Israel & Rachel Campbell "SOUP" Podcast
Welcome to Season 3 of the Campbell Soup Podcast with Israel and Rachel Campbell. We are celebrating over 10,800 downloads and counting, thanks to listeners like you. We started this podcast with a simple idea: discipleship should be more than a classroom, it should be a way of life. When Jesus walked with His disciples, the lessons did not happen behind a podium but along the road, around meals, and through conversations about real life. That is exactly what we do here.
Each episode is like sitting down to a hearty bowl of soup, warm, nourishing, and full of flavor. We talk about life, love, parenting, relationships, faith, and whatever else bubbles up along the way. Some moments will make you laugh, others might make you think, but every conversation is stirred with honesty, hope, and a little humor. So pull up a chair, grab your spoon, and join us for another season of real talk, real life, and real discipleship, one spoonful at a time.
Israel & Rachel Campbell "SOUP" Podcast
“Beautifully Bruised (Don’t Waste the Suffering)” CAMPBELL SOUP SEASON 3 EPISODE 7
Some days faith feels like a bruise you keep bumping, and other days it feels like a tender place where God speaks clearer than ever. We sat down to talk about suffering without the shortcuts—how pain can ripen the fruit of the Spirit faster than comfort ever will, and how to guard your heart from the kind of bad theology that turns wounds into lifelong bitterness.
We trace a path through Job’s story and our own: stacked losses, hospital hallways, numb mornings, and the quiet practice of declaring “God, you are good” before the day begins. You’ll hear how borrowing someone else’s faith can carry you for a while, why John 10:10 draws a clean line between the thief and the Giver of life, and how a “beautiful bruise” can make you tender to the Holy Spirit instead of easily offended by everyone else. We also confront the shame that follows self‑inflicted pain and talk about the wild mercy of a God who can redeem not only what the enemy breaks, but what our choices break too.
If you’ve been asking where God is in the winter season, this conversation offers language, scripture, and simple practices to keep you anchored until the cloud lifts. Not every question gets answered on this side of heaven, but presence, formation, and unexpected grace are real. Listen for hope, for honest stories, and for a theology sturdy enough to stand in a storm. If this helped you breathe a little easier, share it with a friend, subscribe for more, and leave a review so others can find their way to it.
Hey, everybody. Welcome back to Campbell Soup Podcast. We are so happy to be with you. And I'm particularly happy to be back because my daughter Phoebe took my place last week while I was in Texas ministering at a women's conference. So it's good to see you in your black turtleneck. We're matching matching.
SPEAKER_00:We're so matching. I know. You know who we look like. You know, they can see they're matching. If you're only listening, we both separately got here to separate and we both ended up wearing black turtlenecks.
SPEAKER_01:It's because it's well, I think we look like that snobby couple on Christmas vacation that like always is mad at Clark. Yeah, we look a little snobby, but I think it's because we never have overcast kind of chilly weather in LA. And when we do, everyone here is into it. We're like, how can I dress for fall?
SPEAKER_00:It's 72 degrees. It is a little brisk. It's a little cold out there. Don't hate on us, our Seattle friends. Get the turtlenecks on, but it's so good to have you back. We had a great show with Phoebe. She and you later confronted me and said that I take both of your guys' notes. And I just want to tell the audience, I don't take their notes. I am facilitating. And so I see the notes and then I go, okay, well, let's go to this point. And then they say I stole their notes. So this uh today, I don't know how good of a podcast it's gonna be because Rachel refused to let me see her notes because she thinks that I steal notes. And I am not a note stealer.
SPEAKER_01:You're not a note stealer, you're not an like you're not intentionally. I'm a point guard. Okay, so in our meetings before we ever record, we go over like, okay, these are the notes. This is what we're talking about. You're gonna say this, and then I'm gonna say this, which we all know never really happens because I love to throw the surprises, exactly my ADHD surprises in. But I know how to handle Israel Campbell these days. And Phoebe called me on the phone after you guys recorded, which you guys, by the way, did an amazing job. Yeah, yeah, father-daughter, which I loved it. I got to listen, listen to it when it came out. But she said, Mom, dad wanted to go and have a little meeting before we recorded and talk through it. And I told him my notes, and then he took them. He took all my good notes, and I told her, Phoebe, welcome to my whole life.
