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
The Do's and Don't of a Crisis
We delve into the emotional aspects of a crisis - acknowledging the pain without causing more harm. We talk about the significance of faith, hope, and love not as abstract concepts but as practical tools for navigating adversity. We'll share how we chose to respond responsibly, go the extra mile to prove that love works, and how God used our pain to comfort others. In the midst of the storm, we found a God of full restoration, and we believe you can too. This episode is a heartfelt exploration of maintaining faith, hope, resilience, and love amidst adversity.
Hello and welcome to Unwasted Pain. It's us again.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 1:It won't always be the two of us, but I'm glad to be back with Chris, my husband of 29 years almost, and this edition of Unwasted Pain. We've really kind of walked through our journey and, as we kind of segue into some different themes and different people and different interviews, we thought before we moved forward that we might maybe from a list of the do's and don'ts of our experience, some things that you can only learn walking through a challenging season, but that if you could pass along to someone else and say, okay, hey, if you're in the middle of something right now that's challenging, I probably would avoid this, but here's some things that really did help. And so, on that vein, we want to really talk about how do you keep a challenging situation from becoming more challenging.
Speaker 2:Yeah, because I mean, the easiest thing in the world to do is go from bad to worse, and so once something bad has happened, we're typically not at our best and because of that, you know, there's just different things happen and we get disappointed, we get discouraged, we get angry, we get frustrated, and those things typically don't contribute to wise decisions, and so it's easy to make a split second decision. It's easy to make a decision out of anger or frustration or fatigue, and in that it's so easy for something to just escalate and you kind of set fire to the problem and what was originally a small fire becomes a big fire.
Speaker 1:Yeah, even as you're sitting here saying those kinds of things, different things going through my mind, but one of the things that again, we're five years looking back now and kind of in the rear view mirror of things you would do differently, things that by God's grace you did and we didn't even understand the implications.
Speaker 1:But I think the first thing that comes to my mind of like you know, how do you take a small thing and make it a big thing is, I know, for us just the ages of our children and them really kind of in that season of launching out into adulthood. Our son was a freshman in college, our daughter was a senior in high school, so they were both right in that season and then the course of the last five years they have been completely in the college realm and now out. That's a perfect example that you know. Just in those realms, when pain happens, it's not just you, it's the circle of people around you that are impacted as well. And I think sometimes in I think we're all we all care about ourselves too much and think about things in our own world, but to not forget that sometimes that pain can be come not just from you, but how other people that you love are coping, and so your decisions and your choices in that moment impact more than just yourself.
Speaker 2:Well it's. I'll bar this from recovery world A lot of times, whether it's celebrate recovery or, you know, aa, whatever type of recovery they'll talk about, recovery is never just an individual issue. It's never a solo issue. There's always recovery impacts a circle of people. Recovery is a family issue. Recovery is a marriage issue. Recovery is, you know, just all of the different people impacted.
Speaker 2:And when something, some type of adversity, hits you individually, then everyone around you is feeling different things as well and in sometimes they run to your rescue and try to help Honestly. Sometimes, unfortunately, they might question you or even accuse you or be disappointed in you. So there's this collision of opinions, collision of emotions, and somehow another. In the midst of a situation that is unstable, it's important for us to figure out how to model stability and allow enough time to pass for the emotions to simmer down. You know, because when we make decisions out of the intensity of emotion, there's a high degree of probability we can make the wrong decision. And so you know, oftentimes what you're trying to do in this situation is just stabilize initially, don't jump to conclusions, and then figure out how to get different perspectives that aren't in the heightened moment of emotional intensity and then say okay, god, where are you at in this crisis? You know, one of the things that we frequently say is how do you find Christ in the crisis?
Speaker 1:So I think you just alluded to one of the things that you don't want to do is react. You want to respond and that's a very different reaction, is generally almost visceral and it is fast. Respond to me, at least in the way that I define those two words, is a much more intentional thing and I think, again, that's the. I think we're wired in a crisis. You know it's to react, because you know it's. You know even all of the chemicals that are released in your body and the endorphins and the. You know the ways that you're, you know fight or flight, whether it's a literal or a relational or a physiological, it's all of those things. But if there's anything that I could say, generally a quick decision unless there's a building literally on fire, like generally waiting and just taking a deep breath is going to give you the opportunity to just discern if, if, what your knee jerk reaction is is really the right reaction.
