Call Him Father
Call Him Father is a podcast from New Song Church about knowing God as Father and following Jesus in real life.
Each episode is a honest, faith-centered conversation exploring identity, healing, discipleship, culture, and the real questions people carry every day. Whether you're a longtime believer or just starting to ask questions about God, this show is for anyone who wants more than surface-level religion — and a deeper relationship with a God who is present, personal, and deeply involved in your life.
Through biblical truth, practical wisdom, and real conversation, Call Him Father invites you to stop performing and start trusting the Father who already knows your name.
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Call Him Father
How Do You Heal From Grief Without Losing Hope?
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In this episode of Call Him Father, Micah and Pastor Taylor return to the conversation around grief, suffering, healing, and what it looks like to walk with God through pain.
Micah talks about the recurring nature of grief after losing his friend Dylan, how certain days and memories can reopen the wound, and why time alone does not automatically heal. Taylor walks through a Christian theology of grief, lament, suffering, and hope, explaining why Christians are not called to pretend pain is not real, but to bring that pain honestly into the presence of Jesus.
They talk about mourning with hope, the danger of distracting yourself instead of processing grief, how suffering can harden your heart if it is not brought to God, whether there can be joy in suffering, how to comfort others when everyone is hurting, and why Jesus is not a last resort but the first place we should run.
Call Him Father is a podcast tackling hard questions about faith, life, and following Jesus in a modern world.
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Follow Call Him Father for more honest conversations about faith, life, and following Jesus.
Hey, what's up, everybody? Welcome to Call Him Father. We are so glad that you are with us today. We're going to kind of double back on our conversation around grief and suffering. And I think this is just really important because to live is to suffer. And if you're going through something difficult, we got a lot of hope for you in this episode. We want to point you to Jesus and uh help you to figure out what does it look like to walk with God through the difficulty of life. So stay tuned. It's going to be a good one. You've been struggling with some Dylan stuff. Yeah. Okay. So we should. And you want to talk about like the recurring nature of grief? Yeah, I want to talk about it. Like just like it's been a year and you're still well coming up on summer, so this is like he died a year ago. In November. In Nov Okay. Alright. Well, I mean still we're getting closer. Yeah, yeah. Um so this is still fresh, you're still going through the grieving process and trying to figure out grief at this stage.
SPEAKER_00The main answers I want quest sorry, main questions I want answered, not only for myself but for people thinking about this stuff is like when it comes to grief, I feel like a lot of people think, oh, I do one prayer, you know, and then um you know that's that. Thank you, Lord. Which I'm not saying that doesn't happen, you know, you're talking about like your experience with porn and like there's just it just is wiped clean. So I'm not saying it's not possible, but I feel like some people there's either a couple like two extreme sides where it's like I want to pray once and then be healed from it, and then I'm really confused when I'm not when stuff comes up, or I get addicted to therapy and I just go and work on myself without any expectation of supernatural involvement whatsoever. And then I'm so like I stay so focused on this for so long. Yeah. And I don't believe that Jesus is like I can be healed from it. Like you know, you never heal, but it gets easier or whatever. Um but my question is like, okay, what I'm starting to come to a conclusion on is like that there are multiple steps to it and that it also is like a wound that continues to open that you just kind of have to like pray about and continue to replace that those things that you realize. It's like as someone what I noticed is like um he you know, he's dead, so this oh man, that sucks because of this. And then there'd be another thing you realize, like, oh that sucks because of this. And now it's like, oh, it's 4th of July, and it's like that's gonna suck because he was always at 4th of July. And so like there's these continual pains. It's like divorce, you know, it's like, oh now it's Christmas and it sucks because we used to always have Christmas together. So I'm just curious how Yeah, I want to hear your take on that, and then also like your take on like helping what to do in like grief in a friend group when you're wanting to be better, but everyone is really struggling and how to be a leader and an example like that, like how to set a good example, stuff like that.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, okay. Well, let's so we're we're gonna kind of work through a theology of grief, a theology of suffering, the Christian hope in suffering. What does the scripture have to say about it all? And um, you're right to address that tension, man, and I think that that that is a good place to start because part of the universal reality of humanness is that like to live is to suffer. It's not a question of if you're gonna go through hard things, it's a question of when and what's it gonna look like. Suffering comes in all different shapes and sizes for all different people at all different stages of life, right? And so it's not an if question, it's a when. And then when it happens, what's gonna be your place of, you know, that you're gonna draw hope from, that you're gonna go to for hope, that you're gonna go to for healing. And for the believer in Jesus, we've got the greatest answer because it's the person of God who actually hates suffering. And the whole gospel story is about God incarnating himself into our suffering to kill it and to solve it and to put it away for eternity so that we go into new creation with him where there is no suffering, sorrow, tears, or death anymore. Yeah. Um, in fact, at the end of Revelation, God wipes away every tear from our eyes. So when it comes to suffering, we all experience it. You got to decide where are you gonna go to in the midst of suffering. And there can be several, there are several different options. You could do, you know, uh a kind of an atheistic approach where it's all secular, sort of modern therapy practices, EMDR, not bad. Actually, there's actually some really interesting stuff uh coming out about that modality in particular. But the the thing that I'm getting at is like you you reframing, you know, like you can reframe it, you can think about it differently, you gotta accept it, you gotta move on. Uh, this person's gone, it sucks, I'm sorry. Um, but really the self is the frame of reference, and there's no hope outside of yourself that you can appeal to, which is obviously a pretty hopeless, awful place to be, I think. Um, and then you know, like Christians can get weird with this too, where like you're saying, it's like, man, I prayed one time that God would take my hurt away, and I still am feeling it. So is there something wrong with me? And you also don't want to be the person, of course, that ends up just uh living, living with this like awful victim hurt for the rest of your life because Christ calls us to victory, and so that can be somewhat of a place of shame for people that they can