Unwasted Pain
Join us on a thought-provoking journey as we delve into the depths of human experience and explore the intricacies of unwasted pain. In our podcast, "Unwasted Pain," we tackle the universal yet often misunderstood topic of pain and provide insights, support, and guidance for those seeking to navigate the challenges it presents.
Unwasted Pain
Embracing Change: A Faith-led Expedition across States
As the climax of our journey unfolds, be captivated as we recount our decision to move back to Memphis and start a church – a decision fueled by faith and divine guidance. Reflect with us on the peace and confidence we experienced in discerning God's voice. Lastly, we share the encouragement we found in these challenging seasons, the wisdom we gleaned, and how these experiences brought us closer to God. It's not just our story; it's an invitation for you to explore your faith, embrace change, and grow in unexpected ways.
Hello and welcome to Unwasted Pain. I'm here with Chris and I'm Karen Conley and we're so glad to have you back with us for another episode. Chris and I we were just talking kind of where in our story that we would land for this particular episode and we've had the privilege of using kind of our own story to talk about Unwasted Pain, as you've launched this podcast we're looking for.
Speaker 2:I don't know if that's a privilege or not, I know.
Speaker 1:Well, yeah, we're not wasting our pain.
Speaker 1:There, you go, but we look forward to having other guests come and be a part of this podcast and there's just so many universal truths that from everybody's journey that I think that we can learn from. But we were just talking about okay in our journey. We had moved out of Memphis, we're living in Atlanta and we left the city that we loved, where we had raised our family, where you were born and raised, and I had spent more time than anywhere else in my life as a Navy brat and that sounded good. We felt like that was necessary.
Speaker 2:I don't know good.
Speaker 1:Well, yeah, that's I mean.
Speaker 2:I mean like we had planned to finish our ministry in Memphis, retire in Memphis. Never had plans on leaving Memphis, but just given the set of circumstances, sounded good meant what I really meant by that was it felt like the right thing to do, that we needed to step away.
Speaker 1:Nothing about it was good, but you're right. So, but here we are, and like we found an apartment, we're we always wanted one, you know. I mean like we're 22 again and we had a lot of comical experiences when the first night there the fire alarm goes off and we race and grab our dog and run out the front doors and realize nobody else in the entire unit has cleared because they were probably smoking weed and caught the smoke detector went off. So we have a lot of fun stories. I think that was wasted pain.
Speaker 1:I don't know that part we could have skipped. But, chris, it was one of those times where we had lived out or we had taught is maybe the better way to say it we had taught how to discern the will of God. You and I, we in one of the earlier podcasts we referenced Henry Blackabee's experiencing God and we've always said, okay, there's, you know, there's these kind of four ways that God speaks. And so, if you, if you've got a decision to make, you know, this is how you do it. So we knew that we taught that we'd helped other people do that.
Speaker 1:But, man, when you're in the wilderness and you're trying to know, like God, where are you, what is up and what is down, it puts that need to hear from the Lord and just a much more urgent place. And so for us, you know, we ended up there a total of 14 months in Atlanta and but as we came kind of to the first year and right past that first year, there wasn't a lot of forward momentum. I don't know if you maybe want to set the stage for where we were, but we were, we were facing some hard stops.
Speaker 2:Yeah, First of all, I'd like to say this that, though it was hard looking back, God was incredibly faithful even in the hard moments, like he provided us ministry opportunities where we had the privilege of working with a couple of companies that really specialize in working with business leaders from a kingdom perspective, and I think I would have gone just completely nuts Well, yeah, and just sunk into a place of discouragement and probably depression, without the ability to just get up every day and have something to focus on and to work toward and to try to use your gifts and try to be used and try to make a difference. But even in the midst of doing that and we were incredibly grateful for that it just it was like we were, we were able to do it, but it just still didn't feel like the the long term thing that God would have us to do. And so there was this sense that we were always searching for stability. You know that that this was kind of an interim season and we were trying to say, okay, we never expected this to happen.
