Perfect Pain
The understanding of your eyes would be enlightened. Welcome back. Welcome back to the Rootwork podcast family with Tiffany Malone. It's episode 8. It's episode 8, and I gotta tell y'all.
Tiffany Malone:I gotta tell y'all. I was talking to my sister. I have 2 sisters, and I'm the oldest. You probably could've picked that up by now. I have very much have oldest sibling tendencies, but my my baby sister, I was talking to her the other day.
Tiffany Malone:And sometimes we talk about our kids and how much they mirror us. How much they remind us of ourselves. And in some ways, one of her kids is just like her. But in ways she often can't see because she didn't experience herself as a child. And so my mom and me who were around when she did some similar things, often see, you know, see her kids in action and we say, oh my gosh.
Tiffany Malone:You know? She's he's just like you. Or or my mom will see, you know, my daughter and say, if that's not you when you were young. And so I I know most people experience that by the time their their kids are growing up, and that's that's amazing. And I I was talking to my sister just the other day.
Tiffany Malone:We're kind of just talking through some things. And I it came to my mind, and I remembered this really funny thing that happened when we were growing up. And I had to ask her because I have 2 sisters. Was this you or was this she said, nope. That was me.
Tiffany Malone:I started telling her the first three words of this story, and she said, that was me. I'll never forget that day. And the story really illustrates a deeper, a deeper spiritual issue in my life that I continue to see coming up. So when we were really young, maybe my sister might have been 4 or or 5. I don't know.
Tiffany Malone:She was young. Where we grew up, we lived on a street, and our house faced the woods. So there was a a wooded area across the street from us. No houses in our neighborhood. We were the last house kinda on the street, and the woods were across the street.
Tiffany Malone:Well, our house also was situated on a hill, on an incline. So we had one of those driveways and you parked on the incline. So, you know, our kind of garage area was at the top. And usually in our driveway was my mom's car at the top of the driveway, and then my dad's car at the bottom of the driveway. You know, you might have a little space in between or or whatever, but that's typically how it was, and they were both on the incline.
Tiffany Malone:And I can always remember, you know, my parents pulling up the brake or whatever because the the incline was pretty steep. Well, one day, I recall, maybe it was some neighbors or some folks we knew saw my mom, dad, me, and my sisters outside. I don't know if we were preparing to go somewhere. I don't know why we were outside. It seems to be like a nice sunny day.
Tiffany Malone:We might have just been outside in the front yard, and I think they were driving by and so they stopped. They pulled up, and they were talking. And so there are, you know, several people in the yard, our family, their family. We're all talking. Before I knew it, all I remember was I said something I shouldn't have said because that was typical me.
Tiffany Malone:Right? I was always finding myself in some grown folks conversation. I know you can't imagine that I would be always getting in trouble for talking too much. I know this is just like a foreign concept, but believe me when I tell you I was in some conversation I had no business in. And my mom was giving me the business about being in this conversation.
Tiffany Malone:Right? She was getting on to me, and I was I was, you know, sad, embarrassed. You know, the the feeling you have when your mom is, like, embarrassing you or you feel she is or she's chastising you and you have company. Right? You it's it's bad enough to get, you know, have your mom get on to you, but you're really embarrassed when you when you someone else is around.
Tiffany Malone:But that's happening simultaneously as my little precocious sister and my other sister have gotten into my mom's car that's at the top of the driveway. They got in. They closed the door. They were playing with their dolls. And my sister puts the car in gear, backs the car down the driveway which hits the other car behind it.
Tiffany Malone:That car rolls out of the driveway into a busy street no less. This is the grace of God. This didn't go worse. The car rolls out into the street and halfway into the to the, woods, which everybody watching this catastrophe knows that after you go into the woods the woods go on a steep decline and there's a cliff there. And we're all looking Thankfully the car that gets bumped doesn't get hit by any passing cars.
Tiffany Malone:Didn't roll down into the woods. It wasn't a a scene from a a a big action movie where it, like, burst in the flames or anything like that. But one little detail, I remember telling my mom and my sisters after the fact. And I think it gets missed from time to time because there was so much hoopla that day, but I have never forgotten it. At the moment that I was talking too much, I was walking toward where the cars hit.
