Living With Chronic Pain & Spiritual Transformation

I must admit.  From time to time I also struggle with embracing what it means to totally surrender to God.  Isn’t it somewhat natural to wonder, to speculate and to ask questions about its meaning during our journey of faith?  I think so.

To surrender does not mean that you’re to become less intellectual or to voluntarily squander your talents or to give away all your hard earned money or to do anything impulsive of trying to become nothing, such as what I’ve just mentioned.  As much, surrendering is not the process of waving the white flag to signify your resignation about living.

Sure it’s difficult to surrender when you’re vulnerable, weak, disheartened and quite frankly, there’s nothing left in the tank for you to even think about trusting anyone or anything else.  Nonetheless, you’re not required to trust in yourself or others before fully surrendering to God.

Take Jesus for instance, the sole basis of faith.  In order to discover the entirety of His own true self, He completely surrendered to God through perhaps the most human act ever, dying gruesomely by crucifixion. This acceptance of surrender allowed Jesus to experience the fullness of human life, even in the midst of unspeakable suffering.

The human truth is that we complicate what it means to surrender to God.  We’re not called to become perfect before giving our lives to Him.  Instead, the opposite occurs.  We’re called by God to give Him all of our brokenness and sin.  This is the beauty about surrender.  As a result, the process of surrendering cleanses and transforms us from being complacently useless to becoming actively recoverable.

You’re not left doing nothing with your life just because you’ve surrendered.  In fact, you’re given more responsibility to do what God’s authorized you to do by His Spirit.

Inevitably, the purpose of surrendering to God empowers you to discover the totality of who you are, as well as finding out the essential truth about the rewarding mysteries of life.

Keep me on your favorites about spiritual transformation.  You can begin this exciting journey of transformation regardless if you’re living with chronic pain or if you’re struggling against horrendous obstacles.

Faith radically contrasts the worldly lifestyle. This is one sobering reason why it’s so difficult to remain consistent when undergoing healthy change.

As you’re trying to overcome painful wounds or morbid obesity, the battle over your well-being is simultaneously occurring.

The voice of the world boldly gives sensible advice, such as what to do medically, psychologically or alternatively, regarding how to address the obvious problems. The idea of which is to heal, to restore and to bring you back to some form of normalcy. The merits of which are extremely beneficial.

Yet, faith plays an even larger role about transformation. In fact, its integrative qualities provide total healing and optimized health for your entire being.

Faith doesn’t arbitrarily reject sound logic nor does it compete against higher intellect. It simply contends against any thinking or behaviors which oppose God.

In your quest for wholeness, you basically have two options to consider. First, you can simply rely on the entirety of what this world has to offer for the fulfillment of your life.

Or second, you can place your hope in the truth of Jesus Christ, who will open the eyes of your soul to “see” and to “experience” the completeness of life beyond death.

Keep me on your favorites about spiritual transformation. You can begin this exciting journey of transformation regardless if you’re living with chronic pain or if you’re up against horrendous obstacles.

One of the hardest things to do is to fully trust God. When it boils down to life and death, I think most of us are willing to surrender to the idea that it’s better to trust God about matters of the afterlife as opposed to the alternative. Yet, when it involves trusting God daily for everything else we need to live, then why do we get so easily side-tracked into our own sense of self-sufficiency?

For most of us, it’s easier to relate to what self-sufficiency means in terms of identity, security and purpose. And when we fully participate at our highest levels of performance, then we also see the value behind self-sufficiency through the lens of our own human effort, especially in comparison to others and the world around us.

On the other hand, faith is less tangible to our senses. It’s not fueled by self-empowerment nor is it inspired by human accomplishment nor does it subject itself to worldly acceptance. Simply stated, self-sufficiency opposes the power of faith. No wonder one of the hardest things to do is to fully trust God. It requires everything against our human compulsions for self-approval. In summary, taking our eyes off ourselves and looking onto God fully empowers faith to become real as our way for living.

Keep me on your favorites about spiritual transformation. You can begin this exciting journey of transformation regardless if you’re living with chronic pain or if you’re up against horrendous obstacles.

I had never imagined getting to the place where I resisted the idea of change. Once upon a time when I was younger and healthier, I thrived on the challenges of spontaneity. Nothing seemed outside the realm of possibility. That was then. The story of my life has taken a much different turn than I anticipated. Perhaps you can relate to what I’m saying, when your life unsuspectingly ends up dealing with painful things much bigger than who you are?