Speaker 2:Well, and I think it's important to elaborate upon that point, and we've mentioned this maybe before briefly, but in that principle that you need to respond instead of react, god had given us a specific word that was in agreement with that and the word was invite, don't fight. And I remember not really knowing or anticipating what the conflict was going to be or imagining that we were going to be in a position where we were being asked to resign, but God had given us a word out of Zachariah, chapter 4, verses 6 through 10, and in that word it talked about you know that this mountain will become a plane when you shout grace to it and you know that's kind of a not necessarily. You know, one's first reaction is that when you know something's going wrong and you have this mountain that represents this impossible set of circumstances, that you shout grace to the mountain and and in this principle came into my mind of invite, don't fight. And I think it's very fair to say that anyone who had known me previously in my 18 years of leading high point church just knew that I came from a background that was a little bit of an underdog background, a blue collar background, and very much had been taught how to fight, so to speak, that I was a fighter in a good way, and yet, you know, there's always bad expressions of that and there's times that that fighter was very much used by God for good reasons, and then there's times that maybe you aren't walking totally in sync with the Spirit of God and that fighter can have expressions that you kind of get out of bounds a little bit.
Speaker 2:But for me, in that moment where I'm sitting there, really shocked and surprised by a decision by a group of trustees asking us to resign, that the Spirit of God came to me in that moment and literally said I told you to invite, not fight. And I specifically said to this group of people you know they said do you have anything to say? And I said, well, I wasn't ever expecting this and I wasn't expecting this. I was really thinking this word was for another group of people, but I feel like the Lord has told me to invite, not fight. And I think what that means is I'm inviting you to truly follow in this moment and trust what God has said to me, and trust that God has, you know, kind of Appointed me 18 years ago and hasn't unappointed me To truly lead us through this crisis to get to the other side, and that when we do shout grace, this mountain is going to be pushed into the sea and it is going to become a plane. But in that moment I Didn't fully understand the magnitude of what God was asking me to say. And and so when I invited them to follow and I kind of made this promise to God and and to them that I wouldn't fight, that was the hardest decision Probably I've ever made, and it's continued to be the hardest decision over the course of five years, because the most natural thing that we want to do, you know kind of in our temperament and in our flesh, is fight for what's right, to defend ourselves, and and so, in that way, I really believe the spirit of God was asking me, like you said, to respond, not react.
Speaker 2:I think, honestly, they were very much expecting me to fight, and, and it was a situation that it required the initial decision, but the harder part is it required a daily decision To keep trusting God with the outcome and to keep trusting God with Wait a second. I really believe, honestly, that if I would have fought for certain things, that I Could have technically won the fight, but I could have potentially lost God's anointing upon my life. I could have potentially lost Five years of a wilderness. That, honestly, who wants to go through the wilderness? You know again, if you go back to that biblical illustration of the Exodus, it was 11 mile journey that took them. You know, 40 years 11 day journey, not 11 mile journey. But Now that we're five years into this and I believe that we're in a place where the way I would describe it, as we've stepped into the Jordan, the waters have parted. We're not all the way through, we're not on the other side, we can see the shoreline, the waters haven't closed behind us yet, but I'm beginning to get to that place to realize that what God has done in us is is greater than Than what we would have kept had we chosen to fight. And then what God wants to restore is Perhaps greater than what we could have accomplished had the crisis never come.
Speaker 2:And these are big statements, these are not statements that I say lightly, and so you know in that I would say, as we're talking about what Didn't work in order to talk about what does work, the fact that you picked this very first statement of respond, not react. I couldn't agree more. But also I would say, you know, if we could talk about Kind of okay once that decision was made and now we had to maintain the decision, now we had to walk in the decision, now we had to be in agreement and the lineman decision what did that look right? Because it's it was. There was a certain Moment there where again, you're trying to obey God, trying to make the right decision, and I'm still thinking that there's the possibility that God will resolve this and that there will be some more Immediate, more victorious outcome. That, you know, honestly, kind of kept us in that role. But as we went through that and we saw that wasn't gonna happen, then it became harder to actually agree with that decision. I have second guess that decision countless times.
