Tag: suffering

Behind Sufferings

Have you ever wondered or asked why was your life so filled with pains and sorrows? Has the ‘Why, me Lord?‘, ‘If it’s not one thing it’s another‘, or ‘Will it ever end?‘ ever crossed your mind or been spoken from your lips? Have you ever come to the place you thought you were destined to live the majority of your life with troublesome situations with only teasing moments of good times? Does it seem like the ones that come looking for you are misery, negativity, trouble, and frustration?

As children the bad things we experienced caused us to store them away and categorize them forming a wall of defense for future encounters. The lies we believed and the suffering from them will never leave our memories or hearts. The bad relationships that caused the tears to flow and the heart to ache will not be forgotten. The betrayals will always be a haunting sight when that memory resurfaces in our minds. Our inward defense pops up holding them at a distance or they overtake us with the emotions all over again. The majority of the time most people fight them off or avoid them not wanting to go through it again. Troubles and misery for most of us is something we don’t want to keep company with.

As time goes by some will face getting tired and weary battling thoughts of they do not want to go home, go to work, or be around people because they become use to always something unpleasant occurring. A constant of some form of suffering is something not all people experience. There are those in life you meet that seem to have the silver spoon in their mouth. Their luck is always blessing them in money, jobs, promotions, and relationships. Their path always seems to be the smoothest while yours is full of debris, holes, and obstacles. They always get the girl or the guy while you are completely ignored. You may have accepted that each step you take will be with the expectation of what problem is next.

There is a side to suffering very few ever see. If it happens to you the void is filled with understanding and perception to the total effect of that bad event. There is a void if it happens to others there is no true experience knowledge inside of you, but only the outward observance and the guess at the pain of suffering. If the majority of things fall right into place and the minority of things fall apart for you this reading will be difficult to wrap your mind and heart around with complete understanding. If the majority of your life is filled with troubles, problems, and never quite lining up for your life you will connect with this reading.

I have heard the song “Blessed” that has the words of “Cause what if your blessings come through raindrops…healing comes through tears…sleepless nights…trials of this life are Your mercies in disguise…“, but never really digging into it. The song “Thy Will” has words like “…I may never understand that my broken heart is a part of your plan…All I’ve got is hurt…But this don’t feel good right now…It’s hard to count it all joy…” , again not really going past the surface of the words. The song “Trust in You” says, “Letting go of every single dream…I try to win this war I confess, my hands are weary, I need Your rest…” is another hearing with nothing past the surface to understanding what is behind the words.

Troubles will try to drive you, negativity will try to push you, problems will try to beat you, sorrows will try to crush you, betrayal will try to stab you, lies will try to slap you all of which is an attempt to surround you with darkness and defeat. We know the fight will be there when we wake up and remain until we sleep with possible nightmares even there.

The paths in this life that I was drove down, pushed into, beaten with, betrayed into, slapped, blindsided, and crushed with caused me to reach out to someone I was completely ignoring. As you can tell I have made God my best friend, but just because He is my best friend does not make me instantly smart and smooth life. We are the ones still learning every day. It does not matter what you affiliate yourself with or title yourself because you are not automatically perfect because of the connection. When I took my first step towards God I was not instantly a saint. Each day, each step, each word, and every action was learning to be better than what I was before.

As I was talking to my best friend He dropped a thought in my mind that I had never considered before. This is one way He guides us by showing us a thought path for us to follow Him to the end of understanding. At this moment I was pondering the troubles we all face daily and the different levels. This is when He dropped an image of a father sitting about two feet apart from his child that was weeping. The father looked at the child with eyes filled with the look of please scoot closer to me and I will wrap my arms around you and cover you with my love that changes not. Why doesn’t the father scoot over and force his arms around the child, I wondered. Some of us want to handle things are own way. Forced comfort is not one hundred percent effective being one-sided as compared to freely choosing the comfort and the two agree as one.

