Explain what is our core suffering. To what extent do you experience this battle as your greatest pain? Why are we often not as aware of this deep distress in our soul as we are aware of the pain of divorce, death, rejection, violence, etc.?

Core suffering is the battle between who God created me to be and who I am. I long to be the wife, mother, grandmother and friend that God designed and placed in my heart when I was saved. The truth is my flesh is always getting in the way. Some days it seems the enemy is working overtime in my life. The one time I felt closer to my Creator and saw true growth was when I went through breast cancer. I pressed in to Him with prayer, being in the Word and leaning on other believers. Interesting how my focus quickly changed.

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My core suffering is knowing that I am created as children of God, belonging to Him that I should be longing to be with Him and seeking after Him. Yet more often I would have drifted away; go with the flow of business of daily living and attempt to handle live challenges alone rather than relying on God’s provisions. The tug of war is the root cause of my distress.

Our core suffering is to not be in communion with God, and to not be the person he created us to be, because we sin. When we seek external enjoyment as our fulfillment, we will be disappointed every time, because it cannot fill a God-sized void in our souls, and those things will always eventually fail us.
The big life events that bring suffering make it apparent, so quickly. We realize how little control we have, and we cannot have our fulfillment some a perfect, peaceful, happy life. It hits us hard and we are forced to look nowhere else besides our heavenly father for the answers to our pain. They require us to move to him, there’s no other choice.

Our core suffering is the fact that what I was designed to be and as a Christian what I long to be is not in fact who I am at the present moment. Whenever I am aware that the way I’m living, behaving or speaking is not what God intends for me as the Holy Spirit pricks my conscience, I experience some discomfort. We are often not aware of this tension because we are either focused on being comfortably complacent or we are focused on second thing desires that are not what we wish them to be. We perceive those things to be our deepest distress until something or someone stirs this holy tension in us.

Our core suffering is our separation from God, not receiving His love, His gift, His relationship, and the provisions of the gospel. If we do not know our sin, we do not know our savior.
We are often more aware of the pain of divorce, death, violence than the way it impacts us and our relationships. To further that the provisions of the Gospel are not always taught or discussed at this level. Our culture accepts or excuses sin and shame, often covering it over with the bandaids rather than the true healing needed. I once had a patient where stump on his leg had healed over an infection. The doctors had to cut it open and we had to pack it with gauze and healing ointments a couple of times every shift, so it could heal from the inside. This took time, attention, patience, and love. Our soul and spirit wounds sometimes need this type of deeper cleansing with confession, prayer, and healing love. If we are aware of the wound but do not know a deeper remedy, we try to deal with, rather than heal these wounds.

Our core suffering is the thirst within our soul for the New Covenant. The battle between the present reality and eternal destiny.
It’s a struggle to ‘better life’ and ‘better hope.’ A quick relief from all kinds of present pain than bearing the fruit of long-suffering. Honestly, who likes suffering, who likes pain… the desire to end this soonest than walk a ‘long march’ of better hope.
We are often not as ware of this deep distress in our soul, because the pain of divorce, death, rejection etc are more visible.

The source of our core suffering is a heart that is not enjoying communion with God as he intended us to. I think that as humans we tend to view our pain of “second things” as our true sources of pain, when in reality it is our core suffering of a heart that is not seeking after God that is our source of pain. We are more acutely aware of our pain of “second things” because those are the things that are a part of our physical life while the battle of of “first things” takes place in our spiritual realm.

Our core suffering is to rebell against the love of God and his commands/word that is tattooed in our hearts. We miss it, because we get so fixed on what we can see or what we believe is causing us pain (death, illness, rejection, grief). I battle this suffering by submitting to God’s word daily. Repenting for sins and turning towards God and away from the things that are vying for my attention.