Speaker 2:We have honestly been in a place where we not only had stability, we had a sense of a calling, a long term future, that everything was just turned upside down and it was like, okay, we want to make ourselves available, to be willing to do anything that God calls us to do, and we didn't expect this interruption. But maybe this interruption has a divine purpose, maybe God's going to take us in a different direction. We were willing to try anything but at the same time there was just this sense of like I don't know God, like restore your original purpose or, God you know, like what is your purpose now?
Speaker 1:Chris, I think maybe two terms that you just hit on. Maybe we can. We can step aside for a moment and just go. Okay, there are times that we are in interim seasons and nobody really likes an interim season.
Speaker 2:I like to be very decisive yeah, one way or the other.
Speaker 1:And so maybe, if there's someone in an interim season right now, it may be looked very different from ours, but nonetheless it's. It's not where you thought you were going to be. It's a detour. You don't know how, we didn't know and we didn't know what was next. You know it was like are we here? Should we are? Are we going to live here? Are we going to live somewhere else? Are we going to get a job here? Is this going to turn into something permanent, or you know? So just maybe, if you can step aside and just maybe speak to that, that interim season, what would be your wisdom to somebody who is in an interim season right now?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I would just say you got a guard against getting stuck. And you know there's needs to be a sense of, even if it is the smallest step forward, it is still a step forward. And that, though, you know, we were praying for doors to open and we were praying for you know something to just kind of break forth and become available. There was just at least a sense that, okay, we are doing what we can do, to the best of our ability to be faithful. And then what we were trusting was, as long as we were being faithful somewhere, in that, you know, divine collision, so to speak, that our faith would, you know, collide with God's faithfulness, in that there would be that moment where he reveals what to do. But I think we had, even though we had our struggles and even though we had our doubts, we kept persevering and kind of, you know, pressing on, just because there was a sense of just all right, even though we can't there's some things we can't control. We can control that.
Speaker 2:We're going to get up each day, we're going to spend time in the Word, we're going to pray, we're going to do the basics, we're going to knock on doors. It's easier to steer. It's easier to steer a car that's already cranked and moving, and so let's have that. The engine may be an idle, we may not be going very far or very fast, but the engine's on Right now. We may be in a season, we can't get the thing out of first gear, it's going slow and it doesn't feel like we have more power, but yet we're still moving.
Speaker 1:The other thing that I think that you said. I do, in hindsight, look at and think it was only by God's grace, but I do think it's important in those seasons to just to have your hands open. We thought our life calling was to Memphis and then we find ourselves in this circumstance and I think there was something healthy about saying you know what our lives are, yours, lord, and maybe we thought that just search our hearts and just make sure that this wasn't our agenda, that it was his agenda. And again, it's really easy in hindsight because we've come full circle.
Speaker 1:We now live back in Memphis as we're recording this podcast, but in the moment we had no idea and there were multiple opportunities that, well, there were a lot of doors shut and there were. You know, we couldn't get interviews because of just the social media and the just all of the kind of cancel culture type things. But then there were some opportunities that were, you know, in Greenville or in Atlanta or and so. But I think there's just something very humbling but important in those moments to just say this isn't my plan, god, this is your plan and you direct us. We're not going to force our way somewhere.
Speaker 2:Well, and in that, so you know from experiencing God by Henry Blackaby, he talks about there's four primary ways to discern the will of God, and he talks about that. You want to, you know, ask God to speak from his word, ask God to speak through prayer, ask him to speak through wise counsel and then ask him to speak through circumstances. When all four of those line up and go in the same direction, then you can say God, to the best of my ability I think this is what you're saying. Therefore, I'm going to step out, trust you and obey. Now, the most difficult thing to do is when one or two of those four aren't necessarily lining up, going in the same direction. Then what Henry Blackaby recommends is to wait. And when you've been at a place where you've lost stability and you're longing for stability again, you're longing for consistency again, you want to know the will of God, and try to just say yes and kind of start over or start new and afresh. It is hard to wait, and we had come to a place in Atlanta where we had served a couple of different ministries, where we had some consulting opportunities and those were kind of coming to a close and we had been praying about God do you want us to return to Memphis? And even when we left Memphis, originally, there was a sense that we thought that this is just for a season, that somehow we didn't know how this would happen, but we felt like our God is a God of restoration and that somehow, some way, he would bring us back to start what we finished. But at the same time, in the chaos of the moment, we were open-handed for whatever he wanted. And I'll never forget.