experience. Yeah, because am I a defective Christian? Because I'm still hurting because of this loss that I've experienced, and that's not necessarily um the case either. Um when it comes to the first, so you're in the first year of losing your buddy, yeah. And that was awful. Of course, you've talked about that on the pod, and I'm just I'm so sorry, man. That just sucks. Right. That's an awful thing to experience. And you mentioned, you know, 4th of July and all of these different milestones that you're still experiencing because it hasn't yet quite been a year. I think you're a few months away from the loss of your friend. This is what sucks about loss is you don't just lose the person one time. Yeah, you lose them a thousand times. You get the phone call that changes your life forever, and then Christmas rolls around and or Thanksgiving, you know, and you did something with them on Thanksgiving, and now they're not there, and Christmas and New Year's and Fourth of July, and we did stuff last year, and now they're not here, and that can be really difficult and kind of like you're saying, I think that's good language, man. Reopen the wound. Yeah. Because it does. Um, and that doesn't necessarily mean that you're there's something wrong with you, there's something wrong with your faith at all. Um, I actually think that one thing that we need to do better in the church, bro, is recover a bit more of a theology of lament. Yeah. And what I mean by that is God, God is a like he he has emotion, he experiences emotion. Jesus shows up at the tomb of his friend and he weeps. It says, Jesus wept in John 11. I think we'll probably spend a good amount of time on John 11. Amazing, as far as shaping our view of suffering and death and loss and how we navigated through it. He weeps, like he hates death. He really doesn't like it. It's the desecration of his good creation. He absolutely hates it. You go back to the Old Testament, you've got Israel enslaved in Egypt. They're crying out to God to deliver us, and it says that God knew their suffering. Okay, that word no right there is it's God saying, I know it, and and it's as if he's experienced it as it's his own suffering because of how he identifies with his people and loves and cares for his people. So it is a good and godly thing actually to lament. Um, it's not, here's one thing, this might be a bit of a hot take. It's not good to just do a hyper-spiritual thing and stuff it and move on and pretend like you're not hurting. Yeah. That's, dude, I've had some friends that have done that where they've, you know, they've gone through really intense suffering and just because they don't know how to really deal with it. Um, or or it's just like, well, this is the spiritual thing. Yeah, I lost this person and they're with Christ now. And so I need to not feel anything really negative about this because it's just a temporary gap, and I get them back in the end. And this is the spiritual thing to do that honors God is actually to not mourn the loss of this person that isn't here anymore. And I think that that's that's awful theology, dude. That's so bad. Jesus hates death, Jesus weeps, Jesus mourns, God mourns, God hates death. Um He He is the God that suffers along the side of his people. Um, and is if you if you here's what I was going. If you look at the Psalms, so much of the Psalms, dude, are about like David crying out to God, my life is awful. You know, everything sucks. Look at the wicked over here, they're doing great, they're prospering, and I'm just trying to follow God and like my life is a disaster, and I might die, and you know, my people are dying, and this is horrible. And we got to get back to a theology of lament because uh it is a place I think of encountering God's goodness and God's mercy and God's empowering grace, dude. Yeah. When I lost my daughter um in 22, December of 2022, those there were moments, dude, where I I never felt closer to Jesus Christ in my entire life. Um and I couldn't stuff it. I there was just no other option. Like it was just a lot of real, raw, awful stuff. And and as I was processing that loss in in God's presence with my Bible open and my heart open, as mangled as it was, I encountered the love and the presence and the grace of Jesus Christ in a way that I I never have before. And if I wouldn't have let myself grieve and more and I just tried to stuff it and move on and not feel it, I wouldn't have that, I wouldn't have been able to receive that comfort from Jesus. That makes sense. Absolutely. So there's there's some really beautiful spiritual realities here. To be a Christian isn't to see some emotion and suffering and mourning, it's to uh have a refuge to run to in the midst of the suffering and the mourning and the loss. Last thing, I'll throw it back to you. This is where Paul talks about, you know, um, in 1 Thessalonians, I believe it's four, where he's writing to the church to encourage them. And uh he's like, hey, you know, I want to I want to encourage you guys that the Jesus followers that, you know, you did life together, you loved them, your spiritual family, maybe your family, you guys got saved together, joined the church together, and there's been some in the church that had died, um, and they're mourning the loss of their loved ones. Paul's like, hey, look, I I want to encourage you guys that um they're not here, they're not dead, they're with Christ. You will be reunited again when Jesus comes back because of our commonality in the person and the work of Jesus Christ. And the Christian, he says, mourns, but not as one who doesn't have hope. So within this idea that Paul's laying out in 1 Thessalonians 4 is that we do mourn. That's implicit in the text. Yeah, we mourn as those who have hope, which means what? We are gonna mourn. You are gonna mourn. Mike, it's right to mourn the loss of your friend. It's right for me to mourn the loss of my daughter. It's right for our listeners to mourn the loss of the people that they love and to actually like um shed tears over the suffering of their lives. And we just want people to do that in the presence of Jesus as the one who has beat suffering and death, which is death is the end of all suffering. Yeah, right? It's like the climactic endpoint that all suffering ultimately leads to, all whole hurt ultimately leads to that. And the beauty of the Christian story is Christ beat it with his resurrection. And now, as we wait for his return, all of those bad things are already becoming untrue as new life continues to break out into our lives as we encounter Jesus. We experience new life in the spirit, and we anxiously anticipate the arrival of Jesus with hope, dancing on our hearts that this is temporary. Um, God's gonna heal the hurt, bro, that the loss of your friend lodged in your soul. He will He will heal that. And you're you're probably experiencing, well, this would be a question for you. Let me throw it back to you. Have you experienced God healing that hurt in a um and a unique spiritual way uh of the loss of your friend as you continue to get further away in time from when you lost him? What's that journey been like?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I think um It's definitely been a weird seven months. And what you were talking about with the people who are like hyper spiritual to where they kind of want to shove it down and not think about it, not talk about it, and not admit that there's hurt. What I've noticed is I feel like those kind of people end up becoming really bitter and just hurting the people around them, becoming like uh what's the word for like when someone's spiritual but not loving, like really like it has to be this way.
