PSP 34 | How God Shepherds us in times of Struggle or Suffering

This episode of the Pursuit Reality Podcast is part of a special series from the Women in Mental Health seminar at Reality Church in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. This session helps us engage God's presence, emotional engagement, and strength in hard seasons.  Highlighting the critical role of community and relationships in mental well-being, you will be encouraged to embrace vulnerability and connection for healing and support.

In this episode:

• Intersection of faith and mental health
• Theme of suffering and its various forms (trauma, grief, mental illness)
• Understanding the concept of God as a shepherd
• Importance of God's presence and emotional engagement
• Role of scripture in providing sustenance during difficult times
• Significance of community and relationships in mental well-being
• Facing the realities of loneliness and isolation in our lives
• Encouragement to embrace vulnerability and seek support from others
• Understanding how scripture shows us God's care and understanding of human pain
• Practices for fostering connections and reflecting on God's presence

To find out more about Reality Church in Lancaster, Pa go to: www.pursuereality.org

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Transcript

Podcast Host 00:00:01  Welcome to the Pursuit Reality podcast. In this special series, we're sharing breakout sessions from the Women in Mental Health seminar held here at Reality Church in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. While the event was designed for women, these conversations, led by mental health professionals, offer valuable insight for everyone. Let's get started.

Main Session Speaker 00:00:21  Thank you, Pastor Lindsey and Reality Church for having me on the podcast. It's great to be here today as we discuss God and mental health. I want you to know where I'm coming from today. What I have for you are treasures that I have found hidden away in the darkest nights of the soul. I do not have letters behind my name or a book or a podcast, but what I do have is a solid decade plus of wave after wave of crisis, trauma, loss, and fighting not to lose my mind or my faith through all of it. And it is from that that I will be sharing with you today what I have learned deep in the trenches. Us. Today I'm going to be using the term suffering as an umbrella term for all manner of hard that you may be facing tragedy, trauma, sorrow, grief, loss, calamity, crisis, physical or mental illness and distress.

Main Session Speaker 00:01:16  And we will talk about God in all of this. There's many aspects of God that I could highlight to you a healing God, right and Almighty, or an all powerful God, maybe a redeeming God who can fix and remedy and end all that you are facing. Yes I could, all of those aspects of God are true, but they are incomplete because he is so much more in our suffering. Because what has gotten me through the most is an aspect of God that I initially resisted this. This morning I want to talk about God as our shepherd and let's just say the quiet part out loud. Some of us don't want shepherding. We're resistant to it. We want resolution. We want to get this over with. And I get that. We may want shepherding, may not want shepherding, because we've been wounded by people who are supposed to have shepherd us well. And I hear that. My hope today is that you will stay open to whatever God might have for you. When Jesus was alive on earth, he made this bold statement.

Main Session Speaker 00:02:26  I am the good Shepherd. In John 1011 through verse 14, he says, I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for his sheep. The hired hand, who is not the shepherd and doesn't own the sheep, sees the wolf coming and leaves the sheep and runs away, and the wolf snatches them and scatters them. The hired hand runs away because a hired hand does not care for his sheep. I'm the good shepherd. I know my own and my own know me. That phrase at the end there. My own. Know me today. I want to get to know him a little bit better. So this is the way of your shepherd. I have five things that you need to know about your shepherd today. Number one, your shepherd stays. Shepherds are deeply involved in the direct care of their sheep all the time. And in that passage, you can see that Jesus takes issue with what's happening when a hired hand just bails on his sheep. How dangerous this abandonment can be.

Main Session Speaker 00:03:35  And he contrasts that. He's not like that. One way to look at it is the role of shepherding is kind of like the difference between parenting. Parenting cares deeply about their child, and they're in it for the long haul. It's not quite like outsourcing it to a babysitter or to overnight child care. And isn't it any wonder that the same God who calls himself our Shepherd. Also vocalizes all over Scripture that he will never leave or forsake us. He repeatedly promises, I will never leave. Which is the physical or forsake the emotional all over Scripture. God says that he's with us and these words. I understand that they tend to lose their meaning when they're said by those who mean, well, maybe you have that friend or family member that you only talk to a couple times a year and has the audacity to say to you something like, you're not alone, we're in this together. But are we though the sting is there and God's with ness is not like that. His with ness is with us.

