\u201cThere is an ancient Chinese philosophy which says: \u2018To be dry and thirsty in a hot and dusty land\u2014and to feel great drops of rain on my bare skin\u2014ah, is this not happiness? To have an itch in the private parts of my body\u2014and finally to escape from my friends and to a hiding place where I can scratch\u2014ah, is this not happiness?\u2019 Pain and pleasure are inextricably linked. The pleasure would not exist, or least be recognized, if it were not for pain\u201d (Philip Yancey, Where Is God When It Hurts<\/i> [Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1978], p. 46).938<\/p>\n
Pain can serve a definite purpose in our lives.<\/p>\n
Dr. Paul Brand of Carville, Louisiana, one of the world\u2019s foremost experts on leprosy, describes how \u201cleprosy patients lose their fingers and toes, not because the disease can cause decay, but precisely because they lack pain sensations. Nothing warns them when water is too hot or a hammer handle is splintered. Accidental self-abuse destroys their bodies.\u201d (Cited by Philip Yancey in \u201cPain: The Tool of the Wounded Surgeon,\u201d Christianity Today<\/i>, March 24, 1978.)939<\/p>\n
\u201cPain insists upon being attended to. God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, and shouts in our pain. It is His megaphone to rouse a deaf world\u201d (C. S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain<\/i> [New York: Macmillan, 1978]).940<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\u201cThere is an ancient Chinese philosophy which says: \u2018To be dry and thirsty in a hot and dusty land\u2014and to feel great drops of rain on my bare skin\u2014ah, is this not happiness? To have an itch in the private parts of my body\u2014and finally to escape from my friends and to a hiding place … Continue reading “PAIN, PURPOSE OF”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13696","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sermons"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13696","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13696"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13696\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13696"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13696"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13696"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}