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Entries in Lina AbuJamra (3)

Tuesday
Sep272016

5 Ways to Hope When Life Hurts

Lina Abujamra is a pediatric ER doctor and she's seen a lot of "hurts" in life, but in this Attitude UPGRADE, she offers practical counsel for hope through the tears.

"Wouldn't it be nice if we could take a pill to make the pain go away? But things are never that simple," Lina says. "Some days feel like torture, and it hurts."

Oh, yes, I (Dawn) have looked for that magical bottle of pills; but Lina says there is real hope—we just have to know where to find it. (This article is longer than the usual UPGRADE posts, but I think this is a message so many of us need to hear today.)

Lina continues . . .

Motivational speakers try to teach us to use positivity to overcome our pain. But I've found myself in places in my life where no amount of positive mental thinking will work me out of my pit of despair.

Hope is more than a positive mental attitude. God has given us far more than positivity. He's given us His Son who demonstrated victory by rising from the dead. He's given us His Spirit to enable us to live out the Christian life the way He lived out His: victoriously and triumphantly.

Yet so many of us are failing. I'm embarrassed to tell you how often I've crumbled under the pressure of pain. This crumbling reveals itself in a variety of shapes and forms of my life: misplaced anger, inpatient frustration, whining and complaining, and once in a while, the pit of self-pity and even a few potholes of despair.

But this is not the end of the story.

It was a seven-mile walk from Jerusalem to Emmaus, and on that day the walk felt like an interminable journey of sorrow. (Read Luke 24:13-27).  The two disciples were weighed down by their pain. They had expected God to do the impossible. They had expected the Messiah to take over the world.

Suddenly a man came walking up alongside them. The man was Jesus risen from the dead, but the disciples had not been given the ability to recognize him yet.

They told Him what they were talking about: "Jesus of Nazareth, a man who was a prophet mighty in deed and word before God and all the people, and how our chief priests and rulers delivered him up to be condemned to death, and crucified him" (vv. 19-20).

But the worst was yet to come. The disciples then uttered three fatal words of defeat that were the nail on the coffin of their pain: "But we had hoped that he was the one to redeem Israel" (verse 21).

We. Had. Hoped.

Have you ever uttered these three words of hopelessness, not knowing that victory was already on the way? Have you ever misinterpreted the most painful event in your life without any idea of the miracle God was already working out on your behalf?

I can't keep track of the times that I've given up on God and twisted things around in my head and assumed that my pain was final, that I'd been defeated, while all along God was walking right next to me, preparing the victory for me. You too?

The disciples on the road to Emmaus had put a period were God had put a comma.

They had written off the Lord when God hadn't even started yet. They had sunk into despair when hope was on the way.

It's easy to talk about the life that is unshaken when everything is going well.

People flocked to Jesus when he fed the 5000 and cure diseases. It was at the cross that everyone fled. That's what pain will do. It tests our mettle. It crystallizes what we really believe.

Anyone can boast in the Lord when their dreams have come true and their prayers have been answered. The challenge is to stand strong when life is hard, to hope when hope looks dead.

There are four things I know for sure:

  • Pain exist.
  • Pain has a cause.
  • Pain can be treated but it's far better to treat its cause.
  • Pain doesn't have to define you.

We can talk about the resurrection until we're blue in the face, but the way to show if we really believe it is by watching how we respond to the pain in our lives. When it comes to using the pain in your life as fuel for godliness, here are a few tools you can use for victorious living.

Five Painkillers You Can Use:

1. Lighten Up on the Clichés.

Clichés are nothing more than old-fashioned tweets. Pithy quotes might motivate us for a minute, but their effect is short-lived. What we need is life change.

What I long for is the transformed, powerful life that Christ promised us. We need upside-down, inside-out radical living that no litany of clichés will produce, but is rightfully ours in Christ Jesus by faith. The more of God's Word that we hide in our hearts, the more it will give us strength when we need it the most.

2. Let Go of the Blame Game.

When a kid comes into the ER with a cut, families get caught up in how it happened and whose fault it was. The truth is that it doesn't matter who did what. There's a cut, and it hurts, and it must be fixed.

When Adam and Eve sinned, Adam blamed Eve and Eve blamed the serpent, but the fact remains that all of us humans are still suffering because of today. Instead of blaming each other, Adam and Eve should've acknowledged the wrong and accepted God's mercy, then adapted to their new normal outside of Eden.

When Job went through his painful trials, his wife begged him to blame God and his friends blamed him for his own problems. Unlike Adam and Eve, Job was innocent and had done nothing to deserve his pain, yet the blame game was just as much a part of Job story as it was for our first parents.

Blaming someone else for pain is natural and gives us a temporary sense of control. It might even help us come up with an explanation for the pain. But it doesn't work.

What works far better than the blame game is recognizing God's sovereign control over our lives.

It's understanding that God didn't find Adam and Eve in the garden to shame them but rather to cover them. It's accepting Christ forgiveness for sin. It's extending that same forgiveness to those who seem to be the cause of her pain.

