Living Outloud: The Purpose of Pain

We trace Hosea and Amos to ask whether our pain is God’s correction or His formation, and we find hope in a God who heals what He cuts and shapes us for His presence. We share our own setbacks, name the seasons of the soul, and offer next steps rooted in Scripture.

• moving to five episodes to dwell in Scripture more
• Hosea 6 as a call to return and be healed
• God as surgeon and farmer who applies measured pressure
• naming seasons: tilling, planting, growing, threshing
• difference between discipline for sin and formation in hardship
• Hebrews 12, James 1, Romans 8 and 2 Corinthians 4 as anchors
• practical response: repent and return or trust and endure

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Transcript

Immersed In Scripture Like Marinade

Minor Prophets: Patience And Warning

Hosea 6: Return And Be Healed

Shaped By Suffering, Not Broken

God The Wise Farmer And Surgeon

Naming Your Season Of Growth

Discipline, Love, And Holiness

Trials, Endurance, And True Good

Corrective Or Formative Suffering

Closing Encouragement And Next Steps

SPEAKER_00 0:11

Welcome back to the Out Loud Bible Project Podcast. This is Mike, and this is Living Out Loud, the once-a-week segment where we'll take a look at what we read earlier in the week on the podcast and then talk about how we can actually live this out. How can we apply this directly to our lives and do something about it? Well, this caps off an exciting week here on the podcast where we grew from three episodes per week to now five episodes per week, all in an attempt to hopefully just have the word kind of dwell in us a little bit more frequently and a little more richly. And I believe that if you stick with me and and we'll keep up this pace, I think we're going to see even more effect of the living word of God in our hearts and and expressed in the way we speak, in the way we think, and the way we act, which is really the goal. It's what it's here for. And I said earlier in the week, and I'll say it again, I hope this podcast isn't your only time to engage with the Bible in the week. I hope you open it for yourself and and read through it and go to church, hear what your pastor has to say. And but really just staying immersed in the Bible is where we're going to really see the changes in our lives that we want to see. It's kind of like, uh, this may be a weird metaphor, but track with me. Maybe I'm hungry, but you know, when you put steak in a marinade, like it the marinade just sits and just kind of soaks in. And the longer it sits in the marinade overnight, then the just the more tender the meat is when it is time to cook it and eat it. And if you even want to speed up the process yet, bang it with one of those hammers, you know, that's spiky hammers, and that just kind of tenderizes it even more. Uh, very fitting to actually what we're going to be talking about today. But that's the goal here with uh with our time in the word. And you know what? Sometimes we do feel smacked around with a spiky hammer, and uh nothing reminds us of that more than when we read the minor prophets, which is where we are here in our uh our time together on the podcast. We uh read through several chapters of Hosea, we also read uh the start to the book of Amos, and in these chapters with the prophets in the Old Testament in general, we really come get a sense of like, oh man, God is really not okay with the disobedience and the sin of his people, and he his patience is running out. Of course, it is much patience and grace to have the prophets at all. The fact that there was any warning is gracious on God's part. Um, but we get to see God's patience in action, but also running out here, and we can take that as a warning for ourselves. But it's not all doom and gloom, it's not all wrath and fireballs. In fact, the whole undertone, the whole heart of God interwoven through all of these prophets is a desire for repentance and a desire for reconciliation. I want to take a look at uh Hosea six. Hey, if you're in a spot where you can open a Bible and kind of walk with me through that, I think that's great. If you're driving or if you're doing something else, that's fine. Just uh just maybe check into the Bible a little bit later, but and just enjoy the listen. We'll have a conversation here. But Hosea 6, one through three, I'm gonna read in the New Living Translation. I like how conversational it is. Uh it it reads like this Come, let's return to the Lord. This is Hosea, like pleading with people, uh pleading with God's people. He's torn us to pieces, now he'll heal us. Isn't that interesting? He, God, has torn us to pieces, now he will heal us. He has injured us, now he will bandage our wounds. In just a short time he'll restore us, so that we may live in his presence. Oh, that we might know the Lord. Let's press on to know him. He'll respond to us as surely as the arrival of dawn or the coming of rains in early spring. This is a beautiful call to action, spoken by someone who is in line with the heart of God, Hosea talking, and he's inviting people, and I think he we can we can put ourselves here, he's inviting us to return to the Lord and to admit that when it comes to our sin, yeah, we face consequences, and they come from the Lord. He's torn us to pieces, but that's not the end of the story. He will heal us. Yes, he's has he injured us? Perhaps, but he will bandage our wounds, and he's gonna restore us. There will come a time when he restores us. For what? What's the purpose? Verse 2, so that we may live in his presence. And