When too many days are lost to personal suffering, your confidence becomes shattered and without even realizing it, your ability to cope with change slowly but noticeably diminishes because of long-term pain and brokenness.

So when you decide to make that fresh new start, you probably do so from the starting point of being wounded. Without overstating the obvious, this is much more difficult to do than when you’re healthy. And remarkably, being wounded doesn’t mean that you can recognize the extent of your damage – which is now part of who you’ve become. As a result, your first step in the right direction might be somewhat wobbly and your gait seemingly unfitting to stay on the road to recovery.

But as I’ve discussed before, what’s really being tested? Is it the enormity of your wounds or is it your beliefs? Change is always harder when your beliefs are powerless. When trying to get rid of your old behaviors for the new and improved, inevitably your beliefs are being tested.

Sure painful experiences help to create your conscious memories, but this does not necessarily mean that they have to primarily comprise your beliefs. I know that if I had held permanently onto the hopelessness found in brokenness, then I would have never participated in the redeemed lifestyle. Instead, I probably would have remained limp on the couch, discouraged about the changing world around me and immobilized from lack of exercise while eating myself to death. You don’t have to allow your painful memories to keep you hostage in the miry clay.

Simply, change becomes palatable when your mind is renewed. And when referring to renewal, I’m not talking about compiling more thoughts about personal change on top of your latent wounds. This tendency leads to double-minded unsteadiness in your search for wholeness.

Change is not easy, but it is rewarding. Wisdom does not eliminate your trials nor does it make change any easier to bear. I know this sounds unpopular among those who are searching for quick fixes or who are traveling the path of least resistance. However, the true wisdom of God provides you with the ability to endure whatever you have to face.

As wisdom has formed the backbone of my beliefs, it also has fortified my resolve to move forward more powerfully, as it will for you. Your wobbly first step can be transformed into deliberate, brisk walking against the voice of doubtful and hurtful memories.

Keep me on your favorites about spiritual transformation. You can begin this exciting journey of transformation regardless if you’re living with chronic pain or if you’re up against horrendous obstacles.

After taking the first step forward, the next footstep towards change becomes even more difficult due to the inconspicuous nature of doubt.

To change from your old ways of doing things means to change how you think. Ironically, this is precisely where doubt attaches itself – within your mental abilities to process – in terms of how you perceive who you are and what your significance really means.

Even before the heel of your foot strikes the ground on your second step, the odds are highly against you from moving forward without opposition. It is more likely that you should anticipate doubt to thunderously raise its voice against your earnest desire to change for the better.

From one perspective, you might be filled with inspired optimism from God, being able to imagine the best of the best for yourself. No more pain. No more sorrow. No more poverty. And to boot, perhaps, you’ll finally conquer your worst fears of never being able to overcome your biggest obstacles.

On the other hand, all you have to do is to look into the mirror. Change doesn’t seem to happen fast enough. By its nature, doubt will inevitably rush to your thoughts, reminding you of your repeated blunders, as well as your inability to refrain from addictions, such as overeating, over-drinking, overdosing, overspending, over-procrastinating, and for that matter, over anything else.

As for me, I kept reverting back to my old ways of trying to change. Being stripped to almost nothing still wasn’t enough because I continually relied on the few instincts that once gave me tremendous success. Practically speaking, I had placed my faith on the strongest parts of my willful mind to try to overcome chronic pain and obesity. The end result of my efforts fell miserably short of my expectations.

Meanwhile, in terms of how I perceived doubt, well, quite frankly, I thought very little about its existence. Doubt seemed to be the least of my problems in comparison to the constant barrage of pain I had experienced. Fooled by the loudness of pain, I kept trying to overcome what I thought was the fiery test of my life, which seemed obvious to me – painful suffering.

Nevertheless, I learned that pain wasn’t really the enemy I needed to defeat. In fact, the insistent communicator of pain actually pointed me to seek the truth when nothing else was working for me. And the deeper I went by faith, the more I discovered the living reality of God.

Slowly the scales were being removed from the eyes of my soul. The painful instruments of trials were deliberately clearing away the blind spots about walking in change. Fiery pain wasn’t preventing me from moving forward, but instead, it was doubt.

What’s really on trial? It’s not your brokenness. On the contrary, it’s your belief system. Your most seemingly insurmountable trials aren’t the reasons that prevent progressive changes from happening. Rather, it’s the deceptiveness of doubt that stops you from seeing how to effectively live out the process of your redeemed life.

Keep me on your favorites about spiritual transformation. You can begin this exciting journey of transformation regardless if you’re living with chronic pain or if you’re up against horrendous obstacles.