Finding Beauty in the Fire (w/ Scott Hitzel)

In this episode, Shelley Komoszewski and Brock Anderson discuss the concept of beauty in relation to faith, suffering, and community. They are joined by Scott Hitzel, who shares his personal journey through the devastating California fires, highlighting how beauty can emerge from unexpected places, even in the midst of loss. The conversation explores the importance of community support, spiritual insights, and practical steps to recognize beauty in struggles, ultimately emphasizing the resilience of faith and the presence of God in difficult times.

Chapters

• 0:00 Introduction to Beauty and Faith
• 1:36 The Nature of Beauty: Discovery vs. Determination
• 3:44 Scott's Journey Through the California Fires
• 11:42 Finding Beauty in Suffering
• 20:26 The Role of Community and Support
• 28:25 Practical Takeaways for Recognizing Beauty
• 36:05 Conclusion and Next Steps

Transcript

Shelley Komoszewski (00:14)
Welcome to In and For podcast where we navigate culture and faith in the way that helps us see Jesus clearly. I'm Shelley Komoszewski and whether you're confused, curious, or wanting confidence to follow Christ in today's world, we are glad you're here.

Brock Anderson (00:34)
I'm Brock Anderson.

And today we're talking about a very important topic. We're talking about the distorted view of beauty that our culture has, a misplaced beauty. And one of the things that we really want to highlight today is, is beauty determined or is it discovered? Do we actually get to determine what's beautiful or is it something we discover? Cause it's been determined by somebody else, namely our creator. And with us, we have Scott Hitzel, who we're going to introduce in just a minute, who has an amazing story.

Shelley Komoszewski (00:53)
Mmm.

Scott Hitzel (01:04)
you

Brock Anderson (01:06)
about beauty being discovered in an unexpected place. And that's one of the things that makes beauty beautiful is that it's unexpected. And so very quickly, I want to set us up with what, how do we know that beauty is not determined by us? And one of the clear reasons that God has given us to show us that beauty is not determined by us is that we're wrong a lot about what we think is beautiful. Everything from the passions that we pursue and the desires

Scott Hitzel (01:14)
Thank

There.

Brock Anderson (01:36)
that we have and the things that we seek to go after to find beauty, they fail us, they falter, they fall apart, and they lead to disaster.

and they end up letting us down because they're temporal. But when we think of beauty as something to be discovered, we start to see beauty in these unexpected places, even in a place like suffering. One of the greatest apologetics in regard to the existence of suffering is that we have a God who not only understands or acknowledges suffering, but actually entered in to suffering.

Scott Hitzel (01:52)
Thank

Brock Anderson (02:15)
and entered into suffering in a way that brought about the most beautiful thing, namely salvation through Christ alone. in that instance, we see suffering producing beauty in an unexpected way. And we see this in our own lives where the things that we often see as most beautiful is when beauty emerges from these unexpected places like a sunrise erupting from darkness, these things that

Shelley Komoszewski (02:20)
Mm.

Scott Hitzel (02:24)
.

you

Shelley Komoszewski (02:42)
you

Scott Hitzel (02:43)
.

Brock Anderson (02:43)
that demonstrate a kind of resurrection where everything falls apart, but then this seed of beauty

emerges. And that's the kind of story that Scott has for us today as well. And Scott, we're just thrilled to have you on with us today.

Scott Hitzel (02:52)
you

⁓

Shelley Komoszewski (02:58)
We are.

Scott is a close friend of the ministry and someone whose journey has left a lasting mark on Brock and I. And your experience with the recent California fires has given you such a hard-won perspective on beauty, brokenness, and the presence of God.

Scott Hitzel (03:00)
Here.

Brock Anderson (03:18)
Yeah, Scott's ⁓ a lead guide for the Paterson Group's life plan and stratop processes. This is a place that helps organizations and people find their path as also an executive pastor and leader. And as Scott's gonna walk us through his path has been disrupted in a way that many of us can't even comprehend going through the experience that he's gonna walk us through, let alone,

Scott Hitzel (03:33)
Thank

Shelley Komoszewski (03:36)
Mm.

Brock Anderson (03:44)
understand what it's like to walk through that, but his journey through that experience and finding God's presence and finding that unexpected beauty and that is what makes this story so powerful and it perfectly illustrates why beauty is something that's discovered and not something that we plan

Shelley Komoszewski (03:56)
It is. ⁓

Brock Anderson (04:03)
out or determine in our pursuits.

