In Touch Ministries

Dr. Charles Stanley: Pain is not only instructional, but it is very purifying. It is likewise very motivating because oftentimes it's in our pain. How many people have said, "Well, it's only when I got down and God laid me out, put me on my back, took everything from me, that I finally found out what he was saying. And then I got up, and I got in the will of God, and now God has blessed me over and over and over again."

Very motivating. Painful, yes. And God knows, listen, he knows whether to send you blessing to motivate you to do his will or whether to send you pain.

Guest (Male): The crucifixion of Jesus Christ was a physically agonizing ordeal, but his suffering didn't begin with beatings and nails. It began hours earlier in a lonely garden called Gethsemane. Today's edition of In Touch, the teaching ministry of Dr. Charles Stanley, explains how we can deal with the emotional pain that comes our way. Here's part one of Lessons We Learn in Gethsemane.

Dr. Charles Stanley: When you are suffering pain, whether it be physical pain or emotional pain, and it becomes so intense that you even despair of your future, where do you turn? There are many places you can turn, but the most helpful, healthiest, most encouraging, the best place you can turn, the most rewarding place you can turn is to the Word of God.

It's all right here. And what God has done, he's given us in the experiences of his children in the past and of his servants, he's given us principles. He's shown us how in their lives he worked during those difficulties and hardships so that you and I might also learn how to deal with these things. So that what happens is because they know how to respond, the very pain that would destroy them ends up in enriching them and preparing them for greater service of the Lord.

Well, what I want to talk about in this message is simply this, and that is I want to talk about the experience Jesus had, probably the longest, most difficult night of his life. I want to talk about lessons we learn in Gethsemane. And I want you to turn, if you will, to the 26th chapter of Matthew. Jesus has just finished the Lord's Supper with them, and Peter has just told him how faithful he was going to be. And so they crossed the valley up to the Garden of Gethsemane.

And now in that garden, where Jesus so many times went alone to be alone with the Father, and sometimes no doubt carried his disciples with him, on this night, it is everything but a peaceful night. So the scripture says, beginning in verse 36, "Then Jesus came with them to a place called Gethsemane, and said to his disciples, 'Sit here while I go over there and pray.' And he took with him Peter and the two sons of Zebedee, that is James and John, and he began to be grieved and distressed.

Then he said to them, 'My soul is deeply grieved, to the point of death. Remain here and keep watch with me.' And he went a little beyond them and fell on his face and prayed, saying, 'My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from me. Yet not as I will, but as you will.' And he came to the disciples and found them sleeping and said to Peter, 'So you men could not keep watch for me for one hour?

Keep watching and praying that you may not enter into temptation. The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.' He went away again a second time and prayed, saying, 'My Father, if this cannot pass away unless I drink it, your will be done.' Again he came and found them sleeping, for their eyes were heavy. And he left them again and went away and prayed a third time, saying the same thing once more.

Then he came to the disciples and said to them, 'Are you still sleeping and resting? Behold, the hour is at hand and the Son of Man is being betrayed into the hands of sinners. Get up, let us be going. Behold, the one who betrays me is at hand.'" Now, usually, the night in the garden was a wonderful night, but tonight, it is a night of grief. It is a night of warfare and bloodshed. This is a night of all nights in the life of Christ. No night was so dark, no night was ever so long as this one.

So what we have to ask is this: What lessons can you and I learn from the life of Jesus in just this one night of his life? Well, I believe we can learn several very important lessons because you see the truth is, all of us go through our nights of difficulty, hardship, trial, suffering, physical and emotional pain. Sometimes they only last a night. Sometimes they last night after night after night. Sometimes they only last a day, but other times they last day after day after day.

Sometimes it's only a year, and then there are those times when it's year after year after year. How do we respond when we go through those difficulties and trials in life? Well, I want you to notice several things here that I think are helpful lessons I think that you and I can learn from the suffering and the pain of Jesus that we can apply to our own life because all of us are going to respond in one of two ways. We're going to respond the right, most profitable way that'll bring fruit in our life, or we're going to respond the wrong way and we're going to suffer even more because of a wrong response.

And what I want you to think about for a moment is this: In order for God to accomplish his will and purpose in your life and mine, sometimes his purpose and his will require that you and I go through our Gethsemane. That is, we have to go through pain and suffering and hurt that we don't like any more than Jesus liked his. So we come to ask the question: Was Jesus struggling over doing the will of God or not? No, he was not.

