Your pain is a platform.
The Lord has brought the topic to my attention a lot this year.
In January I went to the Passion conference and it was awesome. The Lord taught me so much within a few short days. Levi Lusko taught on this topic. If you haven’t heard of Levi Lusko, he’s a pastor at a church in Montana called Fresh Life. A few years ago he lost his five-year-old daughter to an asthma attack. His book called Through the Eyes of a Lion to turn this pain into a microphone. If you want, check it out it’s a pretty good book.
Anyway, the Lord used Levi to point this out to me.
Your pain has a purpose. It’s not just to knock you down. I never really thought about it like that.
Of course I’ve heard that God doesn’t give you anything that you can’t handle. I don’t believe this is necessarily true. Difficult things happen so that you can lean on Him, run to Him, and grow with Him.
Anyway.
This topic kept popping up this year.
~fast forward to training camp~
At Training Camp, we had just learned about evangelism and they were like “okay, now let’s go evangelize!” I had not showered in…a while (that’s a generous statement fyi) and I was not about to go into civilization and talk to people. Needless to say I did not have the best attitude about what was about to happen.
Once we arrived at the apartment complex, my team decided to split up into two groups and then I ended up in a group with the person who spoke on evangelism. We knocked on a few doors while a few of the neighborhood kids were hanging around with us, so we just decided to talk to the kids.
Grace decided to tell the story of Mary and Joseph with these kids. She started explaining how they were the parents of Jesus. One of the little girls looked at the other little girl and said “you don’t have a dad.”
My heart sank to the floor for this little girl. They went back and forth for a little while and then I spoke up and I said hey you know what that’s okay because I don’t have a dad either. (I don’t know who my birth dad is, so it was just my mom and I until I was six).
God knew I wasn’t comfortable knocking on strangers’ doors that day. He knew I was at about the end of my energy. He placed me with someone who was confident and comfortable and He held my hand the entire time. He gently pushed me to share His glory with this little girl rooted from my pain.
Honestly I stopped writing this blog half way through because this is my least favorite part of my story, and it’s a pretty big part. Questions as simple as what do your parents do, open a long explanation of my broken family.
It might be how I was physically brought to this earth.
It may look like I was an accident.
But God created me before time. He wrote me into His story to help shine His light across the world.
Psalm 139 speaks to my soul and fills me up with truth when I have doubts.
He gave me this platform to use so that I can relate to people across the world.
I’m learning how to use this pain as a platform, because it hurts. And honestly I don’t really like it.
One of the speakers at training camp said “we only have so much joy as we’ve understood pain.”
The joy of a Heavenly Father is always sweet, but I think not having an earthly dad makes having a Heavenly Father that. much. sweeter.
What’s your platform?
Use your pain, don’t let it destroy you.
This doesn’t mean that it’s not going to be painful or difficult. It looks like running towards Jesus opposed to running towards what’s comfortable.
Quotes from Through the Eyes of a Lion by Levi Lusko
“Suffering isn’t an obstacle to being used by God. It is an opportunity to be used like never before.”
“Hard times are a passport that gives you permission to go places you wouldn’t get to any other way.”
“God’s up to something! He’s turning your mess into a message.”
“You matter more than you know.”
