Spiritual Fitness & Living With Chronic Pain

For the industrious, the importance of making plans, formulating strategies and mapping out goals allows one to chart a course of responsible living, which is inarguably filled with a heightened sense of driven purpose.

Without debate, this course of action spawns higher values and a sense of greater accomplishment.  Yet unavoidably, sometimes well-preparedness and purpose-driven fervor cannot prevent catastrophic trials from happening.  Look all around, even at those who have soared to the highest positions of leadership in business, education, military, athletics, medicine, religion and politics.  No one has proven invincible during this season of shaking.

The silver-lined clouds pour rain upon the righteous and unrighteous alike.  Our diverse culture depends upon each other, markedly defined by the weakest point in the chain.  As much as the prudent strive to insulate themselves from upcoming calamity, their efforts remain temporary, if not futile.  Perplexity assuredly has followed the path of complex problems that were invented by human greed.

Although each person must endure his or her trials, it’s time to acknowledge how each personal victory corresponds to the welfare of the surrounding collective.  Simply put, the richness of our society depends upon everyone’s benefit, whether stationed high or low within the American social structure.

Carving out one’s personal niche to glean selfishly will not help to solve the torrid flood of problems awaiting us, especially if the surrounding community continues to disintegrate.  Attaining higher personal standards is certainly noble.  But if these personal endeavors contribute to neglected relationships and a crisis of unity, then additional pitfalls are sure to come.

Although I certainly do not condone socialization within the Democratic system, I am a strong proponent of faith and it’s outcome, which is transformation.  Basically, the message about wholeness from salvation originates from God.  While this impacts people eternally on an individual basis, the good news also spreads to the community at hand, then eventually to every society beyond the immediate borders.  Faith, hope and love bind all people to God, Who then promises to restore those nations who haven’t forgotten Him.

Perhaps the United States might benefit if it were to include God as a part of the solution during these seemingly insurmountable times…

Keep me on your favorites.  For more about living with chronic pain and spiritual healing visit me at www.gordonselley.com.

When you’re at the bottom of the barrel, needing to be rescued, it doesn’t necessarily come your way by simply hoping for it.

While old habits might imprison your way of living, nothing is really going to change significantly until you actually find wisdom.

Wisdom is not something you earn by shooting the most baskets at a carnival, or becoming the most intellectual person in the classroom of theology.  On the contrary, wisdom can be acquired even when you are totally broken, totally broke, totally in pain, and have no clue as to what to do next.

It’s neither intellectual prowess nor serendipity that allures wisdom your way.  It has already started with God through Jesus Christ.  Now it’s up to you.  To acquire wisdom – to break the unchangeable of old habits, it requires you to make a decision to do so.

Part of getting started down a new path for living is for you to make the decision, then for you to commit to it.  I encourage you about wisdom on this revelation.

                                    “She will honor you if you embrace her.  She will

                               place on your head a garland of grace; She will present

                                 you with a crown of beauty” (Proverbs 4:8b-9, NASB).

Keep me on your favorites. Please click onto www.gordonselley.com for more information about living with chronic pain, as well as spiritual healing.

Q:  If I start believing for better health, when will it happen?

A:  Most likely, never…

Let me qualify my answer for you.  Under no circumstances, am I diminishing the unfathomable healing power of God when I bluntly make my response to your question.

When referring to “belief,” it is not a one-shot thing, in which healing springs from human wish and/or hopeful anticipation.  “Belief” is much more than this.

The importance of persistence in belief and how it impacts healing cannot be overstated.  Keep God’s wisdom close to your heart.  In other words, keep it close to every part of your being, including mind, emotions and will.  And as you persist in your beliefs, you’ll discover that you’re life turns into a practical walk of faith.

From this reference point, miraculous healing sometimes occurs.  However, this is found in the minority who struggle with pain. 

Clearly…better health comes as we grow in spiritual vitality first.  The time frame is unknown for better health because all healing comes through God and He is sovereign about timing and to what extent health is restored for each individual.

I encourage you to remain persistent in your walk of faith and in pursuit of wisdom.  “For they are life to those who find them and health to all their body” (Proverbs 4:22, NASB).

Keep me on your favorites.  Click daily for updates about living with chronic pain and spiritual healing at .www.gordonselley.com

For the past few days, I’ve been thinking about heaven.  With everything crashing all around us, like a collapsible tent, my mind has drifted toward something absolute and everlasting, specifically the heavenly realm.

Pain resides as one of the hallmarks of our times, whether from financial devastation, deteriorating health, obesity, brokenness of families and relationships.  We know the list is much longer when tabulating pain and its adverse affect upon our American population.

And when trying to deal with pain, we tend to look selfishly at our own circumstances more closely and compassionately as opposed to others’ needs. 

But what if we were to look outward from our own personal trials? Where would our thoughts meander?

Think about our real purpose for living and what lies beyond our current station of life.  Let’s give heaven a thought for the moment.   It exceeds our most enchanting imaginations, consisting of unfathomable beauty and glory. 

Do we realize the enormity regarding the size of heaven?  The dimensions are given as a cube, 1500 miles square.  In other words, 1500 miles in length, 1500 miles in width and 1500 miles in height.  This translates into 396,000 stories (at 20 feet per story) high, each story having an area as big as one half the size of the United States.  Hard to imagine – it’s mindboggling.

And that doesn’t include the decorative upgrades, master-crafted with the finest and most precious stones and metals.  Frankly, it’s going to be awesome.  If God prepares our heavenly home with this much precision and magnificence, just imagine what He has already prepared for our glorified bodies to live infinitely.  No more collapsible tent, susceptible to pain, weakness, instability, sorrow and tears. 

