Pain relief is a wonderful thing. When we are hurting, the cessation of pain helps us enormously and the advances in modern medicine are embraced by all who can see the benefits pain relief brings.

But there are things we must also consider about pain which are not so universally liked or accepted. Pain is God’s warning system (His ‘megaphone’, as C. S. Lewis puts it) to us. It alerts us to actual or possible damage to the body. Those who suffer from leprosy, for example, feel no pain, but the result can be loss of limbs, for they can be burned without feeling it. Nerve damage which prevents us feeling pain may lead to all kinds of actual tissue damage which goes unnoticed until damage is irrevocable.

Pain can, therefore, have benefits, even though it is not pleasant. It is a warning system which alerts us to problems. Our attention is then focussed on solving (healing) the problem, not simply removing the pain.

Pain relief can, at times, simply mask the problem. It’s much easier at times to pop a pill than to solve a complex physical problem, and there are, of course, complex physical problems (like late-stage cancers) which cannot be cured, and pain relief and palliative care are needed then.

But so often, pain relief is our first response to all problems, because we are averse to pain. No right thinking person embraces pain as a friend. Sometimes, however, we need to be prepared to look for the cause and not simply treat the symptom.

Life has many problems, including things that cause enormous emotional pain. The breakdown of relationships, guilt over sin, abuse, bereavement and so on are things which bring heartache and pain into our lives. When we love, we are vulnerable to pain and to loss.

Our instinct is to deny the pain or to suppress it. Doctors give us tranquillisers to numb the pain. Such things may well have short-term benefits in helping us to survive those waves of excruciating pain which rob us of breath and leave us gasping for air, unable to function at all. But as long-term solutions, they are not really helpful, because they leave us with untreated causes.

God does not offer pain relief per se. He offers healing. That healing may not always instantaneous. The pain may not go away immediately, for God works to sort out the root problems in our lives. He is not anywhere near as concerned with short-term solutions as we are. This can be extremely hard to bear. The psalmists frequently cry ‘How long?’ because they know all about pain and anguish and suffering and sorrow.

Emotional heartache is every bit as painful as physical pain and tends to last much longer too. Grief, whilst natural, is extremely painful. But for our long-term mental health, we need to face the pain and find God’s healing rather than expecting a pill (or platitude) to cure all our ills. God’s solution is to walk with us through the pain, bringng the healing balm of His presence and His sufficiency to our ‘light and momentary’ troubles (which to us are far from light or momentary.) There are no quick fixes to the pain of the heart. There are no words which can be plastered over gaping holes, no simple solutions to heartache and grief. But God’s presence breathes life and health and healing into us and we are revived and strengthened for the ongoing journey – wounded, scarred, broken, but somehow also made strong in the broken places (see Heb 11:34).

There are a number of special meetings coming up in February.

Tuesday 7th February

There is a planning meeting at 11 a.m. where we hope to decide on details for the Community Arts’ Festival in Goldthorpe, to be held later this year. Come along to find out more about this event, which we hope will champion creativity and celebrate community! Individuals and local groups are all welcome and we hope this will be a great festival for all types of arts in our region.

Sunday 12th February

Our monthly meeting at Cherry Tree Court is at 10.30 a.m., with our evening service at 6 p.m.

Sunday 19th February

We are holding a dedication service at 10.30 a.m. (no Communion this morning to take this into account).

We had a quiz on love at the family service tonight. Questions ranged from filling in the blanks from Bible verses about love (surprisingly difficult to do out of context!) and identifying buildings or monuments associated with love:

The statue of Eros in Piccadilly Circus, London

We had to identify the city which saw the St Valentine’s Day Massacre (Chicago) and also had to act out charades of film titles connected with love:

The result of all this hard work was a variety of prizes:

Tonight’s family service looked at the theme of ‘First Love.‘ Usually, when we use that term, we are thinking of romantic love, the rush of emotion we feel when we first fall in love. However, we have to acknowlege that love is the theme which runs throughout the whole of the Bible. God’s love is seen in Genesis 1:28 when we see Him creating mankind and blessing people; it’s also found in the last book, Revelation, when the church in Ephesus is told that they have forsaken their first love. (Rev 2:4)

God’s love for us is the theme of the whole Bible. His love prompted Him to give His Son to save us (Jn 3:16-17) and we love because He first loved us. (1 Jn 4:19) However, we need to move beyond the idea of love as a feeling only and acknowlege that our love for God needs to be seen in action and in truth. Whilst our thoughts of first love may reflect the idea that ‘the first stab of love is like a sunset, a blaze of colours’ (Anna Godbersen) and we may have many memories of our first love, what counts is that we move beyond nostalgia and remain faithful and true to God whose love for us is unending, indescribable and constant. Only when we see the power of His love can we hope to love Him faithfully and steadfastly as He loves us.