Tiffany Malone:I was planning to walk in between the parked cars, and my mom called me back over there because I was saying something smart as I walked that way. And as she was getting on to me, my sister put the car in gear. It's never been lost on me what the timing could have been had I not had I not gotten called back over to get get the business from my mama, and my sister had put the car in gear while I was between the cars. That has never been lost on me. And as I thought about that and my sister and I were joking about it, she recalls, like, every detail of this.
Tiffany Malone:It made me think about life. And sometimes there is pain, discomfort. There are things that we're going through in life that are really, really uncomfortable. Right? Similar to when my mom was getting on to me in front of our company.
Tiffany Malone:Things we don't like. And it's our instinct to want out of that moment, to get back to what we were trying to do. Right? To go the way we were intending to go before that moment of discomfort yanked us from our path and put us in this really uncomfortable painful situation that we didn't want to experience. But what I'm learning even at this point in my life, even when I still experience discomfort, even when I still experience pain, and even the chastisement of God from time to time.
Tiffany Malone:When I experience things that maybe aren't the chastisement of God, they're just circumstantial things that all of us will see or experience at some time in life, is that God's timing is perfect. And sometimes the pain and discomfort we experience is also perfect. I know. I know. I know.
Tiffany Malone:No. But you know, we don't like to think of perfect pain. Right? We don't like to think of of of it as ever being for us. But I wanna tell you this.
Tiffany Malone:When you are in the will of God, his timing is never off. When you are in the will of God, his timing is never off. There's there's the instinct within our humanity to ask, you know, why is this happening to me, God? Why is this happening now? Why why is nothing working that I need for to work?
Tiffany Malone:Why isn't every why that in my mind's eye, in my plan, I had things going this way. Why is it not off but in when you are in the will of God his timing is never off. Wherever there is God obedience to God, creation is synced. And God is doing something with the moment, even the moment of pain. This is the concept that's in Romans chapter 8 verse 28.
Tiffany Malone:And it's what we know that all things work together. They sink for good to them who love God and who are called, the called, according to his purpose. And so it makes us ask the question, the very real question, how do we respond? Right? How do we respond when it seems like our our backs right?
Tiffany Malone:Our backs are against the wall and the circumstances are lined up against us. Because that's a very real question. That's though those are situations that we face. How do we respond in those moments? And I wanna I wanna give us 2 ways that we respond.
Tiffany Malone:The first way we respond, and I hope this is helpful to you. This is I was telling my husband just this morning. There's there's telling and then there's teaching. Right? This is my personal idea.
Tiffany Malone:There's telling and there's teaching. There is the type of learning that is telling, that is the ingestion of information. Right? We we understand these words. We we learn these things.
Tiffany Malone:We can memorize them. But I think teaching takes place when we understand. Right? The the the proverbial writer says, in all thy getting, get an understanding. What what's he saying?
Tiffany Malone:He's saying that as you're learning the the teaching or learning the words, understand what you're learning. Right? Extract the meaning. Because if you don't extract the meaning, they're just words. I I think teaching happens in our lives when it's not just words on the pages of scripture but it's almost like we could kind of step down into the Bible and say and look around and it almost becomes 3 d.
Tiffany Malone:Right? We can look around at it in our lives and understand what the scripture means, what God's Word actually means, and how to apply it in real time to our lives. And unfortunately for a lot of us we never get to that place. We never get past showing up at church, being able to recite scripture, and kind of knowing what to do and towing the the line that we have to to kind of say we we do. And then we get in these moments, especially these moments when our backs are against the wall, and these moments where where pain comes, and these moments that things are uncomfortable, and we don't have the tools we need to navigate the moment.
Tiffany Malone:That's teaching. Teaching is having the tools you got from the telling and realizing now I need the tools. I remember a couple of years ago, my husband was was coaching when my son was much younger, his basketball team 1 year. And he would be telling the team certain plays that they had to make. And and, you know, the inside workings of basketball are a little bit foreign to me even though I'm as tall as I am, and I played 1 or 2 years in middle school.