Speaker 1:Well, let's talk. I'm gonna trust your memory is better than my memory so that we come back to that in just a minute, because I think you're right, there is. There is the decision in the moment, the action in the moment when, when that news comes, or when a decision is made, or when, when things are kind of on the line in whatever scenario you might be in, and then there's the daily living in that. That is is what you're talking about. But before we go that direction, I think it's interesting.
Speaker 1:I think some people like, well, you're a pastor, and so, because you're a pastor, like of course, god gave you a word in the moment, and like there was a phrase and you know it was even one that, like was alliterated, because you know, that's what happens when you're a pastor, right?
Speaker 1:But I think the the other Maybe thing that that I don't want to have lost in this is a that's a thousand percent, not true that God wants to speak to every single one of us and that God wants to protect every single one of us. I do think there is some wisdom in knowing that, yes, he is amazingly full of grace and we can have never spent much time with him at all and he still shows up in the moment, of course, but man having cultivated a relationship to hear from him, that puts you in a much better place to hear from him. But I just also just thought that what I hope that we would look back and realize and could pass along to somebody else is, a lot of times God is preparing you for what is to come and it's easy in the moment of a crisis to just blank, to just you're, just you're in shock.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you're so out of sorts that you probably aren't thinking okay, let me go back and see what has the Lord been saying to me recently, or what are the things that have happened in my life, or words that have been spoken, or you know, like I think, by God's grace, that was something that you were in tune to and so we had, even though it wasn't what we thought, we did have an anchor, and though what we're gonna talk about is that didn't mean the anchor was easy.
Speaker 1:But I guess what I'm just wanting to encourage people is like, if you just come to a crossroad in that, respond, don't react In that pause, think, pray, check your journal, listen, go back to messages you've listened, like what has impacted your heart recently, because there may be some way that you're able to see what that response should be based upon, some things that maybe that you can only look in hindsight when you're now standing at a crisis and going. I mean I was. We were talking with a couple. I was talking with a couple yesterday at church who just got a diagnosis of cancer and they're standing so firm and so full of faith. And he said to me I know that God was preparing me and he was able to look back and go okay, god, this caught me off guard, but it didn't catch God off guard and therefore I'm gonna be okay and I'm gonna walk with this thing through faith.
Speaker 2:So that's a lot of words, but there's things that are sometimes uncomfortable to truly believe about God. You've gotta trust that he's a good God. You've gotta trust he's a good father, but it is uncomfortable at times to believe that sometimes he tests us to see what he can trust us with and in hindsight.
Speaker 1:That's why you made me teach Genesis 20.
Speaker 2:I give you all the hard passages. Hey, I haven't figured it out, you go figure it out, okay, great.
Speaker 2:But you know, again, there's certain things that you know people will say, well, I mean, do you kind of believe that God orchestrated this or brought this into existence? You know, did he allow this? And those are all kind of tricky questions, and even the word allow is theologically kind of tricky. I believe that in this particular situation, yes, the crisis came, but there were multiple ways we could have responded to the crisis Not just us, but other people involved, trustees, the church as a whole and I do believe there was a way to solve the problem in a healthier way, you know, to unify the church, to protect the church, to care for all parties involved that were both inside and outside the church. I have to believe that that was possible.
Speaker 2:I don't believe that, you know, in our particular situation, god wanted to take a great work and see it splinter, and you know so many people get hurt in the midst of the crisis. Sheep get scattered, people lose, you know, kind of their faith in God's church. But what I would say is there's some truths that when you read them in scripture, you're like, oh man, that's one of the greatest truths ever, like I mean, I'm gonna hang my hat on that, but when it happens to you, it's a lot harder to do. You know Genesis 50, 20, the story of Joseph, when it says you know what man intended for evil, god meant for good. Well, honestly, even though I'd never, you know, yes, I see the principle, but until you have to live it.
