Episode 14-Hope in the Middle of Crisis with Lynne Rienstra

Where is God in your crisis? Aliza Prokop sits down with Lynne Rienstra—author, speaker, and ministry leader—for a powerful conversation about finding your safe place in Him, even in the midst of deep pain. Lynne shares the lies she once believed, how God met her in her brokenness, and the truth that you are not alone in the hard things. This episode is a reminder that God often uses our deepest wounds as the starting point for healing, purpose, and lasting fruit.

Resources: 

• Sacred Refuge: Finding Unexpected Shelter in Your Crisis by Lynne Rienstra
• Lynne Rienstra’s website
• AMP Counseling
• Follow Aliza on:
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• PFC Audio Video - Producer Mike Segovia

Hashtags: #TheAMPcast #AlizaProkop #LynneRienstra #Trafficking #Crisis #God #Faith #Healing #Trauma #MentalHealth #Therapy #Counseling #Podcast #Podcasting #PodcastCommunity #PFCAudioVideo

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:03

Good evening. We begin tonight with an issue that continues to affect millions long after the original events have passed. Trauma. Mental health experts say trauma from earlier life experiences often resurfaces years later, influencing emotional responses, physical health, and relationships. While the incidents may be in the past, the body and brain can remain in a heightened state of survival.

SPEAKER_02 0:34

I wish I could just forget about what happened to me so long ago. But these memories haunt me.

SPEAKER_03 0:43

I know it's over, but it doesn't feel over. I need help, but I'm afraid to open up about my past.

SPEAKER_01 0:52

I survived, but I don't feel alive. I want to heal, but I'm scared of what that means.

SPEAKER_06 1:44

Her name is Lynn Rienstra, and she just retired from Samaritan's Purse, would we say? As the regional director, and she's seen crisis close-up all around the world, and she's here today to talk to us about women, crisis, and of course, my topic is trauma, so I think it all goes together. Thank you for being here. I know that it was last minute, but I appreciate you joining us very much. Thanks, Aliza. I feel like God's put this together. I do too. I do too. So tell us about this book. By the way, I'm holding the book. It's called Sacred Refuge: Finding Unexpected Shelter in Your Crisis. A more perfect book could not be had for what I do. And I am very excited to learn about it, and it won a Golden Scroll Award. So tell us all about this book.

SPEAKER_05 2:36

Well, it was born out of my work for Sumerians Purse over the course of 12 years. My work took me all over the globe, Central and South America with Operation Christmas Child, East and West Africa. I was in Liberia just before and then after the Ebola crisis. I was in the Middle East, I won't mention specific countries. Met a grandmother who had lost both a daughter and two grandsons to mortar fire. Two years after the fact, still in deep, deep grief, as you can well imagine, any of us would be. And from the stories that I was seeing unfold before my eyes all around the globe, I saw connections between those women, our global sisters, suffering, this woman suffering for the cause of Christ. She was attacked because she and her family were attacked because they were Christians. I began to see this connection between current suffering, global suffering, modern women's issues, and then biblical women. So for example, I'm in Uganda watching children and moms queued up to get food at a refugee camp that the ministry was operating. They'd come from Sudan, food insecurity, migration, et cetera. And I thought, oh my goodness, that's that's Ruth and Naomi. Exactly. And so the book was born out of seeing this connection and really wanting to call women, readers, into a sacred sisterhood across time and space in which God is saying to us, I know you are living in a broken world. I know that you are hurting deeply.

SPEAKER_06 4:13

Yes.

SPEAKER_05 4:13

But I will never leave you nor forsake you, and nothing can separate you from my love. This book is an invitation out of hiding, because we believe lies about God, into the soul-safe place that Jesus alone makes for us.

SPEAKER_06 4:28

That is amazing. I am honored to even have you here. So again, thank you. Especially when I see the work every day. I have had I've had some human trafficking survivors as clients of mine. And trauma is universal, would you not say? I would.

SPEAKER_05 4:49

It's the direct effect of living in a broken, fallen world, right? Um it's the enemy's modus operandi, right? To steal, kill, and destroy.

SPEAKER_06 4:58

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 4:59

To do it in any number of forms, but trafficking seems one of the most extreme. It's basically saying, I do not see you as an image bearer of the living God. I am seeing you as an object for pleasure or profit.

SPEAKER_06 5:12

Exactly. And so you kind of took the power back by writing this book and showing people that they have purpose that they can heal, no doubt, correct?