SPEAKER_00:Welcome to Campbell Soup.
SPEAKER_01:He takes my good jokes, he takes my good points, and then I got nothing else.
SPEAKER_00:Is it and no notes for me, so I don't know what I'm going to say.
SPEAKER_01:You know what you're gonna say, you just don't know what I'm gonna say.
SPEAKER_00:Which is always good for me to help steer, but that's okay. Please send in your comments. Hello, audience. Get ready first of what is that? Yes. Well, today, good topic, kind of a deep topic, and maybe even a topic that we want to make sure that we articulate sympathy in and aren't just dogmatic, like it's this, this, this. And I talked about on Sunday, we're going through our ripen series and we talked about suffering. Just the story or the example of if you want to get bananas to ripen, you can actually put them in the oven at 85, 90 degrees and put them in there for like 20 minutes, and they'll actually ripen on the inside, not just on the outside. And so suffering does ripen the fruit of the spirit in our life. It produces patience, it produces long suffering, it produces gentleness, kindness, all these different things. It's actually suffering that helps maybe ripen them quicker. But nobody wants to go through suffering. And we actually even titled this Rachel Um Beautifully Bused, don't waste the suffering. And so we're just gonna kind of put that on there and kind of talk about that.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, we're gonna talk about suffering today. And we wanna be honest with you because I think that as long as all of us are on this earth, we're not in heaven. Part of what we walk through in the reality of it is that we have we live in a world that is very broken and outside of God's perfect will. And so because of that, we all face suffering. And our prayer today is that maybe some of you will feel like, okay, I'm not alone. Maybe some of you are walking through the valley of suffering right now and you feel like, what did I do wrong? And we want to just make sure that you don't teach yourself the wrong theology about who God is and who his word is when you're going through suffering, because it's a moment where we become really susceptible to starting to think the wrong things about God when we're suffering. And so Israel and I really today have just prayed that God would help us to talk to you from a place of we're passionate about making sure that you don't think wrongly about God because you're suffering.
SPEAKER_00:So good. And I mean, there is a book that would be, I mean, you could change the title from the title Job to Suffering in the Bible. And it just gives us so many different things that we can apply. It's one of actually the oldest written books. They'll say that that story in that book was written at the same time at Genesis. So the time that Abraham was living, theologians believe that Job was living. So this is a story that spans, you know, so many thousands of years, but is still so good, as in what you said is how to have good theology in the middle of suffering. And when you're in the middle of suffering, the last thing you really want to do is have good theology. It's not like, hey, this would be a really good time to work on my theology. It's kind of like if you're sinking, um, it's not really, you wouldn't want a lifeguard to, you know, yell down at you and say, oh, that's not the right stroke. You should do it more like this. But it would be good if you learned how to swim. And then in case you were in a situation, you would know what to do. Does that make sense? And so it's not a matter of us in the middle of you suffering, saying, Oh, this is how you should handle it. It's more of right, what you said, Rachel, is for because of the fall of man, and until Jesus comes back and we have a new heaven and a new earth, we are going to suffer. The world is suffering. And so then, how do we have the right theology, the right mindset, the right perspective of who God is during it? And so that's kind of what we want to talk about.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. I think back to a certain season in my life where it felt like perpetual suffering. And I know that a lot of you already know that part of my story, but you know, there was a season where I had had a dad who was terminally ill his whole life. He we had a hospital bed in the living room and he was in and out of going being, I mean, the ambulance all knew us because he was always in and out of the hospital, always over and over. I was told my whole life that my dad was going to be dying this week, within days, within hours, and then he wouldn't. His body would turn around. And so it really messed me up in my compassion for others, in my ability to, you know, I was, it was like I was constantly grieving my dad because I thought he was always dying and then he wouldn't. And so I always kind of thought that because my dad was terminally ill my whole entire life, that I the rest of my family would be healthy, you know. And I guess I gave myself a theology about who, about what life is like, where if you have one sick parent, you're not gonna have two. But I remember when my mom got diagnosed with stage four colon