Pain Essential?

This morning I was reading the General Conference edition of the Ensign(lds.org/general-conference) and I read a talk By Elder Kent F. Richards. His talk focused on how pain is an essential part of our mortality, and how pain is either a building or breaking part of our lives. Pain is a very vital part of healing, and growth. Physical or spiritual pain, each teaches us to grow and become better.

So how does pain help to heal us? Isn't it damaging? So if pain hurts what does that have to do with growth? Well lets see, "Pain is a gauge of the healing process"(Elder Richards), it is a measurement of damage, it is a reality lense that lets us see how much we need help with pain. Its a helpmate to humility, the lord inevitably sends us pain, or allows pain to occur, so that we, his people will remember that he is the lord. Jonah states "When my soul fainted within me I remembered the Lord: and my prayer came in unto thee, into thine holy temple". As we remember the Lord we rely on him and we recognize the position we stand with him. The fist reason for pain is Humility... Now what does humility accomplish? Humility sets a teaching environment so that the spirit can give us the needed knowledge to live with our Heavenly Father again.

We are taught by the trials we go through, the chastisement we receive should not be viewed as a opportunity to fail, or "woe is me" ammunition, but to be viewed as a growing opportunity. Orson F. Whitney taught: “No pain that we suffer, no trial that we experience is wasted. It ministers to our education, to the development of such qualities as patience, faith, fortitude, and humility. … It is through sorrow and suffering, toil and tribulation, that we gain the education that we come here to acquire"(Orson F. Whitney, in Spencer W. Kimball, Faith Precedes the Miracle (1972), 98). The trials we go through are one of the many ways we see Heavenly Fathers love for us, "For whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth, and scourgeth every son whom he receiveth"(Hebrews 12:6). This applys for us the lord loves us so he teaches and chastises us...

The main reason that we have trials and tribulations in life is so that we may be succored by the lord of hosts, that we may be "drawn unto him", his Gospel is that he may be lifted up on the cross that he may draw all men unto him... "And he will take upon him death, that he may loose the bands of death which bind his people; and he will take upon him their infirmities, that his bowels may be filled with mercy, according to the flesh, that he may know according to the flesh how to succor his people according to their infirmities"(Alma 7:12). The Lord did not have to suffer and die for our sins, "“It will comfort us when we must wait in distress for the Savior’s promised relief that He knows, from experience, how to heal and help us. … And faith in that power will give us patience as we pray and work and wait for help. He could have known how to succor us simply by revelation, but He chose to learn by His own personal experience."(Henry B. Eyring, “Adversity,” Liahona and Ensign, May 2009, 24).

I testify that pain is essential in our spiritual growth to the lord, on as we are drawn unto Christ can we truly "feel of the wounds in his hands".

http://lds.org/general-conference/2011/04/the-atonement-covers-all-pain?lang=eng#14-PD50028768_000_1050