A son took his inheritance and spent it with wild living all the while he could not be helped until he freely and willingly chose to commit himself to his father (Lu. 15:11-24). We all have set our sights on something in this life whether it was a person we wanted in our life or a certain thing we wanted to be and went after it with all of our might. The not getting the girl or guy we wanted, the not getting the certain thing we wanted, the not becoming what we wanted to become, and the other things that did not end well there may have been a reason behind them. The son wanted to live life spending money and partying not realizing there was an ending and a beginning to something different he had not considered. The happy days of parties and money turned into no one really cared about him with no money in his pockets. Misery, loneliness, and being poor were now his only friends. I see the father sitting close to the child wishing they would allow him to comfort them, but it was up to them. Here the son is in a muddy hog pen slopping the hogs to make some money and having nothing to eat hungered for the hogs food. ‘Why, me Lord?‘ could be going through his mind sitting there desolate. Behind his trouble was a father wanting the chance to help a son to live and learn the right things in life.

What if troubles in this life had God behind them waiting on you to seek Him? What if behind the sorrows you are facing God was waiting on you to cry and be comforted with Him? What if a sickness had God standing there waiting on you to seek Him, meet Him and trust Him? What if your hunger and thirst God was there waiting on you to ask Him, seek Him, and knock at His door?

This is a time to stop, stand there, and really look around yourself. We are in a day that there are all kinds of avenues we can choose to follow. Could it be the different troubles we are having has God waiting on us to choose Him? There are more sides to this life than eating and drinking the pleasures of this world. There are more important things in this life than being recognized by our fellow-man. There are better positions to attain in this life than the leaders of this world. There is a status to reach inside yourself that is far greater than the things of this world.

Your pushing for financial status quo may never be reached being constantly blocked by troubles of this world. Your troubles may be God standing behind them waiting on you just to lean on Him, acknowledging Him, and trust Him to guide your paths (Prov. 3:5, 6). I know it may be hard to believe, but there is a down side to being well off. It is nearly impossible for a rich person to enter into heaven as it is for a camel to crawl through a low gate to a city, eye of a needle (Mtt. 19:24). Your troubles could be the thing keeping you close to God making it easier for you to humbly enter into heaven. This reading may hurt because you would love to have less of a financial burden on your shoulders, but that weight may be what keeps you awake to praying to God.

A person that has it all together in money, power, relationships, and material things is something we observe from the outside wishing the luxuries would be ours. We live from pay check to pay check barely meeting the needs of our families. We have the pressure of paying our bills on time. We have no power of influence to use for ourselves. Our relationships are filled with arguing, negativity, misunderstandings, and seem like constant turmoil. Our material things come from hand-me-downs, neighbors, and the cheapest things we can afford. We are constantly sacrificing our time for all other things, but ourselves. Reality tells you they will always be there. Could it be behind all these things we know will always be there sits a Father close to us waiting on us daily to turn to Him for help in carrying our loads in life keeping us close to Him to the day He reaches up and removes that burden with the words to us to enter in my good and faithful child?

If you or I were rich, wealthy, and increase with goods would we even think of our heavenly Father? Would it even dawn on us that day in the hospital bed dying beyond the ability of the doctors all our riches, wealth, and increase of goods could not stop death either? Would it cross our minds anything and everything we physically have in this world someone else will take it over and do with it as they please? The comfort and false peace we would live daily would meet a harsh reality when it comes to the things of our heart. Rich people often seek for the treasures of real friends, real relationships, and real things for their spirit because they have not been pushed as we have in daily life.

The ‘need of nothing‘ spirit and attitude robs us of the things that matter and will last for an eternity. The ‘need of nothing‘ spirit plays and sings to us songs of temporary lies of happiness and false peace. The ‘need of nothing‘ spirit dances before us wooing us into a vision of parties with no tomorrows. The ‘need of nothing‘ spirit drives us to credit debts beyond the truth of our financial means. The ‘need of nothing‘ spirit places glasses over our eyes with false lenses of paradise on the inside and the outside is black as night. The ‘need of nothing‘ spirit brags to con us on our outward appearances avoiding the looking on the inside of our hearts. The ‘need of nothing‘ spirit of this world would have us to believe lots of money, lots of clothes, lots of vehicles, lots of homes/cabins, and lots of good times is the answer to true happiness. What the ‘need of nothing‘ spirit does not tell us the good things of this world puts us to sleep, blinding us from the miserable, nakedness of our wretched soul, and the difficulty of entering heaven after this life (Rich man and Lazarus, Lu. 16:19-31).

