Torment as Physical Pain
"She was pregnant and was crying out in birth pains and the agony of giving birth." — Revelation 12:2
The Third Form
"She was pregnant and was crying out in birth pains and the agony of giving birth." (Revelation 12:2)
The word translated agony is basanizō.
Here it means simply what it sounds like: physical pain.
Not a malfunction. Not a mental siege. Pain itself.
Why Pain Deserves Its Own Category
You might reasonably ask why pain is listed separately from physical suffering. They seem like the same thing.
They are not. A body can malfunction without hurting — blindness is not painful. And a body can hurt while every scan comes back clean.
That second category is enormous. Chronic pain with no adequate physical explanation is one of the most common presentations in medicine, and one of the most frustrating for patients and physicians alike. Millions of people live with pain that is entirely real and entirely unaccounted for.
Consider a man in his early fifties who broke his hip playing college football thirty-five years earlier. The pain never left, and it got progressively worse. Walking became excruciating. By the time he sought help he had used a cane for over a year, and doctors had been telling him for years that he needed a full hip replacement.
The x-rays were not wrong. The joint was genuinely worn out. Multiple doctors had confirmed it.
He was led through repentance for something from his teenage years, then prayer for his hip.
He stood up and began to cry — and he was a large, undemonstrative man, so this surprised everyone. When he had composure again, he said he was completely out of pain. He walked around the house without the cane, without pain, for the first time in thirty-five years.
The Detail Worth Noticing
The injury itself was probably not discipline. Football players break hips; that is ordinary.
But here is the observation that has proven useful again and again: when an injury does not heal, and instead grows steadily worse over years, that pattern is worth examining.
Bodies are built to heal. When something refuses to — when it deteriorates decade after decade despite competent care — the pattern itself is information.
And notice the last thing about that man's hip. There was genuine physical damage. The imaging was accurate. The joint really was worn.
And the root of it was still spiritual. Which is why dealing with the root did what three decades of treating the joint could not.
Point to Ponder
Bodies are built to heal. An injury that only ever gets worse across decades is telling you something.
Verse to Remember
"She was pregnant and was crying out in birth pains and the agony of giving birth." — Revelation 12:2
Question to Consider
What pain have I had for years that has only ever gotten worse — never better, never even stable?
Today's Practice
Map your pain.
For each pain you live with, write down:
Where it is. When it started. What was happening in your life at that time — this column matters more than people expect. Whether it has improved, stayed level, or worsened. What has been tried.
Pay particular attention to any pain that began at a specific identifiable time and has only worsened since.
Then look at the third column across all your entries. Some people find something they have never noticed — that several of their problems began in the same period of life.
Add it all to your issue grid with today's intensity ratings.
Prayer
Father, I have lived with pain for a long time. I have taken what was offered and adjusted my life around what could not be fixed.
Show me whether there is a root under this that no treatment has reached. Where an injury has refused to heal for decades, show me why.
I am not asking You to bypass my doctors. I am asking You to address what they cannot see. You know exactly why this body hurts. Tell me. In the name of Jesus. Amen.
The x-rays were accurate. The cause was still somewhere else.