Shelley Komoszewski (04:07)
So Scott, welcome to the show. We are so excited you're here.

Scott Hitzel (04:12)
I am so grateful to be with both of you as my friends and as just peers and colleagues and just want to just say that my desire, my prayer is to encourage anyone who's going through something that it doesn't seem to make sense because I can relate. And

when Brock was sharing in the very beginning this whole process of we assume something, but it doesn't go that way. And when you don't know what to do. And I want to just start by sharing ⁓ quickly to set this up about this all actually began two and a half years ago, although the actual pinnacle moment, the turning point was just this year where I had a dear friend of mine who

⁓ She has a gifting towards spiritual dreams and understandings and she came to me and said, I have a word from the Lord for you. And in those moments when someone does that for you, depending on your position in life and where you're at, you may say, I don't believe in that, that's crazy. Or I wanna lean in and listen to determine if that's crazy. And because you never know.

Shelley Komoszewski (05:20)
Right, right.

Scott Hitzel (05:24)
But it was very unique in that I really trust this individual and I've seen the Lord use this individual and she told me the following, Scott, you've lived your years, ⁓ your life for many years, for decades. In the wisdom of the Psalms, the Lord spoke to me last night vividly in a dream and said, you need to begin to prepare your life to be disorientated and to live in the Psalms.

Now, I didn't understand what that meant for some time, but that's never left my mind. And then it began in January of this year when it all began to unfold and make sense, where my family found themselves in the epicenter of the Eaton fire. We were literally ⁓ just to give just a few minute overview for the listeners so that they understand what this moment of disorientation was before the reorientation could begin.

And then ultimately a new orientation into finding this beauty where it was January 7th, 2025. And literally we would find ourselves in the epicenter of the Eaton fire where there was no power. So it was pitch blackout. It was 60 to 80 mile power winds consistent. I vividly remember the day because I remember putting my trash cans out front as they do in Southern California and

They had already gone over the house, onto the backyard, and we were completely disorientated. It was very loud in the home. The windows are rattling, trees are snapping. All of these sounds are going on. And my twin sons looked out the back window and they said, what is that? And what I would see is a giant ball of fire.

And if I could show you that photo, would understand. And for those of you that are listening, I just want you to imagine ⁓ just at the time, it just was a fire. It was nothing more than a fire. But within 15 minutes, this fire had gone all the way up a mountain. And what we would later discover and learn is that most people in my area did not know about the fire because the emergency vac system was not working. So.

Shelley Komoszewski (07:32)
Mmm.

No. ⁓

Scott Hitzel (07:43)
The only reason that our family even saw what was taking place is we happened to live on the ridge. So if it wasn't for that, we would be completely in the dark because there was no TV, there's no radio, there's no anything going on, and all of the noise, you're just hunkering down. So what I would later learn is that these flames that we saw were 40 feet tall. ⁓ So that's taller than

you know, a four-story building, ⁓ they would extend across the entire mountain that you could see, and that they were moving at an accelerated rate. The rate was six football fields per minute. Now, Brock has told me in the past what an incredible athlete he was and how fast he was.

Shelley Komoszewski (08:27)
Whoa.

Scott Hitzel (08:36)
But Brock was not that fast. ⁓ Six football fields a minute is unfathomable. It's unfathomable. I knew at that moment our lives would never be the same. I knew at that moment that the decisions we made in the next few moments would determine our life. The only thing I knew to do, you guys, was to tell my family, my twin boys and my wife,

Shelley Komoszewski (08:43)
crazy.

Scott Hitzel (09:04)
gather our prescriptions and our pets and whatever else can fit into our two cars. I need to go tell our neighbors. I need to go tell our neighbors. So I ran next door and I was literally pounding on the door. Jack, Jack pounding on his windows. Jack, Jack's my 90 year old neighbor who lost his wife earlier in the year. saying, Jack, you need to get out. I'm running to the neighbor on our other side. Her name is Heather. Heather, Heather.

