Knee Pain, Life Goals, and God

“Ouch!” Pain seared through my left knee as I knelt down and I thought to myself, “How am I suppose to get to my goal of getting in better physical shape this spring with all my aches and pains?” I immediately felt discouraged, wondering if my hopes were being dashed. But then another thought hit me, a much more significant one. I started to think about the importance of not tying my ultimate life goals to things that are temporal and unreliable (like knee joints). Although getting in better shape is a good goal and being a good steward of my physical body is a godly goal, it can't be what I am founding my life on. The achievement of it is too precarious. There are so many things that can impede it. “So,” I asked myself, “where should my focus be?” Here is what I've come up with:

I believe that there is a direction for our lives that is an unstoppable road. Call it what you will – the spiritual journey of sanctification, walking with God, the path to eternal life, or even the Highway of Holiness (Isaiah 35:8) – the direction of our life must be God-ward and our life goal has to be connected to Him. He is the only One who is Eternal, whose power can work to redeem any situation, and whose grace is sufficient. If loving and following Him is the real goal of my life, then I can pursue it anytime, anywhere. If being conformed to the image of Christ is my goal, then suffering (even knee pain) can be used to mold me in Christ-likeness. We never lose because God's will for us is to be holy (1 Peter 1:16) and God has the ability to make it happen. 1 Thessalonians 5:23-24 says, “May God himself, the God peace, sanctify you through and through. May your whole spirit, soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. The one who calls you is faithful and he will do it.”

I don't think any of this sounds new coming from me (especially since I quoted 1 Thessalonians a couple of weeks ago) and I often talk about sanctification. What stood out to me about the knee pain experience is the discouragement that followed. It revealed something important to me: I was starting to put my hope for my ultimate well-being into something temporal. Or maybe a more accurate way to say it was that I was viewing my temporal well-being as a higher priority than my eternal one. This needed to change.

As God works, the pain has actually become a prompt – even a gift. Whenever I kneel down (carefully now to avoid the pain), I'm reminded of where my true hope is found. I thought I would share this with you to 1) encourage anyone who may be down-hearted that they are not getting all their goals met and 2) to rejoice in God's amazing way of working with us and the goodness of life with Him.