SPEAKER_03Like pharisaical, religious, dogmatic type of an idea.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I feel like people end up kind of going that way a lot too. Yeah, it's like yeah, you kind of take your religion out on people almost. It's like it needs to be done this way. Um tears help your heart not get hard, bro. Yeah. Yeah, I guess that's where I'm going. It's just it feels like a hardness of heart in that. And I d I've had a hard time with that because I I haven't really cried about it since like I guess like New Year's, like January. Um but I think I it's it's just weird that I found myself like I either like distract myself from it by like working or um just like keeping busy with things. And it's definitely been harder to like sit alone and be at peace. Oh man. Um but I guess I get it. Yeah. We've we've gotten better. I mean, like this this past week we kinda like are changing our routine a bit, um to p allow ourselves to be more? Yeah. Your wife, yeah, okay. And so we're like doing making sure we're like getting our devotions in every morning and like having like a good bedtime and waking up early and doing my runs. Um and just kinda like giving building into my routine like stillness to where I can like I can't run from it. Like this is when I start working, this is when I stop working, and then I have to find something to do. Yeah. Um, because it's just so it's just so not easy to sit with, you know? Like it's a really weird pain. Like it's an abnormally awful pain that comes with it. Um and I think a lot of people don't a lot of people want to think they're done processing it. And that's kind of why I wanted to talk about this. It's like so people can feel like okay that it's been oh this long, but it still hurts. And it's like it it's not about how long it takes, it's about how much you process it, I feel like. You know? Like you can have this big problem in front of you, right? It's like if you had a a bunch you were in the middle of the woods and there's a bunch of blackberries surrounding you. And you can either go through the blackberries or you can sit there and distract yourself and like go around in the woods and other directions. It's like you see the light and as time goes on, it's like the light gets dimmer and that's like your heart getting hardened. Um but it's like it is your job to like go through the blackberries to get to healing, and it's not there's no levels of distraction. Like time isn't just gonna carry you through it. It's true.
SPEAKER_03Time does not just heal. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00And God, like, and the cool thing is, you know, Jesus could come right alongside you with a machete and help cut the blackberries down. But it's like each time you're going through, you gotta be asking for help kind of thing.
SPEAKER_03That's good, man. And that is the journey of the Christian, Micah. That that's what I as as somebody who loves you and cares about you, that's what I want you to expect. Yeah. It's that you're not in the midst of this proverbial forest of suffering with this, you know, like overwhelming, dense, thorny bush around you that you gotta walk through yourself. Right. And in fact, let's just let's play with that illustration that you gave right there. Because the gospel is Christ shows up in the midst of the thorns with you, and he's the one that punches a hole through the forest by taking all the thorns on himself, right? So that you just stay up right with him. He takes all of the of the of the the the suffering has the fullest way with him. You're still gonna experience it, right? But he's the one that actually leads you out. Yeah. And he's right with you in the midst of it. That's what I want you to expect. That that's Psalm 23, man, right there. That's exactly what David is talking about. Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I won't fear any evil. Why? Because you're with me, because I have the presence of God. Yeah. And so I think Paul, you know, he may have had a bit of Psalm 23 in mind in Romans 8, maybe not. I definitely think of it when he talks about what shall separate us from the love of Christ: persecution, death, trial, you know, angels, demons, anything. No, and all of these things were more than conquerors through him who's loved us. Yeah. And so nothing can keep us from the love of Jesus, not even suffering. Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I won't fear because Christ is with me even in the valley of the shadow of death. He's right there. And in a lot of times, man, in a lot of ways, I think that he is uh he's he's been the most visible in my life when I've gone through suffering. Um, maybe because I'm the most desperate, maybe because I'm the most needy, maybe because it's just like, I mean, I remember when you we've talked about this before when I lost my baby again. Uh I had a conversation with God where it was like, I don't know if I'm gonna come out of this a Christian. And if it was up to me, if I just gotta make my way through that wood, uh, dude, uh, there's no hope. Yeah. It's it's only by the grace of God that I'm here talking to you and encouraging you to lean into Jesus right now because he did show up in the midst of my suffering and my tears and my loss. Yeah, and he did punch a hole through the forest, take the thorns for me, and lead me to the light of his presence and um help me walk that journey through. So you walk through the valley of the shadow of death as a Christian. You don't stay there, you don't pitch a tent, you don't build a house, you don't pull a mortgage there, you know what I mean? Like you don't stop at the gift shop, take a selfie, and blog about it for the rest of your life. You move through it. Yeah, that's interesting. You move through it.
SPEAKER_00And I feel like it's it's so even like it's easier than it ever has been to like make a tent in the valley kind of thing. Like to just lay down in the thorns and let it surround you and harden your heart. Because it's like you can just get on your phone, you can go to work, get on your phone, you know, DoorDash, some weed in Door Dash as Geek Bar, and you're you know, you got a fun evening then. Um and it's like I feel like a lot of people just don't have hope in that pain, and just growing up I would see these people that were like I've always had kind of like a childlike wonder for just exploring and experiencing the world and trying new things, and then I would see these like these people that just are so bitter to like everything. And I feel like it wasn't until Dylan died where I was like, I get it. Like if I were to not pursue God through this and allow him to like carry me through it, I would end up right there. Yes. I would just not I just wouldn't want to do anything and I would just become bitter to the people around me because it would fester. And um it just made more sense because and I even though I would talk to these people and they would be like, Yeah, my mom died when I was like, you know, in high school or whatever, or XYZ. They'd have all these things that happen and they clearly never work through them and they end up hating themselves. And then it's just like that's where you that's how you end up at that position of just like brokenness and floating through and hardness of heart. Um and that was like I think I feared that for a while. I I felt like such a heavy pain and burden that I was like so afraid of losing that like the joy that I did have and like the wonder for the things that I did have. And I feel like I'm I don't think I'm out of that yet. I think I'm still working through it. Um but the nice thing is that I do have hope and I have like assurance that I'm walking with God through it.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. So um and even though you can't see necessarily the end and how this is this whole thing is gonna play out, you got you got hope that God's good and that he loves you, yeah, and that he's doing a work in your life and you can trust him and you can throw yourself on him. Yeah. That's a good place to be. And with I had another scripture come to my mind, man, as we're talking about this. This is where the it's really good to know our tendency in suffering for escape. We want to pull the eject button when we suffer. We, you know, like we wanna we wanna go up and around the valley of the shadow of death. We don't want to go through it. Nobody wants to do that. I'm I'm looking for the escape hatch, dog, when I find myself there. I want to get out fast. I want to escape it, and we're gonna do that in different ways. And so what I hear you saying is your which is very normal. I I think that this is probably my uh bent and temptation as well, is instead of sitting in it and feeling it, we go for distraction. Yeah. So that's a lot of times just the easiest, lowest hanging fruit here. It's like, well, ah, this sucks. Don't want to think about that. Let me doom scroll because that's pretty powerful on my prefrontal cortex, and just like blitz my brain out with stupid stuff on YouTube.