Pay attention, get out. Heather's our other neighbor on the other side who lost her spouse less than a year ago and she's raising her kids by herself. I'm having Hannah and Ryan, everybody come look in our backyard because we had a vantage point. We could see what was coming when no one else could. And we said, look, look, look, danger. By this stage,

My family had packed everything into our car, into our two cars. And at that, that was a very challenging moment. One of my two sons has autism. He lives with special needs. And for those of you that are familiar with autism, routine and regimented activity is really their path forward to peace. Well, when you're seeing a 40 foot wall advance at you,

There is no time to go grab his favorite blanket or his pillow or his item of comfort. So I asked Ethan, my other son, to get in the car with Lisa. And this is all I could say, you guys. Lisa, get to the Rose Bowl. That's about four miles from where we were. Get to the Rose Bowl. I will find you there. You just have to get there. If I could show you a picture now, everything around us is on fire.

Shelley Komoszewski (10:55)
you

Scott Hitzel (11:01)
⁓ Trees are falling down, telephone poles are falling down, people are getting into fender benders, there's no traffic lights. It is being in sheer chaos. I had Ryan and our pets in the other car, Ryan's crying, and we eventually would find ourselves at the Rose Bowl together. But here's the thing, while we were temporarily out of danger, we had no idea what to do.

Shelley Komoszewski (11:12)
Mm-hmm.

Scott Hitzel (11:32)
And I think that's part of discovering this whole process as we're talking about today, that even in the midst of it, I still had no idea what to do.

Shelley Komoszewski (11:34)
Mm-hmm.

Scott Hitzel (11:42)
For the next eight weeks, we would be in eight different hotels. We would...

Shelley Komoszewski (11:46)
No, Scott.

Scott Hitzel (11:49)
I lived for two months with only the clothes on my back and what was in a backpack. Every hotel we would go to, everybody's just crying, screaming because it's, finding out at that moment. We just lost everything we owned. I just lost everything I owned.

Shelley Komoszewski (12:06)
Yeah. Right.

Scott Hitzel (12:09)
At the end of this as it was all tallied out 80,000 people would ultimately be displaced 9,000 homes were completely destroyed and I'm only one of those stories you guys I I want to highlight the fact that I'm only one of those stories and usually when something in your life is has Disorientated you you run to your circle of friends or to your neighbor to go get that

There was no neighbor. There was no neighborhood. My city was on fire. We lost 135 businesses that night. That would include a gas station blowing up, a church completely gone that had been there for 100 years, our pet store, our post office, our grocery store. Everything is gone. Now to fast forward into that story just for the sake of time so we can pull out the applications and the principles.

Shelley Komoszewski (12:39)
Hmm.

Scott Hitzel (13:03)
We would go on this journey for months of not knowing where anything would come from. And our friends and our colleagues set up a GoFundMe page, they set up a Venmo page, and it became the true incarnation of what Old Testament talks about, daily manna, where we would receive manna for the day to know where will we be sleeping this evening? Where will we be eating from today?

Shelley Komoszewski (13:14)
you

Mm.

Scott Hitzel (13:32)
Where do we go from here when there's at the time over 150,000 people looking for that Airbnb or those 10 hotel rooms in the city that are going on? Where do you go? What do you do? And I can share with you as a testimony that every day when we would receive manna, it would then give us hope for tomorrow. It was just what we needed that day. What would end up occurring is that

Shelley Komoszewski (13:40)
Right.

Mmm.

Scott Hitzel (14:00)
due to a life group that we had been in for over a decade, years ago, one of the couples reached out ⁓ and just said, we are so sorry for what's taking place, but we want to share with you, as you've come up and visited us many times now as we're living in Montana, that we have a second property that we actually had on the market.

We have gone through the process of taking that home off of the market because we know you have nowhere to go. And we just need you to get here. We just need you to get here to heal for your sons who, our families grew up together. And so in the middle of February, we made our way from Southern California to negative 20 degrees in Montana. ⁓

Shelley Komoszewski (14:51)
Just a little different.

Scott Hitzel (14:54)
It's just a little different. And hey, here's the truth. I'm still wearing the same clothes. We don't have jackets. We don't have winter gear. People were trying to donate things to us endlessly. The issue is we don't have a closet. We don't have somewhere to put these things. Probably five years ago on Netflix, like many of you guys, you may have watched the TV series, a mini series called The Minimalist.

Shelley Komoszewski (15:00)
Hmm. ⁓

Scott Hitzel (15:23)
And I remember thinking, ⁓ that would be so cool. Like Lisa, that's my wife's name, Lisa, wouldn't it be cool to be a minimalist and just have just what you need? Well, now having experienced what I can tell you, no, it's not cool. It's not cool to have two shirts total and every day you're standing in line with quarters to ⁓ do your laundry so that your children have clothes for the next day.