Main Session Speaker 00:04:42  It is nearness. It is proximity and it's constant. But there is an unspoken assumption in our hearts that says, well, God is not with me in the dark night of the soul or the hard story I'm living in. And yet I wish I could take you all over Scripture. Just a few. In Genesis he says, I am with you and I will watch over you wherever you go in Matthew. Surely I am with you always to the very end of the age in Hebrews. I will never leave you. I'll never forsake you. In Psalms I will be with them in trouble. Also in Psalms, even if my mother and father abandoned me, the Lord will hold me close. The Lord is close to the brokenhearted. I live with a chronic condition that requires medication at 1 a.m. and 4 a.m.. Yes, I'm basically on a newborn schedule, and in theory I should be able to just roll over, turn off my alarm, take my meds, and roll back and go to sleep.

Main Session Speaker 00:05:44  But oh, if only I wasn't a perimenopausal woman. And if you know, you know, that means that when I wake up, so does my bladder and says it's go time. There's no ignoring it. There is no negotiating with a woman's middle aged bladder. So it is half asleep. Waddle to the bathroom. And then I begin this task that is known as trying to get back to sleep without overthinking all of my life choices, anxieties. Outstanding to do lists. If you have ever experienced insomnia, you know what I'm talking about. It's annoying. It's tiring. But what I didn't expect is how lonely it would be. Somewhere along the way. I just started this practice in the middle of the night of actively noticing and acknowledging God's presence, and I find myself laying in the dark saying something like, if not for you, I'd be all alone in this. Thank you for staying with me night after night, Judas after dose awake when no one else is. The words of Scripture have become so real for me that he who watches over you will not slumber or sleep.

Main Session Speaker 00:06:56  His staying with us is truly 24 over seven and it's true for you too. He is with in the thick of your situation. With you in bed when you're struggling to get out of it. A fifth day in a row with you in the car when you're fighting back tears, driving home from work and your stomach is in knots with you on the bathroom floor when you're working through a panic attack. He will not leave. He cannot leave. He does not self-select which parts of our day are too boring or too ugly to attend. His word says in Psalm 139, verse seven through ten, where can I go from your spirit? Where can I flee from your presence if I go up to the heavens? You're there. If I make my bed in the depths. You're there even in the depths. Even when others cannot handle it or do not show up for us. He is there. And I want you to consider a practice of starting to notice or actively acknowledge God's presence. Maybe that is lighting a candle to help you remember that every time you see the flickering flame, God is near.

Main Session Speaker 00:08:09  Maybe that's saying before your eyes are even opened in the morning. Good morning. Good morning father. Help me to know you are near. Maybe that's laying your hand on your heart. Taking a deep breath when you're sitting in traffic or washing dishes and saying you are as close as my breath. Your shepherd. He stays with you in suffering, and he will not abandon you. Number two, your shepherd feels if God is near, always near. Sometimes, depending on our life experiences and our mental pictures of God, we may picture him as just kind of standing there, unfeeling, maybe a creepy kind of stalking you vibe or not engaged at all, like Secret Service or a bodyguard. But that's not accurate. All over Scripture. The emotions of God are so evident. He uses words of deep feeling, of love and care for us. We feel so deeply not just because we are women, not just because we are human, but because we are made in his image. He is deeply feeling.

Main Session Speaker 00:09:17  Even when we look back at the passage where he calls himself the good Shepherd in John, he makes a distinction. He's not like the hired hand that doesn't really care for the sheep, and is only in it for the pay. He makes a point to tell us that he cares deeply for his sheep. I wish I had time to take you to verse after verse, but we're going to go to just one, and it's the shortest verse in the whole Bible. Spoiler alert. Jesus wept. It's found also in John chapter 11. And just a little bit of the context of this story, if you're not familiar with it, Jesus has these three friends that were siblings Lazarus, Mary, and Martha. And Lazarus gets sick and dies while Jesus was away traveling. So Jesus now arrives back in town and Lazarus has been dead for four days. So the grief is thick and raging through the family. I wish I had time for the whole story. I cannot, but let's just hone in on John 11 verse 20.