Speaker 2:We came back, and we were in Memphis basically three different times in about a 10-day window, and we had been invited to teach at a local church here, and that was one of the times.
Speaker 2:Unfortunately, we had to come back another time for a funeral, and in the midst of that, though, we were really sensing that God's calling us back, and so, while we were here, we were looking for a house in case God called us back.
Speaker 2:But on one of those occasions, as we're driving into town and we were, I remember, like just past Tupelo, mississippi we receive a phone call, and the phone call was just hey, don't know if you know this or not, but you know, andy is about to start a church. She was our teaching pastor at High Point Church and it was one of those things that, just because of the set of circumstances around this, we just felt like that if we were to come back to Memphis when he was starting a church, even though we had no communication with one another, that people would perhaps assume the worst or believe the worst and that somehow, some way, you know, think that we're just trying to start a church and maybe split High Point Church and that was never in our intentions and, you know, honestly, did things very intentionally. Try not to do that, go ahead.
Speaker 1:No, I was going to say. I just remember very vividly that as we were I mean we hadn't been visiting Memphis very often, right, and we were honestly pretty painful when we would come to Memphis, and I don't know if we'd been here once or twice for the holidays to see family, but that was really about it by that point in time. But I remember on the first trip in of us just kind of like, okay, we feel like the word, we feel like circumstances, we feel like through wise counsel, we feel like through prayer, okay, let's just kind of test this, let's kind of live in this. And then I remember when we got that call and this happens all the time, and I don't, I don't know why, but it's like, you know, we, we get that call and you're like, okay, is that a red light? You know, is that like kind of the hey, you, you thought you had four green lights and this is the red light to say no.
Speaker 1:But then also in Chris, speak to this, because biblically, you know, it's one of those things that just because you're doing the right thing doesn't mean you won't face adversity. And so I remember very clearly like, is this, is this a no, or is this a maybe or like okay, god, what are we supposed to do? We didn't expect this piece of information, especially with the timing of us, you know, coming back. So how do you speak to that person of whether, whether something is a warning or whether it's?
Speaker 2:just, yeah, I mean, it's the discernment process. I mean, there's a lot that goes into that, and sometimes the most difficult part of that discernment process is allowing time to pass and to continue to discern instead of making a decision too quickly. And so when that happened for us you use the term we thought we had a green light. But what we said and what we agreed is like okay, wait a second, this just adjusted that, at least to a yellow light. This is a world of caution.
Speaker 2:Okay, we don't believe it's a red light, but we do believe it's significant enough in it potentially could violate some principles that we believe that God honors, and one of those principles is the principle of unity. And so there could be some things there. Those are things that are out of our control, and we're still supposed to do what God called us to do. There's other times we need to have a consideration that is, god revealing something in order to slow us down or in order to even change our decision, to bring us into alignment with him. And so, in this particular moment, we walked away from that experience and we had already put a down payment down on a house, in case this is what we were supposed to do and deposit down. Sorry mine.
Speaker 1:I'll be your realtor.
Speaker 2:Yes, you are our financial guide. But we put that deposit down and yet then we were like, okay, wait a second yellow light here. And then, about a week later, we're actually coming into Memphis again and about two below Mississippi, we receive another phone call and in that phone call we learn that High Point Church is calling a new pastor. In that moment you and I both just sense, well, wait a second. This is definitely a yellow light. It doesn't mean God's never gonna call us back to Memphis.
