My Wife Went to the Doctor
My wife had her knee examined by a specialist yesterday. She injured it shortly after our youngest daughter was born, but then our move to China made it difficult to give her knee the attention it needed. For the last nine years, she has had days when her knee felt fine and other days when it caused significant pain.
Actually, that is not quite true. Some days the pain was tolerable, while on other days she really struggled with it.
For the past month, she has been working with this doctor twice a week, and the treatment has made a noticeable difference. Her pain has become much more manageable, and our family has even been able to go on hikes together that would have been difficult before.
Yesterday, the doctor put her on a device that measured how her muscles responded as she moved her knee through different movements. What the machine revealed was fascinating.
Even though her knee was getting stronger and healthier, she was still walking as though it were going to hurt. Her body had learned to compensate for the pain.
The compensation had once been helpful. When her knee hurt, she naturally adjusted the way she walked to protect it. But now that her knee was healing, those same compensations were actually getting in the way of her recovery. She was protecting herself from pain that was no longer as real as her body believed it was.
That got me thinking about how often we do the same thing spiritually.
We Can Learn to Protect Ourselves From Pain
This happens in many areas of our lives.
I have a friend who experienced terrible things growing up. People who should have been safe did things that deeply wounded her. She is now far removed from those people and circumstances, and she has a wonderful husband who loves her deeply. Yet some of the fear she learned when she was young is still there.
She has learned to protect herself from the possibility of being hurt again. That protection makes sense when you understand where it came from. When you have experienced pain, you naturally want to make sure you never experience it again.
But the very thing that once protected her can now keep her from experiencing something beautiful. Her fear of being hurt can create distance between her and the person who wants to love her. I think we do this with God more often than we realize.
Fear Can Change the Way We Approach God
Adam and Eve give us one of the earliest pictures of this in Scripture. After they sinned, they hid from God.
God had not stopped being good. His character had not changed. His love had not suddenly disappeared. But their perception of Him had changed. They were afraid, so they hid. … We can do the same thing.
Perhaps we fear that God will reject us because of something we have done. Perhaps we are afraid He will tell us that we are not good enough. Perhaps we have prayed for something before and been deeply disappointed, so we are hesitant to hope again. Maybe we have experienced loss, rejection, or unanswered prayer, and somewhere along the way we learned that it was safer not to expect too much from God.
We may still love God, but we begin to approach Him cautiously. We pray, but we don’t really expect Him to speak. We worship, but we keep part of ourselves at a distance. We read Scripture, but we struggle to believe that God actually wants to meet us there.
We compensate for the possibility of pain. And sometimes that compensation can keep us from experiencing more of God.
Sometimes we compensate for a pain that is no longer there. And sometimes that compensation can keep us from experiencing more of God.
What If the Pain Is No Longer the Reality?
Think again about my wife’s knee. Her body was responding to what had happened in the past. The pain had been real. The injury had been real. Learning to walk differently had made sense.
But as her knee became healthier, her old way of walking was no longer helping her. It was now hindering her healing.
There are things we may have learned about life because of painful experiences that once seemed necessary for our protection. Perhaps we learned to expect disappointment because we had been disappointed. Perhaps we learned not to trust because someone we trusted failed us. Perhaps we learned to keep others at a distance because we were afraid of what they may want from us.
But what if God is inviting us to learn a new way? What if some of the ways we protect ourselves have been used against God? What if Jesus came to correct some of those protections we have against God?
Romans 6:11 tells us to “count yourselves dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus.” That is not simply a statement about how we feel. It is an invitation to believe what God says is true, even when our experiences and emotions tell us something different.
You may not feel alive to God. You may still feel distant. You may still feel the effects of old wounds. You may still find yourself expecting rejection. But your feelings do not get the final word about who God is or what He has accomplished for you.
God Is For You
Romans 8:31 asks, “If God is for us, who can be against us?”
- What would change if we actually believed that God is for us?
- What would happen if we stopped approaching prayer as though we were bothering Him and began approaching it as an opportunity to connect with someone who loves us?
- What if we believed that God wasn’t embarrassed by us?
- What if we believed He wasn’t waiting for us to make another mistake so He could punish us?
- What if we really believed that He wanted to talk with us?
Galatians 2:20 says that we have been crucified with Christ and that Christ lives in us. The Christian life is not simply about trying harder to become acceptable to God. It is about learning to live from the reality that we already belong to Him. That changes the way we walk.
Learning to Walk Differently
This is where I think the Christian life becomes such an adventure. God is not simply asking us to believe a collection of theological statements. He is inviting us to discover that what He says about us is actually true.
Perhaps you have spent years believing that God is disappointed in you. What would happen if you began to believe He delights in you?
Perhaps you have been afraid to ask God for something because you don’t want to be disappointed again. What would happen if you allowed yourself to hope?
Perhaps you have stopped listening because you assume God would never speak to someone like you. What would happen if you simply became quiet and asked Him to speak?
Perhaps you have been protecting yourself from God because you are afraid of what He might ask you to do. What would happen if you discovered that His invitation was not about taking something from you, but about leading you into greater life?
God is not simply asking us to believe a collection of theological statements. He is inviting us to discover that what He says about us is actually true.
We may have learned to walk one way because of the pain we experienced in the past. But God may be inviting us to walk differently now.
Having More of God
I don’t believe experiencing more of God means that life will suddenly become easy or that we will never experience pain again. Following Jesus does not remove every difficult circumstance from our lives. But it does give us a different place from which to face them.
We don’t have to live as though God is against us. We don’t have to continually protect ourselves from His presence. We don’t have to hide in the garden when we hear Him coming.
We can come near, talk to Him, listen, and trust. And perhaps some of the things we have been doing to protect ourselves from pain are actually keeping us from the very love that can heal us.
My wife’s knee is getting stronger, but she still has to learn to walk differently. I think many of us are in a similar place with God.
The question may not be whether God has more for us. The question may be whether we are willing to trust Him enough to stop compensating for the pain and begin walking in the freedom He has already given us.
Let’s start living as though God enjoys being with us... Because He does.