My troubles are to keep me praying fresh living prayers. The bombardments of negativity are supposed to keep me seeking God’s positiveness. My on-edge of poorness should keep me humble and mindful for my need of God. My misery should make me run into the arms of God for the comfort of a better tomorrow. My naive acceptance of lies and deceptions should drive me to desiring the truth from God. My shame should cause me to desire to be clothed and covered by God.

None of us enjoy suffering, sorrows, losses, breakups, betrayals, negativity, and other kinds of stresses in this world. I don’t like the thoughts that my tomorrows will have troubles waiting for me to arrive. If I know the Father is standing there with that trouble ready with His grace in hand I want to find Him and freely choose His sufficient help in time of my need.  If I know the Father is going to take the sour lemons that life hands me. I want to look past the present suffering and find Him to allow Him to convert it with His power into making me a better person.

Paul was suffering in his flesh with tormenting pain. He asked God to take away this pain three times (2 Cor. 12:7, 8). It never occurred to me suffering, negativity, pain, and sorrow may be putting or keeping something in its right place for the preserving of the status of my soul. We all have different things in our lives that will so easily cause us to fall and sin (Heb. 12:1). Behind our problems could be a reason for to keep us in check. It sounds awful, I know. I would rather be alive to God than to allow the ‘need of nothing‘ spirit deceiving me like the rich man waking up in hell for eternity. God told Paul the reason behind his suffering and tormenting pains of the flesh was for to keep him humble and the spirit of conceit would not deceive him into losing his own soul. This temporary suffering of the body was a time for him to keep his spirit fresh in prayer and fellowship with the Father sitting right next to him for His grace is sufficient and His power makes perfect in weakness (2 Cor. 12:9).

Problems, troubles, negativity, sorrows, and all other pains of this life could be God wanting you to call on Him, to meet you, admit you are not God, to look for Him, to trust Him, and to believe Him in keeping your soul safe from the ‘need of nothing‘ spirit. After God told Paul the reason behind the suffering Paul said, “…I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong.” (2 Cor. 12:10).

TROUBLES AN OPPORTUNITY?

Naaman    –    2 Kings 5:1-15     God wanted Naaman and others to know, meet, and see

Pharaoh    –    Exodus 7-11           God wanted Pharaoh to admit He was God and to Obey?

Balaam       –    Numbers 22:4-33       God wanted Balaam to believe Him and Listen?

Blindness  –  John 9:1-41     God wanted understanding to be seen as true sight?

Our daily battles with pain, sorrows, sufferings, negativity, and other stressful aggravations are not against flesh and blood that we can physically see, but by the spirit of rulers, authorities, powers of darkness, and spiritual forces of evil (Eph. 6:12) that we cannot see, but by our side if we look for Him is God waiting with grace sufficient enough and power to perfect our weakness to be called upon. May be He just wants us to be close to Him as much as possible until we are safely home.

Nobody Knows

There is no human being in the past, present, or future that knows in one hundred percent details of what is going on deep down inside your mind, heart, and soul except for one who is no longer here physically. Right now as you are reading these words sitting in a chair, laying on the bed, waiting for the bus to arrive, or at the kitchen table only you know the thoughts and feelings you are having at this moment. If there are people around you your thoughts and feeling are not being broadcast for anyone and everyone to see.

If you should even attempt to concentrate to broadcast your thoughts and feelings they will still go unnoticed and unheard. How many times have you stared into someone’s face while they are talking and the thoughts you are having would get you into trouble if they were broadcast out loud instantly? Most people rely upon body language to try to see inside others practicing a guessing game at what thoughts and feelings you are having, but never truly seeing one hundred percent details of your mind, heart, and soul.

