Pain is bondage. Pain holds you captive. Pain changes who you are. Pain can hold what feels like absolute power over your body, actions, and thoughts. Pain prevents you from thinking clearly, it clouds your judgment, and it affects your prayers and thoughts.
How can a loving, living God ignore someone praying for him to take away the pain? Why would he not instantly heal them? In fact, why should someone have to go through pain at all?
These were the thoughts running through my head while I was growing up. I had an accident when I was four years old that caused me to have constant migraine headaches. Through the years, they seemed to never go away. The ongoing pain caused depression. It would make me miss school and lose out on a lot of opportunities in life.
And it majorly affected my prayer life. Everyone kept saying they were praying for me, but when I would pray, it felt like praying to a brick wall.
I remember taking trips to the Mayo Clinic, as well as to other hospitals and chiropractors over the years. I would get temporary relief sometimes, but the pain would always come rushing back. I became angry and bitter in my heart.
Satan would have me believe that my pain and suffering were the only pain and suffering in the world. And it worked. It always felt like I was the only one who knew what it meant to suffer. And that God didn’t see me.
“It always felt like I was the only one who knew what it meant to suffer. And that God didn’t see me.”
In 1584 in his book, Dark Night of the Soul, Saint John of the Cross says, “Many praise and bless Jesus as long as they receive some consolation from Him, but if He hide Himself and leave them for a little while, they fall either into complaining or into excessive dejection.” I knew dejection well.
“But God” moment
I had missed most of my sophomore year of high school, having to stay at home and do work there. My headaches had gotten bad enough to where I would wear sunglasses and ear plugs because light and noise were bothering me all the time. Going into my junior year, the pain became even worse one night. In what didn’t much resemble a prayer, I remember crying out to him in frustration and bitter anger.
I remember telling Him, “Lord, if you’re really there and you heal me from my headaches—if you’re really there like my parents and my schoolmates and school lessons and Sunday school all say that you are—if you’re really there and you heal me, I’ll be your man.” Then I remember falling asleep, exhausted and emotionally spent and hurting.
I was about to experience a “but God” moment that would shape my life.
I woke up the next morning and something was different. Something was missing. During the half hour I took getting ready for the day, I began to realize what was different. My pain was gone! I had lived with pain for so long and it was such a part of me that it felt weird when it was missing!
In my despair and my hurting, God had heard me and healed me.
“In my despair and my hurting, God had heard me and healed me.”
How sure am I that this was God? I will stand up in any court of law and declare that it was not the Mayo Clinic, nor chiropractors, nor doctors. It was God that healed me that night. God heard my cry. He heard me in my distress. While I do get headaches sometimes (usually from my children, lol), I have not had the extreme migraine headaches that I used to have.
I knew what I had to do: I needed to be His man. That first day, I got down on my knees and confessed my anger, bitterness, and my pride to Him. I knew Jesus had saved me from my sins, and He was calling me to be His man.
Does God Really Listen?
Soon, new questions had begun to form. Why hadn’t God healed me before? What was different this time?
As I’ve reflected on what happened, I truly think it was because I had finally come to a place of being broken enough to want to be His man. I don’t think I had wanted to before. I had wanted to follow myself out of my own pain and misery.
That got me to wondering if there were other “but God” moments when God did deliver even when it seemed like He was never going to?
One example I found interesting was from Genesis and Exodus, the first two books of the Bible. Abraham’s descendants ended up in Egypt and, in time, enslaved to the Egyptians. They found themselves in bondage and in pain, with no hope. They cried out to God, and that’s when they experienced a “but God” moment. Yes, it’s possible they were crying out to God for many decades. But the language of the text is interesting in how it connects God hearing with their crying out to Him in desperation:
“Years passed, and the king of Egypt died. But the Israelites continued to groan under their burden of slavery. They cried out for help, and their cry rose up to God. God heard their groaning, and he remembered his covenant promise to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. He looked down on the people of Israel and knew it was time to act.” (Exodus 2:23-25, NLT)
“He looked down on the people of Israel and knew it was time to act.”
And oh, how God acted. Using His man Moses, God set His people free from slavery.
“But God” Passages
Did you know the phrase “but God” is used throughout Scripture? God has moved powerfully in the past, and He is the same God yesterday, today, and tomorrow. Can you pray this psalm today?
“My health may fail, and my spirit may grow weak, but God remains the strength of my heart; he is mine forever.” (Psalms 73:26, NLT)
“But God” reminds us of God’s power to bring the dead to life:
“And we apostles are witnesses of all he did throughout Judea and in Jerusalem. They put him to death by hanging him on a cross, but God raised him to life on the third day.” (Acts 10:39-40, NLT)
“But God is so rich in mercy, and he loved us so much, that even though we were dead because of our sins, he gave us life when he raised Christ from the dead.” (Ephesians 2:4-5, NLT)
“But God is so rich in mercy, and he loved us so much, that even though we were dead because of our sins, he gave us life when he raised Christ from the dead.”
“But God” reminds us of God’s ability to rescue:
“Later, God condemned the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah and turned them into heaps of ashes. He made them an example of what will happen to ungodly people. But God also rescued Lot out of Sodom because he was a righteous man who was sick of the shameful immorality of the wicked people around him. . . . So, you see, the Lord knows how to rescue godly people from their trials, even while keeping the wicked under punishment until the day of final judgment.” (2 Peter 2:6-9, NLT)
Crying Out to God
It is my hope and prayer for you who are hurting and in pain that my God—who heard me, and who heard his people of Israel—will hear you. And that you also can have a “but God” moment, whether your health is failing, your faith is weak, or if you feel like you cannot go on in your current situation and are crying out to Him.
As you cry out to Him, please remember that faith in Him is not the same as faith in a particular answer to your prayer. In Hebrews 11, the “Hall of Faith,” we read about the faith-filled who “shut the mouths of lions, quenched the flames of fire, and escaped death” (Hebrews 11:33-34). Yet, we also read about the faith-filled who “were tortured . . were jeered at . . . were chained in prison . . . killed with the sword” (Hebrews 11:35-37). We have to let God be God and trust that He can use whatever we go through for our ultimate good (Romans 8:28), even as we cry out to Him for help.
“We have to let God be God and trust that He can use whatever we go through for our ultimate good, even as we cry out to Him for help.”
I reflect back on three steps I took as I cried out to God in desperation and in the days following my healing. I want to be clear that this isn’t some kind of formula for instant success. Rather, they are steps that put me in a posture of submission to God, and I commend them to you as well:
- Confess your fear and lack of trust. Often, those are the first things that put a wall up between us and God.
- Pause and listen. Be silent without distractions around you. What is the Holy Spirit saying to you?
- Take one step of faith. Just one. One step of faith can be powerful enough to move mountains, Jesus says in Matthew 17:20. Take one step of trust that might require you to bend a knee. Confess that your life is His.
I can now honestly pray this Psalm, and it is my hope and prayer that you who are reading this can have it as part of your testimony as well:
“Come and listen, all you who fear God, and I will tell you what he did for me. For I cried out to him for help, praising him as I spoke. If I had not confessed the sin in my heart, the Lord would not have listened. But God did listen! He paid attention to my prayer. Praise God, who did not ignore my prayer or withdraw his unfailing love from me.” (Psalms 66:16-20, NLT)