Speaker 1:I'm blessed as the man who remains steadfast under trial Right. We like that one Right, exactly you know.
Speaker 2:But in that way I would just say it's fine to say, oh, bless your heart. It's someone else, it's fine to say I'm praying for you. When it's someone else, it's fine to even quote the right verse or, you know, try to encourage, but it really doesn't require much change in your own life For us. We still had to say we're going to hang onto this word, even though we don't fully understand it. We're gonna allow what this word says to be our source of hope, even though we don't know how it's gonna be fulfilled. And I would say, you know people ask the why question all the time and I don't know that I will ever fully have a satisfactory answer to the why question. But I do know God's ways are higher than our ways, his thoughts are higher than our thoughts, that he is trustworthy and that in the midst of this, here's some things I know that don't work. You know. I know running from God was not the solution. I know doubting God, you know, was not the solution. I know being the victim was not the way out of this, you know. I know complaining and just, you know griping, and you know, in biblical terminology, grumbling, you know, was not the solution to this. I know quitting on God was not the solution to this. I know that you know just getting mad and angry at the church and blaming the church wasn't the solution to this.
Speaker 2:There were so many things that, yes, I feel the feeling, I validate the feeling.
Speaker 2:There were a lot of times in my prayer life with God I mean very verbal, intense, loud, just get the feelings out of me Times that you know I would just kind of scream at God and say why and help. And then those times that even the scripture says that you know there are moans and groans and groans that are too intense to articulate, but we just gotta remember there are some things that are never gonna work, that the voice of the enemy comes to still kill and destroy In every one of those things I just mentioned. Not one of those things was gonna build my faith. Not one of those things was gonna increase faith, hope and love in my life. Not one of those things was going to help me see God play a role of restoration in our life. Not one of those things was gonna help us forgive. Not one of those things was gonna help us become a better person. So I mean sometimes we just need to make it more simple and go whoa, wait a second. This doesn't work. This is hard, but it works.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you know, as you're saying that I think it's, you know, I don't know I was gonna say normal or human, I don't know.
Speaker 1:I guess human might be the most accurate word.
Speaker 1:When things feel so bad, you do start without a really strong anchor, questioning God, you know, I thought you were good.
Speaker 1:How could a good God let this happen, kind of thing, and even just see people that you know sometimes you use the expression that most of the time that when a theologian becomes liberal it's because they become immoral first, like there's things that happen, not necessarily in a morality world in this context, but that like in a weak moment, we shift our theology or we all of a sudden what we thought, that we believed, we, because we can't see clearly and because we don't know the end of the story, we jump to these massive conclusions. And I was just thinking, even just yesterday, before we recorded this, I taught out of Genesis 22 and there was some texts going along from our dinner group and I was just like man everybody is fixated on. I don't think I could put my son on an altar and I'm like you're missing the point, like that's not the point. God didn't put that in there for you to wrestle with whether or not you would put your son on an altar.
Speaker 2:I'm like none of us could yeah.
Speaker 1:I'm like there's seven million things between that and where you are that God might want you to put on the altar, like your selfishness, your cell phone, your how you like what, your job, your how you feel powerful. Yeah, like there's so many things. But like somehow, where the conversation went was like this debate about God and whether that was fair or unfair. And I'm like that's what we do. We just kind of start redefining things when it feels too big for us to do Like, well, that seems to I don't think I could do that. Well, therefore, there must be something with God that I don't understand. So I don't know if that makes any sense, but Well it is.
Speaker 2:It's that dynamic of the difference between a God-centered approach, a God-centered theology, and a man-centered theology Okay. A God-centered theology is he is good, he is sovereign, he's in control. When it doesn't make sense to us, he still has a reason and he's gonna bring good out of it and I'm gonna trust him regardless. A man-centered theology, where it starts with man at the center, then, when something doesn't make sense to my present circumstances, I'm gonna trust there's something wrong, okay. And when there's something wrong, then I might now change my belief system temporarily in order to right the wrong. And so what we've gotta do is go no, no, no, no, no.