SPEAKER_04Yeah.
SPEAKER_03And so that can be bad because Paul talks about this idea that we comfort others with the comfort that we have first received. Emma, would you mind looking that verse up when you get a second? It's Paul, he he says something pretty much exactly like that, that we comfort others with those that we've uh we comfort others with the comfort that we first received. Yeah. And the idea here is that if you and I, bro, we'd if we don't shut up for five minutes and just sit in silence in God's presence, and you know, definitely a pro to have um a wife that's as awesome as yours who uh loves you and cares about you, and who can sit in these moments with you as well. And if we don't shut up and just sit and just talk through it with Jesus and with some people that um we love and we trust, you're not gonna experience the comfort of Jesus in it. Yeah. If if I'm gonna go to Instagram to try to distract me or YouTube or you know, the whatever your your uh functional savior is that you're running to to try to absolve the pain that you're experiencing, you you're gonna get maybe some comfort from that thing that's fake and fabricated, and you're just gonna be left feeling worse than you did before, and it's not gonna do anything really to heal you, and you don't all the while, the greatest tragedy is you don't experience the comfort of Christ in the midst of the suffering that you can then pass on to other people. Yeah. Um okay, this is 2 Corinthians 1 4. This is what Paul says He comforts us in all our afflictions so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God. Oh, the comfort. So God wants to comfort you in the midst of your suffering with his presence, and then in turn, you have something very comforting to offer to other people that are navigating through uh difficult moments of loss in their lives. Um and to do that, you gotta sit, man, in silence. One of my favorite authors, his name is Jerry Sitzer. He wrote just some amazing books. One of them is called A Grace Disguise, where he talks about he he's probably about my age, maybe a little younger, um, late 20s, 30s, somewhere in there, I think, where his wife and his daughter were in a car wreck and they both tragically died. It was just awful. Um, he's a professor out at Whitworth, amazing dude. Read all of his books. You know, they're just amazing. Resilient faith, water from a deep well, super good. Totally changed my life the last couple years. And he talks about this story, his story, where he ended up at a, you know, like a monastery type of uh situation where he goes and he talks to this Catholic nun, actually, and she's like, Hey, you know what? You need to just come and just sit with the suffering. You need to have some space to just be and to feel it, yeah, and to cry the tears and shut out all of the distraction, or this thing is gonna, it's gonna kill you. You you need to sit with it, you need to sit with God. And so he would go up there for a period of time, I don't know how long it was, but there would just be sometimes hours where him and this Catholic nun are just sitting in a room together and they don't say anything. Yeah. Um, and you know, the first few times he said that he went up there for half a day or a full day, whatever, he would just, you know, weep the whole time. But over time, as he's processing in silence and solitude in the presence of God, um, Jesus did begin to uh not take away the memories, not take away the hurt completely, totally. Like he still talks about it, and of course, I mean that's gonna mark you for the rest of your life, dude. You lose a spouse and a kid like that. I just can't even imagine. It's awful, horrible suffering. But he began to move through it and um ended up moving on in life and raised his kids. He was a single dad of, I believe it was three kids at the time, and uh remarried, amazing ministry, and uh just a phenomenal guy. And uh part of the wisdom that he would give to us here is like you gotta sit with it. You have to open yourself up to feel the pain and to feel the hurt in the presence of God so that he can help move you through it, yeah. Um, so that you can receive the comfort that only God can give you, so that you can be comforted, yeah, and then you can give that comfort away to other people. What I what I'd like to tell the people, bro, um with what you've experienced with Dylan, you will get um you'll get through it, but you won't get over it. Um and that's okay. Yeah. Jesus still has scars on his body right now. Yeah. Post-resurrection appearance, Thomas. Look at the holes in my hands and my feet. Put your fist in my side. He's still got the scars. Um time, just having kind of an empty hope in time that it's just gonna heal this. Um I I I wanna see people move more towards uh a hope in Christ that he can heal all of our hearts. And uh as we process them in God's presence, that he he'll bring us through and it's gonna leave a scar. Yeah, I guess that's what I'm trying to say here. It's gonna leave a scar. It does heal. Sometimes it'll open up again, and that's okay because God is still Jehovah Rapha, the Lord who heals, and uh he'll heal our wounds a thousand times if that's what it takes.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00What do you what do you think you do when you're in like a group setting of pain? Like when it seems like the only easy option is a distraction. Like what where's the way out of that? How do you as a leader push people towards healing in a healthy way?
SPEAKER_03So this is what's unique for you here, right? Because this is this is your Christian community. Yeah. Where you guys have experienced the loss of loss of your friend that you love together.
SPEAKER_00Or like in an example, like for you and Marissa, like, you know, it's you can lean on your wife, but when you're both going through it, it's like, what do you even do?
SPEAKER_03So for Marissa and I, like, because it it I mean, it does, it still sucks, dude. Like I've got my we have in like an urn with Hallie's ashes on Marissa's nightstand. It's like literally right there every single night. Like it's right there. So it's it's real, and you know, most of the time now it's like just rejoicing that she's not here, but she's not dead, she's with Jesus, and and we went through an amazing story of God comforting us with some really great stuff, and he still is in a lot of ways. Yeah. Um, but part of you know, every once in a while it's just that that grief wave comes again, especially now that our we have a our youngest daughter is two years old, and our oldest daughter is six years old, and Hallie would have been right in between them. And so now that all of their personalities are coming out, we're seeing the sisters together, yeah. It's just hard to look at them without ever picturing Howley in between them and the ages that they're at. Like it just it sucks, dude. It freaking sucks, it's horrible. Um, and so when whenever whenever that happens and somebody says something, you know, Marissa, whatever, uh I'm just I'm really missing, I'm missing, I'm missing our girl right now. Like it's just it's hard to see this without her. And man, this is just this is a bummer. What we don't do is we don't like what get over it, you know. Like that's obviously the wrong approach. Um, this is a tender moment of a lot of hurt that we want to hold some space for. And I think that that's a good and godly thing to do. I think that that's what God does for us. Galatians 6, 2, bear one another's burdens and thus fulfill the law of Christ. So if my wife is burdened, I need to get up underneath that burden and bear it like it is my own. And this one actually is my own. This is very much a shared burden here. And so um, where this is unique and difficult for us is like, and for you and your friends also, is this is also your burden. Like you carry this, you you experience hurt. And so my temptation has been when Marissa gets there, a self-defense mechanism that, like, I don't even want to think about that right now because I'm gonna turn into a mess and that sucks, and I haven't thought about that in a week or so, and now this is all right in front of my face, and I don't really want to go there. So that can be my temptation, but I gotta resist that because this is a moment of hurt for my wife that I love. Yeah, and so I I think the first thing to do is to just not quench it. Like, you don't need to, if you look at John 11, man, Jesus we can learn so much about like how to care for people in suffering by the portrait of Christ that we see in John 11. And one thing, like when I'm training pastors, what I'll talk about is like, you know, because we we don't know what to do. Nobody knows what to do when it's like somebody calls you and they're like, hey, uh we're at the hospital and my baby just died. Can you come and pray with us? Or like, hey, yeah, uh my spouse just died and I'm in my house and I've got you know the support officers here and fire just left. Can you please come pray with us? Like you just get brought into these impossible situations, or like, hey, uh, my kids gone, and I think that they might have actually like committed suicide, and and we gotta go look for them in this area.
