"Life has been so hard, I don't even want to get out of bed in the morning."

Pain and suffering are not meant to kill or destroy you, they are meant to strengthen your faith.

When I was thirty-five years old, there was a time I was so depressed from what I thought life had "dealt" me, that all I wanted was to crawl under the covers and never show my face again.

I blamed all my miseries on this job, and that person, and those circumstances. I can remember being so discouraged over a heart-breaking ministry situation that I lay upstairs in my daughter Kari's room, not eating for almost four days. Each of my children would come up and try to encourage me, but I'd just tell them to go away—I didn't want to face anyone or anything. Norma did her best to break me out of the doldrums as well, but for days I stayed in a darkened room, alone with my misery.

Finally, I remember telling my wife that I had made an important decision. I was getting out of the ministry. I didn't want any part of all the stress and broken promises I'd faced, and I was going to leave and get into some other kind of work.

Norma turned to me and asked, "What would you do? You've only been trained for the ministry and nothing else." As that idea sunk in, I really became depressed! I "thanked" her for the encouragement. In my mind, I was on a dead-end street with no hope of ever finding a pathway that would take me away from my troubles.

During this time, I remember doing something out of desperation that turned out to be the greatest thing that has ever happened to me in my life. This period of personal darkness was the worst experience that had ever happened to me, but it turned into the greatest thing I ever experienced because of what it taught me.

I learned one biblical principle that taught me several important things I may never have learned otherwise. I discovered how to use my emotions—even the negative ones—instead of just being used by them. I learned something that led me to lasting freedom from worry, fear, anxiety, hurt feelings, and depression. I also learned how to take all the negative things that happen to me and actually find positive good and deeper love for others within the trial.

That terrible experience taught me the secret to experiencing continuing fulfillment in life: Emotional pain inflicted by others is meant to strengthen us. Pain gives us more love because pain causes us to feel the pain of others. We become more compassionate, understanding, energized to help others, more sensitive, better able to know how to help others in crises and the list goes on and on with qualities of love. We even become more like Christ faster through trials. II Corinthians 12:9, 10

In the past, how have you responded to ridicule from others? Conflict? On-the-job gossip?

How can the trials you are going through raise your "threshold of pain?"

Why was I ever born? My entire life has been filled with trouble, sorrow, and shame.

Jeremiah knew despair. After sustaining beatings and imprisonment, he was done with ministry. No one was listening to his message. However, he knew that quitting was not an option. Instead, he resolved to continue to reach out to the very people who were seeking to take his life.

© Copyright 2005 Smalley Relationship Center

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