How do I Remain Joyful Through Pain?

Pain is something everyone experiences, but how can we remain joyful when life hurts? In this episode, we talk honestly about the tension between suffering and joy. Is joy just a feeling that comes and goes, or is it something deeper that can remain even in hard seasons?

Through conversation and reflection, we explore what it looks like to hold onto hope when circumstances are difficult, how faith can shape our perspective on pain, and why joy doesn’t mean pretending everything is okay. If you’ve ever wondered how to keep trusting God when life feels heavy, this episode offers encouragement, practical perspective, and a reminder that joy can exist even in the middle of pain.

Transcript

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What is up y'all? Welcome back to Conversation in the Kitchen. I'm your chef Corbin Cook and today's main dish is how do I remain joyful through pain? This episode we will dive deeper into the pain we experience as Christians and how we can remain joyful through all of it. A story I want you guys to keep in your minds throughout all this is the story of Job. If you do not know the story of Job, it's a great read, it's a book in the Bible. I highly recommend it. It's in the Old Testament. I forget where the next one is you know, I mean Joshua Judges for the first thing for Saint Kings. It's it's before Psalms and Proverbs, so I'm correct. I can't remember the top of my head, but you guys get it. But if you don't know it, I'll recap it really quickly. Job was a devoted man to God who was blessed immensely with riches, a great family, great farm, cattle, everything. Satan had asked God to take everything from Job because Satan wanted to test the faith of Job. Everything was taken from Job and he mourned and cried. But here's the thing he remained faithful to God and knew that God was better than anything that this world could offer. This book demonstrates the why of all suffering and how to deal with it. The pain I'll be referring to for most of this episode is more mental and spiritual. Uh physical suffering, we will face it, like sports injuries, etc. etc. Um, also, if you guys hear like bird noises and stuff, I'm kind of outside right now in nature. So I feel like it's just calm at peace, helps me progress to everything. But first, we're gonna go into like what is pain exactly. This is like gonna feel very like brief, but I feel like it needs to be here for the foundation of this episode. Pain in short is a mental or emotional distress or suffering. This pain can be such things as breakups, loss of a loved one, as I mentioned earlier, sports injuries, or just anything that anything external that affects you mentally in a sense, like performance in sports, school. I have had those kinds of like mental distresses, like sufferings a lot, especially with sports. I get into that later though. Now we have like what is pain, let's experience the why, and why do we experience pain? Why do we experience suffering? There are many different answers that people can go at with this. The way I look at it, the best way to put it is we experience pain as a consequence of following our own desires. The intention for God was to support his love of the Son unto us, and Jesus is the blueprint for that creation. This was meant to be the reason for all creation, and so instead of loving God, we decided to love our desires instead. We loved our own desires. We were meant to be lovers of God, but instead, through Adam and Eve, we became lovers of our desires. This love for our desires has created sin, which is a barrier that has separated us from the holiness of God. And because we follow our own desires, we miss out on the goodness in store God had for us originally. Now we we cope with suffering in many different ways. I have a story. So one year for Christmas, my sisters decided to do something that was going viral on TikTok. So I don't know if you guys know like the Russian nesting dolls. It's really weird how I explained it, but it's those little dolls. You probably you've probably seen the movies like you know, there's like one big doll, and then you open it as a minute medium-sized doll, and then you know, you you open that and it's a miniature one, and you kind of get the whole idea. But it's that, but with presents. And so my sisters got this big old box, and I thought, oh, it's a big old present. And I opened it, it's a box, and then I opened the box itself was empty, but then there's another box, like, oh okay, that box is empty, but there's another box inside of it, it's just that repeated process is opening boxes again and again and again and again. Um like my eyes kept widening every single time I saw a box. It's like the next best thing is going to be another gift within this box. I thought, I don't know, it's gonna be a pretty cool gift inside of this box. This is the same thing we experienced with our desires or coping of suffering. We look at the beauty of this desire, the beauty of this thing, and we when we open the box, there's just a small hit of happiness that eventually fades, or even worse, nothing at all. This leads us to open more and more boxes and hope that something will bring us pure joy. We tend to go and look for our own desires in order to find content with the current situation we are in. But the thing is, these boxes lead to emptiness. We the void will still never be filled with our suffering. My small bit of happiness just having to be a $20 Uber Eats gift card at that time. It doesn't really get you much, though, with the way culture and everything has been, yeah. But the thing is, you can never be content by loving your own desires, you can only be content by loving the riches of God. That's the only way you can be entirely content and just at peace with everything. Why did I go on with this bit? The pain we feel is a call to turn to the one who can heal. It is a form of discipline. In Ephesians 12 5 through 11, it says, and you and have you completely forgotten this word of encouragement that addresses you as a father addresses