Pain at Just the Right Time

[The Midweek Encounter is a ministry of Encounter Church in Kentwood, MI. These posts are reflections on Sunday's message, which can be heard here each week: http://myencounterchurch.org/#/messages-media]

I have only been grounded once in my life, and it is one of the most vivid memories from my teenage years. As a fifteen-year-old girl, I thought I was in love with an eighteen-year-old boy and would do anything to see him, even though my parents had set strict boundaries around our time spent together. We were supposed to be in a large group of people in a public place or at a friend’s house—never alone and never in private.

I decided it would be a good idea to tell my parents that I was going for a run [I am not a runner… the fact that I thought this would work is still comical]. So, I left my house and went for a jog until I was far enough away from home that my “boyfriend” could meet me alongside the road. After a few minutes of talking, I saw my parents’ very distinct black SUV pulling up behind us and my dad rolled down the window… and the rest is history. At the time, it didn’t seem like my dad had my best interest in mind—after all, I just wanted to spend time alone with the boy I “loved.” Looking back now, I can appreciate my father’s perspective; he knew that this older boy was going to hurt me and he was simply trying to save me from unnecessary pain. Being grounded was the right discipline given at the right time.

In a similar way, God kept the Israelites in a “layover” period in order to protect them from their own sinful ways. While the Israelites simply wanted a change in geography and diet, God saw the root of their problem—rejecting the Lord who was among them (Numbers 11:20). He decided to give them what they wanted, food other than manna, just not in the way that the Israelites had expected. The Lord brought an overabundance of quail from the sea and let them fall around the camp. Even those who gathered the least collected approximately 4,000 pounds of quail!

However, because the Israelites had rejected the Lord, they were subject to God’s discipline—the kind of discipline that had their best interest in mind. Numbers 11:33 says, “While the meat was yet between their teeth, before it was consumed, the anger of the Lord was kindled against the people, and the Lord struck down the people with a very great plague.”



Photo Credit: Tristan Colangelo

God struck down the Israelites with a great plague in order to rescue them, and in the same way He also reaches into our lives in order to save us from our sinful behaviors. In an attempt to rescue us from the stronghold that sin has on our lives, our Heavenly Father can use pain as a way to share His grace and provide for His children. Rather than fighting the pain or ignoring the promptings of the Holy Spirit in our lives, we need to learn from the pain. It might be just the right amount of pain at just the right time, sent from a God who desperately wants to rescue us and bring us back to Him.

[Megan Stephenson is a recent graduate of Grand Valley State University and works for a private education group in Grand Rapids as an Assistant Registrar. She loves spending time with her husband, Ben, trying out new breweries, restaurants, and local attractions. She also self-identifies as a crazy cat lady, despite owning no cats of her own, thanks to her loving and allergic husband.]