3. Get Off the Self-pity Train.

Self-pity is defined as a self-indulgent attitude concerning our hardships. The problem with self-pity is that it believes it has been wronged. It's an attitude that dislocates the Christian from a sovereign God Who is behind every detail and circumstance.

Charles Spurgeon once said, "God is too good to be unkind. He is too wise to be confused. If I cannot trace His hand, I can always trust his heart."

The biggest lie that Satan will throw your way is the God doesn't care about you anymore, and self-pity slowly feeds that lie. God does care about you (1 Peter 5:7). The self-pity train can kill you if you don't guard against its lies with the truth of God's Word. It's time you jump off that train and run toward grace.

4. Bury Your Past at the Cross.

Paul killed Christians before he became a Christ-follower. Yet God used Paul to write the bulk of the New Testament and to build the church. How did Paul deal with his past? His solution was to bury his past at the foot of the cross (Philippians 3:13-14).

It's time to get rid of the Rolodex of sin. Failure is the best teacher you'll ever find. Learn from it, then let it go.

Your past might be part of who you are, but it has no power over you. Use it to rejoice in God's mercy and grace and move onward and upward. Use it as your platform to highlight God's love and grace and watch God use your past to change your world like He did with the apostle Paul!

5. Leave Your Fears to God.

Pain and fear are often inseparable. What is it that you are afraid of? God's plan isn't to hurt you through your pain but to shape you through it (Proverbs 25:4).

Like a perfect Potter, He works and reworks the clay until it seems good to Him (Jeremiah 18:4). He molds the clay until reflects the beauty He is after.

This process is called sanctification. It's God's work in you through your pain to make you more Christlike. It's a work God started the moment you gave your life to Him and is committed to complete when you finally see Jesus face-to-face.

There comes a time in your life when nothing will do but God Himself—when only the Lord can make sense out of your pain and confusion. Only He can rescue you. Only He understands the depth of your pain.

When the disciples on the road to Emmaus had lost hope, Jesus rebuked them (Luke 24:25-26). Life is never as hopeless as we make it out to be. We are never as alone as we feel. Things are never as unclear as we think.

If we look at the facts too long without a measure of faith, we will sink into despair, and the only way to build our faith is through the living Word of God. When you look at the painful facts in your life to the lens of God's promises, you will find hope for the future.

Few things will change our world like our resolve to hope when it hurts too much. Few things will radically transform our world like our resolve to believe God when everything screams against Him.

Hope has a way of showing up when we're not looking for it. When it does, anything can happen.

Which of these "painkillers" could increase your hope today?

Lina AbuJamra is a Pediatric ER doctor, author, and speaker. Her passion is to apply her life-saving, decision-making, and hope-giving skills from the Emergency Room to rescue and recover people from spiritually deadly situations. She has written three books: Thrive: The Single Life as God IntendedStripped: When God’s Call Turns from Yes to Why Me?; and Resolved: 10 Ways to Stand Strong and live What You Believe. You can connect with her daily at livingwithpower.org.

This post was adapted from Chapter 9 in Lina’s book, Resolved: 10 Ways to Stand Strong and Live What You Believe (Baker Books, 2016).     

Tuesday
Jun092015

4 Steps to Contentment

Lina Abujamra, a pediatric ER doctor, wrote a powerful book for singles, and in this Attitude UPGRADE, she helps singles deal with discontentment. But there’s a message here for all of us!

“I like to fix things,” Lina says. “Give me a problem and I’ll give you a solution.”

I (Dawn) think most women are “fixers” at heart—part of that nurturing trait God gives us. I love how Lina uses scripture to help us “fix” a serious spiritual problem.

Lina continues . . .

Fixing things isn’t unusual for an ER doctor, and the more I read about Paul’s approach to life, the more I am convinced he’d be a great fit in the ER too.

In 1 Corinthians 7:17-24, Paul moves from the problem of discontentment to give us four simple steps for developing an attitude of contentment.

Here’s how:

1. It’s a matter of OBEDIENCE.

Consider 1 Corinthians 7:17, 24: “Only let each person lead the life that the Lord has assigned to him . . . So, brothers, in whatever condition each was called, there let him remain with God.”

Paul isn’t suggesting contentment as an option. He uses the active verb “let” to strongly point to the necessity of exercising our will in this matter. The verb let means “to make” or “to cause to.” Contentment is not simply a suggestion.

Accept the life that God has called you to. If you’re married, be married. If you’re single be single. But whatever you do, put your heart and mind into it and actively embrace it by faith.

God cares about your obedience. When you embrace the attitude of contentment, you are willfully showing your obedience to the Lord. It is an attitude that is based not on your circumstances being what you desire them to be, but on what the Lord has provided for you today.

2. It’s a matter of ACCEPTANCE.

I like to say it another way—want what you have. We’re so much like Eve, with closets full of stuff, but always yearning for the one thing we don’t have.