SPEAKER_00I've got a question for you in that area too.
SPEAKER_03Okay, let's get there, let's get there in one second. It can just it can just be impossible. And so the idea with John 11 that I'm trying to say is like you practice the ministry of presence. Sometimes you just gotta just show up and shut up and just carry the hurt of the other person instead of just trying to move everybody through that that can actually you can actually model the presence of Jesus to people by sitting with them and actually uh holding space for it. Now, there's some extremes here that I'm sure we'll get into. Like, you know, you don't want to like we do want to call people to Christ, and that's what Jesus does in John 11, is he points to the resurrection. Yeah. So we do need to get there, but we also don't need to have that be our initial reflex and do like a pharisaical religious thing and like, oh, you're hurting right now, and so it's evidence of a defective faith, and you should feel bad for yourself and try harder. Anyways, for sure what we're gonna say.
SPEAKER_00In in that showing up and just being present, how I'm not saying this like it's like a blanket statement for like how to do this, but how long do you stay? I mean, it it seems like with like after Dylan passed, like Noah just stayed with us for like a week. Like it was just like it's just a weird thing where it was there was a fracture in our, you know, family. And it was like Dylan's gone, and so we kinda all grouped it back up together. And but it's like at what point like if you were to go to someone's house, where do you have the boundaries for, you know, your own family? Like, oh I need to get home because my kids and my wife need me. So it's like where it's it's hard to even ask this question because it's not like you've got a great example of you know um the situation with this, but like how as a pastor are you able to just be available for that kind of stuff and not have it completely like derail your life? Like, how do you set healthy boundaries but still be available to go do stuff like that for people?
SPEAKER_03I see what you're asking. Well, yeah, you have to. What's unique about my lived experience, man, is I the the fire service was really helpful here for me because you you are you're forced to learn compartmentalization. You know, you're going to car wrecks with mangled bodies and blood all over the place and people dead, and you're seeing dead people a lot. And like, yeah, I mean, you're having these really weird experiences that most people don't have, which is by the way, part of why I'm a really big advocate for people doing law enforcement, doing fire, doing military stuff like that. To like these experiences, they like those six years in the fire service shaped me who I am today. And one of the things that I'm really grateful for, I did a lot of growing up there. Um, I got hired right when I was 18, did this like explorer program before when I was 17, got a bunch of firefighters in my family, so this is what I was gonna do. Um, and yeah, it was that this is one of the things that I'm most grateful for is it taught me how to compartmentalize. Yeah. There's some stuff where it's like, you know, the like certain situations. I had some friends that, and thank God that I never experienced this, but like there are situations where you you can have a skill of compartmentalization, but then you go on a kid call and you're wrecked, you know. Like there's just you're gonna need to take a timeout for a little bit and you're probably gonna carry that one with you. But that was really helpful for me to learn how to compartmentalize stuff, and uh especially as it has pertained now to my family and ministry life in balance, um, because I have to do that. I gotta go to the hospital and you know, visit with somebody that just, you know, like this, this I'm I was with uh this last year. This guy, his brother was out in his car in front of his house and shot himself in the head. And I get the call. Hey man, will you come and pray for my brother? They they both go to well, he went to New Song, Brother Still Is Connected. Um tragic, freaking awful thing, and that is awful to see somebody laying in a hospital bed with the bandage around their skull. Oh wow, so he flatlined, and his brother's there, and I'm praying with him. Yeah, he he he shot himself in the head, and uh, and then I have to go home and play baseball in my backyard with my eight-year-old.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_03That's a weird experience, man. And this is where, dude, I am so grateful, by the way. Just shout out to every single one of you that is in uh law enforcement, first responder, fire, EMT, private ambulance, hospital, emergency room, ICU, cancer ward. Like these guys are absolute heroes, bro. What they experience for so many years and decades in this career. I mean, it's we got to pray for these guys, we got to support them because it it's it's intense. Like you're not meant as a person to see that level of suffering and death all the time. Yeah. Um, and so I've had to learn that skill. Uh, you you you have and you can learn it, like you have to be able to shelf it and to process it in a healthy way and have ways that you do that. And also, you know, I don't want my kids to be looking at me in the face and and dad is still on the hospital room and zoning out and blacking out and not present with me, and I don't have a dad that's raising me now because he's still getting trauma triggered all over the place. Does that make sense? So I've had to learn how to bring the stuff that I see and experience to Jesus so that I can be present with my family when I'm with them for sure. Absolutely. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Okay, so suffering as a Christian is inevitable. But do you think there can be joy in that suffering? And then also where is you know, is it possible to have like almost a toxic positivity when dealing with that? Like I feel like as as men we can be like, oh, I am spiritual and you know, one month has gone by since my kid passed, so you know, it's time to wrap it up. I'm done being sad, I'm gonna you know, God's got me, so I'm not really gonna think about it. And when I do think about it, I'm just gonna not think about it because it's over now. And I guess the idea of knowing that tr the reality of it, the truth, right? But do you think it's still a good thing to talk about those truths, or do you just be like, oh well, God's got me, which is true, right? But still processing those things out loud with someone or in silence or or praying through them. Do you think that like how do you go about that? Because I feel like in my mind I've been like, Well, I trust God's plan, um, I know it'll be okay, I know I'll be okay, I know good will come from this. And so I feel like there's a lot of things I've avoided talking about just because I know the the truth of it, like the truth in Christ. So, at what point is that like a toxic positivity?