cancer and my dad was still sick. And I remember this season where my dad was living on the fifth floor of a hospital in Everett, Washington, and my mom was living on the third floor, and both of them were fighting for their life, and how that was such a huge season of suffering for me because we're still pastoring in North Carolina. I'm still meeting day to day with people that needed pastoral care. I'm still leading a church, I'm still being a mom and a wife, and then I'm still going back and forth to Seattle from North Carolina, caring for my parents. And basically, that season was such a winter season for me. And I ended up losing my dad, and then my sister Jenny died after my dad of congestive heart failure. So it was grief upon grief. And then my mom and my sister were had cancer together. My sister had throat cancer, my mom had colon cancer, my sister passed away. My mom went through remission, and then right after we celebrated five years remission, cancer came back like a monster and just ravaged her body and she was gone within months after we had celebrated. And I just remember funeral after funeral, grief season after grief season, and having a really difficult time. The thing I described to Israel was I still know God's a healer, but my faith is so bruised and I just feel so numb and I couldn't get into God's presence. And one of the things that held me my whole life was God's presence. And in that kind of suffering and grief, I just remember not being able to even worship. And that was a season I had to rely on a lot of other people's faith to help me walk through that season of suffering. But now, you know, now I'm 10 years past that season. And I think about the woman I was before it and the woman that I am today because of that season of grief and how I know God in a different way. I know myself in a different way, I know you in a different way, and the beautiful gifts that God gave me. God doesn't cause us to suffer, but he will grow us when we're suffering and he will introduce us to different aspects of who he is in the suffering that are the most beautiful things. And the depth of relationship I have with the Lord is amazing, and it literally only came through my suffering.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, and I think that that's so good for everyone to hear is the bru, I think it's really good to be able to say my faith is bruised. I think it's really powerful to say I had to borrow faith from others. And the story of Job, I just that first chapter is so important to read to get a good theology of suffering. We have to remember the first thing that it says is that the devil says and does and hurts Job. It says that, you know, can I attack Job? And, you know, of course, the theology of God allowed it, but he wasn't the author of it. He wasn't the orchestrator of it. And and then that revolves around so many different things because even Job kept his integrity and he didn't curse God. Job's wife, which is a whole, I mean, we could do a podcast just on Job's wife because everybody was a dirty dog. A dirty dog. Everybody died, the kids, the horses, the the everything. And the one thing the enemy didn't touch was Job's wife, which is like, why? Well, because we see how cankerous she was and what she said. You know, why don't you curse God and die? And honestly, that's the natural response, isn't it? Yeah, that would be. I mean, it's easy to point that out to her, but man, that would be when that much happens, that would be natural. And then the three friends, and then even Job himself is rebuked by God because he he was where, you know, that whole phrase is so powerful, where were you when I create, you know, and all of this stuff? And you're like, whoa. And then he, you know, the the story of redemption is just amazing. And I just think that we talked about this Sunday. The first thing, if it comes to having a great theology about suffering, is that God is a good God. And that doesn't mean we understand, it doesn't mean we like, it doesn't mean we just are hunky dory. This is awesome. But if you lose that God is good, you will be a victim for the rest of your life. You'll be hurt all your life. And I think the only thing that really has helped you and I anchor some of the most difficult times is the profession. And I don't even know if we always believed it. Sometimes we just said it by faith. Yeah, that's right. He is a good God. No, he is a good God. And even New Testament, for God so loved the world that he gave. And so if we if we don't get that, then we can start thinking that he's a mean God, he's an angry God, he is a smiting God. And so then we don't really get a beautiful bruise from suffering. We're just bruised continually. And you know about a bruise, if you've ever started to heal from it, one little touch again and it goes right back to it. And so some people live in perpetual bruises instead of a beautiful bruise where it's tender, but God heals. And I've had some places for my injury one year ago, I was so badly bruised, there's no bruise there anymore by God's grace. And so let's maybe unpack that a little bit about how do we declare God is good when things around us aren't.