Tiffany Malone:But the what the coaches go through is to try to get the players to learn. They're trying to teach them, not just tell them. Right? The plays. And there were a few plays where he would call the play, and as he was in practice trying to teach them the plays, he would have to tell them I need you to position yourself here so that when this particular scenario plays out, you're already in formation and then you can get the ball and you guys can execute this way.
Tiffany Malone:And there were a few of them who would learn that, but they would be so stuck on I'm supposed to stand here that the ball would get dribbled right beside them because they hadn't extracted the meaning from the play. Okay? You're supposed to stand there but all things we do in the game of basketball is to the end of getting the ball in our basket. So you never want to stand there while the ball is dribbling by you and not be aware of the ball. So that's the meaning you have to extract.
Tiffany Malone:The play is the means to a successful end. And it was difficult for, you know, a bunch of 5 or 6 year olds to get this is the play, but this is how I need you to move in the moment in order to get extract the meaning from the play. And that's kind of how we are, right, in life. And so sometimes when our obstacles come, when our pain comes, when the hard things of life come, we need to grab truth but we're not really sure how to extract the meaning from it. Well, the reality is I believe our obstacles are ideal for us.
Tiffany Malone:I I know. I know. And I'm not I don't say that I don't say that lightly. I don't say that flippantly because pain is real. But I believe that nothing happens in our lives that can't be worked for God's purpose.
Tiffany Malone:If it does, his word isn't true. And his word is true because he is true. In fact, that's what we we that's what we respond to our obstacles with is the truth of his word. So in some way, God is going to work it. I'm not saying He sent it.
Tiffany Malone:I'm saying open your spiritual eyes to see how am I supposed to respond, right, to this obstacle. Like your pain is perfect for bringing out in you and for working God's will in the earth. Right? Our our our our our obstacles are ideal. Our our pain is it's they're just the teacher we need to perfect us, to slough off the edges.
Tiffany Malone:Right? And the reality is is that the wisdom of God lies therein. One of my favorite passages is in I think it's 2nd Corinthians no. 1st Corinthians 2 where Paul is talking to the Corinthians church about spiritual things. Right?
Tiffany Malone:He's talking to them about spiritual things, the spiritual mind, the spiritual man, and how the spiritual the the carnal man can't can't discern the spiritual man. And he says there that if the powers of this world had ever thought, if they discern, if they knew that the way God was going to defeat them was through the cross, they never would have crucified Jesus. The wisdom of God is not of this world. Right? And so it's counterintuitive sometimes.
Tiffany Malone:The obstacle is the path. Sometimes the pain is the path. Sometimes the discomfort is the road. And I know that's easy to read, you know, when we read about, you know, Alliance Den and and Daniel. But the reality is had we been there, what we have been wanting was out of the lion's den.
Tiffany Malone:But for what God was working, the way was to spend the night in the lion's den. And what God was gonna do was take the appetite away from the lions. What God was gonna do was create the moment where the king realized this flippant decision that led Daniel to the lion's den was almost gonna cost him the wisest man in the empire. So much so that the king wakes up early in the morning running down to see did your God deliver you? And when Daniel says I'm okay in the grand scheme of things the king says praise be to your God.
Tiffany Malone:There is something God is doing that he's working for, His purpose. And if you get out of your pain sometimes he can't do it. Right? We we we we see the fiery furnace and we want out of it, but it's not out of it that God is gonna work it. It's in it that he's going to take the heat out of it so that everybody can see that he is God.
Tiffany Malone:Right? We we we come, like, to this to this Red Sea and our backs are against the wall, and we we don't want we don't know how we're gonna be delivered. And God is like, just stand still. Stand still in the anxiety of, oh my gosh. What are we gonna do?
Tiffany Malone:Until you remember the truth that I did all those plagues. That the reason you're even at the Red Sea is because I brought you. And if I brought you here, I'm gonna take you on. And when God's miracle shows up, it's the thing that we never stop talking about in scripture. And it has to happen when you stand there with your back against the wall between the rock and the hard place.
Tiffany Malone:If there's no rock and no hard place, God can't get glory. He can't get glory. It's like when they walk through the the the wilderness, the instinct is just take me to the promised land. But they have to be tested, and they have to be trained so that the ones who will qualify for the promised land can know what to do when they get to the promised land. You must go God's way.