Main Session Speaker 00:10:17  When Mary heard that Jesus was coming, she went out to meet him. But sorry. When Martha heard Jesus was coming, but Mary stayed home. She couldn't face him yet. Maybe. I'm not sure. But she says, Martha says, Lord, Lord, if only you had been here, my brother would not have died. Pause for just a minute. I love Martha for this statement and for whoever was sure to write it down. Don't miss it. That statement. Lord, if only you had been here, my brother would not have died. That statement is so powerful. And what's crazy is if you jump down to verse 32, Mary finally does come. She finally can face him and she says the exact same thing. She kneels in verse 32. She kneels at his feet and says, if only you had been here, my brother wouldn't have died. Listen, we all know as women that when two women come out saying the exact same thing, they've been topping. Talking about this, this has been top of mind.

Main Session Speaker 00:11:20  And we're going to stop here with this statement. If only you had been here, my brother wouldn't have died. That statement. That's actually what we call lament. What is lament? It is bringing all of our sorrow, our anger, our confusion, our disappointment, maybe even some accusation. The whole of our emotions, not just the ones that we deem positive, but the whole of our emotions to God. Did you know that this is profoundly cathartic and it has made example for us throughout Scripture? We all lament in some ways, some of us. We lament to a bottle or to the fridge. Some of us do retail therapy. Maybe it's the TJ Max candle aisle for you. Some of us are stuffers and we choose. I will not lament because that is not what a good Christian does. And he only wants my praise. And we minimize pain that we have gone through that could be brought to Jesus. If only you had been there. Is said by both sisters to express true and pure lament.

Main Session Speaker 00:12:28  They are giving voice to deep disappointment, anger, confusion, a grappling with their reality. And we're going to look at Jesus's reaction. But before we do that, let's just take a note of what wasn't his reaction. He doesn't get defensive. He doesn't say, hey, this isn't how you talk to me. Don't you know I'm the savior of the world? No, no, he doesn't go into some long lecture about how he's going to turn this around for their good. And, you know, just wait, because a resurrection is coming. Spoiler alert. The resurrection of Lazarus is coming. He is going to come back from the dead. No, he especially does not go around correcting them as women for speaking out of turn. Culturally, there's no spiritual bypassing. Don't miss that. This is a profound conversation with Jesus and his female friends who felt so comfortable as women, as friends, and as followers of him, to break cultural norms and just express raw feelings with him. Notice there is no male go between in this conversation, and this should be an indicator to us, especially as women, how emotionally available God is to us.

Main Session Speaker 00:13:47  He gives the exact same reaction we would probably all have at the seeing of a friend in the depths of her fresh grief. He weeps. Verse 35. Shortest verse in the whole Bible. Jesus wept. The text goes on to say he was deeply troubled. Some say greatly disturbed in spirit. Some translations deeply moved. I wish we all spoke Greek, because the Greek word is so much more vivid and graphic of a picture. It translates to snorting like an angry horse. So he's not just upset and like wiping away a perfunctory tear. No, he is raging and wailing. He is probably going to need multiple nose blows from the snot and the tears of this experience. His feelings are giving voice to what we all feel. It was not meant to be like this. He sees their there paint, and he chooses to join them in it. He's not standing around aloof and unaffected and unemotional. Oh, take me to the grave. I'll sort this out, I got it. Don't you know it's a miracle in the making? No.

Main Session Speaker 00:15:02  I would tell you that one way you can take care of your mental health is to lament. Well, to use all the words to journal or process in therapy and say all the things that you think are unsayable to Jesus. If only I would have known. If only it could have been me instead. If only she hadn't been there. If only you had spared us. I can sense that there are words unspoken. There's lament waiting to happen. There are tears unsaid among us. And I want to encourage you to make lament a part of your spiritual practice and your mental health care because you have a shepherd who weeps, who draws near to your broken heart because he's a deeply feeling God. Your shepherd stays. Your shepherd feels. And number three, your shepherd sustains. Is there anything more universal than a mother worrying if her children have eaten and shepherd's are like this, too? I mean, half the job is literally leading the sheep to pasture just to graze and eat. We all know that when a little kid is sick, you got to keep them nourished.