It was not a matter of whether he was going to do the will of the Father or not. What he was struggling about was what he spoke about in that cup. That cup represented the fury and the wrath of God that would be declared upon, and listen, and not just lavished upon but stormed against the one who bore the sin of the world. When he went to the cross, he felt the avalanche, he felt the tidal wave of God's wrath and God's fury against all the sin of all mankind forever. Past, present, future.

Jesus knew what he was facing. Of course, he cringed at the cross. Of course, he understood because he had seen people crucified before. He knew something of the anguish and the pain and the suffering of hanging there and dying by degrees. And as horrible as that was, even more horrible was the fact that he and the Father would be separated. How would you and I describe that? I don't think any of us will ever be able to describe or fully understand until we get to glory, and then maybe it won't be an issue, of course.

But until we get there and he explains to us the horrendous pain that he experienced when he was separated from the Father for our sins. It would be like taking your physical body and cutting it right in half and pulling it apart. Can you imagine the kind of horrible pain that would be? Because remember that Jesus and the Father had never been separated in eternity past. Never.

But you see, that was the price he was willing to pay for your sins and mine. And so when he comes and we find him struggling here in the garden, it's very evident what he's struggling about. And he is struggling, not whether to do the will of the Father or not, but because he wanted to do the will of the Father. Is there some other way we can do this? Not eliminating the crucifixion, but eliminating that point and that time of separation.

Now, no one will ever suffer like Jesus suffered. Now, remember this: There are many people out there for their faith who have been martyred for their faith, who have gone through all kinds of pain and whose physical pain may have been equal to Jesus' physical pain of crucifixion, because many people have been crucified in the past. But Jesus was different because along with that crucifixion, he bore the weight of the sin of the world.

Now, when you and I go through difficulty and hardship and pain in our life, we certainly would like to escape from it if at all possible. And yet God knows what he's up to in our life. And as we said in the very beginning, it may be that it is the will of the Father that we go through difficulty in order to prepare us for his purpose in our life. Now, remember this: It certainly wasn't God who put the nails in his hands, but he certainly allowed the Romans to put the nails in his hands and his feet and put a crown of thorns upon him.

Some things may not be the will of God itself in your life and my life, but God allows it to happen. And so if God allows it to happen, he has purposed our pain for our profit. He will spare, listen, no experience, he will spare no effort, he will spare no pain in order to prepare us and get us where he wants us to be in life to accomplish his purpose and his will. And when you think about the pain and suffering and hurt that you've been through in life, you think, "What a waste." Now, watch this: "What a waste to go through this pain and suffering and heartache and trial and persecution and all the rest."

Remember this carefully. Are you listening? Say amen. It is only a waste if you allow it to be a waste. Only a waste if you allow it to be a waste. And some people live that way. They go through all kinds of pain, hurt, and sorrow and suffering, and because they don't respond in the right manner, what happens is it is, to some degree, a big waste in their life. They didn't ask the question, "God, what is your goal for me in this?"

They didn't seek the mind of Christ. They didn't ask God, "What is your purpose? What do you want me to do? What are you saying to me? What do you want to change in my life?" They just want to go on in their own rebellion, wasting the pain and suffering and hurt, and oftentimes ultimately bringing their lives to destruction. When I think about what pain does in our life, I want you to jot down four things, because this is true.

And that is, pain and suffering in our life can be very instructional. There are some things that you and I are not going to learn in pleasure when the times are good, when we have everything we need, everything we want in life. Pain can be very instructional. We learn things about God in our suffering we wouldn't learn any other way. We learn things about ourselves we wouldn't learn any other way. We learn things about other people we wouldn't learn in any other fashion.

There's something about pain that makes us get down to the nitty-gritty of our life and see what we're really like, what can we endure. Secondly, it is very purifying. There's something about pain that causes us to be able to see things as they really are. All the fog lifts, the clouds blow away, and we begin to see reality. We see ourselves in a different light. We see other people in a different light. We begin to be able to perceive and understand things that we would not understand otherwise.

Pain is not only instructional, but it is very purifying. It is likewise very motivating. And God knows, listen, he knows whether to send you blessing to motivate you to do his will or whether to send you pain. He knows exactly what it'll take to instruct us in the ways he wants us to go. He knows exactly what it'll take to purify our heart. And I mean not just a matter of confessing those surface things, but allowing God to get down on the inside of our being until we see things about ourselves that we've never seen, we feel what we've never felt.