SPEAKER_01:I'm I'm sure I have a short memory. So I want to talk about one thing that you said that really just jumped out to me right now is that bruising causes you to be tender. And so what you were talking about is so true about seasons of suffering and grief is that you when we're tender, we are either going to be easily offendable for the rest of our life, where if somebody says one wrong thing, we're just deeply wounded. That can happen because of suffering, or we can become tender to the Holy Spirit and tender to the voice of the Lord. And so our tenderness when we're bruised can be so beautiful because we can surrender our tenderness to God and then we can hear him, know him, see him better, or we can become to identify in tenderness in a in a wrong way. That's a fleshly tenderness where no one can ever cross us, no one can ever say anything. And I just remember when I was grieving how short my wick was with you and with people on the road. And it's like, wow, you're so tender. But when that tenderness is surrendered to the goodness of God, it can actually be the greatest asset to your spiritual growth. But yeah, I think, you know, I remember when you're talking about this, having a theology that God is good even when we can't see his goodness is really important because the Bible says that he is a good God, but every day does not feel good. I remember your mom's 80th birthday, and she said that. She said, I walked through being a pastor and giving God everything. And my husband, who was a pastor, drowning and having a 16-year-old son named Israel. And I didn't see God's goodness on those days. But overall, the overarching theme of my life is that God has been good. Yeah. I think that's the thing is that when you're walking through suffering, you might not be able to see or feel God's goodness, but you have to cling to the promise and truth that God is good. And I remember waking up in the morning in my grieving season of so much loss, and they're feeling like 50 pounds on my chest of sadness, just right when you wake up is like there. And I remember before my Instagram, I would say every single day for like the first year, God, I know that you're good. Today you're gonna be good. I don't know how, but I'm gonna declare it, God, you are good, even when I don't see your goodness, and setting my heart before I said anything else that God was good, and training my spirit really in those seasons that I'm gonna see the goodness of God and I'm choosing to look for it today.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, and I you just you were so strong during those moments. And I think it is going back to some of the things that your mom even trained you in. And we were even talking about from last week to this week, we're talking about doing a podcast sometime about training your spirit, but just us training our spirits to declare the Lord is good and his mercy endures forever, like forever, and just making that a declaration, even like you said, you don't see it, even if you don't feel it, and even if it seems impossible to say, it will help you get through that season instead of stay in that season. And and so I think we have to get a good theology that he is good. We also have to get a good, I think that helps that theology is John 10:10. The thief comes to kill, steal, and destroy. And then Jesus says, But I've come to give life and to give life more abundant. And so we see this Jesus is making this massive comparison from the devil and him. He comes to kill, steal, and destroy. And this is what I've come. I've come to give life and to give it more abundant. And so if you confuse it and you think this killing, this stealing and this destroying is from God, it's going to be really hard for you to accept the part where Jesus says, but I've come to give life and to give it more abundant. You'll never experience that part because the two are muddied and the two are now, you know, and and it's so difficult because it's like, well, it was this God's will, or how did he allow, or all of that? I think in simplistic, not trying to be dogmatic, but just simplistic, get a heart and a posture. God, you are good. I don't get this, I don't understand this, but I'm chalking this up as the enemy tries to kill, steal, and destroy. But you've come to give life and to give it more abundant. And right now, I'm devastated. I need to be able to grab a hold of this abundant life because I don't see it, but by faith, I'm gonna declare it. And I think that's really, really solid theology. The difference was Job's wife, curse God and God, curse God and die. Job's friend, Job, this is your fault. You you deserved this. God wouldn't do something bad unless you deserved it. This must be discipline. This must be a Jesus spaking, you know, all of those kind of terminologies. And God rebukes the friends, and and then at the end, talk about abundance. Everything that Job lost, he saw double. And I mean, pretty incredible. And I don't know how he does it, but he does. Don't we serve a God that it's like, man, nobody could replace your mom? Nobody can still replace your mom. But there are some things that we've experienced that were just like God's grace. How did he help us through this? How did this situation turn to good? I think it's because of having that theology, he is a good God.