Eve had no contentment despite all God had given her. She went after the one thing she didn’t have and fell strait into the pit of sin. The only way out was God’s saving grace.

If you’re living your life with a nagging desire for the one thing you don’t have, maybe it’s time you call it what it is—sin—and confess it right now. Ask the Lord to forgive you and give you the grace to embrace the life He’s called you to live.

3. It’s a Matter of WORSHIP.

It’s time for a perspective check. This God we call “Father” is the One who called the world into existence. He is bigger than your biggest imagination of Him He is higher than your highest thoughts of Him.

He is also the God who has called you to your life as you know it. I know this to be true because God repeats different forms of the word called seven times in 1 Corinthians 7:17-24.

Your singleness is not a mistake. It is God’s plan for your life today.

Will you choose to exalt God for who He is? Will you worship Him no matter what? When you do that, you will find that contentment will come a bit easier and more naturally for you.

4. It’s a matter of ENDURANCE.

In 1 Corinthians 7:20 and 24, Paul instructs us to “remain.” To remain means to stay. To stay, when you feel like leaving, is not always easy. It takes mental toughness and spiritual tenacity … eyes focused upward … determination … grit. It takes the Lord standing by your side—which is why I love Paul’s whisper to us at the end of verse 24: “remain with God.”

With God makes all the difference. With God frees you to be who you were meant to be. With God is the answer to all your fear.

God’s presence with you is how you can remain when you feel like moving. God’s presence near you is how you can rejoice when you feel like crying. God’s presence with you is how you can remain content in the calling God has given you.

Contentment is satisfaction with God’s sufficient provision. He is adequate to meet all of your needs.

Which of these four steps to contentment would make you a more content person today—whether you are single or married?

Lina AbuJamra is a Pediatric ER doctor, author, and speaker. Her passion is to apply her life-saving, decision-making, and hope-giving skills from the Emergency Room to rescue and recover people from spiritually deadly situations. She has written two books:  Thrive: The Single Life as God Intended, and Stripped: When God’s Call Turns from Yes to Why Me? You can connect with her daily at livingwithpower.org.

Graphic adapted, Image courtesy of anankkml at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Thursday
Mar062014

When It's Best to Hold Your Tongue

I “met” Lina AbuJamra when I read one of her books, Thrive, a book primarily for singles. I was impressed with her grasp and practical application of biblical truth. I recently saw a post she wrote for a True Woman ministry and wanted to share it, with her permission, with UPGRADE readers so we can Upgrade the use of our tongue.

“I talk too much,” Lina wrote. “Way, way too much.”

Lina had me there … I just finished a discussion with my husband Bob about how I tend to talk too much in the car. Maybe it’s because poor Bob is a captive audience.

Lina continued …

But God is committed to teaching me when to hold my tongue. With that in mind, let me share ten situations where I'm learning it's better to refrain from talking:

1. When you have no idea what to say

Proverbs 17:28: "Even a fool who keeps silent is considered wise; when he closes his lips, he is deemed intelligent."

2. When you're wrongly accused

1 Peter 2:23: "When he was reviled, he did not revile in return."

Isaiah 53:7: "He was oppressed, and he was afflicted, yet he opened not his mouth."

3. When you're mad

Proverbs 25:28: "Like a city whose walls are broken through is a person who lacks self-control."

4. When you're confused about life

Lamentations 3:25–28: "The Lord is good for those who wait for him, to the soul who seeks him. It is good that one should wait quietly for the salvation of the Lord . . . Let him sit alone in silence when it is laid on him; let him put his mouth to the dust—there may yet be hope."

5. When you wouldn't want someone else to find out you said it

Luke 12:3: "Therefore whatever you have said in the dark shall be heard in the light, and what you have whispered in private rooms shall be proclaimed on the housetops."

6. When you don't really mean it

Proverbs 3:28: "Do not say to your neighbor 'Go, and come again, tomorrow I will give it,' when you have it with you."

7. When you can't stop yearning for the good old days

Ecclesiastes 7:10: "Say not, why were the former days better than these? For it is not from wisdom that you ask this."

8. When you have a lot to do and you don't like it

Philippians 2:14: "Do all things without grumbling or complaining."

9. When the timing is wrong

Proverbs 25:11: "A word fitly spoken is like apples of gold in setting of silver."

10. When you don't have anything to say that gives grace

Ephesians 4:29: "Let no corrupt talk come out of your mouths, but only such as is good for building up, as fits the occasion, that it may give grace to those who hear it."

Got any other tips on when to refrain from talking? Share them with our UPGRADE readers.

Lina AbuJamra is a Pediatric ER doctor, author, and speaker. Her passion is to apply her life-saving, decision-making, and hope-giving skills from the Emergency Room to rescue and recover people from spiritually deadly situations. Lina shares stories of faith at her popular blog. She has written two books:  Thrive: The Single Life as God Intended,  and Stripped: When God’s Call Turns from Yes to Why Me? Lina lives alone in Chicago, although she does have many friends. You can connect with her daily at livingwithpower.org.