that, Jose doubles down is the goal. Let's know him. Oh, that we might know the Lord. Let's press on to know him. Knowing the Lord is our great privilege and our responsibility. It's only possible to know the Lord because he's allowed himself to be known. If God didn't want you to know about him, then you wouldn't even know to want to know about him. You know what I mean? You know? Uh we only can know about God because he allows himself to be known. He's God. If he didn't want to be known, then he wouldn't ever be known. There's nothing we can do about it. But the fact that we can know about him, we can know him, is his invitation in the first place. We're not desiring to do something that he's unwilling to do. It's it's he invited us in the first place to get to know him. And I I don't know why this is. Maybe it's just one of those things that's like it's because it's God, but the one of the primary ways we can know him, I believe, is through suffering and through how he helps us navigate the suffering and his healing and his care and his attention through it and on the other side of it. I don't know why it has to be that way, but when you look at the life of Jesus, Jesus is no stranger to suffering. And there is a difference between suffering like Jesus and suffering like the Israelites, and we'll get into that a little bit more. But let's have the goal of getting to know God and just having to accept the fact that maybe the best way that God has designed for us to get to know Him more is through the difficult times. But here's a point that I want to say now, and I want to reemphasize throughout: God is not trying to break you, He's trying to shape you. If you're going through some difficult times right now and you just feel broken, you feel targeted, you feel attacked. Look, God may even be involved in it. Now, he certainly allows anything that happens is because he's allowed it. Is he directly attacking you, or is it the enemy who has been given authority and and permission to? I don't I don't know. I don't know. But whatever the case may be, God is not trying to break you, he's trying to shape you. Hosea's language is very raw. He says he has torn us, but he will heal us. See, God's not being cruel. God's being a surgeon. Surgeons tear, surgeons cut, surgeons damage and injure us, so to speak. But it's for the purpose of healing. God is a master surgeon. The tearing, the cutting, the pain, it's purposeful, and the healing is promised. Again, with the goal in verse 2 that we may live in his presence. This is all so that we can be with him. It's it's formative. God's not trying to break you, he's trying to shape you. This really reminds me of one of my favorite verses. I've been leaning into it a lot lately. I don't know, maybe that tells you a bit of our of our uh present condition, but uh Isaiah 28, 24 through 29. I know we didn't read this in the podcast, but I'm reminded, so I want to bring attention to it. Isaiah 28, 24 through 29 says this. Listen to me. Listen, and pay close attention. Whenever we read that in the Bible, it's like, oh, oh, okay, I'm listening. I'm I'm paying attention. God is speaking here. Does a farmer always plow and never sow? Is he forever cultivating the soil and never planting? Now we in a non-agricultural society are like, wait, hold on, wait, wait a minute. Was the question again? But back in the day, when most people are farmers, they would have been like, oh yeah, no, totally. Like far farmers don't always plow and never sow. Then they don't always cultivate the soil and they never plant, that'd be silly. Does he not finally plant his seeds? Black cumin, cumin, wheat, barley, and emmer wheat, each in its proper way and each in its proper place? The farmer knows just what to do, for God has given him understanding. A heavy sledge is never used to thresh black cumin, rather, it's beaten with a light stick. And again, the farmers back in the day would be like nodding, yep, yeah, yeah. A threshing wheel is never rolled on cumin. Instead, it's beaten lightly with a flail. Again, okay, yeah, yeah, yeah. See, grain for bread is easily crushed, so he doesn't keep on pounding it, he threshes it under the wheels of a cart, but he doesn't pulverize it. The Lord of Heaven's armies is a wonderful teacher, and he gives the farmer great wisdom. Okay, maybe your gears are already turning a little bit. Maybe you're like, that was a lot of farmer metaphor, I don't really know anything about that. Here's the thing God compares himself to a farmer who knows exactly how to treat each seed through the whole process. And the process of growing plants, of course, is first the plowing and the tilling of the soil, then planting the seeds, and then the process of letting it grow, and then the threshing of the harvesting when it's ready, ready to be, to be picked. And not all seeds get the same treatment in the process. Just like not all pressure that you feel, not all suffering that you may feel is the same. And God never over pulverizes, God never over-threshes, he doesn't over-till the soil. It feels that way sometimes when we just feel like I can't catch a break. It just feels like one thing after a next. Like, why is God doing this to me? And I you know what, those questions are tough to wrestle with. And it's tough to go through these situations where it just feels like one thing after the the next. I'm talking solo today because Kelsey has taken some steps backward in her back healing, and it's hard. It's hard, and it's discouraging, and it just feels like, are we doing something wrong? Like, what