Me, God and My Pain (Part I): Why is there pain in this world?

A Tip to maximise your Mid-Week Truth Turn Up …

Your Mid-Week Truth Turn Up is a 'meaty' devotional that can re-centre your heart on Jesus as you go along in your week. The devotional is slightly lengthier than a daily devotional and that is because I post them only once a week and they are meant to be your repeat meditation for the next 7 days till you receive the next Truth Turn Up.

My tip is therefore that as your week goes on, you visit and re-visit your Mid-Week Truth Turn up and meditate on the Bible Meditation passage, my write up as well as the Further Study at the bottom of the devotional. Take the whole week to meditate on it and get it into your spirit. Do not try to compress the whole devotional into one reading.

Enjoy (* wink *)

Coach Toyin 

ME, GOD, AND MY PAIN (PART I): Why is there pain in this world?

By Coach Toyin

Genesis 2:16-17, 3:1-24, John 10:10, 1 Peter 5:8, 

1 John 5:19 We know that we are from God, and the whole world lies in the power of the evil one.

Let’s take this back to the beginning. All you have to do is study Genesis 1 and 2 to see that God created a perfect world, a world without pain, sin and brokenness.; a world that birthed its richness and harvest for the benefit of humankind. In this perfect world, God also created man and woman in His image and gave them authority in the world. He told them to “Run things! Live well! Fill this beautiful earth!” (forgive my interpretation!) He gave them what I call ‘the God-life” – a life of deep relationship with God, being like Him, seeing Him face to face and co-ruling with Him to establish His will on earth as it is in heaven.

‘The God-life” is a life of deep relationship with God, being like Him, seeing Him face to face and co-ruling with Him to establish His will on earth as it is in heaven.

There was one caveat though – the God-life was there’s if they chose to keep it by living within God’s instructions. You see, God created human-kind with a will; they could choose Him … or not. He gave them everything, but they could only hold on to ‘everything’ if they held on to Him. Sadly, as we know, man chose not to hold on to God. They fell for the devil who confused and then blatantly lied to them about God’s heart towards them. He deceived them into eating the fruit from the tree of knowledge of good and evil which God had instructed them not to eat from – eating from it would cut them off from ‘the God-life’ and introduce a desire for evil, sin and brokenness into their lives and into the world.

The result? Our very fallen, broken and sinful world … a world that literally births pain in and for the people who live in it. The impact of this sin in the world is and was so bad that the very first account of man’s activities after the ‘fall’ of man was of Cain and Abel, Adam’s sons (Genesis 4) who were destroyed because of the jealousy, anger, hatred, and murder, that gripped and controlled Cain’s heart. From where? They are and were a product of sin, which produces pain and death, and by Genesis 6:5, a few generations after Adam, the Bible says that “the Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intent of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.”

The result of man’s choice to live outside of God’s will is our very fallen, broken and sinful world … a world that literally births pain in and for the people who live in it.

In short, pain is woven into the very fabric of the broken and fallen world that we live in. It has become the enemy’s master tool to torture humankind, whom He knows that God loves boundlessly. The devil’s aim from the beginning has been to torture us using the pain that our broken world births in and through us, so that while on earth, we live broken, and even after our physical life, we remain in pain and brokenness, eternally separated from God. There is pain in this world because of man’s sin and continued departure from God, and the devil uses that pain that has now become a fabric of life on earth, to keep us broken and away from God, now and in eternity.

Pain is woven into the very fabric of the broken and fallen world that we live in.

Sigh …

Now this would all sound really horrible, except that woven in there is an incredible story of redemption that centres around God Himself, and how He made a way to bring us back into ‘the God-life’. We’ll talk about that in later episodes. For now, the Bible passages in today’s devotional tell us everything we need to know; Pain is not God’s work on earth; it is the devil’s work on earth.

Let’s pray:

Jesus, the levels of pain that are all around me really shock me. Its hard to reconcile Your goodness and love, to the reality that this world is so full of pain. As I learn more about pain in this world, help me to keep my heart open to what You are showing me. Help me to trust You and Your love. Help me to trust that You are not the source of the pain that this world births, but rather, You are the author of every eternal solution to restore and heal the brokenness that I hate to see in this world. In Jesus’ name, Amen.

I am Coach Toyin, fully convicted by my own words, and very much still under construction in the hands of the Father.

CHRISTIAN TRANSFORMATIONAL PROGRAMS BY COACH TOYIN

                                       

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