Somehow, God exposes to us our lives as we've never been exposed before. It's instructional, no doubt. No doubt that it's instructional. It's very purifying, it's very motivating, but also it creates the atmosphere for awesome intimacy. Because it's when God brings us to the end of ourselves that we're willing to get in a relationship with him that he desires. A warm, intimate relationship. It's when he removes from us that which is precious to us, when he takes away from us everything we have, when he lays us flat on our back and he's all we've got. I'm telling you, my friend, that creates the atmosphere of great, awesome intimacy with God the Father.

Pain is a very profitable thing in the life of God's children when we allow it to be. When we understand that it's instructional, when we understand that it's purifying, when we understand that it's motivating, when we understand it is the atmosphere in which God can do a great, awesome work in our life.

So let me ask you a question. How have you been responding in your pain? How have you been responding in your suffering? How have you been responding when people have criticized you or persecuted you? How have you responded when you have hurt so deeply you did not know what to do next? Which way to turn? Where to turn? My friend, you want to turn to the living Word of God and listen to what he says about his love.

You say, "Well, how can I believe that God loves me when he allows all this to happen in my life?" What you have to ask is, "God, what is your goal for this experience in my life?" Because God, listen, being in the will of God does not mean that we will not suffer. So first of all, I simply say that God's purpose and plan for our life may include the time of Gethsemane in our own life. The second thing I want to say is this: that our times of suffering, our Gethsemane, may also be extremely painful for us.

I think there are two primary reasons that God has placed this particular event in the life of Jesus in the scripture. Number one is certainly that you and I, who are the very reason and the cause of it, listen, if there were no sin, there would have been no Gethsemane, no sin, no cross. He wants us to understand the horrible pain his son Jesus Christ went through to atone for as the substitute, pay the sin debt for us in Gethsemane.

That excruciating, painful night was the beginning, the horrible beginning of the debt he paid for you and me. God wants us to see that. Salvation is not cheap. Grace is not cheap. What you and I have, the forgiveness of our sins, did not come cheap. When people talk about cheap grace, they know nothing about the scripture. There's no such thing as cheap grace. Grace cost Almighty God his only begotten Son.

And that grace has been bestowed upon us not because we are worthy of it, not because we are fit for it, but simply because God loves sinful human beings. What does he want? He wants us to be forgiven of our sin. He wants us to be sanctified unto himself. He wants us to come into an intimate relationship with him. God has something awesome in mind by allowing us to go through this difficulty and pain.

So one of the primary reasons is he wants us to see and understand something of what our Savior experienced. A second thing he wants us to see is this: He wants us to understand, he wants us to see how Jesus responded, how the Apostle Paul responded. He wants us to learn the principles of dealing with, of responding to difficulty, hardship, and pain and suffering so that we will respond in the right fashion, so that, listen, we will not waste our sorrows. We will not waste our pain. We will not waste our hurt, but we will profit from it. It'll become a fruitful time in our life.

And in our tears, our hurt, our brokenness, our loneliness, our sorrow, and our sadness, all of that is like rich soil. Rich, fertile soil plowed up. And what happens? God drops his awesome principles. Listen to this. He drops his awesome principles in the soil of tears and hurt and pain and shame and suffering and persecution. And what comes out of that? God begins to water that in your life, and something transpires in your life that makes you more valuable to the kingdom of God than you have ever been or ever could even imagine to be in your fondest dream. It just depends upon how you're going to respond.

And you see, being in the will of God doesn't mean that you're going to escape pain, suffering, and hurt. And when I hear people talking about the fact, "Well, if you're in the will of God, you're doing God's will, and you're full of the Holy Spirit, you're not going to suffer this and this and this," I want to tell you something that is totally unscriptural. No one could be holier than Jesus. No man who's ever walked apart from him could have been at least more obedient than the Apostle Paul.

These two men suffered for the gospel of Jesus Christ as no other two people that I know in history have ever suffered. Everywhere Paul went, somebody was on his case, persecuting him for one reason or the other. He was absolutely obedient to the Father. Did he have his struggles? Yes. His weak moments? Yes. Crying out to God to take that thorn out of his side, and God did not do it. He understood what struggling over the will of God was about.

He understood what struggling against those who would persecute him and left him for dead lying in the streets, having stoned him. He understood all of that. Did that mean he wasn't in the will of God? No, it does not. People who walk in the center of the will of God oftentimes suffer the most. Now, in the 22nd chapter of Luke and the 44th verse, here's what it says: that he was in agony, listen, in agony, and he was crying out to the Father, praying fervently to the Father, and sweating as it were drops of blood.

