Peace amid Pain - The Birth from God (1)

The main reason for pain and the main source of suffering and toil is sin and separation from God. For Adam has not known toil and pain, thorns and thistles, and Eve has not experienced burdens of pregnancy and giving birth until after they were fallen into sin.
“To the woman He said: “I will greatly multiply your sorrow and your conception; In pain you shall bring forth children; Your desire shall be for your husband, And he shall rule over you.” Then to Adam He said, “Because you have heeded the voice of your wife, and have eaten from the tree of which I commanded you, saying, ‘You shall not eat of it’: “Cursed is the ground for your sake; In toil you shall eat of it all the days of your life. Both thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you, and you shall eat the herb of the field. In the sweat of your face you shall eat bread till you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; for dust you are, and to dust you shall return” (Genesis 3:16-19). Sin is the head of pains.

Every believer who encounters the experience where the Bible says: “Being born again, not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible, by the word of God, which lives and abides forever”, must have his main original problem solved.

When some came out towards Jesus, with a paralyzed person who was in pain and elongated on a bed, asking him for healing; what did Jesus say to the paralyzed? Before telling him “I say to you, arise, take up your bed, and go to your house.” He said to him “Son, your sins are forgiven you.” (Mark 2: 5, 11). The Lord did not only look at his disease and his inability to move, but He looked deeper beyond the exterior pain, He looked at his spiritual pain.

How deep and hard is the pain, when someone is not acquainted with what’s waiting for him in the Eternity and what his destiny is and what will happen after death. “For what profit is it to a man if he gains the whole world, and loses his own soul? Or what will a man give in exchange for his soul?” (Matthew 16:26). But if a man is suffering physically and psychologically while his soul is in contact with the Lord, he will be able to bear his sufferings.

Our Lord, when offering a treatment, He doesn’t offer only exterior treatment; He heals the inside first. For that, the singer says in the Psalm: “Bless the LORD, O my soul, and forget not all His benefits: Who forgives all your iniquities, Who heals all your diseases” (Psalm 103:2, 3). David mentioned iniquities before diseases, for the forgiveness of iniquities must precede the healing of diseases.

Most of the times, we ask the Lord to heal us of our diseases, to change our circumstances, and to solve our problems, so that we can rejoice; circumstances could change to the better but without inside happiness. Why? For this is not the right solution for our problems. The real solution is we have to experience the blessing which came in “Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! In his great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead” He did not say Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ who saved us from the disease or from the pain, because the new birth is the real solution for the problem of sin and separation from God

Magdy Samuel