The Balancing Actናሙና

Many Parts But One Body

Your body is an integrated system. If you hurt your right foot badly, you may end up with a painful left hip or knee, from limping awkwardly. In the same way, if you have pain in one area of your life, the problem isn’t necessarily rooted in that particular area. You may need to examine your whole life to see if something in another area is out of kilter, setting off alarm bells of discomfort.

The truth is that pain isn’t always an enemy. It can be an ally too, designed by God to pull us back onto the right track. Without it, we may not realize we’ve gone astray. Pain can literally save your life. In the book of Judges, a pattern is repeated several times by God’s people (as seen in Judges 2:10-14, for example). Every time they forsook God, He afflicted them with a painful situation. In their pain, they would cry out to Him for rescue, and He would once again have mercy. Then they would do it all again. Like me, you’ve probably lived long enough to have experienced the consequences of ignoring God and living life on your own terms. At some point, your thin cows have probably eaten your fat cows. Hopefully, the resulting pain drew you back to God.

In Luke 15, we read about a young man who asked his father for his inheritance, then squandered it. When he’d burned though all that cash, he was hungry, lonely, and bereft. The pain brought him back to his senses. He ran home, repentant. Sadly, this young man’s greed and hedonism ultimately caused pain in every sphere of his life, and his deviance from God’s ways also caused pain to his family. No matter how much we try to isolate certain decisions or spheres of life, we’re holistic beings, and we live in community. Our sin affects every part of our lives, and it affects those around us too.

Remember, pain is a good indicator that there’s something wrong in an area of your life. It signals that you’ve veered from God’s original design. However, in most cases, where you feel the pain isn’t where the problem is. For example, you may have felt pain in your marriage, finances, or friendships that was actually caused by disobedience to God in your career space or in the leisure activities you were involved in. Investigate the health of all seven spheres of life to check whether they’re submitted to God. I call this "doing the balancing act." Scan your life prayerfully and trust the Holy Spirit to help you find the true source of your discomfort. Ask your loving Heavenly Father to heal you and restore you at the root of the problem and thank Him for using the tool of pain to bring you to your senses and back to Him.