Main Session Speaker 00:16:23  getting them to eat is a nightmare. And so what does a doctor normally tell you? Keep pushing fluids. Well, good luck with that, because they don't want it. I don't know about yours, but I remember from my little kids one day I had this brilliant idea long before the mom hack reels on social media. to use this little dropper, like, with a squeezy top To coax them to take drops of anything I could get them to take. So if it was broth or sprite, it was like a little syringe and had a fun squeezy top and drip, drip, drip. I would do my best to get in any fluids they they would tolerate. And you know what inevitably would happen with enough rounds, they would regain their appetite. And it was sustaining to them while they endured illness. I can tell you from my own endured suffering that it has been the word that has sustained me. The Bible tethers us or soothes us in times of grief, times of an unstable mind, or enduring crisis.

Main Session Speaker 00:17:29  The word sometimes gives us words to engage God when we're truly at a loss for what to say or what to pray. The word is the only holy text that explicitly claims to have the power to renew our minds. And no, I am not going to take a moment now to say you need to read your Bible more, and that's going to fix it. No, no, I have been in the trenches too long to know that that can just hurt to hear. But from one woman in a trench to another, I will tell you that if you don't push fluids, a whole host of complications are going to ensue. Your shepherd knows that he has to keep you sustained by his word. And I get it. I get that sometimes when we are facing the hard, the thing that we usually have no appetite for is the Bible. I'm a Bible teacher who has laid in her bed, unable to get out of it. Seeing my Bible under a pile of stuff on my nightstand and just unable to stop staring at nothing or weeping uncontrollably.

Main Session Speaker 00:18:38  I know I could read it on my phone, but y'all, let's just be real. I'm gonna go to social media and congratulations if you have more self-control than that. I don't know where the idea came from, but one day I saw I had some pretty cardstock laying around and I made myself a few three by five note cards. Nothing special. Literally three by five pieces of paper. And I decided to put some Bible verses on them. And then I made a few more, and then a few more, and I started calling them my cards. You know, when I was packing, I'd be like, has anyone seen my cards? No clever name or anything. If a friend sent me an encouraging verse, I would make a card. I'd put them on my nightstand. If I couldn't sleep, I'd grab one and meditate. Think through it, some slow, deep breaths and just talk to God about the verse. If I didn't know what to pray, I would pray what was written on the card.

Main Session Speaker 00:19:31  Because you can borrow scripture like that. sometimes I'd say, well, one of these needs to go in my bathroom mirror. I need to see it more often. I carry these cards and I have so many memories of being in hospitals and courtrooms while I faced the unimaginable just flipping through my cards. I know what I realized one day that they were. They were like the syringe, the dropper, drip, drip. The word in very small doses. Tenderly nursing me, soothing me. Anchoring me, steadying me in my darkest hours and bringing back slowly my appetite for the Bible. Hear me. I know that this isn't Bible study. I know that context matters. I know that, just like feeding a child with a dropper when they're sick is no replacement for actually feeding the whole of feeding them. I'm talking about staying nourished through suffering when you've lost your appetite. Your gentle shepherd isn't thinking, hey, where's your color coded? 5 a.m. Bible study plan. No, no, he's saying push fluids, stay nourished.

Main Session Speaker 00:20:51  Don't miss the compassion in that. Perhaps you may need to make yourself some handwritten cards. Nothing special, but just some Bible verses that speak to you. If you need some encouragement, we actually have a handout of a few verses that maybe we can link in the show notes, or you can get from the church. if you have not been to church in ages or if you've had minimal engagement with the Bible, this could be a starting point just to lean into the Christian faith and try it out and see for you. If perhaps verses in a format like this are nourishing to your soul, or perhaps listening to scripture on Spotify or a similar app, maybe a way in which you can also have the dropper of little by little nourishment. You don't even have to believe in all of these verses. Yet for them to have power in your life and in your mind. Your shepherd, he stays, he feels, he sustains. And maybe with these cards or with listening to Scripture, maybe he'll sustain you with that as well.

Main Session Speaker 00:22:03  And number four, your shepherd herds shepherds. Go after the one when needed. But when they do, it's usually to bring them back to the flock. Generally speaking, shepherds will tell you it is safest for sheep to stay together. Isolation, likewise, can be so dangerous for our mental health, especially as women. Many mental health professionals will tell you that people and relationships can be our greatest or most likely place of wounding. Some of you know what I'm talking about. And fascinatingly enough, people and relationships can also be our greatest or most likely source of healing. I know that this can be hard to hear when you had an abusive parent, when you had a friend betray you or ghost you when you needed them the most. If you have had an unfaithful romantic partner, or worked with an unlicensed counselor, or had a faith, community, or spiritual leader that wounded you, or you've just lost relationships that you loved due to a move or to circumstances that were beyond your control, you just miss what you had.