like what what are we supposed to learn from this? What do you want? What do we do? And there may not be easy answers for those. But we have to trust that God knows what he's doing and that he's not doing anything unnecessarily. He knows the difference between crushing and cultivating. Now might be a good time to just identify what season you may feel like you're in right now. Is it a a tilling, a plowing season where God is just churning up all of the soil that's been there for a while? You feel like it just, man, I just feel all torn up and everything in my life is moving around and I'm I feel inside out and upside down, and it just feels like everything's being shaken up. That may be God tilling and plowing the soil to prepare it to be able to receive a seed. He knew that before there was just not enough air, not enough life, not enough softness to it. It would have rejected anything that he would have done. He knows, we don't necessarily recognize that. Maybe it's planting time. Maybe it's just some some time for things to be starting small, and you feel like you should be further along, but God is having you right where he needs you because he knows he's just planting seeds. Maybe it's a growing time. Maybe you feel like you're you're experiencing great growth in areas, in relationships, and in your walk with God. That's that's great. That's a really fun time because generally the farmer leaves the plants alone. Water them, give them food, let the sun shine on them. It feels like a good time. Enjoy that time of growth. Then there's a time for threshing. Sometimes the harvest is a lot of fun. You go pick a pumpkin and it's like, oh wow, I have a pumpkin, that's so fun. Pick an apple off a tree. Mmm, delicious. Sometimes harvesting is also, it again depends on what the seed was. Sometimes harvesting, like wheat, it takes a lot more work. It takes some a little bit of beating, it takes a little bit of effort to separate the wheat from the chaff, so to speak, to get rid of the things that aren't necessary and helpful for the harvest and keep the good quality things. What season are you in? And trust that God is God knows the exact amount of pressure to apply in each step of the process. Each season has a purpose. And here's the thing: none of them last forever. I know it's when you're sick or when you uh have a relationship issue, maybe an estranged family member, you're injured, it just feels like this is what it's gonna be forever. Kelsey had an appointment with the spine surgeon just yesterday, and one of the most encouraging things he said was look, this is not going to be the rest of your life. There's a definite end date on this. It will be fixed one way or another. Okay. Now, of course, it's difficult when it's like could be another couple months. That feels like forever when it's already been a couple months, and that has felt like, oh man. You know, you know the feeling. But God, like a skilled, experienced surgeon or a wise farmer, looks at you and says, Oh, this season's not gonna last forever. It's d there will definitely be a time where what you're experiencing will end and you'll move on to the next thing. It doesn't feel that way. That's when we just have to trust him. That's half when we have to trust that he's good. I I do want to make a distinction here, kind of before we continue on too much further here, that there is a difference between God disciplining and God cultivating, God shaping. Because we can suffer because of sin. And of course, we see this in Hosea, Amos, all these minor prophets that we're reading. Israel is experiencing suffering and they're going through a hard time because of their sin, because of their rebellion, because they've rejected God's way and have embraced the rest of the world's way around them. And that requires some discipline. Amos, like we read, said the same thing. So God's saying in Amos 2.13, for example, God says, So I will make you groan like a wagon loaded down with sheaves of grain, kind of reminiscent of what we read in Isaiah, where God is is really laying on the weight, really kind of putting the pressure on, but it's for the purpose of discipline. However, we have to know that even discipline is grace. Discipline is a sign of God's love. If I go in the grocery store, I see kids who are just brats. They're just yelling, they're screaming, they want this and that off the shelves, and they're not listening to their parents, and it's it but you know what? What do I do with those kids? Nothing. They're not mine. I have no responsibility to discipline them. I have that they wouldn't listen to me anyway. It's just I just let them do what they do. They're not mine to discipline. My kid, I have a responsibility and a privilege to be able to raise her to become more like me and to be uh raised right in the world. That's that's where I give my focus, and sometimes it's discipline, and that is part of our relationship. And so, God, in the same way, he doesn't discipline everybody else who doesn't submit themselves to his fatherhood and and his lordship. If they don't claim to him to be their God, then well, he lets them live their life, and they'll experience the consequences of that. But the active discipline and the active crafting and cultivating of your heart, that is because God loves you. And yes, it may be because of sin, but he just recognizes he's not like trying to like stop you from having a good time. He just knows how dangerous and harmful and hurtful sin is in your heart, and he wants to draw that out and reform you so that sin doesn't leave its ugly