The brother or sister you fought with growing up hearing you say, “I hate you” did not truly see the entire inside your mind and heart. The words could have been spoken because they were leaving you behind and the intention was just one more time give me some last-minute attention before you go, instead of “I hate you” and “I wish you would die” intentions. They did not see the broken heart and the inside tears dripping from the thoughts you are leaving me all alone. They did not see the hole that pulled away from your heart as they walked away. The reality of how much they were a part of the love in your heart surprises even yourself increasing the sorrow of “I did not realize until now” they are leaving. Nobody sees the engulfing defeating pain of “It is too late now” and “there is no second chance“. They only see the outside of facial and body language with no clue to the depth of suffering occurring right before their eyes hidden inside of you. Your spirit is not broadcasting one hundred percent of what is truly going on the inside of your body only the outward physical actions are dropping hints.

A great majority of people don’t even see with understanding the outward hints of the facial or physical clues. On top of that a great majority of people just don’t care, which is one of the saddest things on earth. There is a beauty to seeing and connecting to the inward parts of a person that go beyond descriptive words anyone could ever speak outwardly. There is a world inside each person that has mountains, valleys, rivers, slums, cities, towns, schools, jails, court rooms, execution rooms, happy places, war-torn zones, tombstones, sunrise, sunsets, rain, snow, teddy bears, snakes, horses, dogs, cats, birds, lakes, oceans, caves, and many more things.

Night has come and everyone has done their routine before bed as you lay down and the lights go out. Nobody knows as you silently lay there on your pillow the small trickling thoughts start flowing down your little creek bed as the water increases to overflowing your banks, out your eyes, down your check silently dripping and soaking into your pillow in the covered darkness of night. Even if you have someone beside you there is no broadcasting out loud the pain and suffering you are silently enduring. The bombing thoughts of something you love that is going away explodes all around you feeling powerless to stop the bombs falling from the sky. In the silence of the night inside your mind and heart an entire war can be erupting with a deafening sound to a hearing ear the horrific sites you see and “Nobody knows“. You lay there in a fox hole hoping the morning when and if you wake up to everything will be changed.

Inside your mind, heart, and spirit is an unlimited world that ‘Nobody knows‘ truly exists. Your body walks by the cubicles at work, the doorways, through the warehouse, down the assembly lines, or the saw-tables with every person absent-minded of the spirit of suffering inside. They see an outward smile you have practiced and hear words of greetings you have perfected, but the dying lonely spirit inside goes unseen and unheard.

As you walk with one foot falling out front with the other foot swinging into place in front of the other creating a forward motion for the body while the mind is frozen into place with heart pounding shock. The thoughts will not come for the numbness has them locked up. The pressure from deep down below begins to push its way upward as they reach the outlet at the top spilling out over the bottom eye lid. To the outside world water flows downhill naturally, but the hidden inward world of a hurting soul the water flows upward pushing up, out, and then down onto the cheek beside the nose to the chin dripping its brokenness. Who can truly see inside the house of flesh the details for the reason of suffering? Who truly cares to know in all purity of intentions? You body begins to stumble as you walk being a reflection to the staggering soul within. You want to help them so bad, but there are no ideas only emptiness with tormenting sorrow for the nothingness that can be done. Everything around you is totally oblivious to what is happening on the inside and you find yourself in place wondering ‘how did I get here?‘

Everyone leaves the house hearing the last person shut the door “Nobody Knows” your back leans against the wall sliding down to sitting on the floor as your arms prop onto your knees with your hands catching your face with streaming tears pouring into your hands as a deep mourning cry begins to burst forth with an utterance and a language that cannot be translated. You fall forward crawling towards the bed, couch, or chair dripping the tears of heartache and wishes. You dedicated many years of your life to saving that someone finding with all your efforts, sacrifices, and denying of personal happiness they walk away from you straight into the fire you wished to save and protect them from the burning pain. The wall holds no record broadcasting the memory of your sorrow. The floor, bed, couch, or chair does not highlight or glow the dripping spots of your tears to the evidence of your hidden tormenting brokenness.