Main Session Speaker 00:23:21  Finding safe people and learning to trust again is hard, and the power of. And two things can be true, and it can be really healing. We've all heard of flight fright or the freeze response. These are some automatic ways that our bodies respond in times of stress or crisis. But have we heard about tend and befriend? This is a healthy stress response that we can choose, and it's specifically more common to women. This is where we reach out to others for nurture or comfort support. When you put that cup of coffee on because she has started crying and grabbed the tissues, that's tend and befriend. When you're spiraling and you're tempted to retreat into doomscrolling, but you decide to call your friend and say, hey, I'm sorry to be needy, but do you have a minute? That's tend and befriend when you help her shop for the funeral dress and you do all the talking at the counter so she does not have to, that's tended befriend. Again, this is a healthy response that seeks support and connection from other people.

Main Session Speaker 00:24:31  It improves our mental health. It keeps us going through suffering and recovery. We cannot talk about mental health without talking about the loneliness epidemic that we are facing in this country specifically. But I would venture to say around the world, especially since every study out there shows that one, it affects women more. And two, it's always more than half of the population. Half of you that are listening to this podcast know what I'm talking about during the greatest enduring crisis of my life. It hit a few months into the pandemic, which was also the months into our moving back to America, from South Africa to a brand new city, Atlanta. So not a small city either, where we knew no one locally, no church, no family. Like no one, like not a soul. The one family we knew had just moved away. And so here I was, thrown into the greatest crisis, completely alone. I had the most wonderful friends, but they were cities and oceans away. And everybody, as you remember, was isolating and nobody was getting on planes.

Main Session Speaker 00:25:42  And that part, the aloneness made this city, I mean, this experience and this city exponentially more painful. My friends stepped up even from far away. Your pastor, Lindsay, sent me like a week's worth of Costco ready meals, and I don't even know how she finagled that, because I still cannot get Costco to deliver to me. But, other friends listened and responded to hours of voice messages. One drove from out of state just to sit outside of the hospital with me. It took some time, but eventually we did find a church and at some point we were invited to a small group and I remember telling my husband, absolutely not, I I'm not going. I'm barely holding on here. I have nothing to give to these people. they don't know us and they're living their lovely little lives. And we're in this never ending telenovela tragedy. And I'm just. I was 100% not having it. I was being herded to a flock by my loving and gentle and wise shepherd, but I was dragging my feet.

Main Session Speaker 00:26:56  Spoiler alert I actually end up going, I went, I was a little walled up. I'm not going to lie. But I did show up. About four months in. The leaders asked us privately, would you be willing to share what you're going through at our next meeting, which was a hard gulp. but also, spoiler alert, we did. We were vulnerable and the response was really beautiful. A lot was said that day. even with through some tears. But one thing that stood out to me was said, what saddens me the most is that you had to go through all of that for so long, completely alone. And I promise you, you will never face anything like that alone in Atlanta again, because you're going to have us. A year or so later, life turned upside down again, unexpectedly again. And they made good on that promise in so many beautiful, practical ways. This time we were not physically alone in Atlanta, and to think I almost didn't go. I almost didn't share.

Main Session Speaker 00:28:06  I almost didn't ask for help. I almost did not join the flock. Yes, God was with me, of course, but he also herded me to my friends, old ones and surprising new ones. And I'm not saying I don't still face loneliness, but I do keep choosing to tend and befriend. He knows that him alone is not enough, that you need people and that there will be different people for different seasons of your life. He herds you to a flock because he cares about you and because it's good for you and hear me. I'm not saying there isn't a place for nursing our wounds or staying out of unhealthy relational spaces, but living isolated is not a viable plan for staying mentally healthy. I would gently ask you to consider tending and befriending. It goes both ways. It might mean that you meet the need of a friend. Or I'm gonna say it out loud. You reach out and you ask for the help and the friendship and the support that you need. I know, I know, it's very hard.