SPEAKER_05 5:23

Yes. And and just to share, Aliza, as I was writing, the Lord called me to fast. First of all, to do the Daniel fast before I started chapter one and during the writing of chapter one, and then to shift to a media fast. So for 10 months of writing, I did not watch my favorite Netflix series. I wasn't consuming media. And it was a powerful way of the Lord just kind of cleaning out my spirit, cleaning out my ability to hear him more clearly, and that's what was needed for this book. So when I went to write chapter by chapter, he was bringing clarity to me about which biblical women, which modern women's stories. But at the end of every chapter, there's actually kind of a, I would just call it a Jesus calling section where Jesus is speaking to the reader directly and saying, I see you, I know you, I know where you are, and you are not alone. And you matter. Not forgotten. You matter.

SPEAKER_06 6:21

You matter. This is something that I think more people need to hear. And and you know, when we see your background and I see all the things you've done and all the places you've gone, little old person in Ohio or little old person in Pennsylvania might think, well, this wouldn't apply to me because I'm not in Uganda. But it does.

SPEAKER_05 6:42

Oh, it absolutely does. And really the modern women's stories take us into the hearts of and daily experience of women just like you and me. People whose marriages maybe are feeling kind of shaky right now, people whose kids are walking out the back door of the church, people who have breast cancer diagnoses. That was me during the writing of the book, right? Here I am uh in a living laboratory for what I'm writing about, which is where is God in my crisis? Can I trust him? Is he real still? Will he be there for me? Um I'm coming home from surgery, if you can imagine. My husband's driving me home from breast cancer surgery. Somebody runs a stop sign right in front of us, T-bones our car. If I had been sitting in the front seat next to my husband, I don't know if I would have been here today. That's God's business. I'm in the middle of writing the book, right? And here's why I shared the story. It really was a living laboratory for what I was saying to women readers, and that is you're not alone in the hard stuff. Because from the moment I heard I had cancer, waiting six weeks for surgery, all the radiation, but coming home from surgery and the accident happening, which totaled a car. We walked away with no bumps and bruises. And you were totaled the car. Yeah, three hours out from under the knife. Oh my god. It was one of those. Anyway, but I was completely sheltered under the shadow of the Most High. I mean, I was living out Psalm 91. Wow. And I am not a super saint, Elisa. I have made so many mistakes in my life. We all have. Uh God has been really gracious and patient with me. Uh what I want to say to our listeners is that sacred refuge, that supernatural shelter under his wings is not for super saints. This is for every single child of God.

SPEAKER_06 8:38

That's right. And just because you may have done something you're not proud of, that doesn't mean that you're not equally as important in his eyes. Right. So you begin the book by talking about your first crisis where your father left the family when you were four. Right. Can you talk about a little on the impact of that?

SPEAKER_05 8:56

Yeah. What is it about age four? I have seen a pattern, and I'm sure you have too in your work, that four seems to be when memories begin, but it's also when some significantly traumatic event occurs, and it kind of is, it builds a, it it forms a fissure or break in our psyche or our spirit. I don't know the inner workings of it. And that's what happened to me. The enemy saw an opportunity and took it to lie to me, and he said, Well, yeah, if your dad leaves, and he's the one who's supposed to be there for you, everybody's gonna leave. Yeah, right. Everybody he spoke to my identity and he just eviscerated me. He just said, You are nothing and no one. He just stole any core sense of value or worth or identity, and that's that's how he operates, right? He hates us and that's what he does. Yes, he does. And then he said, and the best you're gonna be able to hope for is to fake everybody out. And so my life shifted from where it should have been, which was, you know, two parents loving me, calling out God's best purposes, you know, telling me I was valuable, that uh they did the best they could. I I don't blame them, but uh it shifted from that to a foundation of performance. I am what I do, I am what I accomplish, my value comes from what I achieve. Only perfect girls are loved. Those are the lies that I adopted. And really the Lord's been freeing me from for many years.

SPEAKER_06 10:18

Wow. And I think that's so important for people to hear because it's and I tried to teach my children this when they were little. I love you just for being, not for doing. Yes. I hope they learned that. Yes. Uh because it's a tough lesson to learn if you don't. And look how far you look where you are. I mean, it's amazing what you've done.

SPEAKER_05 10:39

Well, that's God. I mean, it's like I'm there.

SPEAKER_06 10:42

There's no other explanation for that. Yeah. So you talk about Psalm 91, the secret place, right? So finding that soul-safe place in God. What's that look like for you?