SPEAKER_01:Something I've really found about God is that when we trust him with loss, when we trust him with God, it wasn't supposed to be this way, but we really trust him with it. He trusts us to bless us, he trusts us to use us. And he those are moments where we are being tried by fire, and he gives us the grace to walk through suffering, and then he blesses. And suffering and blessing, something is really correlated to that. I have seen where you don't get what you lost back, you don't get sometimes it doesn't look the way you asked God in your prayers to look like. Sometimes things are broken and it doesn't make sense on this side of heaven. But when we can even surrender and open up our hands with the wise and the mysteries of God, you know, my sister was born with massive disabilities. And that is something that could have made my parents question God for the rest of their life, but they lived open-handed and said, God, we don't understand why Jenny has to struggle this side of heaven, but we still trust you. And I believe that when we do those things where there's deep disappointment, there's deep suffering, but we give it to God and really with even all our questions, because we'll have questions. And even Mother Teresa said, When I get to heaven, God's got a lot of explaining to do. Her faith was so strong in God that she wasn't afraid to say that. And I can't wait to hear the heart of God when I'm in heaven and have the understanding of his mysteries that I don't know here on earth. But I can trust him with that. I can open up my hands and even give my suffering and my disappointments to him as a living sacrifice. It's an offering to the Lord in my tears, in my fear, in my disappointment. I can give that to God as an offering of worship. I can I can give him my life even in the midst of the struggle, and I can be a living sacrifice in a way that the good days can't produce.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, and I think we are a little spoiled living in Western world, Western Christianity, in the aspect of the things that try our faith are probably different than those that are in certain places where Christianity is being persecuted. And so suffering then becomes something that we we can pass fail on. And I think that failing it, it really does rob us of so much ripening and fruit, you know, that God can do through it. So I think there's the perspective of God is good, and then there's the perspective of how amazing God is to even use the suffering to somehow bless, help, change, transform us. Do you know what I mean? So here it is. He doesn't have to. Yeah, he doesn't have to, and it could just chalk it up as it's a it's a messed up world. But I love that scripture that says he makes all things work together for good. And I don't, I don't, it's amazing how he does that, but I do believe that happens when we allow that. God, we give this to you, we trust you that you can make this hot mess to good. And I don't see it. And I even like what you said. I've had to do this sometimes too, is just like, I may not see it on this side of eternity, but I do know you're a good God. And I do know you make this. And I do know your ways are higher than my ways, your thoughts are higher than my thoughts. And I know now there's been so many things I've been disappointed with, upset with a person maybe doing something wrong to me, that years later, when I just stopped, you know, holding it accountable to them or, you know, not allowed that process, I look back and go, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. That wasn't God that did that, but look what God did through that. Thank you, God. And then I I touched on it on Sunday, and I'd really like to talk about this for a second, is not only I think that there's an not an easy, I think we've trained our spirits so much that when something happens bad, we go, He's a good God. We just we you and I just grab hands and we do it. But the thing that I probably deal with is what about when I make a bad decision? I made a bad decision, I made an agreement with this or I did this knucklehead thing. God still can make it good. And that blows my mind that he can he, yeah, okay, he can fix what the enemy did. He can even fix what I did.
SPEAKER_01:Wow, that's huge. And man, isn't isn't shame the biggest bully? Yeah. And that's what happens is we can go, okay, God, if the devil did this to me, then you'll turn it around and you will redeem my life. But we think we we deserve uh years of being set back or years of shame when God's like, get back up. The only difference between the righteous and the sinner is that the righteous will get back up. Good, great. The enemy wants us to stay down, bury our head, and be ashamed. And that's God does not operate in shame. Jesus despised it. Despised it, yeah. And and died on the cross so we could be free of it once and for all.
