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No Pain, No Gain? Not Exactly...
by Robert Cook
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After years of fighting it, I’ve finally come to a place where I actually enjoy spending four or so hours a week tearing my muscle tissues apart; knowing that over time I’ll be bigger and stronger. At least that’s the general idea anyway. I’ve been going pretty consistently for about seven months now. So, I guess that would make me a weight-lifting expert huh? For the sake of argument let’s just say that it does. This being the case, I feel I’ve earned the right to question a long standing myth that most people in a gym are familiar with…
No pain; no gain. You’ve heard it before right? The more time I spend learning about muscle growth, I’m learning that pain does not guarantee muscle growth. You can spend years killing yourself in a gym and not make any significant increase in strength or size. Its not the pain that causes muscular growth, its actually the time you spend healing and recovering from the workout that produces the most growth. Will there be pain? Yes. Should there be pain? Yes, but pain doesn’t equal growth, it is only as you allow yourself time to recover from the exertion that your body goes into repair mode. As the muscle repairs, it actually grows in the process.
So what does this have to do with our spiritual life? It’s sad to say, but the gym is not the only place one hears clichés about pain supposedly helping one through tough times. One common cliché is, “God wants to turn your hurt into your ministry.” The idea is that out of your pain comes growth and an ability to minister to people in ways you could not before you experienced your pain.
There is partial truth in that idea, but in and of itself, it is a very dangerous statement. I don’t believe that it is God’s best for us that we should minister to people out of pain and hurt. Pain does not qualify one to minister. It is one's ability to heal from their pain that enables them to minister effectively.
All too often we find people getting hurt, stuffing their hurt, and then burring themselves in ministry dealing with the hurt of others’ so that they will never have to deal with their own. If you ask them about it they just say, “I’ve forgiven the person,” or “I’ve laid that down at the Cross,” or “I’ve put that under the Blood” whatever that means. It’s sad to think of the number of people who have gone into ministry just so they will not have to live in the suffering of their past.
Hurting people do not help people, they only hurt other people. Three great truths God has been showing me are these:
1, Every one of us has our mindsets and hearts shaped by our past hurts.
2, Every one of us are masters at fooling ourselves that our past pain has no lingering side effects.
3, Without healing our pains are pointless.
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