Speaker 2:But between these two sets of circumstances we have zero peace, that this is the right time for us to return. And we really felt, like you know, out of the greater unity of the body, out of respect to High Point Church whether they ever know this or not that we were gonna make a decision to honor the new pastor. And we were gonna make a decision where, you know, two former pastors aren't starting a church at the same time that this new pastor is arriving. And so we lost our deposit on the house. And then we decided that this is a yellow light and therefore we need to wait.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and that was. You know, the word wait keeps resurfacing and I, just as you're sitting here and we're kind of retelling this, I'm thinking about other situations in life. And you know, when you talk about those four areas and saying that, okay, a lot of times if all four aren't lining up in the same direction, that means wait. A lot of times what we do is we get two of the four, or one of the four, or three of the four, and then we just make an assumption and we just jump forward. And you know, there's a lot of times, especially in broken relationships, when a marriage ends that interim season of being by yourself, that just it feels bad, whatever loss you've experienced, whether it's a job, whether it's a relationship, whatever it is we sometimes want out of that feeling so bad that we don't wait Absolutely, and then we actually are taking wounds into a new situation that might not even be the right situation to begin with, and so that waiting is so hard but it's so important.
Speaker 2:Well and, honestly, like, even though returning to Memphis was hard and it definitely was gonna have several hurdles to overcome, at the same time, though, there was a part. It was just a decision and it would just be good just to have a decision and then to live in the decision and now to try to make the best of the decision and, when we were this close, put a deposit on a house believing this is what God wanted, then receive two phone calls. Then, undeniably, we believe this is the yellow light, this is the caution, this is the pause, this is the wait, this is the stop. Do not go forward. Then after that, honestly, it was incredibly discouraging, because it was like what now, you know? Like I mean, I thought this was. It is this, don't go forever. Is this just another pause? Just, is this just a timing issue? And it just causes you to question everything in many regards and just to really regroup.
Speaker 1:Well, and regroup is probably a good word, you know, and in some ways again, at the time I mean at the time there was maybe I don't know, you have to tell me from your perspective because we definitely, like, walked through this together but there were different things that would affect you more than me and me more than you. But this next kind of chapter, I mean when we just said, okay, we're not going back to Memphis- Because this was around September between.
Speaker 2:August and September.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Well, we then are, like you said, kind of starting over. You know, okay, we've got another clean slate, where do we go from here? But very quickly, the consulting work you were doing was ending.
Speaker 2:It was gonna end in.
Speaker 1:December, and then the health insurance that we had was ending in December, our lease was up in December, and it was one of those times where, honestly, I you know, was like well, god, you must have something great up your sleeve, because there is literally everything stopping.
Speaker 2:Well and honestly, if you don't get some interviews quickly, nothing's gonna happen after Thanksgiving. Sure, you know so like you've got this deadline before you, and yet you know that you better discern or see. God opens up doors quickly because things are gonna shut down. And so that's where there was a consistent voice in our life that was always there to give wise counsel, always there to encourage, always there to believe the best. And in this process, that voice in many ways were different leaders from Bethel Church and whereas there were lots of leaders that we've known, but in this particular situation, instead of some leaders running from us because of cancel culture type stuff, they chose to run to us and in this opportunity arose for us to interview about being like executive pastor type position at their church, their campus in Cleveland, ohio, and it was something that, because of their consistency in our life through the crisis, because of the different prophetic words, had been spoken to us.
Speaker 2:We were very attuned to this because we've always taught that God is a God of sequence, that what God did yesterday is in preparation what God wants to do tomorrow, and I've always been a lead pastor. I've never been anything but a lead pastor in. I knew that if I was to go into this role of executive pastor, I sensed that that was maybe something to do for a couple of years, but that maybe that was a way that God would restore us and bring us back to the place of whether it was coming back to Memphis or pastoring somewhere else to be able to operate in our gifts. But even in the craziness of that, as we begin that interview process, unfortunately the pastor there right around Thanksgiving, right after Thanksgiving, had some heart complications, had to have heart surgery, and so now the whole interview process is kind of interrupted and we're like all right, are we supposed to go? We're not supposed to go. What does this set of circumstances mean?
Speaker 1:You know, and I think one of the things when I look back and just reflect on our story, you know, here we are, we've got the potential of moving to Cleveland, we have had their love and they were the most like Christ to us through our whole crisis, and so there's something about that connection that just feels very Christ-like and feels like, okay, lord, you've opened this door, the fact that we even have this opportunity.
