I will accept the fact, Lord, that life with You is a series of “hurtings.” Animals suffer pain, but only human beings can become morally and spiritually better because of their pain. Unless I suffer grief, I am not likely to grow into a mature disciple of Jesus Christ. One of the greatest disappointments You can suffer, Lord, is to see me battle my griefs and yet not become better. You have said, “I kill, and I make alive; I wound, and I heal” (Deuteronomy 32:39, KJV). It is to my sorrow that I do not become healed or come alive when God allows me to feel pain. Jesus wounded Simon Peter with a look that drove him to tears; he wept “bitterly” (Luke 22:62). Oswald Chambers says, “To be hurt by Jesus is the most exquisite hurt conceivable.” The hurts of Jesus, if I accept them properly, are the healings of tomorrow. I need His hurtings to cauterize the shallow and superficial in my life. If I walk very long with Him, life will be a series of cuttings, woundings, and grievings. Two personalities cannot walk together without woundings and healings.
Say what I will, life will deal me hurts one way or another. But I can choose. I can say to the world, “Hurt me,” and it will. But the hurt of the world is a “survival of the fittest” hurt in which there is no mercy and no redemption. The world does not care If I die; it only cares that I get out of the way if I cannot compete. But Jesus deals with losers, outcasts, beggars. He has a place for them in His eternal plan. He hurts them in order to polish and shape them, to sting them into an awakened condition, to remind them that dust can have a destiny, and that human frailty can be covered with eternal glory.
Thank You, Lord, for making paupers into princes and raising the needy to sit upon thrones (Psalm 113:7–9).
“Be gracious to me, O God, be gracious to me, for my soul takes refuge in Thee; and in the shadow of Thy wings I will take refuge, until destruction passes by” (Psalm 57:1).
Daily with the King 