Pain: God's Megaphone
How Pain is God's Megaphone to Find True Peace
Have you ever wondered why God allows *not causes* pain in our lives? Why would He allow the ones He so loves to be anything other than at peace? And yet, unavoidably, we’ll find ourselves coming back to this question over and over.
Humans, after all, are more willing to first wonder why we are in pain rather find the possibilities in it.
Humans are also masters at manipulation, attempting to attain results in the name of “efficiency.” We want solution. We want an out to pain. We want God to pull the proverbial trap door and let us fall somewhere free of sadness or, dare I say, perseverance. However,
We only kid ourselves when we think the answer to our earthly pain is earthly peace.
Who’s to blame for pain?
Often, the world or the devil gets the blame for our problems, but sometimes, life is just hard. Not fun reality check: Things don’t work out. People sometimes aren’t who they claimed to be. Disappointment can become like your throbbing pinky toe when it meets your bed post in the pitch black dark. (Why does it always hurt for hours?) Circumstances can sometimes just stink, and we try our best to mask the smell by attempting to manufacture an earthly peace that doesn’t last.
→ External peace doesn’t last, because it can’t. It’s doesn’t have the capacity to last. It’s earthly. So we tell ourselves the adage: “Fake it ‘til you make it.”
True peace will not come from “fake it ‘til you make it.”
Fake peace is like a flimsy house of cards. It will inevitably become fractured or dismantled by the first puff of pride, anxiety, or trial. Then we fool ourselves into thinking if we would’ve just given more or done more, we would be more… at peace.
The lie we tell ourselves is this: If I just acted like I had peace, I would be free from pain.
We never stop to think: What if the allowance of pain in my life could reveal something I’d never seen or known otherwise?
God’s Megaphone
C.S Lewis said this in His work The Problem of Pain:
“Pain insists upon being attended to. God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pain: It is His megaphone to rouse a deaf world…” C.S. Lewis
I love a megaphone metaphor - maybe because I am loud or half deaf and like things loud. When something is loud, you can’t miss it. I have been knee deep in student ministry for years and the best tool outside of a Bible is a megaphone, IMO. Don’t believe me? Photographic proof at the end.
God shouts in our pain. He shouts the way to peace… Himself! He is peace! But how often do we listen for it? Or are we too busy telling Him or anyone else that will listen what is wrong? His “shouting” isn’t mean or demeaning. His shout is a calling. A calling to come and rest. A calling to the peace that only HE can offer.
Full Disclosure
I have experienced the megaphone, as well as my own unwillingness to listen for it. This quote cuts deep into my current season of pain. The pain of not being able to hold things together when it feels like it all depends on me. The pain of watching a parent become what they never wanted to be. The pain of not being able to help others, because I am too busy trying to help my own mind, sometimes, just stay afloat.
→ I share this, because Maybe you can relate in this: I want the pain to be gone ←
I want to not worry if I am not being there enough for those in my life. I want to not fear that my season is changing, because my life is beginning to look different.
I want these pain(s) to disappear like the last piece of my mother in law’s coca-cola cake at Thanksgiving. But life isn’t cake, and pain isn’t Thanksgiving. (unfortunately) This means life hurts and sometimes throbs, while also sucker punching you in the face when you’re not looking.
If pain is something we are not going to be able to avoid, and it’s not enough to simply live with it, then we must learn how to see the good in it… how to see God in it.
If we choose anything else, we risk the reality of being overcome by it.
Real peace isn’t attainable from an earthly source.
Real peace is only attainable through the Prince of Peace.
Real peace isn’t attainable by my actions or my standing… which is helpful externally, but doesn’t bring true peace eternally.
Real peace is the product of a right relationship with God… the relationship where He’s willing to grab a megaphone in your pain and give your heart the sound it needs to beat accordingly to the rhythm of peace.
Jesus tells us in John 16:33: “I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.”
He prepped His followers with what they needed to stay connected. He was honest about how life wasn’t going to be puppies and rainbows for those that choose The Way. He gave them (and us) the instruction they would need to stand in the truth that in Himself, there is peace. In Him there is peace… attainable even in pain or suffering or disappointment.
In Him there is peace standing with you in the morning, sometimes with that megaphone, telling you to rise and shine and give God the glory, glory! (taken from my 4th grade VBS leader, Mrs. Ruth Regal)
What is God saying to you in your pain? Are you listening for that megaphone calling to you to come and find rest? Are you obeying and submitting to His peace?
Word to the wise: Listen with your heart… not your circumstance. He’s not concerned with earthly peace near as much as your internal and eternal peace. And your external may never reflect your internal, but that’s not the point. The point is this: Are you listening to the megaphone in your pain and receiving the peace that He wants to give?