Shelley Komoszewski (15:23)
No.

Scott Hitzel (15:52)
and you're doing that for months. So what I learned in this though, you guys, was this, that if I'm not careful, I can misconstrue words that are even used in spiritual contexts, and I could find myself discouraged, defeated, destroyed. Because if I looked at my life in that moment, I wouldn't have said, ⁓ you're blessed.

Shelley Komoszewski (16:19)
Right. Right.

Scott Hitzel (16:21)
And yet when I understand scripture and when I understand what it means to be blessed and to understand, and this became a critical point of our story, that being blessed is a God-given state, that where my soul can be solely satisfied, of my circumstance. So whether the Lord gives or that he takes away, I can still bless his name and say that I'm blessed. Now I may not have what I think I need,

Shelley Komoszewski (16:47)
Yes. Yes.

Scott Hitzel (16:51)
And yet the people around us rallied together to give me what I needed. And so I also then began just through this journey of understanding. My life, I felt like, looked like the chaff of the Psalms. They're just blown away, they're useless. It's something that the world even throws away. And yet when I began to understand my identity in Christ, we could say, no, I'm still blessed because I was planted like a tree next to the waters.

And whether I'm in a year of drought or when the heat comes, literally, when the 40-foot wall of heat comes.

Shelley Komoszewski (17:30)
than minus 20.

Scott Hitzel (17:32)
or the minus 20, either direction that you wanna go. We were playing in the extremes. We just thought, if we're gonna do it, let's just go all out extreme here. And so regardless of that season, regardless of the temperature, the scriptures say that I can still bear fruit, that I can still have shade, my leaves still can be green. How do you say that your leaves are green?

Shelley Komoszewski (17:35)
Yep. Yes.

Yes.

Scott Hitzel (17:59)
when 9,000 of your neighbors have also lost everything they owned, right down the street from us, a man went back into his home to get his Down syndrome son, and the man was in a wheelchair and neither would come out. And I have story after story like that of what it looked like that evening, and then to ultimately say, and yet somehow the way maker, our God, our creator,

the one who watches over us would provide a way that was way outside of even my understanding to say, I need to pursue and discover what's next because I'm unable to in this current setting. So as we drove 1200 miles to Montana, which is a place we love to vacation, where there's literally bison, you know, instead of traffic, where there's

trees instead of skyscrapers and just saying we're here, we own nothing. We literally own nothing. Let's begin again. And then to say that in our local area, my son Ryan, who lives with autism was able to, the regional center of Los Angeles got ahold of our family and said, we are looking for a story of a young adult who

⁓ is living with special needs and how the fire impacted their lives. And so Ryan was selected by the local regional center to have his story shared on behalf of all the families that have children with special needs. And KTLA and some others picked up that story. And even he, in the way in which he sees the world, was able to declare, God is still good. I still have breath, so I have purpose.

and yet I don't know what that means. And all of my friends are in Los Angeles. All of my friends are here, but I have to go somewhere else for now. So now we are speaking to you guys from Montana, and we're just in this process of understanding what does it mean to be blessed despite circumstances? What does it mean to give my son some axes and say,

Shelley Komoszewski (19:58)
you

Scott Hitzel (20:26)
go ahead and do some therapy and just chop down those trees. And these aren't the types of trees that they're just gentle trees. These are the trees you yell timber when they're coming down and going, we're a dozen trees in and we're just letting God ⁓ therapy nature, it's community of people of faith do what it's supposed to do so that we can get to where we even are able to begin speaking about it.

It would take months before we would laugh. We still have nightmares from what we saw, what we experienced, and people that we know that were impacted. And yet there's something when I orientate my life, even when it's being disorientated, when I orientate my life and my identity and who I can be as a child of God, and when I orientate my life around His words, not the words of the world.

that are telling me you're chaff, you've lost everything, you have nothing. And while that may appear to be true, I still have everything I need. I still was receiving manna every day. And I was still being loved by my maker every day. And so I believe, and unless I'm mistaken, I believe that's the story I was supposed to share with you guys today. And now if I'm sharing the wrong story, just let me know.

Shelley Komoszewski (21:48)
Hahaha.

Scott Hitzel (21:53)
But otherwise, my prayer is that that story can be a blessing and the realization of regardless of where you are in life, you can still be blessed. There's a difference between a blessing and being blessed. And what I also learned is that a blessing is not what the world will tell you it is. The world's gonna tell us that the blessing is, that promotion at work. that bling that you throw up on the gram. ⁓

Shelley Komoszewski (22:17)
Hmm.

