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Neil Strauss said, “People go through so much pain trying to avoid pain.”

Why is it, do you think, that we avoid pain so strongly?

U.S. Marine Corps officer, Lewis Burwell “Chesty” Puller famously said, “Pain is weakness leaving the body.”

I must have a lot of weakness then because I’m always in pain.

While we try our best to hide pain, avoid pain, numb and remove pain, we need to know that pain is actually a good thing. Pain allows us to know we have feelings. Pain helps us to remember the better days before pain. Pain teaches and motivates us to become better, stronger, faster, with more endurance.

I like what Indian poet, Rabindranath Tagore said: “Let me not pray to be sheltered from dangers, but to be fearless in facing them. Let me not beg for the stilling of my pain, but for the heart to conquer it.”

We aren’t a people known for tolerating pain. While some say that time heals all pain, I tend to agree with what author, Roy T. Bennett, said, “Time doesn’t heal emotional pain, you need to learn how to let go.”

Letting go isn’t easy. When was the last time you truly let go of the pain? Not just of that knee, hip, lower back, neck, pain but of the emotional pain you’ve held for years?

We allow items having nothing to do with us to infect us and swell us emotionally and mentally. God never promised we wouldn’t have pain. In fact, throughout the Bible, especially over and over again in Romans, we are promised that we will suffer. We will have pain.

Have you ever heard or read the story in Acts 28, when the apostle Paul was bitten by a viper and lived?

His hands didn’t swell up nor did he drop dead. This amazed all the folks who witnessed and heard of this.

However, the Bible never says it wasn’t painful. You see, God never promised to protect us from being bit. He does, however, promise to protect us from the venom.

Unfortunately, there’s a lot of poisonous venom spurting from peoples’ mouths and hearts these days. People bite at you fast if you disagree with them or for simply being silent.

While God hasn’t promised you won’t “get bit”, please never forget how if we are in him the venom doesn’t get us.

Don’t allow the poison of others to stop you from being the good this world needs. Endure that pain knowing God can use it for something beautiful. If you don’t know God’s grace, let’s talk. “Our wounds are often the openings into the best and most beautiful part of us,”

David Richo.