Main Session Speaker 00:29:19  We are busy. We do not like the way it makes us feel. We are a very DIY. Pull yourself up by your bootstraps oriented culture. We like our privacy and we don't want to be perceived as needy. But there is a certain level of need implied in deep friendships. It's actually what helps to nurture a relationship. And you may say, I'm really bad at that, or I had that, but I'm going through a very lonely season and I get it, I get it. It's going to take practice over decades, and being willing to start again and again starting may look like going first and actually inviting someone out for that walk and not canceling last minute or reaching out and saying, you know what? I could use the help I someone to sit with my mom so I can get a break would be really great. Or finding a church. Or if you're in a church joining that small group, maybe you have a condition or a situation for which there are support groups, and you muster the bravery to go to one more than once, or you choose vulnerability and you ask for help from somebody who's already a trustworthy friend, but you haven't been wanting to impose or depend on them.

Main Session Speaker 00:30:38  I am suggesting to you small acts of showing up. Rinse and repeat over and over again. This is your practice. You are now a person. For whom? Yes. This is hard. Yes. It does not come naturally. But who practices this regularly? And I want to encourage you that if this is a sweet spot for you already. Let me just say that your attending and befriending is not just kind of fluff self-care, but it can truly be one of the best things that you do for your own mental health. Pay attention to when your shepherd is at work hurting you, and might pay attention to when you're dragging your feet. Your shepherd. He stays. He feels. He sustains. He hurts. And lastly, number five, your shepherd leads. Many of us are familiar with the famous Psalm 23. He leads us beside still waters and by right paths. And when we go through the darkest valleys and sit in the presence of our enemies, we can see that in the pleasant and in the perilous.

Main Session Speaker 00:31:52  The language of Psalm 23 is that our Shepherd is with, and he is leading us through all of it. But where is he leading us to? The end of Psalms it says, dwell in the house of the Lord forever. Well, little spoiler alert. Your life here on earth is not going to last forever. What he's talking about is eternity. Heaven. One of my pastors, Johnson Bui, has a quote that I love. Nothing is more misdiagnosed than our homesickness for heaven, and I want to validate that that some of us live with an acute ache for heaven. You may only be naming it right now, in this moment, that you live with this longing for the day when your grief will be no more. When the ache to see that person you love will be satisfied, and they will be healed and fully restored. You long for this enduring struggle to just be over. To those of you who are listening and are reeling, those days are numbered. Your shepherd. He sees your longing and he's leading you there.

Main Session Speaker 00:33:08  We're going to talk more about that. But first, just allow me a little detour. I will come back in this unexpected life of mine. I think about God a lot. I noticed something about him the other day that I never noticed before. That God is a collector. And I'm very serious. I'm very serious. Hear me out. I love me a good estate sale. We have loads of them here in the South. And what I noticed is that people are by nature collectors. And it is not just shoes. Oh no, no, no. I see whole collections of cosmetics and gnomes and nativity sets, trinket boxes, rare books and dried flowers and even vintage grandma nightgowns. And I know some of you minimalists that are listening are just scoffing because you don't collect anything. But I would raise you. What about your photo reel on your phone? What about the quotes in the back of your journal? What about the letters that you keep somewhere special? We are by nature collectors. And so one day I'm at this estate sale and I'm just browsing leisurely without children gloriously.

Main Session Speaker 00:34:10  And the penny drops for me. God is a collector too, and we're just like him. Just a few of his collections that I have noticed. One in job. He is proving the point that he is God and job is not. And he asks, have you visited the Storehouses of snow and hail. I've read jokes so many times and I missed right over that. Wait wait wait wait. Think of all the snow and hail on planet Earth, especially at the polar caps. He keeps them in storehouses. Revelation five eight. It says that there are bowls, plural, like bowls that you keep something in with the prayers of the saints. God collects our prayers. They do not evaporate. They accumulate. Some of you maybe feel like you pray into an abyss like no one is hearing you. But God is literally collecting all of your prayers. They are so precious to him. He saves them. In Psalm 58 verse 56, verse eight says, you keep track of all of my sorrows.