Inside your body there is a gathering around your heart “Nobody Knows“. They have come together to crush your spirit with the past, present, and the future. Loneliness joins hands with powerlessness, powerlessness locks hands with sadness, sadness joins regret-fullness,  regret-fullness joins with unfulfilled, unfulfilled with emptiness, nowhere to go and no answer in sight closes the circle around your heart starting the squeezing pressure of no tomorrow for you. ‘Why doesn’t someone truly see me?’, ‘Why does no one come to my help?’, ‘Why, am I so invisible?’

I am lonely with a loneliness physical gratification is not enough. The relationships that started quickly, a dream come true, a long time coming, too good to be true, played, and got together for the wrong reasons plagues the memories of a soul is something “Nobody Knows” the deep scars left inside the hidden spirit under our flesh. The physical plays only a band-aid part, but not the completeness of the cure. There is a hunger and thirst that goes far beyond the limits of this lonely house of flesh we live in.

Your spirit is inside your house of flesh. No one can truly look in through your windows seeing one hundred percent in details what your spirit is doing, thinking, or feeling on the inside. You can be shoulder to shoulder at a concert with someone thinking of dying inches away from your spirit and you would never know it. They could be sitting in the chair next to you with a broken heart of despair and you would never know it. They can be a well-known person in the public’s eye with a spirit of detrimental loneliness that you would never know. They can be handsome, beautiful, pretty, short, tall, and ugly by the world’s outward judgments, but inside “Nobody Knows” the true positive or negative form. They can be presidents, secretaries, doctors, lawyers, cashiers, nurses, carpenters, farmers, technologist, pastors, priests, choir members, coaches, husbands wives, roommates you see every day and yet “Nobody Knows” the suffering of their souls.

What do you live for? What is it you get up every morning to live for? What keeps you going on the outside though your insides are broken and torn? What holds you together? Do you think you will ever find complete happiness? Will the morning come that you wake up and all will be as you have dreamed it would be?

If deep down your answers to the above questions have a short coming to your expectations what can you do about it? Powerlessness may step up and say, ‘I cannot change others and the world I have tried them and on me‘. You are looking on the outside. Trusting people to be the hero that saves you at the end of the day is the fantasy you wish to see, but only fulfilled on make-believe shows. People will fail us because it is in all of our natures. Today you will not find many in this world that can walk by you and see the real you, stopping in the crowd, turning to you, and inviting you to eat with them (Lu. 19:2-6). You will not find someone who purposely goes out of their way to a spot you visit everyday just to meet you, talk to you, and try to help you (Jn. 4:4-42). You will not find many who will see through others trying to do you harm for their own selfish reasons using you, stand up for you, pointing the twisting of the law back at them, and after they leave offer you a hand up to go free because neither do they condemn you (Jn. 8:2-11). You will not find many in this world to accept you as you are and still want to keep company with you (Mtt. 9:10-13).

If finding that someone on the outside falls short what about doing something about the inside? Can you find something that will work on the inside that nobody on the outside could ever reach? We all at one point or another seek a physical existing partnership of someone who truly sees us with complete understanding and hears us with complete perception (they get us). Finding someone at your level of thinking, morals, and desires in completeness is almost near to zero chances. You may get close to finding that someone, but the majority of the world simply adapts to their situation with the outward facial/body expressions and rehearsed words of conversations. Another percentage of the world gives up and turns to substances that provide physical escapes through their flesh pushing those highs and lows upon their spirits.

You have a spirit door that leads to the inside of your body. You can open your spirit door and allow a roommate to move into the place where “Nobody Knows” the real you. As with all things you must be careful who you open your spirit door to. People cannot become one with your inside spirit literally. They can live with you with their physical body beside your physical body, but they will still not live inside your body where the real you hurts in the night-time crying tears silently into your pillow as they sleep. They may get accustomed your habits mimicking a oneness with your spirit, but still clueless to the details of your spirit. What we are looking for is beyond what this world can offer.