Scott Hitzel (22:19)
You know, you got that A in school girl, you are doing so well, you are blessed. No. And it's also not what some of the saints within the church are telling when we say, how are you doing? And they're like, I'm so blessed and highly favored. I'm like, really? Really? How does that work out in your theology or in your apologetics or in your mind when everything you had was lost? We had people saying, it's just stuff.

And yet, I believe that the Lord can give and that the Lord can take away and that I can still find a blessing even when I'm being disorientated.

Brock Anderson (22:57)
Yeah, that's a.

incredibly powerful story, Scott, and I love how you walk, even as you walk through, you see the breadcrumbs of God's grace throughout the story of the people that you're encountering, that you're in community with, the people reaching out, the house provided, the daily manna, as you described it, is enough for the day. it just, it reminds me of just one of the things that's true about God and about

Shelley Komoszewski (23:00)
So good.

Brock Anderson (23:29)
his relationship to us is that he's under no obligation to be that way toward us. It's only because of his grace and his mercy and his love toward us that he gives us those glimpses and those reminders that I'm here and I'm here and I'm here in the midst of this and I'm in this with you. And I think it's just one of the most powerful testimonies that we see throughout ⁓ anybody who is deeply connected

Scott Hitzel (23:34)
Thanks.

That's right.

Brock Anderson (23:59)
to the Lord in their faith that they always have that story of but there was God and but there was God and here's how the Lord showed up and from the outside looking in oftentimes people are just like ⁓ man things just must have been unbearable unfathomable you must have been just at the end of everything but within you have the Holy Spirit ministering to you you have the people of God coming around you and that could just be a powerful that is a powerful testimony

Shelley Komoszewski (24:05)
you

Scott Hitzel (24:25)
Okay.

Brock Anderson (24:29)
of God's presence in the midst of just incredible chaos and difficulty. So, but as you look back on that, what helped you recognize

the glimpses of beauty or goodness, even as everything familiar was being stripped away? What had prepared you spiritually for something like that?

Scott Hitzel (24:52)
Well, as I mentioned at the forefront and this is someone actually told me to prepare. And so I believe that it got in his goodness and in his loving kindness actually gave me a little heads up. Although to be honest, I didn't know what that breadcrumb meant.

Shelley Komoszewski (25:13)
Right.

Scott Hitzel (25:14)
it still said, begin to orientate yourself. And I believe that all of us have promptings, whether through another individual, whether through listening to the word, whether through being in a community that just says something in your life needs to be ready for something. And that was a very powerful lesson for us. And also the lesson of just, who will I listen to in this moment? Will I turn to scripture?

Shelley Komoszewski (25:39)
⁓ so good.

Scott Hitzel (25:42)
or will I turn to what the news is saying 24 seven ⁓ of how everything is lost and how, because that begins to play on you. And the Psalm chapter one, it does something very interesting and it talks about the fact that I can listen to the world ⁓ in the ways of it. And there's a progression to that, but I can also listen to the progression of the word of God. And it says, the first thing that I do is I delight in it.

Shelley Komoszewski (25:45)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Scott Hitzel (26:11)
And I actually see beauty in it. And then it goes on and it says, and so then I'll meditate on it day and night. And so what happens is this, the word meditate there, I began to understand means to chatter. It's da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da. And so the question became, what am I thinking about all day? And as a listener, what are you thinking? What is obsessing your thoughts all day? And if we work the passage backwards,

Shelley Komoszewski (26:19)
⁓

Hope.

Scott Hitzel (26:41)
What that reflects is the current position of my posture and of my heart. It means that's what I delight in. That's what I find beauty in. And so when I'm chattering all day about this or that, and it could be a worry, a fear, it could be about a job or a new car or a certain type of clothing or a relationship, that's actually what my soul is delighting in. And if you feed that, you need to be very careful what you're eating.

Shelley Komoszewski (26:48)
Yes.

you

Scott Hitzel (27:11)
And so I think that Brock, if that makes any sense, that the concept of first delighting and then meditating and then asking myself, what am I meditating on? That's what I'm delighting in and challenging myself every day with that lesson.

