Surviving Pain

People, (other people) are one of our primary sources of pain in the journey of life. God has created man to live in community with other people but because of the pain that other people bring to us, we often find that the communities we were created for our families, churches, and communities end up being our primary source of pain. Our natural man does everything it can to shield itself from pain. Because we are created for community and long for community but find that the communities we are given cause us so much pain we often develop means to cope. We build walls around our lives, we wear masks, we are very careful which people we associate with, and we make sure that people can’t see into our lives too deeply: all these things in order to minimize pain.
Because of sin people hurt people. The natural man tries his best to make himself king of his world. Man naturally tries to promote himself above everyone else. In order to promote himself natural man takes from the people around him to promote his own ambitions. This stealing from others for our own benefit it ultimately what causes pain in other people.
How can we as people survive the pain of other people? This will only happen as we see God’s hand behind the pain caused by other people. Although interactions with people is what causes us to experience so much of our pain, God uses this pain to do his work in our hearts. God will never allow us to experience anything that is not for our benefit if our heart is to follow him. God help us to see His hand behind the pain we feel from others as we live in churches and families.