Title: Love Learned Through Pain
Learned love in pain
“How great is the grace you have stored up for those who fear you, how great is the grace you have bestowed on those who take refuge in you before men! Blessed be the LORD, for he has shown me his marvelous love in a fortified city (Psalm 31:19-21).
I. Text Commentary
The text we read today is a psalm of David. This poem is written in retrospect of what happened when many hardships abounded in his life. The most painful experience for him was suffering through people. This involved betrayal and revenge of those he loved. Externally, he suffered from difficulties in the environment, and internally suffered from these wounds of the heart. From David's point of view, this suffering was unnecessary in his life, but God made it a channel of grace through which David constantly depended on God.
II. loneliness in suffering
The deep feeling of loneliness that had become solitary was the most difficult pain David had to experience in his relationships with people. God allowed David to suffer this kind of pain so that he could examine his relationship with God and opened his eyes to the fact that he should not rely on God alone. We, who remain sinful, try to live on our own somehow. But God is constantly calling us. Because God knows all too well that we become unhappy when we leave Him.
III. Use it as an opportunity for recovery
A. Hide
Verses 19-20 in the text use parallelism in literature. ‘You hid them in a secret place’ is paired with ‘You hid them in a tabernacle’, and ‘You have led them out of the counsels of men’ is paired with ‘You will set them free from strife. It is written to emphasize one fact. It is a confession of God's protection and grace who hid David in the time of trouble. The adversaries are intent on trying to save the poet's life. While David was fleeing in search of shelter, he experienced God hiding David in his tent. This tabernacle refers to the tabernacle, which was the church at that time. The poet says that the Lord hid Himself in a secret place. David also describes this place as a stronghold in other psalms. It is said that he hid him in a place like a high fortress from which his enemies could not climb.
Sometimes our eyes of faith are bright and sometimes dark. When the eyes of our souls are diseased, God's word of truth becomes painful, not beautiful. So, God lets us know that there is nothing in this world that we truly long for by letting us be abandoned by the things we love.
B. Let go
Enemies who want to curse us and inflict pain try to put us in danger by fervently plotting evil. But if we take refuge in the Lord by faith, God's wisdom puts us to shame in the counsel of our enemies. Even now, when we try to live by faith, we see various temptations before us. Satan used his servants to overthrow us in order to make us his servants forever. But God loved us until he sent his Son to give us eternal life. God's wisdom surpasses human wisdom. God brings us out of trouble in an excellent way.
IV. to know God's love
After David became king, he loved the world more than God and did not come to the Lord because he sinned. However, God gave us trials and hardships to bring us into the arms of the Lord and let us know the perfect love that cannot be replaced with anything in this world.
V. Conclusion
Tribulation, trials, hardships and difficulties do not stop us from living the faith. Rather, our devious spirit of independence that tries not to run away from there into the arms of God is what prevents us from leading a religious life.
In life, we will inevitably face small and great hardships. I hope that you will serve the Lord as a captain in the midst of the sea of life where the waves of this kind of trouble are raging. 2009-05-20