There are spiritual roommates that can live inside with us. I had many encounters of different kinds of spirit roommates. Some spirits wanted to live in a drug world, alcohol world, sexual world, players world, money world, power world, and many other types of worlds, but the conclusion of all of these pointed to one hundred percent satisfying the physical flesh side and leaving the spirit side to be thrown away and forgotten. I found one Spirit that did not push satisfying the flesh. The flesh is what everyone else sees and ignores the suffering of the spirit within. This one Spirit loved and adored the hidden spirit within that “Nobody Knows” or cares about other than to use it for their own gain. I started my research seeking this one Spirit. I found Him helping others no matter their status quo in life, outward beauty meant nothing to Him, and He willingly helped without demanding payment. I challenged Him with questions of the heart about love, hate, marriage, kindness, revenge, death, life, loneliness, sorrow, and whatever else came my way. I started to trust His answers because the results helped me sleep at night, wake up the next day happy, and pass through the day even when people did not care.

As time passed by I felt He was the Spirit roommate I wanted inside with mine automatically.  One day someone said some challenging things about my Spirit friend and His word. Of course, I nodded and smiled while inside I was thinking I will go home and see for myself if what they said holds true to what my Spirit roommate says. He said my friend was the same yesterday, today, and forever, which I found in Hebrews 13:8. I said to myself and my Spirit Friend ‘OK, that is true because it is in Your word and not twisted.‘ They told me that no one in the entire Bible was ever baptized in the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. This was still the same conversation that I had nodded and smiled. I found in Matthew 28:19 is where my Spirit friend had said, “Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost: Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you:..” OK, this was true what He said to His disciples of that day in the past, but now it was onto researching where they baptized people. I kept going because my Spirit friend was the most important friend of all because He knew exactly what I was suffering on the inside while the rest of the world turned away. I researched using all kinds of tools to find water baptism in the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit. Again, I found what they told me was true that no one in the entire Bible record was baptized in the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit, but I did find several Bible recorded water baptisms in the name of Jesus Christ. This made me go “Hmm”. My best Spirit friend in His word only baptized in His name for the reason of applying His blood to wash away my sins, which made sense to me because you cannot kill the Father or the Holy Spirit. I only agreed with this because it completely matched my Spirit friend Jesus and I trusted Him more than people. The final part they told me was we can receive His Spirit like they did back then because He is the same yesterday, today, and forever. I researched and found my Spirit friend Jesus did not change in water baptism and the in filling of His Spirit because it was a promise to all generations (Acts 2:38, 39.

Now, it was on. I started asking my best Spirit friend Jesus if He wanted me to have His Spirit like they did back then when the cloven tongues of fire came upon them giving them words of praise in another language than their native language as a sign they had received His Spirit then I wanted it also. This open attitude towards my Spirit friend and His word allowed Him to truly and literally move inside my body with my spirit. I was glad to go down into water baptism with His name pronounced over me washing away my sins. I was glad to ask Him directly to fill me with His Spirit with the evidence to myself and those around me of a language He gives me at that moment praising Him. I know now His Spirit and my spirit are roommates inside this body. I will never be alone, cry alone, hurt alone, and walk alone ever again.

He has balanced me out from the inside that “Nobody Knows” except Him with a wisdom that blesses me and those around me who are hurting past the surface of their flesh. He knows and wants to help if we will allow Him. I cannot give you the words that I feel in my spirit that would express enough gratitude for Him loving me beyond me and wanting to be a part of my life. I encourage you get His Bible and challenge Him for answers of your heart that no one knows, but you and Him. He will show you how to handle fear, hate, envy, jealousy, loneliness, and any other unlimited questions you may have. He will drop His thoughts into your thoughts that will make you smile beyond any joy you have ever experienced in this world. Don’t be alone ever again. May God bless you.