I sat over coffee a few days ago with an old friend, I didn’t go with any expectation to the meeting which is very unlike me so when the conversation started to drive itself, I let it, just inwardly hoping my companion wouldn’t feel an awkwardness.

We got into our growth and relationship with God and from then, I lost track of time, till I had to run off to a lecture I know better than to miss!

This post is birthed from my highlight of the entire conversation, so please, go get a cup of coffee/tea/water as well, and let’s re-have the conversation.

My best times of prayer and worship have been when I’ve sat and cried without any ability to make words of what I was feeling, sometimes, this feeling could be one of admiration and worship, and other times, it could be pure pain and hurt.

Unpopular opinion: Pain is a necessity for growth, in the absence of pain, one doesn’t possess sufficient feelings of inconvenience to see that it is time to grow. When you were younger, I imagine you had favourite shoes which you loved and as you grew, you must have realised that one day suddenly, you had discomfort wearing them, why?

Because your feet had outgrown the capacity of the shoe and it was the universe’s way of telling you ‘Hey, you’ve grown, get new shoes to accommodate the growth’. Without the pain from the inconvenience, you’ll be unable to even notice and acknowledge your growth.

So yes, pain, is a necessary evil, C.S Lewis actually calls it a megaphone of God, how God sometimes uses it to grab our attention. And let’s not even lie, it actually works.

When the pain comes though, what’s our reaction? where’s our hiding place? who’s our run-to person?

Most people end up back at God’s feet only after they’ve mentally resolved the pain or found a way to deal with it, or they even appear before God first truly but being very passive about it like God can’t relate completely with it.

Today, let’s destroy every thought that exalts itself to say that God cannot relate with or understand our pain. God is not our parent who sometimes worry when they find that were in pain, He’s also not the mean person who tells you “Stop exaggerating the pain”. He is capable of feeling it to the level you feel it and relating with you on that same level.

We have to learn to be sincere with God about our pain, we need to know that God will not see it as blasphemous if we came to Him with questions about our pain, we need to understand that His being God does not hinder Him from relating with us even at the level of pain.

This brings a whole new level of liberty! It allows you to enter that presence, come rain or sunshine, with the tears of joy, as well as the tears of pain. Knowing He’s a Father that can handle every emotion we are capable of feeling so please, please, let’s not short change ourselves downplaying or out-rightly eliminating our expression of pain in our relationship with God.

I’m excited, I was recently listening to how every name we know God with was revealed to us by someone who experienced God in that dimension, so today, together, we’ll give God another name that we can leave for our children to come to and keep praying with. He is ‘God, the bearer of my pain‘. Later we can come up with a Greek or Hebrew word for it too lol!