Speaker 1:And just in our spiritual journey, you know, we I think we reflected to say, you know, we saw God do so many amazing things in our ministry previous to this, but that over the last couple of years, the ways that God had sustained us and spoken to us and, you know, been like a manna, was in a, in a different expression than had been familiar of our original ministries. And so, whether it would be prophetic words or things of that nature, that God was just doing things and putting us in a culture and an experience that we had not had before. And so there was this part of saying, okay, is this him giving us an opportunity to be a part of a community, to grow ourselves and to develop and understand more of who the Holy Spirit is. That had been happening in the five, seven, 10 years prior leading up to our departure from Memphis, but almost in an accelerated way.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, in that regard, like you said, we had seen God do a work in our lives regarding the Holy Spirit. Back, really, in many ways goes back to 2010, when I was on sabbatical reading, you know, 20 books on the Holy Spirit. Then, 2013, god gives me an encounter at the church of the Highlands that, just, you know, kind of gave me another, you know, entry point into just a greater understanding of who the Holy Spirit is, how the Holy Spirit works and then was trying to, I think, gently guide our church in those ways and for us to grow in those ways. You know, honestly, in a way that was kind of slow and deliberate at least slow and deliberate from my perspective. I don't know about other people's perspective, but when God gave us favor with Bethel and when they really took interest in us on a personal level, and when we really saw God use them to speak into our life in extraordinary ways, ways that really are unexplainable apart from the Holy Spirit giving them specific insight into how to guide us and provide, you know, kind of pieces of the puzzle to discern God's will, that it did feel like there was continuity there. And so, you know, when Pastor Steve gave us the opportunity to go to Bethel Cleveland and again he was in a difficult situation from a standpoint of his own health. We just had to kind of trust in that moment and so we moved up there in January of 2020.
Speaker 2:And again we moved up kind of thinking this was going to be a couple of year assignment two, three year assignment, and that we would see what God taught us, how we could learn, how we could bless them.
Speaker 2:But we went up there, you know, kind of all in, I mean, we immediately bought a house and you know, in just kind of saying okay, let's plant ourselves and be where God moved us.
Speaker 2:And then the strangest thing happened a pandemic comes eight weeks later, you know. So, like we, we move up there and we're only there for eight weeks, kind of engaging with people, interacting with people, you know, before COVID comes, and then Ohio was one of the first states to just shut down. And so now we're in this place where both of our kids are in college, one of them's, you know, at the University of Alabama, the other one's at Furman University World, long ways away from both of them, and you know, you're now trying to figure out, you know, how to care for them and protect them, and the midst of all of this, and so you were traveling a lot back and forth doing different things, and it left me a lot of time with our dog, moe, to just go on prayer walks and, you know, spend time on the Word, trying to discern God's will in this crazy season.
Speaker 1:You know, as I am thinking about just kind of that journey, I think one of the things that, again, it's hard to see it in the moment.
Speaker 1:But you know, when we look back now I can think of the decisions we didn't make.
Speaker 1:We didn't take the job that would have put us in Greenville, south Carolina, in the very city that we think is the cutest place ever and where our daughter lived, and we, I remember, in the middle kind of the beginning of COVID, we took a trip there and it was like the apocalypse there was Greenville.
Speaker 1:Downtown Greenville is always full of people and it was nobody was on the streets and I remember just walking through there and the three of us and just having a job that could potentially relocate us there and thinking, okay, maybe this will be our new home and maybe we'll just start life over and maybe that was our past and we'll never go back and that's okay. And I just I think now there's times, and this is again, god doesn't work in a box, he doesn't work by a formula, but one of the things you talked earlier about with God open a door, honestly open, and closed doors don't always mean that's where you're to go, I'm telling you, and so, in the world of you being in an interim season or you being in an uncertain place, it's still one of those ways that just be patient and I think the-.
Speaker 2:I hate that term, you hate that term.
Speaker 1:And the one thing and I don't know if this is just your own expression, but I've heard you say it so much.