Speaker 2:I've got to elevate my thinking above a man-centered approach and I've gotta try to see the crisis from God's perspective. And when he sees a crisis, he sees the big picture, he doesn't just see the moment. At time, god is more interested in what he's gonna do in you and through you than in your comfort zone. You know like is the moment our comfort zone gets disrupted. Then we begin to oftentimes become accusatory, and so now what we've gotta do is say no, no, no, no, no. He's much more interested in transformation that will come through this circumstance than just changing my circumstance. He's much more interested in how I become like Christ in what he does through the process than just delivering me from it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, Well, um, it is one of those times where, if I could encourage anybody to what you believed before the crisis about God, if you were in a healthy place, hold on to that. He has not changed, just because you can't see the outcome. And I think you talked about you know that in that moment of invite, don't fight. And in the moment that felt like, okay, we'd heard from the Lord. But then it got really hard because it was not a week or a month, and two months and three months.
Speaker 2:Tell them how much I loved you. Encouraging me.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so one of the things that might not work.
Speaker 2:Yeah, this is different things for different people.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah. So and that is true. I think it's important that, when you're going through something challenging, to normalize the fact that A if this is the first type of crisis, you've walked together, whether that's with a friend, or whether that's with a spouse or in your work dynamic, whatever the dynamic is. I mean, you and I had been married 24 years, was it?
Speaker 2:Something like that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, basically when this happened and we had not really had to experience this level of pressure and this level of disruption and this level of pain, and so we had to just normalize, like I've never been in this situation before. I don't really know what I need, and then things that I tried that didn't work would be like. I would be like, well, you know what Chris, like I know it's really bad, but you know, I know you've lost your job and I know we've moved and I know we don't have an income and I know like there's all big list, but I'm like but at least we're all healthy. Like you know, somebody else has cancer and we don't, and so like it's fine and you are not feeling it at all.
Speaker 2:No, honestly it just.
Speaker 1:I was like this does not help me at all, yeah, and you literally said that Like this is not helping me at all, and I would say not everybody hits a crisis in a healthy marriage. So there are times where crisis happens, and it's now a crisis on a crisis.
Speaker 2:It's like a house of cards.
Speaker 1:It begins to fall apart because of the way it's built. And so you were in a place to be able to say Karen, that's not helping me. And I was in a place to be able to receive that because we were in. We were in, but you were like well, why doesn't this Like?
Speaker 2:it helps me and I'm like I'm glad it helps you. But right now, just hearing that someone else has it worse than us does not help me because it feels as bad as it can possibly be to me and I don't want someone else having a worse situation to somehow or another be helpful to me. God bless them, let them have a wonderful situation. I hope God heals them. But God heal me, god deliver us. You know that kind of thing.
Speaker 1:Yeah, well, so I guess I just say that the word normalize is something that I think you and I use a lot, but I think it's actually pretty helpful because I think if you let's just say for you and I, because we were at a healthy place, we could have that dialogue without maybe inflicting more pain on one another. We could have that at a health and go, okay, I need to regroup and I need to, you know, I need to figure out something, and so we did. But for that person or that relationship that was already strained, and then crisis comes again. Sometimes, if you can just step back from where you are and go, okay, you know what, we weren't in a perfect place and now we're in this crisis, I'm just gonna acknowledge that's not where we weren't where we wanted to be. And can I just take that in context? And what can I do right now? Can I just suspend that and can we together be a team through this?
Speaker 2:Well, and so you know, yes, I did say hey, that's not helping me right now, but I did kind of give some guidelines and go listen.
Speaker 2:If I'm just having a bad day, just give me permission to have a bad day, yeah yeah, I said now, if I have two bad days, you know, try to get me to do something, encourage me in some way. Let's kind of poke on me a couple of times. Don't allow me to have three bad days in a row. Yeah, you know, because I was honestly, legitimately afraid of slipping into some type of depression, and so we did create some kind of ground rules. And then, you know, literally what I needed was inspiration For me. There were things that, like, my greatest fear was losing the vision that God had given me. And so, in order, when you know you're fearful of losing something and you feel empty because of that, like I needed more vision pumped into me. So, even though we didn't necessarily have money, it was well, we need to go to this conference and let God speak to us. Or, you know, I watched countless documentaries, you know, just because I just needed to see story after story after story after story of someone having some type of crisis, some type of adversity, overcoming that adversity, and, you know, sometimes it was a godly person, sometimes it wasn't a godly person, but you just learn from the way people are resilient, and so, you know, when I think about this, I just want to. I wrote down a few things here that I think are just good, simple reminders. Okay, a lack of vision isn't working. So, like you, gotta still maintain a vision for your life. God hasn't given up on your life. He's not giving up on his vision for you. You know God hasn't given up on his promises for you, and so let me just go that next step.