Tiffany Malone:And what we want is to go any way except the way that takes us down the path to our cross. The cross that Jesus says we have to take up because the cross means you have to deny yourself. And often that's what the pain came to teach us. It came to reveal that all this time, there are some things we'd only been told, but that we still needed to be taught. The pain reveals that some things we've been learning all our all our lives we hadn't really learned yet.
Tiffany Malone:And the pain perfects us. It is intended to squeeze out some of the last places of self and self centeredness and selfishness. And some of those last things that have to die in us, so that we can truly be perfected and fully used for what God wants us to use. So we have to learn how to respond to those my backs up against the wall places with the truth. And we have to extract the meaning from the truth.
Tiffany Malone:The meaning being if God brought me here he's going to use it. And I don't need you to hear that as a cliche. That's just telling. I need you to sit in it as 3 d truth that that is to be lived. And until we learn that, learn that in the deepest place, until that becomes more than a cliche to us.
Tiffany Malone:We will keep failing the test of how to respond to pain, how to respond to tough circumstances. The other thing really is inherent in most of what I've said. Because when you respond in truth, you respond also in humility. These moments teach us that there needs to be less of our will and more of God's. In fact, isn't so much of what is difficult for us in this moment?
Tiffany Malone:The reality that we want something, we want our way, we want an outcome, we want something for ourselves so much. And when we will come down and say not my will but yours. God what you want not what I want. Then we find that we're in the flow of what God is doing. Then we find we're right in the movement of the flow of creation and all the things God is doing.
Tiffany Malone:We're able to come down in our sense of self to learn what god is trying to teach us through the circumstance. And as long as we keep looking out there for what you need to be doing, we're missing what it came to teach us. We're missing what it's here to teach us. Does the guy send it all? I don't think so.
Tiffany Malone:I don't I don't think so. I think many things happen as a result of us being in a fallen world and that sin abounds. But the wisdom of God is that he's accounted for that. That has not overridden the plan of God. I was talking to my husband yesterday and he made an interesting statement.
Tiffany Malone:He said, you know, God is so wise. I think he's factored our stupidity in his will. He has factored in what we don't know, and he's still going to get the outcome. His will is still going to be accomplished. He's still going to be glorified, that included.
Tiffany Malone:And that is what some of our circumstances come to teach us. Until we learn what Jeremiah knew. Oh, lord. The way of man is not in himself. It is not in man that walks to direct his own steps.
Tiffany Malone:Now I've been told that in some way all my life, but it's only been in recent years that I sat in that, that I looked around at it, that it took on life and and meaning for me. Right? That I could sit in that word because everything about what we do implies that we know what we're doing or that we should know or that we want to know what we're doing. But the goal of it all is to get us to surrender at the feet of our savior until we ultimately tell the one of the greatest truths and that's that I don't know and you do God. And sometimes our circumstances come in order to tell us that.
Tiffany Malone:And so I don't know. Maybe you are in a situation where you are have you are in the middle of something painful, something, really emotional, something maybe you're facing a a difficult season with your kids or a diagnosis or a tough spot financially or, you know, maybe relationally something is breaking down and your back is against the wall and you don't know which way to go, I want to remind you that in those moments, the way out is usually through. I want to remind you to get the learning to extract the meaning. I want to remind you to tell the truth when your back is up against the wall. Respond with the truth of the word.
Tiffany Malone:I wanna remind you to learn the humility that God's way is best. And I wanna remind you of one of the great passages of scripture. I think it's 2nd Corinthians 4 17 and 18 where Paul reminds the church at Corinth, our momentary light affliction is working for us. I know it doesn't feel momentary. It doesn't feel light.
Tiffany Malone:It feels like heavy affliction on our shoulder, but he he reframes it as momentary light affliction. And then he tells us, it's working for us a far greater weight of the of glory. And that by the time God is done working out through the medium of circumstance and how he works all things together, Great glory will be had for him and through you, through the working out of this circumstance. So this is a word of encouragement for you. It's a word to tell you if it's tough for you right now, respond with the truth, respond with humility and watch God work out great glory in your life.
Tiffany Malone:You keep doing the work along the route and we'll get there. Till next time family, we'll see you. Bye.