Speaker 1:I give you credit for it if it's not, but God's not going to let you fall off a cliff thinking you're obeying him, and I don't. That has just helped me a lot in the sense that some of those things that we got really close up to and said, you know, I think one of the earlier podcasts you talked about you had given a kind of informal yes to a job that would have kept us in Atlanta, and by the time you landed from the plane, you had decided that maybe that wasn't what God had for you, and so there was that opportunity that we let pass. And then the one in Greenville that would have been, you know, and we were like gosh, we could take this nonprofit and do a lot with it and like we could see this and God, we've got continuity in relationships in this organization. But there is something to say that just because a door opens, don't jump. But in that same way, god's not. If you truly are asking him to show you the way, he's not going to let you walk off that cliff.
Speaker 2:So in this way we were just trying to be faithful where we were and we were, you know, in the midst of COVID. That didn't mean we were looking for any new place, it just meant we were just trying to figure that out, like everyone else. But I'll never forget, in a very unexpected way you know, this isn't something that I went looking for a word, I was just being consistent and faithful in my priority time, right where I was. But it was a Thursday morning, april 24th, and I read Exodus, chapter four, verse 19 and 20. And it says go back to Egypt. In Egypt, Memphis is named after the capital city of Egypt. And it says go back to Egypt. It says all the people who wanted to kill you have died. Bring your wife and children with you and the staff of God. And as clearly as I have ever heard the word of God and God has spoken to me on many occasions that are these definitive moments where, and especially out of Exodus chapter three, exodus chapter four, exodus chapter 33, 34, exodus has been a very significant. The person of Moses has been very significant in my journey. But when he said go back to Egypt, it was as if I didn't hear the audible voice of God, but through the Spirit of God speaking through the word of God. It was a command, it was an authoritative voice, it kind of jumped off the page and then, just because of the uniqueness of our situation, just kind of this context of all the people wanted to kill you have died, and then bring your wife and children with you, we felt like that there was some sense that our home needed to be reestablished in Memphis. Whether our kids ever moved back to Memphis or not, it would restore their childhood, it would restore their memories. And then the last part of that was bring the staff of God with you. And I know in that particular account how the staff represented the presence of God, the power of God, and we really felt like we were growing in the ways of the Spirit, learning the Spirit of God, and that we're to bring this new understanding of who the Holy Spirit is with us back to Memphis.
Speaker 2:And so now, what's crazy about this? This is Thursday, april 24th. In the shutdown of the pandemic, churches are shut down. Who goes and starts a church when, nationally and almost globally, everything's shut down? That's insane.
Speaker 2:Then that afternoon I get a phone call from our pastor and at that point in time we were, because we weren't meeting on a Sunday morning. We were teaching on Fridays, recording the message to present it on Sunday. And he says, hey, I can't teach tomorrow. Is there any chance you could teach and would you mind teaching out of either Exodus 3 or Exodus 4? And I was like, absolutely, I can do that and I'll never forget that. I went and I was teaching in this empty sanctuary just looking straight at the camera and in many ways felt like I was just preaching to me, taking what God had said and declaring this to see all right, we're really going to do what God's told us to do, but then and again, an unpredictable set of circumstances. So I preached that message on a Friday.
Speaker 2:Then on Sunday we get a phone call from Pastor Jimmy Latimer here in Memphis and Pastor Jimmy's a legend in Memphis and he pastored Central Church in Memphis for over 40 years and he has a church in Memphis now that's called Redeemer. And he said Chris. He said I'm in the hospital, I'm battling some congestive heart failure issues, and he said as clearly as I've ever heard the voice of God. I felt like he told me to restore Chris Connelly to ministry before I die. He said I don't have much, but what I do have I can give it to you, and if you ever want to come back to Memphis and start a church, you can use my church. Now I don't necessarily claim to be the smartest guy in the world, but I can do the math of two plus two equals four.