SPEAKER_05 10:53

Uh it looks like a family crisis last year that sent me into a tailspin for a while. Okay. Tied into my old issues of um fear of failure, long time fear of failure. Okay. And God inviting me through that crisis, here I am teaching it, I've written on it, I'm saying it's true, but he's giving me another laboratory to walk it out. And God inviting me through that crisis to come in nearer. So if you if we're thinking about Psalm 91, we're and we're saying, you know, the psalmist is saying he will guard you, he will cover you with his pinions. Those are the strong flight feathers of a bird. And they're the ones that really provide both shade from the sun and shade from the rain. It's the place where the Lord is saying, come higher up and further in, come right in under the feathers, next to my body. It's what a baby bird does with a mommy bird instinctively, right? Especially in a rainstorm or a bad hurricane. Come right in there where you can feel my warmth and you can hear my heartbeat saying, I love you. I love you, I love you. And that was what happened for me. The the crisis was dizzying, I it was like getting gobsmacked, I didn't see it coming. And all of a sudden I feel like my guts are hanging out. Sorry to be so graphic, but there it was. And the Lord not like leaving me alone in it, not forsaking me. He's promised never to do so. He says, I'm always with you and for you, and he's proven it through the gift of Jesus on the cross. That's the irrefutable proof that he'll never leave us and that he loves us beyond all knowing. Um, but the invitation, the crisis turned out to be a portal. Who who would have guessed that? But it was the actually the very crisis itself that was the doorway into this yet deeper place of leaning on the Lord and experiencing sacred refuge.

SPEAKER_06 12:50

And you did, and you you kept going and probably stronger than before.

SPEAKER_05 12:55

Yes, because I saw God answer prayer and keep me safe in that quiet hiding place.

SPEAKER_06 13:03

You talk about the unexpected gift. God is offering you an unexpected gift. Yes. So I in the world of therapy, we call that I think, reframing, looking at it differently.

SPEAKER_05 13:16

Yes. Is that what you mean by that? It's exactly what I mean by that. And in chapter eight of the book, we go to the New Testament story of Mary and Martha and Lazarus, who were really good friends of Jesus, right? He would stay in their house in Bethany, just two miles outside of Jerusalem, coming and going into the city. And it turns out that later in his three-year ministry, Lazarus gets sick, though the sisters send word, uh, teacher, the one you love, is sick, and they know he'll come back. They've seen him heal, they know he can do it, but he doesn't come back right away. And what's fascinating, check it out, John 11, I think it's verse 3 and 4. It says, Now Jesus loved Mary and Martha and Lazarus. So when he heard that Lazarus was sick, he stayed where he was two more days. I I don't know about you, that kind of blows my definition of love out of the water. But then again, you know, he's got a reason. Yes. Yes, he's listening to the father and only doing what the father tells him to do, right? He's on God's timetable for God's purposes. When he does go back, his love is reflected in his compassion for the sisters. They both run out in their different personalities and ways and say, Hey, I'm ticked at you. Like Martha's like, if you'd come, he wouldn't have died. What's the story? And he says this profound thing to her. He says, I am the resurrection and the life. He's letting her into the most profound truth of his identity. Yes, he's the Son of God, but he's the one who has the power over life and death, and it it's foreshadowing what he's about to do on the cross and resurrection. He also enters into their grief. Mary says the same thing and he's he just weeps. He just weeps. He knows what he's about to do. He's about to resurrect the guy. He's about to bring Lazarus out of the grave, but he takes the time to enter into our brokenness, and I love Jesus for that. That's who he is today for us, for people that you serve and who are hearing us today, who are hurting and broken. He is absolutely entering into the brokenness. Here's the bottom line, and here's the here's the surprise, the reframing. If Jesus had come back when the sisters asked him to come, he they would have experienced him yet again as the healer, the one with the power to heal. They had seen it many, many times. Yes. And they asked him to come and do that. A fair request. But because he tarries, and Lazarus is not just a little dead, it's a Billy Crystal moment, right? But he's not just many days. Mostly dead, he's sort of dead. He's really dead. Four days he's gone. He's starting to smell, right? You know the story.

SPEAKER_06 15:49

Yes, yes.

SPEAKER_05 15:50

Because he waits and comes back on God, the Father's timetable, he is revealed as so much more. Does that make sense? Like Jesus would say to us, you want me to come and fix your situation or fix your crisis or change something presto. I'm I'm not a magician, that's not how I work. Vending machine, Jesus. Yeah, oh I like that. Yeah, we do that. We we kind of make him uh snack size, right? Yeah, exactly. It's awful.

