The search for a painkiller

I was recently sharing in the teaching of an Ellel Ministries course on the issue of finding freedom from addictions. While preparing for the weekend I sensed the Lord say that mankind has always looked for a painkiller. During the weekend course we were looking at all kinds of wrong dependencies from pornography to heroin. In fact heroin comes from opium, a substance which has probably been used for thousands of years as an analgesic, a painkiller.

Pain is the consequence of a wound in the body. It can come from physical, emotional and spiritual disorder. The main cause of wounding in the life of man is sin, whether done by us or to us. Without God we desperately try to deal with the pain, to kill it or to dull it, by any means at our disposal, including a dependence on substances or behaviours which we believe will help us to cope. More often than not they leave us feeling a little worse than we did at the start, once the immediate effects have worn off. Unfortunately, many of our own coping mechanisms can be costly, sinful and even illegal.

Prescribed medication from the doctor can manage pain for a while, and we thank God for this relief, but there is only one painkiller that gets to the heart of man’s problem and brings a permanent, indeed eternal, solution. In the same Chapter of Revelation containing today’s verse we find one of the names of this powerful painkiller, the Alpha and Omega. Jesus offers a solution available now and effective from start to finish. Submitting our lives to Him and letting Him treat the place of wounding can bring life-changing comfort today, together with the certain promise of a complete remedy when this earth has passed away. What an offer!

Prayer: Father God, thank You that You see our pain and that You have a perfect solution. Amen.