Speaker 2:Giving up isn't working. All right, quitting isn't working. Less commitment isn't working, less conviction isn't working. Where I'm just, you know what? I got burned, I got hurt. You know, was that really worth it? I'm not gonna give my life to this again. You know why even care. You know, like you would be so easy to not care, but yet that's not. God continues to care. If I want to be like God, I've got to care and then like things like this. Well, criticism isn't working, complaining isn't working, condemning isn't working. And you know what? Canceling isn't working. It never works to cancel someone, because God never cancels someone, and so then you gotta go.
Speaker 2:Well, what is working? Well, guess what? It just goes back to faith, hope and love. You know, faith is that confident trust that God is who he says he is and that he'll do what he says he'll do. Faith is not blind faith, it's not just, you know, taking this leap into the darkness. No, it is confident trust in who my God is and that he will actually fulfill his promises. And so it's faith.
Speaker 2:Hope, you know. Hope is that confident expectation. Hope isn't wishful thinking. There's a source of confidence because, again, I'm not in this alone. You were in this with me, our kids were in this with me. Godly men and women who are friends, were in this with us, but, most important, god was in this with us. So we had a source of hope because we didn't run from God, we ran to God. But then love. There were so many decisions that we made based out of what does it mean for us to position ourselves to still receive God's love and still give God's love? And you know, one of the things that I think was a secret to our success in walking through this, if you can even use that terminology, was that we always still found a way to serve. We always still found a way to be serving the Lord and serving people, and that prevented us from just being me-centric.
Speaker 1:You touched on a couple of different things that I just like just little pictures that might be helpful. You were talking about being afraid of slipping into a depression and like having some kind of boundaries, some kind of gutters in the bowling alley to just try to prevent that. There are simple things, like literally. I just remember there would be days that it depends on, like, the time of year and what part of the country you're in and all those things, but that it would just be like you could just stay inside and in your little bubble of pain. And if you just walked outside and you realized the sun is shining and the world is moving on around us and like, yes, I hurt, but there's a bigger picture in a bigger world out here and I am gonna get, we are gonna come through this. And so I think there's sometimes even just even just like forcing yourself to be outside, forcing yourself to get some exercise, like just yes, there were days that it was like I just know I'm doing this because it's the thing that I'm supposed to do. I don't feel it, I don't want to, I wanna stay in bed, I don't wanna go see anyone, I don't wanna, but I think those kinds of things.
Speaker 1:And then you talking about love, you gotta pull some people in, and this is tricky. I'm just gonna be honest, because if you people will disappoint you there were a lot of. There were a few people that like, were heroic in our journey, that showed up and they shouldn't have had to. And why did they? And I don't even know, and how did you even know and why did you even care? And yet they would show up. But there were so many people that you're like, well, where is so-and-so? Like we haven't heard from them in months, like where did that friendship go? Like this had nothing to do with this, but they. So you gotta be careful because people will disappoint you, no doubt, but at the same time, you still gotta invite people in and you still gotta let people love you and not act like you don't need love.
Speaker 2:Yeah, let me even be more specific. The majority, without a doubt, will disappoint you, but don't focus on the majority. Yeah, the minority will hold your arms up in the battle. The minority are the key to your victory. The crowd's never gonna be there for you. The core will be there for you.
