The Gift Of Pain: 2 Kings 5

Naaman’s story stood out to me right away! If it weren’t for his leprosy—a disease that marked him as unclean and left him desperate—he might never have come face to face with the one true God. The very thing that should have destroyed him was the thing that drove him to seek healing, and in the process he found something far greater.

“for your servant will no longer offer either burnt offering or sacrifice to other gods, but to the Lord.”—2 Kings 5:17

What a change for Naaman,“I will no longer offer sacrifice to other gods, but to the Lord.” His pain led him to a place of encounter, and once he saw who God was, there was no going back. Pain has a way of doing that—it shifts our perspective completely. Once you’ve experienced

The Gift of Pain, by Philip Yancy

God’s nearness in the middle of suffering, you can never unsee it or unfeel it.

Interestingly, I went to post about today's reading and I came across something I wrote and never posted over a year ago and never published, from Romans 5:3–5. This book was something recommended to me during one of the many difficult seasons I found myself walking through. It was eye opening to learn more about the disease of Leprosy, one talked about so often in the Bible and specifically today as we read about Naaman.

The Gift of Pain, by Philip Yancy

Here is what the Lord was speaking to regarding hard seasons, pain and another perspective I really was learning in this season I was reading in Romans:

“We are happy even when we have troubles and pain. That is because we know that those troubles help us to become patient and strong. And when we remain strong, we show that we trust God. When we trust God like that, it causes us to hope for God's help. And when we hope like that, it will not disappoint us. That is because we know that God loves us very much. God has given his Holy Spirit to be with us. The Holy Spirit causes us to know God's love very well.”—Romans 5:3–5 (EASY)

This was a passage I read that connected endurance to hope. Again, endurance is something that can only be birthed in hard places—through pain, through waiting, through situations we would never choose. I think of my own story: miscarriage, divorce, abandonment, rejection, a car accident that left me partially paralyzed. There were days I couldn’t even get out of bed, buried under despair. Yet those were the very places where I discovered God’s comfort and presence in ways I never had before.

For so long, my cry was “Why, Lord? Why?” but He’s been shifting me. I’m learning to ask different questions: What are You doing in this? What do You want me to learn here? How will this make me more like You, walking closer with You?

That’s the gift hidden inside the pain. It’s not just survival—it’s transformation.

Maybe the real question isn’t why the pain, but what has it revealed about God that I would have never known otherwise?