Brock Anderson (27:28)
Yeah, that's incredible. Some great takeaways there. And I think as we move into landing the plane here and think about, what are some practical takeaways that we have for those that are just challenged in the midst of their circumstances. One of the steps that I take, hey, this is an inspiring and encouraging story and just a great example to look at of just, wow, look at how God gave him the ability and gave his family the ability to persevere and even gave him a platform.

with this talk about the glory of God on the airwaves throughout the airways of California. But what do I do in the midst of the struggle that I'm going through? My house didn't burn down, but I feel like my life is burning down. And so what does that look like? What are the next steps that I take? And I think we want to walk through two or three of those and just kind of ponder on those a little bit.

Shelley Komoszewski (28:11)
Yes.

Scott Hitzel (28:24)
So

good.

Shelley Komoszewski (28:25)
Yeah, when beauty feels buried in our lives, we just here's three just simple takeaways that we can remember. We pray for eyes to see differently. And Scott, I'm going to come back to you on that one and just how you prayed that through and how you saw God deliver it. I'm praying for lips that speak honestly and we admit both the sorrow and the hope. And so we're speaking to ourselves and the world around us. And then we're praying for a heart that is tethered.

to God, his word and his people. And so just three practical takeaways when beauty feels buried in your life. And so Scott, did you, how did God give you eyes to see differently?

Scott Hitzel (29:06)
Shelly, that's such a key question. And I think that regardless of where we're at in life, and I understand my story is one of 9,000 just of the Eaton fire. It's one of tens of thousands, as many more, 80,000 people are displaced because of this. You may not be living through the most

expensive national disaster American history, but you're going through what you're going through. And to understand and to not compare that to either this story or another story, it will allow you to begin to have the scales removed from your eyes to say, my story isn't important enough for me to even think about or to talk about. And we have to have the scales of our eyes removed and to go,

Shelley Komoszewski (29:38)
Yes.

Scott Hitzel (29:56)
I need to see clearly here. I need to see what it is that I'm a part of. And really a part of that again for me was who am I going to choose to listen to, the news outlets or the scriptures? Where will I find my identity? Will I find my identity as a child of God or will I find my identity as one of the victims of this circumstance? And that's not to say that I wasn't impacted by.

Shelley Komoszewski (29:58)
us.

Yes.

Scott Hitzel (30:26)
but where's my identity rooted in? And that really became, what will I do? And then to see with eyes to go, I see everyone's pain. I see everyone's pain. What can I do for that? I can stand like a tree next, if that was planted next to the waters. And so here's what I understood, that if I understand that I'm planted, that means that Jesus took me and that he placed me here.

Shelley Komoszewski (30:28)
Yes.

Hmm

Scott Hitzel (30:55)
And if I'm planted, I've been placed. And so I don't need to doubt where I've been placed because I've been planted by Jesus. And so I can't doubt where I've been placed in life. I can't doubt the process that I'm going through in life. And ultimately it's for the benefit that His glory would be revealed and given to others. So I think the eyes to see that even whatever our listeners are going through today.

Shelley Komoszewski (31:00)
So good.

Yes.

Scott Hitzel (31:24)
You can still benefit other people's lives and go out there and see what you can do and then surrender what you can't control. I didn't know where we would sleep and I would surrender that, but man, it came every day. And at the same time, it doesn't mean I needed to sit there. I could still be active and participate and try to serve other people.

Shelley Komoszewski (31:27)
Absolutely.

Hmm.

So good, Scott, thank you. So I pray for eyes to see differently and your story is such a beautiful testimony of that. And then lips that speak honestly. And I think Scott, you have modeled that for us so well. You've told your story with both sorrow and hope. You've named the loss and the goodness together. And not only does that refrain how we see our own sorrows and our own wounds and our own losses.

but it phrases how we tell the story to a world that's watching. And something that I know Brock and I have talked about on other podcasts, but when there's deep loss, in those moments when you say this hurts, this is through snot, tears, you're saying, yes, this is unbearable and God is so good and he is so faithful and he will not let me go. And when we have a posture and lips that speak that honestly,

That's what the world around us notices. That's what the world says, I want that faith. I want that. And I don't know how to get that. And so being honest that what I know that in times of unbearable loss in my life, when I'm so focused on what I've lost and I'm not asking for eyes to see beauty in the unexpected or lips to say, yes, that is true. And God is good. What brought you to said, but God is here, but God is at work.

Scott Hitzel (32:45)
That's right.