Speaker 2:It is absolutely essential you learn, you know through a crisis, who your friends are and you learn who they're not, and some of those friendships gotta be redefined. I don't think you should burn a lot of bridges and I think you should be open to what you know restoration looks like. But I would just say again, here comes the word normalize. We need to normalize that the majority will disappoint. We need to focus not on those that disappointed, we need to focus on those. There were less than 10 people who, truly, I don't know how we would have gotten through what we got through. Apart from those 10 people, they are heroes. They are people I will forever remember. They will people. I will forever be grateful for people. I will forever tell their story and now I wanna be one of those people to other people in their time of adversity.
Speaker 1:What you just said. Oh, maybe we've been married a while, because I was just thinking something very similar to that that I think one of the things that kept us going through it and this doesn't mean this doesn't matter if you're in the ministry professionally or not, but we just wanted to remain blessable and I think that was something that governed every decision of like we can't understand a lot of what is happening, or why, or how, or like it was just felt like a scene out of a bad movie, but nonetheless, it didn't matter. We've said this in another podcast. My response is my responsibility, and so that, like, if nothing else, if you just are, like father, whether the enemy sent this or whether you're testing me, I don't know, but what I know is you see how I'm responding and so, just, if nothing else, sometimes that fighter in you can't fight.
Speaker 1:Maybe it's a divorce, it's a custody battle, it's a this, and sometimes you have to.
Speaker 1:Just being ugly doesn't ever really help you anyway, but like there's just times where we just had to be quiet, like not even just peacefully be able to defend ourselves, but we're like okay, you are our defender and you are just, and the only thing that I can control.
Speaker 1:Right now I can't control any of my circumstances, but by golly, at the end of the day, I am gonna walk through this in such a way that God sees me and says well done, and there's something to that that I think definitely can help steady you through the middle of a lot of junk. But then to what you just said. We have the phrase you created, the phrase of going the extra mile to prove love works, and that should be as if you've been through a crisis and you knew it was the few and not the many that helped you through it. That that should make you one of the few and hopefully, over time, the few will become the many. But that is something that God can forge in you that you will be the person that shows up. You will be the person that moves towards someone in pain, because most people don't know what to do, don't know what to say and they just kind of do the back dance.
Speaker 2:I think it's second Corinthians, chapter one. It could be first Corinthians, but he talks about take the comfort that you have received from God and comfort others with it. And, like in the first nine verses, he uses the word comfort 10 times. And so once we have received the comfort of God, once we've received the comfort of God through other people, then that produces a healing in our life. And then now we have a responsibility to give back and to comfort others.
Speaker 2:No one's gonna live this life without adversity the reason why this podcast is called Unwasted Pain. In a sinful, fallen, broken world, there's gonna be some pain, all right, but God never wants your pain to be wasted. In many regards, he wants us to fail forward. Don't fail the same way twice. Learn from your failure and move forward.
Speaker 2:And so in this I would just encourage everybody don't focus on what isn't working, focus on what works. And, honestly, it's why we say only love covers a multitude of sins. Only love never fails, only love works. And when we focused on that, there were still hard moments. There are still hard moments, but it kept us believing, it kept us hoping and it kept us loving.
Speaker 2:And in that you begin to sow, you begin to plow some new soil, and you're cultivating some good soil, and along the way you're having to remove some rocks and some thorns, but you can have complete and total confidence that a new harvest is coming, and I believe that new harvest can be even greater than the old harvest because of what God did through the crisis. He is a God of restoration. He's a God of full restoration, not partial restoration. A God of complete restoration, not partial restoration. And then, on top of that, he's even a God of double restoration, or double portion sometimes it says and so believe big and be a good steward of the adversity, and then I promise you you will get through it. And you'll get through it and you'll be a better person, and then you'll be better for other people in their moments of adversity.
Speaker 1:Well, we're almost there and for those of you, I think one of the things that kept me going if you have day one of your crisis, you know day one of your crisis there were days that even you know and I don't know if this fits in that same category of. This doesn't help me to you, but I'm like it will never be as bad as it was that first day, like we are still breathing, we are still kicking, we are still moving forward and whether we're walking or crawling or running from that point of pain, we are moving away from it and the healing will occur. So I hope that this has been helpful. I hope that you know that our hearts are with you anyway, that we can be a resource to you. We wanna be and hopefully this podcast has been that. So thanks for joining us and we'll see you next time.