SPEAKER_03Well, yeah, so the illustration that was coming to my mind there, man, on the person that's just gonna try to stuff and move on and not think through and not process and not pray and not talk to people is the image of mold. How do you get mold? It's a little bit of moisture, no air movement, no sunlight, yeah. Lock it down, and then you get this explosion of black, moldy death that just gets worse and multiplies over time. That's the picture that comes to my mind for that guy. Yeah, okay, cool. You you'll be able to maybe girt your way through it for a little bit. Give it give it a year. Yeah, give it 10 years, give it 20 years, and watch how that shapes and forms you as a person. Yeah. And God doesn't want that for you. Yeah. If you don't intentionally allow Jesus Christ to disciple your hurt, your disappointment, your pain, your suffering, your hurt, your disappointment, your suffering, and your pain will disciple you, dude. Yeah. It'll form you. It will make you to be a uh either a person who's more convinced of the goodness of God, the beauty of God, the glory of God, the comfort of God that can then in turn pass that on to other people. Or, I mean, this is what's at stake here. You become just this infested, moldy, black, deaf, bitter, angry, hard-hearted, unhealthy person that doesn't know how to help other people. Because I mean, what are you gonna tell them? Yeah, you know what? Wow, how'd you get through this? This was horrible. Just kind of didn't think about it.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_03Oh, okay. Yeah, that sounds healthy. You know what I mean? Like obviously that guy's kind of useless. So don't be that person for the sake of your soul and then also for the sake of other people that God will bring you in contact with throughout life to where he wants to comfort you with his comfort so that you can actually be the comfort of Christ to them. So, initial thought on that. Jumping back to your first question, can you have joy in suffering? I I want to say absolutely 100% yes. We got to define joy. Uh joy isn't necessarily happiness, happiness is circumstantial, right? It's your your sense of happiness, is like, oh, hey, I got money in the bank, you know, nobody I love is really suffering. Stuff's pretty chill right now. So I feel gen generally happy. Joy in the biblical theological sense is it is it's something that you get as a gift of grace when your hope is in Christ, when your identity is in Christ, when you're a follower of Christ, that can't ever be taken away from you. Yeah. Regardless of what you navigate through, dude. So if you look at Galatians 5, the fruit of the Spirit, the fruit of the Spirit is love and then joy. And Paul doesn't put any qualifications on that to say, well, you know what? If you're going through something difficult, joy's going to go away for a little bit. No, no, you get it as a Abiding reality in your life, regardless of what you're navigating through. In fact, the scripture says about Jesus that it was for the joy that was set before him that he endured the cross, despising the shame. So it was the joy that was out in front of him on the other end of his suffering, his crucifixion and his death. It was joy that actually empowered him and carried him through the suffering of crucifixion because he knew he had resurrection, ascension, and redeemed humanity on the other end of it. So Dr. Jason Hubbard he says it this way that faith is hearing the music of that day. Hope is dancing to it now, Micah, and love is inviting other people to come into this glorious expression of joyful hope. Because that day is fixed, it's coming. That's where we end up as followers of Jesus, and no amount of suffering can take that from you. So yes, there is hope in suffering. Yes, Christ models for us, or excuse me, there's joy in suffering. Yes, Jesus models joy for us in suffering. And that doesn't necessarily mean that you are going to enjoy suffering and you are going to have joy in the midst of it that you don't stay here forever and you can rejoice in suffering, that Christ is sovereign. He's not going to leave you here. This wasn't a surprise to him, the suffering that you're navigating through right now, bro, with Dylan. He saw that. He's omniscient. Um, he's also omnipotent, he's all powerful, he's omnibenevolent, he's altogether good in everything that he does, and he has a redemptive pathway already laid out for you, dog, before you ever lost Dylan. Right. Like he's got all of that laid out. And so part of walking with Christ through suffering is like it's a journey of revelation, it's a journey of realizing how God has actually gone before me in this, yeah, and uh uh like uh establish his redemptive purpose in my life as it continues to unfold even in the midst of suffering. Yeah. So yes, you can have joy, and yes, I've had joy in suffering. Um, and uh and Christ is the source of it.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00I feel like as uh you know, a videographer, I found joy in like sharing like helping other people feel heard through the sufferings that I'm experiencing. But um this one time watching a video like years ago where he's talking about like an artist that would just kind of make sad like write sad stuff, you know, like they would just dwell in the sadness and then eventually they like seeked help and got healing and then made stuff that was like happy, but like no one wanted to read it. Um so I feel like artists in particular kind of have a bent towards like staying in that sadness and like creating art through it. Um at what point do you think you're people are dwelling on something too much? Like where they're not actually processing, but they're just kind of creating like this weird feedback loop of like being sad and so then making art about it, and then people being like, This art is great, and then they're continuing to like almost pursue sadness in that way.
SPEAKER_03John 5 Jesus goes up to this paralyzed guy at this pool and he asks him one of the most profound questions that anybody has ever asked anybody. We can pick this apart in a million different ways. Yeah, it's absolutely brilliant here, and I think it directly applies to your question. Yeah, he asks the guy. I mean, there's a multitude of people with all sorts of issues, dude. And he goes out, he singles out this one guy who's sad, he's paralyzed, has a physical ailment that's altered his entire life. Um and the idea of why people would be around this pool is because it was said that you know an angel would show up and stir the waters up, and the first person in gets healed. Yeah, and so then the true healer shows up and doesn't throw him in the pool because Jesus Christ is the God who heals. Right. He walks up to the guy who's expecting that getting in the water is gonna be his healing, and he looks at him, and the question he asks, Micah is so good. Do you want to be healed? And I think that that is so profound because one of the reasons why is we can become codependent with our issues and with our suffering and with our pain for many different reasons. One of them is because um, you know, I I I do see this frequently where people like to stay in the sadness and the suffering because it's a means by which we can actually manipulate people into codependent relationships.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, for sure.