scars all over your life. Hebrews chapter 12 reminds us that God disciplines those he loves. Specifically, verse 10, check it out. God's discipline is always good for us, so that we might share in his holiness. That's the goal, so that we can be made more holy like him. Verse 11 says, No discipline's enjoyable while it's happening, it's painful. It's like obviously, right? But afterward, there will be a peaceful harvest of right living. There's that harvest again. Peaceful harvest of right living for those who are trained this way. So all that to say there is suffering that can come because it's discipline and it is a result of our sin. That can be a reason for our suffering and the difficult times we're going through. Especially, and and the Holy Spirit works to convict us to know if we're sinning, you know, and so we read the Bible, we find that our life doesn't line up with him, and then we're experiencing suffering. Those may be related. Let the Holy Spirit guide you in that. But sometimes we suffer just because life is hard. Not all pain is punishment. Jesus himself suffered without sin. Jesus never needed discipline, but he did experience suffering. Because you know what? The world is broken. And this pressure, this these hardships are part of our formation. James 1, 2 through 4 reminds us that that trials produce perseverance. He says, rejoice. It's like let's let's consider this a good thing. I know it doesn't feel like a good thing, but it's a good thing. Why does endurance matter? James says, because God uses this pressure to help you become mature and complete, and you don't need anything. You're lacking nothing because you have him and you have you have the endurance that he cultivates in you. Romans 8 28 says that God causes everything to work together for the good of those who love God and are called according to his purpose for them. Now this verse I think often gets misinterpreted and misapplied to say, well, God works everything out. Like and and almost like that's supposed to make you feel better, it's okay. God will work it all out in the end. I that's not the fullness of what this is saying. He causes everything to work together for the your good, yes, but what is your greatest good? Because if he's if he's a great God, he's gonna make your your greatest good out of this. What's your greatest good? To become like Jesus. To be made mature and complete, lacking nothing. That is what God is going to work everything together for. It's not so that you end up feeling good necessarily, it's so that you end up being like Jesus. I want to throw another passage at you. Second Corinthians 4, 16 through 17 says, in summary, this is why we never give up. Though our bodies are dying, our spirits are being renewed every day. For our present troubles, and how do you know there are many present troubles? They're small and they won't last very long. Yet they produce for us a glory that vastly outweighs them and will last forever. So we're gonna endure these present troubles, recognize that in the grand scheme of things they're small and they're temporary. But what they produce in us is so valuable and is gonna last forever that we're gonna be happy to have experienced what we did in order to receive what God wants for us. So here's here's a distinction, and I think we can we can close on this and chew on this a little bit more throughout the week as we go forward. Think about the suffering that you're feeling right now, the hard times, the punches you feel like you're you're taking on the chin, everything that you just feel like, oh man, life is life is tough right now. It may not be everyone, but if not, if not you right now, then keep this in your pocket for when times do come, because they will. But ask, okay, is this suffering corrective or is it formative? If it's corrective, because yeah, there has been sin and and God's convicting you a little bit that you have been ignoring him and and he's trying to bring you back to what's right and bring you bring you closer to himself and and closer to to righteous living. If it's corrective, then you've got two things repent and and return. In fact, repenting is like doing a 180. That's the idea of repenting, is God, I recognize where I am, I recognize that is not where you want me to be. I apologize, and I'm gonna turn things around to go back to you. I need your help to do that. Please help me. I'm willing. Please guide me. That's that's the idea of repentance. So if it's corrective, then allow yourself to be corrected, repent and return. But maybe your conscience is clear. It's like, God, am I am I doing anything wrong? I'm please search me and tell me if I'm doing anything wrong. If if if I've offended you in any way, I don't I don't want to live like that. I don't want anything in between us. And if still, it's like, no, no, we're we're at peace. God says we're at peace. I'm uh we're okay, but you're still going through hard times, then it's formative. And now's the time to trust and endure. Just trust and persevere. And ask him for help. He's not asking you to do anything that he's not willing to walk with you through. Is your suffering corrective or is it formative? Do you need to repent or just need to hang on? I hope this conversation has brought some encouragement. and some clarity to you today. Thanks for joining me here on the Outloud Bible Project Podcast. I'm excited to enter into another week with you next week as we continue these books of the minor prophets. I'm looking forward to it. So I'll see you next time on the Outloud Bible Project Podcast.