One of the hardest aspects of my Christian life has been dealing with emotional and spiritual pain. Over the years I’ve had some pretty hard experiences, as I’m sure you have. One recent experience I’ve had has been due to my dad’s development of frontal temporal dementia and the subsequent exasperation of his mood disorder. Sometimes the idea my dad’s dementia hits me like a ton of bricks. I can be just fine, working away, and then bam, I start thinking about what his dementia will do to him. It isn’t as if I’m actively thinking about what his disease will do to him. Sometimes it will seemingly come from out of the blue; while other times I foolishly “stuff down” how I feel. When I force this feeling back, thoughts about the situation with my dad bubble up suddenly to the surface like a rolling boil.
Maybe your mother or father has a disease that will end up crippling them and eventually lead to their death, the way my father does. Perhaps you’ve lost a parent tragically or you’ve experienced a massive amount of financial loss, or a relationship you’ve invested heavily in was abruptly over. We live in a fallen world that requires us to deal with pain. To neglect dealing with pain and avoiding one’s own feelings isn’t healthy. In fact, avoiding your feelings only leads to further issues such as compounded stress, guilt, shame, depression, and more. Dealing with pain is an unavoidable part of life.
Dealing with pain is part of dealing with reality. The day I sat down to write this article, I cried for a good half an hour while working on another project. I kept telling myself as I cried to “knock it off”, but the tears didn’t stop. Finally, I stopped telling myself to knock it off and just cried until I stopped. It’s important to remember that Jesus experienced the full range of human emotions, but never sinned. Jesus was beaten, scourged, and died the most bloody and brutal death known to man. He experienced betrayal by those closest to Him. When I feel like I do with my dad, I remind myself I have a Savior in Jesus who understands what I’m going through. Jesus is unlike me, however, in that He is sinless, while I’m a sinner clinging to and abiding in Him.
Preaching the Gospel, and not a self-improvement message, is the key to rightly dealing with pain and reality. As Christians we have a big God who knows what we are going through, who is near to the broken hearted, and who genuinely desires to walk with His people through pain and suffering.
In my teenage years I struggled with telling people, “I love you”. There are times when I still struggle with this. While over the years I’ve grown better at telling people I care about them, even recently I struggled to say, “I love you” to someone I care about a lot. It wasn’t that I didn’t genuinely love this person, I do but I just didn’t feel very loving at that moment. Perhaps you’ve felt that way as well. How do we get over the feeling of feeling icky? The Bible talks about a word rightly spoken. You never know when you might offer a word of encouragement at just the right time. You never know how your prayers or ministry to someone might be the catalyst the Lord will use to genuinely help someone.
As we wrap up this article, I want to give you some (hopefully helpful) advice on how to deal with pain. First, understand that others around you are experiencing different degrees of pain in their own life. Experiencing intense pain whether emotionally, physically, or mentally will cause you to be more sympathetic, compassionate, and humble toward others. Second, get a good support system around you from your local church, family, and friends. Finally, I encourage you to open your Bible and engage in the spiritual disciplines. If you don’t know what those are, I encourage you to get Donald Whitney’s classic book The Spiritual Disciplines for the Christian Life.
Whatever you do, don’t be silent about your struggles and please don’t ignore or avoid them. Deal with your issues by facing them head on by the grace of God, and with the help if needed of trained professionals. Dealing with pain is an inevitable and unavoidable part of life. Look to Jesus and remember what He suffered. He knows what you are going through. Run to Him, cling to Him, and rest in Him; He is sufficient for all you need.
This post was first published at Blogging Theologically.
Dave Jenkins is happily married to his wife, Sarah. He is a writer, editor, and speaker living in beautiful Southern Oregon. Dave is a lover of Christ, His people, the Church, and sound theology. He serves as the Executive Director of Servants of Grace Ministries, the Executive Editor of Theology for Life Magazine, the Host and Producer of Equipping You in Grace Podcast, and is a contributor to and producer of Contending for the Word. He is the author of The Word Explored: The Problem of Biblical Illiteracy and What To Do About It (House to House, 2021), The Word Matters: Defending Biblical Authority Against the Spirit of the Age (G3 Press, 2022), and Contentment: The Journey of a Lifetime (Theology for Life, 2024). You can find him on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Youtube, or read his newsletter. Dave loves to spend time with his wife, going to movies, eating at a nice restaurant, or going out for a round of golf with a good friend. He is also a voracious reader, in particular of Reformed theology, and the Puritans. You will often find him when he’s not busy with ministry reading a pile of the latest books from a wide variety of Christian publishers. Dave received his M.A.R. and M.Div through Liberty Baptist Theological Seminary.