SPEAKER_00:I love that. And and I just love the story of where in Samuel, where Saul is like, don't ask for a king. It's not what you're supposed to do. Or Samuel says, Don't ask for a king. They get Saul, and then the next thing you know, David comes along, and Jesus is described son of David. And it's like, man made the biggest mistake, and God still was able to use it to actually get the glory. And so I'm so dumbfounded, grateful, and like, thank you, Jesus, for even my mistakes. You can make it work for your good, not just when the enemy does something.
SPEAKER_01:And you know, we all pray, I want to be like Jesus, but Jesus, he's acquainted with our grief, he suffered first. And when we want to be like Jesus, nothing makes us more like Jesus than walking through suffering and still declaring, God, we trust you. Not our will, but your will be done. We've never been more like Jesus, and we've never known the heart of God more than when we're walking through suffering. So beauty comes out of that. And I think about Job, what you've been saying with all of the things with Job, and my favorite part of the story of Job is the very ending of the whole book. And it Job says to God, I knew about you. I knew about you through all of my memorization of scripture, every religious practice I ever did, I knew about you, but now I've seen you face to face. And there is something that happens when we walk through valleys.
SPEAKER_00:Wow, absolutely.
SPEAKER_01:The shadow of death, when things are taken away, when people disappoint us, when situations disappoint us, when we even feel like God has disappointed us. That is where you meet him face to face. You want to be a person that when people see you, they see Jesus. Then we have to be people who say, God, you're still good even in our suffering, and we will meet him face to face. There's some people who know about God, then there's the ones who know God, and you know they have some battle scars, and God makes it worth it.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, that's so good. I did not look at your notes, and so I am not stealing any of your points. But as we close, I just think it's really important. Number one, shame off you. If you are in the middle of suffering, we're not trying to add salt to your wound, but we are encouraging you recalibrate, refocus, and just begin to declare until you believe he is a good God. And it will help you heal quicker. I don't believe in like, well, once you say it once, then everything gets better. I'm it could get worse as far as I've there's been some times in my life where things have gotten worse, not better. But if you can reposition, recalibrate, refocus that he is a good God, then what happens is now you've allowed God to come into that and start working it for good. When it's closed off, when it's curse God and die, when it's even Job in the aspect of he's like, I wished I was never even born, you know, all of those things. But as soon as he opens up, you are a good God, then all of that just begins to now give God an opportunity to let this season be a miraculous season instead of a devastating season. And so we don't want to try to put salt on your wound. We are, if you're in the middle of suffering, our heart, our we grieve for you. I never want to be like one of Job's friends and try to somehow articulate some kind of truth because I have to be right. No, I don't get it. I'm so sorry. I wished it never happened, but I do know that God that we serve can get involved, and somehow He does it. It doesn't even seem possible or plausible, but He has a way of working it to good. And so we're that's just our prayer for you and Rach. Would you pray for everyone?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, and I just really feel in my spirit, I want to encourage you to think that even the winter seasons matter to God, the God of seasons, and suffering is a season that ends. And Israel and I both are here today to encourage you. We know what suffering can feel like. It makes you want to quit. It feels hopeless, it feels heavy and dark. And we have both absolutely been there more times than one. And we just want to tell you that winter seasons matter to God. And I would just encourage you, keep showing up because the season will change and that cloud will lift and the sun will shine, and you'll see the goodness of God again. And so, Lord, I just pray for people that are walking through any kind of Suffering. Yes, God. Or even those who have friends right now and they don't know how to help their friends who are suffering. Lord, would you help us? Would you anoint us? Would you grace us through every season of our lives to honor you, to see your goodness in the land of the living? Father, I just thank you that you love us, that you're for us and not against us. And Lord, what the enemy meant for harm, God, you turn it for good. And there's always redemption when we trust you. So I just bless every person listening today. I pray that their hearts will be encouraged to look up and see your goodness even today. In Jesus' name we pray.
unknown:Amen.
SPEAKER_00:Amen. Okay, we love you. Make sure that you share this. I think this one could really help some people just in a season or prepare for a season. And if you have any comments or any questions, let us know. But we love you and we'll see you next time on Campbell's.
