What is the Purpose of Lingering Physical Pain?

The following is a transcribed Video Q&A, so the text may not read like an edited article would. Scroll to the bottom to view this video in its entirety. 

"When I was 15 and a half, I broke my ankle at a soccer game, almost had my leg amputated. My dreams of playing college soccer and professional soccer were gone, and so that is what began the spiral of depression, because everything I knew about myself was gone. I lost all the friends I had. I lost all my daily routines of practice, and all my dreams and aspirations were all gone, because I couldn't do it anymore. For me, I never understood why that happened to me, and I was very angry at God. I was mad at God. I yelled at God. I blamed God for taking away the thing that I loved, and I never understood how God could possibly use that as a good thing and redeem it for good in my life. Well, now I look back and I realize, man, the amount of people I've been able to help because of the depression I encountered, because of the broken leg that I had, I would never be able to reach those people unless that would have happened to me.

I never would be sitting here today as a pastor, an author, and a blogger and whatever else I do if it wasn't for my life completely changing and then God using those things and redeeming it to give me a new purpose. I don't believe God did that to me on purpose. I don't believe it was intentional, that He said, 'Hey, I'm going to break your leg today,' but I believe He said, 'Hey, there's a jacked-up situation right now. You're going to go through a lot of hard times. You're going to go through a lot of brokenness, but be faithful, because I'm going to use that pain, I'm going to use that brokenness and give it a purpose. In a couple years you may not realize it, in five years you may not realize it, but eventually you will realize what purpose you have out of this pain.'

I'm able to sit here today and say, man, I realize the purpose that has come out of all that pain."