Speaker 2:Okay, and so what you and I did after these incredible set of circumstances and again, god speaks through the word, he speaks through prayer, he speaks through wise counsel and he speaks through circumstances and we felt like we got a word from the word Exodus, chapter four, verse 19 and 20, we were in agreement, praying through that. We were asking some friends getting wise counsel in that, and then these circumstances began to line up. But then we said, okay, now, before previously we waited, we had a yellow light because some certain things came up that it was wise to wait. But this time we said, okay, now we need to wait and not jump on this. We need to take a full month, you know, or a month in a week, and we're going to pray through this through the end of May, and at the end of May we really sense this is what God has for us, then we'll tell our pastor and we'll make the decision and we'll obey the word.
Speaker 1:One of the things that I want to make sure. I know obviously our journey is in the context of ministry, but I think that it's easy sometimes for people that aren't in the ministry to hear a story like that and think, well, that only happens to you or that's because you're a pastor and I want people to know. I think the time was truth in that. Well, there's many, but one is that God just cares that intimately about all of us. And yet the sowing and reaping, the daily disciplines that we did have prior to our crisis they enabled us to be able to have some peace and confidence in discerning the voice of God.
Speaker 2:Well, and what's important about that? Peace and confidence. Because of what you said, discerning the voice of God. Because we didn't have peace and confidence in circumstances, the whole world was in chaos. We had finally gotten to a place where we had a salary again, we had a home again and now health.
Speaker 2:Insurance and now we're going to risk all of that again, leave all of that again to go start over. I mean, I'll never forget that somewhere in this journey is we were talking with our son one day, in kind of processing with him. He's like dad, he's like people don't have babies at 49 years of age. He's like I don't know that this is really what you're supposed to do right now. And I get that, understand that and really weighed that piece of advice from him heavily. But once the Lord spoke, and because of the clarity in which he spoke and the way that he began to compliment that, when you know that, you know that, you know then you just got to obey him and trust him.
Speaker 2:With the rest, that sounds maybe pastoral, but that is true for anyone. We do not say that just because this is the unique life we live, because we're called of God. God has a unique calling for everyone. God has a unique purpose and plan for everyone. So in that regard I would just say the most important thing is you got to have an anchor and for us, we knew the road ahead wasn't going to be an easy road and we knew there would be storms that come, and we knew a lot of people wouldn't understand our decision. In many ways we didn't understand our decision, but if we put an anchor down, when the storms come, the anchor holds.
Speaker 1:I think there's a song like that, but I can't emphasize that enough and, as we kind of continue the story a little bit, I think this will hear this in another form. But you know, any decision that you make, it's going to have highs and lows and it can be God's best for you and that doesn't mean it won't have adversity. It can be outside of God's will and it will probably have adversity. But to us, I think, in just kind of our whole journey as a married couple, that has been what has both held us individually and together. Was that like we need to have something that we can hold on to. That we know that wasn't our good idea, or I wasn't just following you or you weren't following my idea, but that we had peace, that we had heard from the Lord, that we had something, that when things got hard we weren't going to point the finger at one another, but that we had sought the Lord and we had come to a place that we both had confidence in. That.
Speaker 2:But here's something really important you got to be brutally honest with yourself and with one another in this discernment process, because it didn't make any sense that God spoke for us to leave on April 24th and we only arrived in January, and so we were second guessing that we were looking back. Well, why did you even bring us here and why did we buy a house? Was that a mistake? And very well, maybe buying the house was a mistake.
Speaker 1:We were just so tired of being in an apartment. There's truth to that.
Speaker 2:But I don't believe the trip, the detour, the experience in Cleveland was a mistake In ways that we can begin to understand. Because when we told Pastor Steve this story and he was incredibly gracious and he spent a minute or two trying to ask some legitimate questions, needed questions but then at the same time he said I've got to trust that God spoke to you, because what you're about to do and trying to do is a bit crazy and you are risking everything to go do that. But then, when he had us share it with the staff, we weren't expecting this at all. But as we shared and we shared that part about okay, go to Egypt, the people wanted to kill you. You've died. Bring your wife and children with you and the staff of God, justin and Nicola Lorman.