SPEAKER_06 16:14

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 16:15

Um but he's but it's like he's saying, but I am so much more, and this crisis is an invitation to you to discover more of who I really am for you.

SPEAKER_06 16:26

Wow. He leaves that space there for them to be able to do that instead of swooping in. It's kind of like when you have kids and you don't fix everything right away, right? Same kind of thing.

SPEAKER_05 16:39

Yeah, it's it's really good parenting, but it's it's hard to do. Hard to do. Yes, it is. It's hard to do that.

SPEAKER_06 16:43

I have a few of those kids and they're great, but boy, when you're raising them, you want to do everything for them, right? So what do you hope will change with readers um and through the readers as a result of experiencing this book, which I can't wait to get home and read. Tell me what you think.

SPEAKER_05 17:01

Yeah, I hope they'll I hope they'll come out of hiding. That was God's invitation to me as I was writing it. And I've spent too many decades of my life hiding out from God, uh, going through the Christian motions. I, you know, I'm a pastor's wife, I've been in ministry, blah, blah, blah. You know, I know what it looks like, I can play the game, I can look right and talk right and all the things. And God couldn't care less about any of that. He is after our hearts. He wants the whole package. Jesus' blood was shed for all of us, and he wants our hearts. Yes. And he wants us in a face-to-face, right? You are the lifter of my face relationship. He wants us in a Jesus' blood shed and his body broken for us, bridges this huge gap between a holy God and our sinfulness. Paul says, and now we with unveiled faces, no more faking, no more hiding, no more masks. Our faces are unveiled before holy God. And he looks at us through the lens of Jesus. If we're if we've come to Christ and said by faith, I'm a sinner and I need forgiveness, and I'm trusting you, Jesus, to make it right between me and Holy God. When that happens, the Holy Spirit fills us, gives us new life, and it changes our relationship and how the Father views us forever. He sees us through the lens of Jesus, and that means that we are not only people with our sin removed, he's actually given us, Jesus, God made him new no sin to be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in union with him, says Paul. 2 Corinthians 5. So the Father now sees us as righteous, beautiful, and delightful, even as he sees his son.

SPEAKER_06 18:43

Wow. And that would speak to my listeners who've been through trauma, who feel like, well, not me. Everybody, yeah, that's good for them over there. Right. But I've got to be. Yeah, you don't know what I've done. Yeah, yeah. Or you don't know what's happened to me. And how could he want me? Or or maybe he'll forgive me, but how am I going to make such a big impact with anyone? Because after all, look at what I've been through.

SPEAKER_05 19:10

Well, one of the things that I have discovered about the Lord is that he uses our deepest brokenness often as the place of our greatest usefulness and fruitfulness, right? The enemy says you're disqualified. Right, right. Lies. Ix, Iksnay, right? Iksnay on you, you're out of here. God could never use anybody like you. You don't look right, sound, you don't have, you know, talk right, you don't wear the right clothes, you're not in the Christian club, whatever it is. And actually, our brokenness healed by the Lord is our rocket fuel in ministry.

SPEAKER_06 19:44

That's amazing. I I can see it now. I can see an ad right now, rocket fuel, and people just shooting off into the horizon because they can actually do something and feel like they can do something. That's that's what I work with, and you see them in their pain too. But you've you've emerged in such a beautiful way, and I could talk to you for another hour, but unfortunately, we don't have any more time. So I want to thank you for being here. If you all hear that noise, that's the the floor, the rumblings here, it's all really cool. Everybody's doing podcasts around us, so you hear some noise, but we are on the floor of the National Religious Broadcasters Convention, and I'm honored to have you here. Thank you so much to Lynn Rienstra, R-I-E-N-S-T-R-A. Look up her book, Sacred Refuge Finding Unexpected Shelter in Your Crisis. And with that, I will say goodbye for now. Thank you for joining us on this edition of the Ampcast. Be sure to share this episode with your friends. If you find that there's someone that needs it, please share this with them. You can find us on social media, of course. And we'll see you next time on the Ampcast. Bye-bye.

SPEAKER_04 21:02

You've been listening to the AmpCast with Elisa Marie ProCop. To find out more, go to AmpCounseling.com. You can discover more information about all our services that we offer. Be sure to follow our social media platforms using the icons at the bottom of the page. Don't forget to check out our show notes for today's episode, where we will have links and contact info for today's guests. Well, that's all the time we have for this episode. Thanks for joining us, and we will see you next time for another edition of the Amp Cast with Elizabeth Pro Cop Dealing and Healing from Trauma.