Today's Devotional

April 5th, 2002

Subject:  What I Learned From IBS

2Corinthians 1:4  - "Who comforteth us in all our tribulation, that we may be able to comfort them which are in any trouble, by the comfort wherewith we ourselves are comforted of God." 

I started having stomach problems on Sunday. I thought it would be gone in 24 hours so I simply decided to wait it out.  Well when it was still hanging around at the 36 hour mark, I decided I'd better do something, so I went and bought a $5 bottle of Pepto Bismol.  Ah, that should do the trick.  Well within half a day that bottle was gone and I wasn't feeling any better.  That's when I began to solicit information from my friends and family.  One recommended the Imodium AD while my mom recommended the doctor.  The Imodium AD seemed like a good deal so I tried that first; to no avail.  I then decided that I wouldn't eat anything and that I would only drink a little because everything I'd eaten or drank caused me these stomach problems.  Thanks to my malady I couldn't even work out because I was so miserable.  Finally on Thursday I'd resigned myself to the fact that I'd have to go see the man, the doctor.  When I logged on my computer on Thursday, however, my sister had sent me an e-mail telling me that it sounded like I have exactly what her daughter had.  She even gave me the name of the malady, Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS).  I immediately search the internet and pull up a page with IBS on it and whamO.  It tells me what it is, what causes it and how I can treat it.  It turns out that all of the things that I had stopped doing were all of the things that I should've continued doing.     

Now out of that scenario I was reminded of 3 simple points:

Point 1 - When you've tried all of the rest, try the best.

Sometimes we have to come to the end of ourselves before we can try the solution to our problems.  When all of the self-effort and suggestions from friends don't do the trick, then we usually say okay God, what's up?  We should learn to look to Him early to make life more peaceable for ourselves.

Point 2 - Use your pain for the good of others.

In 2Corinthians 1:4 it talks about how we go through tribulation and suffering so that we may be able to comfort those with the comfort which we have been comforted with.  I'm sorry that my sister's daughter had to go through her pain with this IBS, but because she did, I was able to use her suffering to my benefit.  The question for us is, are we passing on our comfort from our past sufferings or are we passing on more suffering to others?

Point 3 - God uses our physical issues often to teach us spiritual lessons

Surely this was a physical ailment for me and surely my friends and family tried to help me out with various solutions and remedies.  There is nothing wrong with that.  As a matter of fact the whole exercise can be paralleled with that of a spiritual life.  Just as I tried all of my own remedies to come up with the answer to my problem, I needed a "real remedy" to be cured.  I tried my way, and then consulted my friends and family and then when I "accidentally" got a word, I had the cure.  How often do we do this in our lives?  Could God be telling me through this physical effort of  searching for an answer to simply seek Him for the solution?  Perhaps.  It's definitely something to thing about.  It's great to experience our frailty at times because it reminds us that we are not God and we need Him for permanent solutions to the problems of this life. 

Carlen