Now, some of you want to turn to that. Look, if you will, the 22nd chapter of Luke and the 44th verse. In fact, it was so bad, verse 43, Luke's account says, "Now an angel from heaven appeared to him, strengthening him." He was at the point of death. Listen to this. "And being in agony, he was praying very fervently, and his sweat became like drops of blood falling down upon the ground." You say, "Well, how in the world could that be?"

Here's how it can be. And that is when a person, and of course this does not happen very often, but in times of war this has certainly happened, when men have been under such absolutely intense pain and suffering and stress, the capillaries under the skin with that kind of stress can burst. They of course begin to bleed, and that blood begins to mix with a person's sweat, and what happens is a person is literally sweating drops of blood.

This is the kind of pain, this is the kind of pressure, this is the kind of stress, this is the kind of tension, this is the kind of sorrow. It was so deep, so yearning. And I don't know how deeply distressed you've ever been. Have you ever been so deeply distressed that you think that your insides were coming out? That all the weeping in the world was not enough? You couldn't weep enough, you couldn't say enough, you couldn't pray enough, you couldn't feel enough, you couldn't think enough, you couldn't do enough of anything to express the awesome, horrible sense of deep, listen, deep, penetrating, cutting pain in your life?

You see, if you've had an easy life, you've missed something. You say, "I don't want any of that in my life." Let me ask you a question. You want to be what God wants you to be? You want to be the best that God can make you? You want to be used of God? You want to at least head in the direction of the maximum potential of your usefulness for God? Then, my friend, you must be willing to submit to whatever God sends in your life, because whatever he sends you in your life has a very definite, godly purpose for it.

Guest (Male): You're listening to In Touch, the teaching ministry of Dr. Charles Stanley. To be on the path God has for you, you must be willing to submit to him in whatever circumstances he allows. As you look to the Lord and respond correctly, you can benefit from his work in your life.

You can hear this message again at todayonradio.intouch.org and look around at the many resources to find out more about how to trust God through your seasons of hardship or pain. And if you'd like to have a copy of Dr. Stanley's complete message, you can order at the bookstore. The title is Lessons We Learn in Gethsemane. Our web address again is intouch.org. Call or text to 1-800-InTouch. If you prefer, you can write to us at In Touch, Post Office Box 7900, Atlanta, Georgia, 30357.

If your sensitivity and obedience to the Spirit of God is growing, your walk with God is gaining vitality. Today's Moment with Charles Stanley is coming up.

We're not the first to seek a life of purpose. The Bible tells of many who followed a specific path, step by step, with courage, with surrender, for a deeper purpose, a stronger passion, a lasting peace. Introducing Your Path to Purpose, Passion, and Peace, a new 90-day devotional inspired by the timeless teaching of Dr. Charles Stanley. Available now at intouch.org/store.

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You're listening to In Touch. The believer who seeks to be an effective Christian will take care to listen to God. Here's a Moment with Charles Stanley.

Dr. Charles Stanley: It is the will of God that you trust the Lord Jesus Christ as your personal Savior. No question about that. It's all through the Word of God. In fact, Paul wrote to Timothy and he said, "God desires that all men and women, of course, be saved and come to the knowledge of the truth." And in second Peter he says, "It's not my will that any should perish." And the Apostle Paul said, "If thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you'll be saved." And then he also said, "Whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved."

But it isn't enough just to have your sins forgiven. There's more to it than that. The scripture says in Ephesians chapter four that it is the will of God that you and I walk in a manner that is consistent with who we say we are. And in Colossians, the first chapter, he puts it this way: It is the will of God that you and I walk in a manner that is pleasing to him.

Now, when you think about your life now that you've trusted Jesus Christ as your Savior, would you say that anybody who knows you knows that something has happened in your life? That you're not what you used to be, somebody who's known you for a while? Can they see a difference in your life? Well, walking with the Lord is the will of God for every one of us.

Walking in the will of God is not always easy, but it is his will and his purpose and his plan. And in order to walk in the will of God, you and I must learn a very valuable lesson. One of the most valuable lessons you'll ever learn. We must learn to listen to him. Because listening to God is essential to walking with God.

Guest (Male): You can learn more about how to live for God when you visit us at intouch.org. How are you going to apply what you've heard today? We'd love to hear from you today. On the next In Touch program, even though we struggle, God is always near and understands our distress. Join us for part two of Lessons We Learn in Gethsemane next time on In Touch, the teaching ministry of Dr. Charles Stanley. This program is a presentation of In Touch Ministries, Atlanta, Georgia, and remains on this station through the grace of God and your faithful prayers and gifts.