Jacob is changed irrevocably from his night of wrestling with God and bears permanent scars from this encounter, limping forever as a result (see Gen 32:31). Most of us want the blessings that God can bring, but are not so keen on the brokenness that is sometimes a part of receiving those blessings. There are no victories in the Christian life unless we learn what it is to be defeated by God. We have to learn the meaning of ‘magnificent defeat’ (Wes King), that unless we lose our lives, we will never find them. Jesus made this very plain: ‘Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me and for the gospel will save it.’ (Mark 8:34-35) One commentator says, ‘In Western culture and even in our churches, we celebrate wealth and power, strength, confidence, prestige, and victory. We despise and fear weakness, failure, and doubt. Though we know that a measure of vulnerability, fear, discouragement and depression come with normal lives, we tend to view these as signs of failure or even a lack of faith.’  Jacob is a vivid reminder to us that blessing and brokenness can very often not be separated in the Christian life.

Life breaks us. Things happen to us beyond our control which break us and we are never the same again after these things. We may heal physically; we may even know emotional healing, but we bear scars from these things. We limp.

God breaks us. Just as a horse trainer knows that a horse has to be broken before it can be ridden safely, God knows that if our self remains undefeated, we will not find the blessing He has for us. Jacob is never the same again after this encounter. He is not perfect: far from it. But he has learnt that in surrender and apparent defeat, there can be victory and blessing. Frederick Buechner says of this encounter that it represents the ‘magnificent defeat of the human soul at the hands of God.’

In our society, we often feel that brokenness means failure; we very quickly throw out broken things and replace them with pristine new ones. God is not like that, however. Brokenness is actually a prerequisite of being used by God. He’s not interested in perfect people, in flawless individuals. (They don’t exist, anyway, so there is no wonder He’s not interested in them!) He specialises in using people who are flawed, sinful and disobedient – people like Jacob. He specialises in turning the deceiver into one who has seen God face to face and lived. He knows all about brokenness. After all, Jesus Himself is known by the scars; He’s worshipped in heaven as the Lamb who was slain (Rev 5:6):

‘The marks of death that God chose never to erase,
The wounds of love’s eternal war.
When the kingdom comes with its perfected sons,
He will be known by the scars.’ (‘Known By The Scars’, Michael Card)

This morning’s sermon continued the ‘Battles & Blessings’ series, looking at when Jacob wrestled with God. (Gen 32:22-32) This incident profoundly changed Jacob’s life, giving him a new identity and transformed character. Prior to this, he had been known as a grasper, a deceiver (see Gen 25:21-34) who had connived to get his older brother’s birthright and who plotted with his mother to get his father’s blessing. (Gen 27:1-45) He had had to flee from Esau’s wrath and lived away from his family for years, discovering something of God’s presence through a divine encounter at Bethel (Gen 28:12-17), but also learning what it was like to be on the wrong side of deception with Laban! (Gen 29). Now he is about to return home and is fearful of Esau’s reaction (Gen 32:1-5). Immediately before that encounter, however, he has to face a mysterious man who wrestles with him until daybreak…

The wrestling match is not initiated by Jacob, but by God, and we need to remember that whatever we may think, God is the One who goes searching for the lost coin and the lost sheep. We see Jacob’s tenacity in this encounter, however, and understand that if we are to know blessings from battles, we must learn to persevere in prayer. Persistence and perseverance are not the same as pester power, but must form part of our prayer life if we are to be victorious in prayer. (see Luke 18:1-5, Matt 15:22-38, James 5:16-18) God tests us to determine our desire for Him and we must learn to keep on praying and not give up. Prayer becomes the force that moves us forward. Self-help is no good, but as we engage with God in prayer, we are in a position to receive the blessings God pours out.

Jacob’s encounter with God leads to a new name (‘Israel’, the name by which the whole nation will be known) and a new identity as one who has struggled with God and humans and overcome. We too have been given a new identity in God and those who overcome will one day receive a new name from Christ. (Rev 2:17) We are now new creations in Christ Jesus. (2 Cor 5:17) We have been given a new nature and the Spirit of God lives within our mortal bodies. (Rom 8:1-9, 2 Cor 6:19-20) We have been born again, adopted into the family of God so that we are now children of God. (Jn 1:12, Rom 8:14-17) We are no longer slaves to sin, forced to do whatever the enemy demands of us; we are free to do as God says, to live as He commands, to enter into all the countless blessings He has freely poured out. Eph 1:3 says ‘Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ.’ Those spiritual blessings are there for every single Christian to receive. Paul says that ‘no matter how many promises God has made, they are “Yes” in Christ.’ (2 Cor 1:20) Our part, though, is to speak the ‘Amen’ of faith, to claim those promises, to come before the throne of grace with confidence and boldness, just as Jacob speaks boldly and receives a new name, a new identity.