If this reality doesn’t move the believer from suffering into understanding what awaits him or her, then nothing does.  Maybe, except the reality that God’s glory is far greater than any material part of heaven’s permanent features.

So then, why do we hold so firmly on to our collapsible tents on this earth?  Simply, we do so because of our temporal mindsets.  And if we can learn how pain teaches us about our real, permanent home, then we can experience true inner transformation to deal with the difficulties of today.

In conclusion, inner transformation allows us to see beyond the simple and foolish part of our current mindset, burning off the spiritual fluff for the real practical ways of faith.  Heaven is part of the hope we have in Christ, a recreated gift awaiting delivery onto us through His grace.  Death and modern destructiveness should no longer have a thoroughly impactful sting over us…

Keep me on your favorites.  Please click onto www.gordonselley.com for more information about living with chronic pain, as well as spiritual healing.

Personally, I think one of the hardest things to do is to really confront pain.  Think about this for a second.  When it comes to pain, isn’t this the first question we ask, “How much is this going to hurt?”  With this thought wildly racing through our minds, the notion of actually confronting pain frightens even the most courageous among us.

The idea to confront pain does not necessarily mean to absorb its painful impulses with our own human strength and ego.  This perceived meaning grossly disfigures what I’m actually trying to convey.

We see the same kind of misinterpretation when we read scripture, and it states, “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge” (Proverbs 1:7, NASB).  If we’re walking around in fear and are afraid of trying to access God, then we’ve completely missed the point.

The fear of the Lord here refers to the correct way of thinking about God and participating in the correct relationship with Him by having affectionate reverence.  The beginning of knowledge is not the first place in which knowledge claims its birth.  In this context, the beginning refers to the controlling principle about knowledge.  And knowledge is not just the accumulation of information.  It’s actually dependent upon revelation and fully inseparable from character.

When we put all these meanings together, even though God has tremendous and unfathomable power, we don’t have to adopt an unhealthy fear about Him.  Instead, we’re encouraged to have an intimate connection with God, which grows even deeper as we acquire more knowledge about Him through His Son.

The same thing applies to confronting pain.  It’s vitally important that we should confront pain, not for prideful suffering or for sadistic reasons, but rather, for gaining a fuller knowledge about its nature and how we are interrelated with it.

Although pain can certainly rear its ugly head and threaten our inner security, it is also multi-dimensional related to the other parts of our being.  Once we break through the misunderstanding about pain, we have a golden opportunity to see how it is actually used to teach us vital lessons about life.

By confronting pain head-on, we avoid the unnecessary downhill slide because of ignorance and fear.  Healing options, whether medicinal or spiritual, can be aptly applied to our lives.  And if pain becomes chronic, face-to-face confrontation, so to speak, allows us to better adapt healthier behaviors to counteract some of the adverse effects of affliction. 

We have nothing to lose by confronting pain, except if we avoid doing so, then likely, we’ll allow suffering to fully wrap its chains around our entire being.

When confronting pain, I encourage everyone to do so with some help.  The fear of the Lord will provide sufficient knowledge about your unchartered journey into uncertainty and will absolutely give you the strength to face the unthinkable about painful suffering.

Keep me on your favorites.  Please click onto www.gordonselley.com for more information about living with chronic pain, as well as spiritual healing.

There are many unsuspecting people all around you that suffer from chronic pain.  Sometimes it’s really hard to tell because they might appear normal to the average eye.

Just because one might not use an assistive device, such as a cane or an oxygen tank, does not mean that he or she is not experiencing some form of painful suffering.  In fact, I bet the numbers heavily favor several who deal with pain without having any form of aid.

As for myself, I still cope with chronic pain though I might seem very normal in the sense of being able to move around and function somewhat naturally.  Some days are better than others.  Yet, there are none in which I am physically pain-free.

Living with chronic pain is like having a permanent toothache.  You know how this feels…When the throbbing pain continues like clockwork, never really giving up its rhythm.  Throb after throb while you maintain a sense of normalcy by trying to disguise the painful impulses.  Then if you were to drink a cold glass of water, for instance, these levels of pain would probably spike upwards, similar to someone who lives in chronic pain and experiences barometric changes in the weather.  The painful results are eerily familiar.

Imagine if your body never fully responded to treatment to get rid of the toothache pain.  What if it persisted fifteen years or more?  What would you do?

As in my case, I’ve done nearly everything practical to nourish my entire being, including body, soul and spirit.  The seemingly hidden pain sometimes surprises me and reminds me of its existence through means of nerve burning down both arms and legs, just to mention a few of the symptoms.

Frankly, I don’t dwell about the nature of chronic pain nor do I attempt to live in a masqueraded lifestyle about suffering because it quickly leads me down the wrong path to self-pity and self-preservation. 

Instead, I literally get by myself and spend time with God.  This is when I ask Him to take all the brokenness, pride and suffering from me, casting all my anxieties into His lap.  This is my heart sacrifice given to Him by His grace.  This process has allowed me to breathe in and out effectively, in terms of dealing with the core of my painful issues, instead of misprojecting them onto others.

Though my pain might remain, as is the usual, the rest of my being becomes refurbished, ready to brave to dream to live again.  Understanding the burdens of each day fully empowers me to succeed for the race of tomorrow.

This viable option is available to you likewise…

Keep me on your favorites.  For more about living with chronic pain and spiritual healing click onto www.gordonselley.com.