his son? It says, My son, do not make light of the Lord's discipline, and do not lose heart when he rebukes you, because the Lord disciplines the love the one he loves, and he chastens everyone he accepts as his son. Endure hardship as discipline. God is treating you as his children, for what children are not disciplined by their father? If you are not disciplined and everyone undergoes discipline, then you are not legitimate, not true sons and daughters at all. Moreover, we have all had human fathers who disciplined us and we respected them for it. How much more should we submit to the father of spirits and live? They disciplined us for little while as they thought, best, but God disciplines us for our good in order that we may share in his holiness. No discipline seems pleasant at the time, but painful. Later on, however, it produces a harvest of righteousness and peace for those who have been trained by it. God disciplines the ones he loves. This is an example of fatherly love. Here's a little scenario. A man has neglected spending time with his family because he's so prioritized on work. Because of this, God allows for the man to lose his job. God is tearing down his idols to readjust the man's priorities. God is throwing pain in our way to test our faith. It is either A, we're going to turn to God, or B, try to hold it all together. It is not easy to hold all of it together. Speaking from personal experience, you can't just put a facade on and have make everything seem so lovey dovey, sunshines and rainbows. Because you can't fake it at all. You cannot fake it till you make it. Because there's always someone who will know what's going on, and that is God. He knows everything that's going on in your life. You cannot hide from him. The pain we experience can also help us identify with others. 2 Corinthians 1 3 through 4 says, Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves receive from God. This comfort we feel from God and sharing it unto others, it's almost in a sense of when David was sharing his love to Mephibosheth in 2 Samuel 9. Living by faith in a fallen world invites suffering, and discomfort will be brought forth. But you have to be comfortable with being uncomfortable. And more ways you can see why we experience pain. There are two different ways. Well, three, like why we experience pain. I'm gonna summarize this section up. The first way is because it is a result of our actions with God, us loving our own desires instead of loving the one who has created us and wants us to run to him. Secondly, it's almost how the question is brought up like why does a good God allow suffering? Because the suffering we face is to be in comparison with the suffering Jesus faced on that cross when he was hung up on there enduring all the pain for us that we should have felt. We want things to be fair, but if things were fair, we would receive eternal damnation. Third, I would argue with this suffering opens up a greater understanding for the character of God. Listen, when you look back in the Old Testament, this is more applicable with Old Testament scripture. Many people remember the covenant with Noah, the rainbow show, that he will no longer destroy anyone, and the covenant with Abraham that he will make his descendants multiply. That could happen in any way. The Noah one is one I'm more looking at because Noah he promised not to wipe out anyone. Look at the exodus of the Israelites. The Israelites rebelled against God continually again and again and again, but God never destroyed them. Why? Because he was keeping that promise he had with Noah. So instead of wiping them out, he inflicted suffering and pain on them so that they may look in turn to the one that can heal. Israel never did that, of course. So instead of wiping the people out, God had to wipe the sin out of people. That was the root issue. The sin within us is the root cause of why we were separated from God. And you can see that this suffering is a result of God not wanting to wipe us out from the earth, but more of a call to turn to Him. It's in a sense showcasing the power of God, but also how much of a promise-keeper God is. This is transf this is transitioning into my last like area. How do we deal with the pain? There's a man named Simeon who was who's mentioned in the gospels, he was there at the temple when Jesus was there. I'm pulling this out from Luke 2, 25 through 26, which reads, Now there's a man in Jerusalem called Simeon, who was righteous and devout. He was waiting for the consolation of Israel, and the Holy Spirit was on him. It had been revealed to him by the Holy Spirit that he would not die before he had seen the Lord's Messiah. Simeon did end up seeing Jesus Christ in front of him. Jesus not not Jesus. Simeon did not see a little boy, but rather he saw the Son of God. A root word in consolation is consoled, which means to be comforted in the midst of grief. Simeon found comfort in the waiting of Jesus Christ coming to dwell among us. How? Because he knew that God always fulfills his promises. But when we reunite with Jesus in heaven, we will be living our best lives ever. Which is why the a great read also, the book of 1 Peter. And 2 Peter, if I'm correct. He he touches on it touches on that too. But we are chosen exiles, chosen to be exiled out of this world. But because we have a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ, we have a hope that we will no longer be exiles when Jesus comes down and saves us. Isn't that just a beautiful, beautiful thing? So we can have comfort in the second coming of Jesus Christ the Messiah. And that is how we can help deal with the suffering. God remembered his promises with Noah and Abraham and knew he couldn't wipe the Israelites. So he made them suffer and used their rebellion for a greater cause. And all that led to Jesus Christ shedding his blood on the cross so that we may have a seat at the table with him forever. And to wrap up all this, knowing the character of God helps us find comfort in the midst of suffering, for we know that he keeps his promises and he will deliver us.