Can the act of enduring suffering actually be beneficial to you and others? Let’s look at this possibility through a simple yet powerful exercise to gain a renewed perspective... 

What is your first memory of suffering or pain? Is it a visceral pain memory of falling and scraping your knee or bumping your head, or abuse? Maybe it is a more obscure pain: being forgotten somewhere as a small child, disregarded, neglected, or bullied. Either way, that first memory of suffering in any way is a kinetic life recovery/restore point. An initial planting plot to go back to and look at with fresh eyes. Do not wallow and whine, rather seek positive input of healthy new data and nourishing seeds that will yield life-giving results!

Like a computer back-up, our brains have been designed to store memories. These are places in life that have the ability as a recovery point, and even greater, because we produce life not just data. This is a point of reference to begin to restore with uncorrupted data and recover a healthier future, one that is a gift for you and others.

You see, you can go to that moment and rewire and reroute future responses with healthy input. Who responded to your tears or who didn’t?  Maybe you didn’t even shed a tear and just sucked it up from the very beginning. It is in this honest looking back that we can gain wisdom for the future. It is vital that if we go back and look, we must look for the life-giving things in those restore points. 

How would you have liked to have been comforted or encouraged at that moment? Is that a moment of testimony to the fact that you can endure a momentary pain and turn it into a tool for greater growth? Is there a sense that you were attended by Someone more powerful than the pain? The truth is - you were, and always will be! Ask Him to show you.

No suffering comes our way that does not have the potential to renew our heart soil. We were created from soil, and given the breath of GOD HIMSELF.  It totally makes sense that we can be strengthened by figurative storms, plowing and replanting. In this same metaphor, our individual plots of human soil are wrecked by storms of life; “cut” with a plowshare of real pain and then tilled up with TRUTH to eradicate the weeds, called “lies”, that spring up when we suffer. The Gardner sends His messengers with exhortation to rework our heart soil so that we can receive the seeds of abundant life that He is sowing through each and every experience…joyful or painful. 

These moments are chosen specifically for our field of life; which is the Genesis soil type that the Creator knows He made us from, and the specific growing season. He has sown these beautiful crops in us as a gift, to bear thriving fruit that not only nourishes ourselves, but it is also exponentially multiplied as we allow others into our field to harvest wisdom, truth, encouragement, and life-giving hope!

If you are feeling a little barren, it could be a signal to go back and look for a point for heart soil recovery. Ask The Creator to show you any field that is not healthy or prepped well. Then be tillable, willing to respond to His loving hand that may prune off dead branches and cut through the hard ground, dig up deadly roots, and weed out discouragement. The Truth will replant with the fresh seed of life full of potential for a completely different result than the first one – a renewed field flourishing with life giving crops for all.