SPEAKER_03Because if I'm always the sad boy, then when I'm around other people, they feel sad for me. And um, you know, like I like that because I get attention and people feel bad for me, and then they comfort me. And and really that's what this hypothetical person is crying out for is comfort. Right. Why it sucks, dude, is because Christ wants to give this person comfort, yeah, but we are settling for putting other people uh in this category of uh, you know, I'm gonna manipulate and pull and extract comfort from you in an unhealthy way because I'm codependent with my issues and I actually know nothing of the comfort of Christ, and so we can actually stay there. And and that person to Jesus would say, Well, no, I actually don't want to be made whole because then my sense of identity would fall out from underneath me, you see. My sense of self-worth would fall out from underneath me. My sense of why, you know, people are they they treat me as they do. That would fall out from underneath me. Um, which the irony here, the thing that sucks, and that this person often doesn't realize is like everybody's exhausted when they're around them, right? Like that it's just it's awful. Yeah. Um, because it's always what's wrong, it's never what's right, it's you know, five, ten, twenty plus years down the road, it's like, dang, man, you know, you'd think that you might move along the journey at least a little bit, and it's still the same play card, which isn't healthy and it's not a good place to be.
SPEAKER_00It's almost like it becomes their purpose. Yeah. The sadness is their identity.
SPEAKER_03Yep. Yes. So I so people can identify with it to the point of like it's this is the source of my identity. And so they would essentially answer Jesus, if that's the case, like, I no, I don't actually want to be healed of this thing. So yes, bro, I think that I think that there is and that's so hidden, dude. Like, that's so deep right there. Like, you gotta do some soul searching to figure out if that is the state of somebody's heart or of your heart. But I I think that that is that's just a really interesting question for us to reflect on in the midst of suffering. Is I feel like if Christ comes to me and asks that, how would I how how would I answer this?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, that's like a state that I think a lot of people slip into and don't get out of because it's like, what are you gonna do? You know? How are you gonna call someone's blind spot around them losing a child and being sad about it for 20 years? Um It's like w who's gonna feel like they have the authority to do that?
SPEAKER_03Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And and okay, so let's let's talk about that for a second because I'm sure that I will still have sadness. For sure, absolutely.
SPEAKER_00But I'm I'm saying you're not you're moving forward. Yes, like you're not well.
SPEAKER_03This is this is what's interesting. Kate, let me try to work this through here. I've been thinking about this. Tell me what you think about this. I was talking to somebody this last week, precious Saint goes to New Song here. She's probably in her 60s somewhere. She just lost her husband recently of like 35 plus years. And which is just I can you imagine that being married to somebody for almost four decades, grew up together, children together, been with them every single day for almost 40 years, and then they die. Dude, I mean, like, yeah, what how do you move forward? But she was she was talking to me about her experience with this, and I was just so taken aback by this because she was like, you know, I it was it was probably a couple months in where I was in a state of absolute despair, did not see a path forward, didn't know what to do, didn't think that there was, you know, like hope here. And so she was praying about it and like, God, what do you want me to do? Jesus, what do you want me to do? She was answering to Christ in John 5, I want to be made well. Yeah. And so she she told me that the she just sensed the Holy Spirit say, I want you to grab your Bible and a journal and your Spotify playlist and go to a cabin and sit there for eight hours. Yeah. And just write and pray and sit in it. And so she does that. And uh uh she she just starts getting all of this stuff out, writing the you know, the wulda, shoulda, coulda's, getting the hurt out, the pain out, the I wish I would have, I wish we would have, like just getting it all out in a very real, raw way in God's presence and this like daytime retreat that she took. She did that several times successively in one way or another. And she said that after that happened, um, it wasn't that she stopped experiencing the pain, it's that it it was almost like she she took a bit of an anesthetic, meaning like it it lost its sense of world-breaking power over her. She still mourns, she still weeps, she still sheds tears, she's still navigating the loss of her spouse that she loves and she misses every day. Yeah, but that sense of world-ending, earth-splitting, life-ending hurt, it's it's as if like it lost a measure of its power. Right. I've experienced that, dude, several times over stuff. Like, you know, we've talked about on here as well when uh I pulled my friend's body out of the car. I was several years after that driving on the guide past where the accident happened with my wife and my oldest son, who was probably about one at the time. Um, and all of a sudden I just had this like full-fledged daydream visionary experience where I'm back on scene, I'm seeing everything that I was seeing there that day, just totally reliving it. Yeah. And um, it was the grace of God that I snapped out of it, like right when I start going over the lines, you know, and I and like it could have been bad. I was just totally there. And I'm driving a car with my wife and my kid. And I remember after I came out of that sort of like whatever happened situation right there. I probably I was talking with Marissa about that. I'm like, dang, like that's freaky that that just happened. We were just moving over some lines here. I don't know where that was gonna end, but that freaks me out that this thing had that much power over me. Will you pray for me? Yeah, and so she she laid her hands on me, she prayed for me. I asked God to help with whatever was happening in my brain and my body. So I was remembering that, like a PTSD type trigger type of situation, daydream, whatever happened. And uh after that, dude, like God he he did. He knocked that thing in the head. Um, and it's not that I can't still get emotional when I think about it. When I go back there, it's not that I don't miss my friend anymore. This is probably a decade ago. Yeah. Um, but the the the the power that it had over me, it's not there as it was anymore. Because I was the dude in John 5 that said, I want to be made well.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. That's good.
SPEAKER_03Does that make sense? What do you think about that?
SPEAKER_00Do you think that you have to have faith that a prayer will work for it to work? Or do you think that's kind of uh like almost superstitious?