Main Session Speaker 00:35:26  You have collected all my tears in your bottle. You have recorded each one in your book. Wait wait wait wait wait. All of our tears in a bottle. I know that this is poetic language, but it is saying something straight to our hearts. Our God has collected and tracked and cared about every single one of our sorrows and our tears. Think about the wide range of tears that you have shed over a lifetime, from infancy to the whole of your adulthood, to all the tears you have yet to shed. Every single one. He's kept track of the sorrows that the world recognizes with funerals and flowers or severance checks, the ones that no one will ever know because they're so entwined with someone else's story, or the ones that you've had to swallow privately for all manner of reasons. Every single one he has borne witness to. And then watch this. Watch this. When we get to heaven. Where our shepherd is leading us to in revelation 21, verse four through five. I love this passage.

Main Session Speaker 00:36:40  It's one of my favorites. He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away. He who was seated on the throne said, I am making everything new. And then he said, write this down, for these words are trustworthy and true. I find it comforting that God doesn't just say, all right, it's over. Welcome to Heaven. Victory march party at the left. Marriage supper of the lamb on the right. No no no no no. There will be an acknowledgment of all that we went through in our lifetime. There will be tears. Final cleansing Tears that you and I will need to shed with him. When is the last time that you wiped a tear from another human being's eyes? I'm going to venture to say it's probably been a child. Because adult to adult, this is a very intimate act. It requires vulnerability, tenderness, a gentle hand, proximity. You got to be really close.

Main Session Speaker 00:37:54  You do not wipe from far away. You do not do one mass wipe.

Speaker 3 00:37:58  You get a wipe, you get a wipe. Everybody gets a wipe. A thousand wipes.

Main Session Speaker 00:38:01  All at once. No. The language here is abundantly clear. He personally will wipe every tear. There will be a finality to your suffering. Your shepherd is going to personally attend to your sorrow before he makes all things new. So if you have ever cried out, I cannot take this anymore. I know that he will have led you to a land of no moors, of no more anxiety or racing thoughts, no more sudden, life changing news, no more abuse or assault, no more chronic pain, no more medication decisions, no more diseased bodies and minds. No more suicidal ideation, no more infertility or miscarriage or abortion. No more recovering from trauma or relapse or addiction. No more stacking bills and night sweats. No more hard chapters in our stories. It will all be over. This is trustworthy and true. You can be absolutely sure.

Main Session Speaker 00:39:20  I know that hope can be a painful word depending on your circumstances. But this is the surest and the purest hope that I have to give to you. All of our stories aren't over. I don't know how each one of yours or mine ends on this side of eternity, but I do know that in this life our shepherd, he will stay with you. He will feel with you. He will sustain you. He will hurt you. He will lead you through and to your eternal life, where your suffering will be no more. I know that there is a lot of emotions and internal process going on right now. Something I would encourage you to do if you need to, is to make a list of your no more's of what God will put a finality to on the other side of eternity. And as we as we end our time together, I want to end with something. A practice that will regulate us. This is a grounding practice of Holy Scripture combined with breathing. It is from him that we have our breath.

Main Session Speaker 00:40:35  I'm going to read the 23rd Psalm while we slowly inhale and exhale. Your job is just to listen and breathe. I'm going to prompt you for the first two inhales and exhalations just to get a rhythm going, but then you take it from there at a breath pace that works for you if you can. If it's available to you, get comfortable. Maybe if you're folding laundry, set the basket aside and lean back for a moment. Shift your weight. Maybe put your hands on your stomach or your heart, or the tops of your legs. And if it would help you. And if it's safe to do so. Cut out the distractions and close your eyes. Let's just start with one good cleansing in an outbreath. Inhale. Deep exhale until it all comes out. And let your shoulders just fall. Inhale. The Lord is my shepherd. Exhale. I lack nothing. Inhale. He makes me lie down. Exhale. In green pastures he leads me beside quiet waters. He restores my soul. He guides me along right paths.

Main Session Speaker 00:42:08  For his name's sake. Even though I walk through the darkest valley. I will fear no evil. For you are with me. Your rod and your staff. They comfort me. You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies. You anoint my head with oil. My cup overflows. Surely your goodness and mercy will follow me all the days of my life. And I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever. This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God. Amen.

Podcast Host 00:42:59  Thank you for joining us on the Pursuit Reality Podcast. We hope these episodes help you in your journey towards greater hope, healing, and growth. If you're interested in finding out more about Reality Church, you can find us online at Pursue Reality.