Speaker 2:Justin was on staff there and Nicola had just had their son and so she had served some before. But Justin, when he heard, bring the staff of God with you. Yes, of course he knows the biblical context, but in an application, he felt like the spirit of God said to him you should go with him. Well, we've had this happen before, where people have followed us to play in a church and you really try to talk them out of it instead of talk them into it, because you're like well, wait a second, there's not a salary here, there's no guarantees here. There's. The only guarantee is that this requires a lot of sacrifice, a lot of work, not a lot of promises, and we're going to trust that God will do something special at the end of this journey.
Speaker 2:Okay, but what ended up happening is Justin Nicola ended up saying yes to the Lord, and then Taylor Sullen, who is now Taylor Aller, she says yes to the Lord and then God gives us a team before we ever leave Cleveland to come back to Memphis. You can't make this stuff up and so, like, why did God send us? You know, in that process it's like I don't know. This maybe doesn't make sense, but the only thing I can see is that he was blessing us and he gave us some experience there at Bethel to see and experience that it was kindness, it was provision, but then it was also preparation for the next season in how he was going to commission us and send us, but not send us away alone, but send us away with a team.
Speaker 1:And I think one of the other things that, in retrospect, that I appreciate about the journey even though you know we're just like we lived in Cleveland for a minute there are so many things that I look back and things that were said to us, words that were spoken to us, prayers that were prayed over us, and even the kindness of God when we were in Atlanta, and just different points along the way that that journey.
Speaker 1:I think, even though it had its challenges for sure, that that season of healing, that time was needed, that over the course of those two places there was a lot of healing and there was space for us to really try to be healthy and to come through the other side with God's perspective and without, you know, microwaving oh, we're fine, let's just hop back into ministry. But we're real people and we have a real family with real, you know, young adults that are trying to process things. And that there was something that sometimes, if you're in the weight you know you're going to be in the, don't waste the weight but allow. Allow it if you keep, if you're not getting where you want to go, give God access to do the work in your heart so that when he takes you to where you want to go. You're actually usable.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah. And and I would say in that Sometimes Leaders, if they don't ever allow their own Wounds to heal, they accidentally bleed on their sheep and you become a wounded leader, and it's hard to follow a wounded leader. This is all about Unwaisted pain. God never wants to leave you in pain. He wants to heal you, he wants to restore you, and Then we believe he uses the adversity of that season To not only reveal the character he's already built, but build more character, and he uses it as a test to see what he can trust you with. And so God brought us back. We moved back.
Speaker 2:July 27th I think it was exactly 40 days later we started the church. We actually started a house of prayer before we started the church, in obedience to some prophetic words that we believe that God has Given us about that. But maybe the last thing I want to Conclude with it I think is really remarkable here we are three years later. One city church, the last Sunday in September, september 24th, will be three years old and this fall we will move into this beautiful Jewish synagogue. That this projects a little bit over a six million dollar project for this first phase, which is Totally remarkable and virtually impossible for a church of our size to do, just extraordinary gifts that we'll have to tell you more about.
Speaker 2:But here's the thing when we said yes to God on that April 24th, and then when we continue to pray, and we said yes to God at the end of May, it was in the month of May that the Jewish congregation Decided to merge with another congregation and that synagogue became available. As soon as we said yes, god already had our home prepared. So never underestimate the power of a yes. Never underestimate what God can do with your yes. The most powerful word that you can ever give God is yes, and he'll do the rest.
Speaker 1:Think Moe agrees. Well, you know, it is often in hindsight when you're going through the middle of it it feels like days might be wasted, pain might be wasted. But I hope that, no matter where you are in your journey or if you're helping someone else who maybe feels like they're in an interim season or in a wilderness or on a detour, that there will be truths, that you can help them. Sometimes, when there were people that came alongside us, that that spoke truths and brought clarity when things sometimes felt cloudy and Either discouraging or just delayed, that that somehow, through our story, that not only will you find encouragement From the experiences that you've had, but that you will also help someone else that might be in that season Needing you to hold up their arms, to encourage them and to help them know that, no matter what they're going through, that our heavenly father Is not going to allow it to be wasted. So thank you for joining us. We hope you'll see you next time and you have a great day. I.