SPEAKER_03Such a good question, dude. So there is a tension here. It says Jesus in his hometown that he couldn't do any mighty work there because of their lack of faith, and Christ was amazed at their unbelief. It's not like unbelief in that context was like a kryptonite for him where it was like, ah, melting, you know, like he couldn't heal anybody because faith is the thing that has power. It's Christ that has power. People weren't rushing him like they were everywhere else, dude. Like he goes anywhere else, and people are like laying their freaking invalid grandpas out on the street, just hoping that Jesus' shadow touches them. And everybody there was like whatever. You know, we we saw you on the swing set when you were a kid, Jesus. Like we know who you are, you're not impressive. Um, and and so they didn't have faith to reach out and grab onto Christ in a way that everybody else was. So that's the first part of the tension. Um, that yes, faith does play a role. And also, you know, like it's also false to say that faith is the means by which I experience spiritual breakthrough in my life. It almost becomes a faith in faith thing. Yeah. Where I just need to have enough faith, and then all of a sudden, you know, the person I love gets healed, they don't die, suffering gets better. Faith is only as good as its object. Christians, we don't have faith in faith, we have faith in Jesus Christ. Right. He's a sure foundation, you know, he uh is the same yesterday, today, and forever. God's word is a perfect reflection of his will. Um, and so that the the strength of our faith is what it's anchored to and what it it holds on to, which is the person of Jesus Christ. Um before, and I want to be careful here too, man, because like you know, before we ever point the finger at like somebody else and say, You're not experiencing God's power in your life because you're you're just not praying with faith. Yeah, what Jesus does that's really interesting when he comes down off of the Mount of Transfiguration in Matthew 17, his disciples are down below, they're trying to cast a demon out of a boy and nothing happens. Um the dad brings his son to Jesus now and he's like, I brought him to your disciples, and they couldn't do crap. You know, can you help us? This is awful. Jesus, what he does is he rebukes a certain group of people for their unbelief, but it wasn't the dad and it wasn't the kid. It wasn't the people that needed the miracle and the breakthrough and the healing, it was his disciples. Yeah. So before, you know, I and I've just seen religious people do this, where actually we had a dude at uh uh church several years ago who like he doesn't go here anymore. He didn't like what I had to say about this, but this is spiritual manipulation. He had somebody come up to him after the service and was like, Hey, uh, here's this sickness that I have in my body right now. You know, I will you pray for me? So he prays that God would heal him, and then he didn't get healed. And so the guy looks at him in the face and he's like, Okay, well, you didn't get healed. Um, and I prayed in faith, and so therefore it's because you have sin in your life. So what aren't you confessing? And the guy was like, Oh, shoot, like, am I the problem here? Like, I don't I don't think I have any sin in my life. And then he walked away with just this sense of condemnation for sin that he didn't actually can like do. And uh it ended up messing this guy up spiritually pretty good here, man, because he's like, shoot, like, is this my fault that I am suffering and going through this? And is there like something I don't see in my heart and my life? And uh it can be spiritual manipulation. So, yes, faith is important. Jesus says, and and also, bro, I think that like it doesn't take a lot to see God move and act. Yeah, talks about the faith of a of a mustard seed, which is the tiniest seed, yeah, you know. Um, it doesn't take a lot because it's not about your faith, it's about Jesus Christ and his goodness and his power.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, that's good.
SPEAKER_03I've thrown up some prayers, dude, that were weak, and I didn't even expect God to do anything, and there's like boom. Yeah, absolutely. You know, there's the breakthrough, there's the answer. And other times I've fasted and prayed for months and sometimes years and haven't seen breakthrough yet. Yeah. Um, but I'm still convinced, just as convinced of the goodness of God as I've ever been. And I think quantity-wise, I've exercised more faith, let's say, as I pray for my wife's healing from her autoimmune condition, because this has been five years of just consistent fasting and prayer, believing God for healing and breakthrough in her body, um, really getting after it. So, probably quantity and quality-wise, it's more faith in Jesus. Uh and yet, you know, like I go back to other moments where I've prayed for somebody that is sick, something in their body's jacked, and don't even really even believe that God's gonna do anything in the moment, and then all of a sudden it's like boom, they get healed on the spot. So, uh way less of a quality of faith or quantity of faith in that type of an example. But again, it's not like our hope isn't in the faith itself, it's in Jesus Christ who's the healer.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. And I guess the reason that is relevant to our previous conversation is just when you're in the middle of it, I feel like it can feel almost hopeless sometimes. Or like if you are praying for someone that isn't a believer. Um I feel like they can especially think like, oh nothing's gonna happen. But I think it's still worth praying, even when you're battling like the unbelief and struggling with it. Um still worth throwing a prayer up.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, and also, I mean, don't jump to self-condemnation too quickly because the greatest evidence of faith is prayer. Yeah. It's fruit of it, it's proof of it. Like and and it might not be, you know, like you might not be walking on water right now, but man, the fact that in the midst of your suffering you're willing to turn your heart to Jesus and to ask him in humility to do something about it. Um to continue to heal your heart, to continue to help you process, to continue to bring you forward, to continue to bring the right resources to the table at the right time. That's evidence of a real living faith for me, bro.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. That was like the first thing and then I did after Dylan or finding out Dylan died, was we just like thanked him for Dylan's life, and that we got to know him and just to help us through the next few months. And like for his family as well.
SPEAKER_03It's a good reflex. And I would so much rather have somebody do that, man, than exhaust every other alternative before they before they come to Christ. And people do that a lot in difficulty, dude. It's like which is just so stupid. I get why we do it. I've done the same thing. Um, and it's because there's just quick outlets everywhere else. But the problem is they just they don't they don't do the thing that we want them to do, which is actually bring real lasting transformation, change, and healing into our lives. And I just want to encourage people, don't have Jesus as your last, you know, last hail Mary, last ditch effort type of uh thing. Yeah. Bump him up to the front of the line. For sure. And uh don't end up with a bunch more baggage and your suffering by going to try to find what only he can give you in porn and sex and distraction and um, you know, drugs and whatever the dependency would be, all of that is not gonna do the thing that you want it to do. You're gonna be in a worse state as you were previously, and now you have all of this baggage as well as the suffering. Yeah. And then ultimately what happens because God is good and gracious is people come and they hit rock bottom. And uh then it's like at that point, you know what? Maybe I should try Jesus. And I would, and then God is so gracious and loving, dude. He meets us there all the time, all the time. And because he loves us so much, he he would spare us that pain and to just say, look, you you don't have to go to the pig pen with the prodigal son in Luke 15. Like you can recognize that I love you and I'm for you, and and you got my resources available to you right now.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, that's great.
SPEAKER_03All right, hey guys, thanks for hanging out with us uh on today's episode. Love that you are a part of the Call Him Father journey. And again, if you would shoot us your questions that could be featured on a future episode, we would love to do that. You could shoot us a DM in our social platforms. Love to take a look at those and make sure that they get answered soon. God bless.