Highlight: Learning from pain

Whether it’s mental, physical, emotional, or spiritual, many of us fall into the trap of living to avoid pain. But what if our pain was trying to tell us something, what if it could be a good thing for us? Elizabeth Brown says that we’ve become experts at running from pain and avoiding confrontation.

“We are a drug addicted culture now because we know we can escape a lot of pain.”

However, in the medical world, not being able to feel pain is a life-threatening condition.

“There are people born without the ability to feel pain or they develop a disease like leprosy and they hit their fingers, or they step on a nail, and they don’t recognize it as pain.”

Pain warns us that if we don’t adjust, worse damage can and will be done.

“There’s a story about a small child who actually gnawed their fingers off because it didn’t hurt. Pain centers are critical and they’re needed for our physical health and these times that are so painful in our lives are beneficial for our spiritual health.”

When we walk through pain in a healthy way with God by our side, positive things start to take place.

“As we walk through such times, we reset our priorities and we look at our life and we say, gee, I won’t ever do that again and that was the wrong choice. We learn the right choices to make, we develop a confidence, and we learn to trust God because we see.”

If we encounter pain with God, we can be assured that we will have the opportunity to learn from it.

It takes a long time to recover from pain, and that’s okay.

“No one should go through hard times while being pious and clinging to religious clichés. They need to get down and really talk about what it’s like. You see someone who has lost a child and they’re talking about how wonderful it is that they’re up in heaven – and it’s only been two weeks – you know they’re not facing the reality of the hurt.”


Elizabeth Brown is a teacher, speaker, and professional counselor. The author of the popular , and .

Key Scripture: John 10:10

Featured Songs: Song of My Father – Urban Rescue;  I Will Rise – Chris Tomlin; Sinking Ships – Lincoln Brewster

Standing up when life falls down around you