Pain’s Role in Shattering the Illusion of Self-Sufficiency

Continued from here.

I hope and pray that nobody reading this blog entry will be as stubborn as I was in letting go of the illusion of self-sufficiency. I fought God with all that I had to my own detriment, and the process was exceedingly painful, both physically and emotionally. I repeatedly threw myself against His brick wall, but He never budged. I cannot put into words how painful the process of being sifted as wheat was, but I came out on the other side with a deep fear of the Lord. I will now do whatever God tells me to do because I’m too fearful not to – not that I am “afraid” of God – I simply fear disobeying Him. I trust Him completely and know that as long as I fear Him (trust & obey Him), I need never fear anything else. He holds me in the palm of His hand.

The truth is that God created us to be dependent upon Him. Each of us has a deep yearning to fill up with Him, but most of us seek to fill that place with anything other than God. For me, some of those idols were food, friendships, and television. For others, it might be sex (pornography), drugs, alcohol, compulsive busyness, and the like. Anything we overdo is really us trying to fill the space inside that only God can fill.

Lewis said,

The creature’s illusion of self-sufficiency must, for the creature’s sake, be shattered.”

For someone like me with lots of deep emotional pain, there was plenty to work with internally to break this illusion. For people who have been blessed to grow up in safe, loving environments, God might need to allow external forms of pain, such as misfortunes, into their lives, which often leads folks to ask why God would allow such terrible things to happen in the lives of good people. One way or another, God must lead each of us to realize that only He can satisfy us, and we learn that through experiencing pain.

I share Lewis’ sentiments in revealing these realities to you:

I am only trying to show that the old Christian doctrine of being made perfect through suffering is not incredible. To prove it palatable is beyond my design.”

When I find myself in a season of suffering, I try to remember that the question I need to ask is not whether a relationship with God is too difficult. The real question is whether it’s worth it … and it is.

To be continued…

[Graphic: Cartoon of Grace breaking a guitar. Courtesy Bitmoji.]