Shelley Komoszewski (33:14)
You know, some of, I love, Ephesians says, but God, and I have a friend who has a t-shirt she wears and God, and God steps in, in the scene and God starts to work and God shapes the situation to be so much more than what it actually is. And so eyes to see differently, lips to speak honestly and Brock, a heart that is tethered. I love that word tethered to God, his word and his people. Walk us through it.

Scott Hitzel (33:31)
Yeah.

Brock Anderson (33:39)
Yeah.

Yeah, I think

one of the things that you said.

Scott that really resonated with me was the vantage point that you all had when you first saw the fire where you said we could see what was coming when no one else could. And when that when we think about that from a spiritual point of view and thinking about the times of suffering, the hard times, the difficult times, they're going to come. Right. This is talks about this in First Peter in detail about about the now for a short time, if necessary, you've had to endure various trials and these kinds of things.

Shelley Komoszewski (33:52)
Hmm.

Scott Hitzel (33:59)
Okay.

Brock Anderson (34:15)
are going to happen. But when they

do, we want to have a vantage point that we can see what's coming. And one of the ways that we do that is that we build up our spiritual resources by being connected to God's Word, by being connected to the Holy Spirit, always praying, Lord, make me sensitive to the direction of your Holy Spirit, by always having a confessional life and a life of repentance and coming before God in that way. And by being connected to his people, by having

Scott Hitzel (34:18)
Sorry.

Shelley Komoszewski (34:27)
Mm.

Brock Anderson (34:44)
and those around us that can speak into us.

Because when we don't have those spiritual resources, when we're not tethered to God in that kind of way, we don't have the stuff that we need to endure through those trials. And so the trials deplete us so much that we're in the negative. And now all of a sudden the doubts turn into something far worse than doubts. But when we are...

Scott Hitzel (34:50)
Okay.

Shelley Komoszewski (34:57)
you

Brock Anderson (35:09)
tethered well to God's people, we're tethered well to his spirit, we're tethered well to his people. And

throughout ⁓ the process of life, just staying connected deeply, then we're consistently building up those spiritual resources so that when trials come in, when trials come, we have the resources necessary to take on that trial and to see it for what it is. It's God working in our life and he's going to be with us and he's going to give

reminders of his presence and reminders of his goodness and and reminders that that he is providing throughout all of this. But if we don't have those, if we're not constantly ⁓ intentional about building those resources, we put ourselves in a really dangerous position that we don't have to put ourselves in and that we shouldn't put ourselves in.

Shelley Komoszewski (35:46)
Yes.

Scott Hitzel (35:48)
Right.

Shelley Komoszewski (36:05)
Well, unfortunately, our time is winding up here. could talk to you guys on the subject for hours more. Scott, you are always welcome on this podcast. Thanks for your honesty,

for your helping us see Jesus clearly, even when it feels like there's nothing beautiful in our lives right now. So God's best to you and your sweet family as you continue this journey. And for you listening, maybe beauty feels misplaced in your life right now.

But that doesn't mean it's gone. Even in the ashes, God is working. So Brock, any teasers for next month? Dun dun dun.

Brock Anderson (36:44)
Yeah, so we are talking about misplaced and distorted view of beauty here and our next episode we'll talk about our culture's distorted view.

of justice. What's the difference between our culture's understanding of justice and God's understanding of justice? And how does this actually impact the kinds of conversations that we have with people? And we'll even approach this from an evangelistic approach as well. How does this approach how we tell people about the gospel? We tell people about the story of God.

Shelley Komoszewski (36:55)
Ooh.

Scott Hitzel (37:00)
Okay.

Brock Anderson (37:15)
it has an incredible impact because if we get justice wrong, we end up getting the gospel wrong. We come across as talking up here, down to people up there, or people down here, instead of coming down

Shelley Komoszewski (37:21)
Yes.

Brock Anderson (37:29)
and saying, I'm a sinner in need of grace, you're a sinner in need of grace. Let me tell you where we can find grace in Christ.

Shelley Komoszewski (37:36)
That was a really great teaser.

Scott Hitzel (37:38)
Really

good. Well, thank you guys. Right, I'm like, well, how do I get involved in that? You guys, thank you so much for the opportunity to spend some time with you as my friends and to share our story and to share what scripture can do. It's been an honor and a privilege. And so thank you so much.

Shelley Komoszewski (37:40)
Now Scott wants to come back.

love it.

Brock Anderson (37:59)
Thank you, we'll see you all next time.