpose. Romans 8:28