My Prediction? Pain.

This is the last in a seemingly endless series on our need to be grace wholesalers if we’re going to bring lost people home. We’ve recently walked together through four suggestions for how to become grace wholesalers. If you need to become a grace wholesalers (and yes, you do) then read the last week or two of posts. Today, the fifth and last suggestion (and the first time I’ve been able to quote Clubber Lang in the title of a post, but I pray not the last). So here it is: Pain.

I believe part of God’s plan for us becoming grace wholesalers is pain. We get so impatient when other people don’t grow, until we don’t grow. We get frustrated with someone else’s marriage problems, until we experience marriage problems. We judge someone for their sin, until some sin creeps into our life. It’s when we need grace that we realize … other people need it too.

And God wants to use me to be a grace wholesaler.

In some ways, God wants to allow us to be broken so we can extend authentic compassion, really feeling what others feel. And so I’m learning not to gloss over the pain in my life. To not medicate it. To not run from it. To live in it and then minister out of it.

Check out this quote from Henri Nouwen, from his book, The Wounded Healer, “Who can save a child from a burning house without taking the risk of being hurt by the flames? Who can listen to a story of loneliness and despair without taking the risk of experiencing similar pains in his own heart and even losing his precious peace of mind? In short: Who can take away suffering without entering into it? The great illusion of leadership is to think that man can be led out of the desert by someone who has never been there.”

God is calling us to be wounded healers. God is calling us to be grace wholesalers. That’s what God is, that’s what Jesus is, that’s what we need to be … grace wholesalers. So, in the words of Mindless Self Indulgence … “bring the pain.”

We’re done with being grace wholesalers and finally we’re off to a new topic. Until then: My personal philosophy? Clothing optional. (Sorry.)

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