Smiling Through The Pain!


Phil 4:4
 "Rejoice in the Lord always. Again I will say, rejoice!"  We all know this verse by heart and may even have it on the fridge.  It has been a word of great encouragement to me through the years as well as painful at times.  The reason for the pain is my understanding that Paul wrote this from a jail cell.  He wrote this smiling through pain.  He wasn't into "mind over matter", it was just that he possessed something on the inside that was more powerful that what was going on outside. That's where I want to live!  Too often we take a "flesh wound" in Kingdom combat and treat it like it is our ticket home!  We have to get over this kind of thinking and living.  Once I spent a couple of hours counseling and praying with a person that attacked me personally in the middle of the session.  It would be like a patient waking up in the middle of surgery, grabbing a scalpel and stabbing the surgeon in the leg.  I felt hurt, rejected and betrayed! I wanted to say, "get out of my office!" Yet, they were hurting and hurting people may hurt others.  I closed out the session as best I could and limped out of my office glad it was over.  As I headed to the rest room I looked down the hall and there was another hurting person waiting to see me.  I heard the Lord say, "splash some cool water on your face and get ready to help them.  They need your best!"  Wow!  Every person we meet needs our best and not the residue of a wounded healer.  If we aren't aggressive about staying clean and pure in heart, we will gradually begin to minister out of that hurt.  Paul had learned something important.  As ministers we will be bitter or better.  Paul chose better!  We must choose better.  Don't let the enemy cause a flesh wound to disable you.  In the words of a great coach, "Shake it off!"