How can I address my past trauma?

Transcript

This transcript was generated automatically from the audio and may contain small errors.

If you're looking for an author to read, may I commend to you a dead guy named C.S. Lewis? I've quoted C.S. Lewis several times before. He's not a perfect guy. I wouldn't subscribe to everything he believes, etc. But he does have a good way of maybe describing difficult things. C.S. Lewis, of course, is famous for Chronicles of Narnia, Screwtape letters we talked about a couple of weeks ago. But one of his later works, one of his most controversial works, was something called A Grief Observed. And the story behind that is pretty interesting. Lewis had never married for the first 50 years of his life. And he had kind of accepted that. He was a bachelor, and that was kind of going to be it. And then he met an American writer named Joy Davidman. And he fell head over heels for this girl, this lady. And they were deeply in love. And it really hit him unexpectedly.

But then tragically, roughly four years after they were married, she had a very aggressive bone cancer. And it took her fast. She was gone. And the pain that Lewis experienced was immense. It was on a level that he did not anticipate. It destroyed him. And he was kind of stuck in a house. His kids had, or his stepchildren had kind of grown and gone. And he was just in the house alone, just chilling. And he was just with his thoughts, and he was haunted by these thoughts. And all he had was a bunch of notepads. And so he started pouring out all of these emotions on these notepads. And just kept going, and kept going, and kept going. And all of the feelings of being spiritually bereft, feeling emotionally exhausted, alone, and shut out by God. All of these things are things that he just poured onto the paper, almost as a lament. And it actually turned out into a book.

And the resulting book was so raw that C.S. Lewis would not publish it under his own name. He published it under a pseudonym, N.W. Clark. It was republished after he died under C.S. Lewis, but not before. Ironically, after he published it under N.W. Clark, a bunch of his friends bought the book, began reading it, and began recommending it to him. No kidding, so that he could deal with the loss of his wife. Here's something that he wrote in A Grief Observed. C.S. Lewis says, no one ever told me that grief felt so much like fear. I'm not afraid, but the sensation is like being afraid. And later he says in that quote, I just keep swallowing. Like he can't physically make it through something without this deep sense of loss and fear. And it's not the same as fear. It just feels like fear. It's a very confusing thing to go through. Today, we are daring, trying to ask and answer the question,

how can I address my past trauma, my past doubt, my past suffering, and other deep questions, deep, painful questions? And I will say most people, many people here, are probably going through something incredibly difficult. That really painful situations that result in trauma or trauma from really painful situations is not uncommon. You might feel alone in that, and that's normal to feel that way. However, that feeling does not align with reality. A lot of people are going through something incredibly difficult, something they don't know how to deal with. Maybe they're going through it for the first time. Today, this sermon, as we bounce all over the Bible today, all over the Bible, this is by no means a fix all. This is by no means a shut up and rub dirt on it and, you know, make sure you're happy about it. This is something, it's heavy, and so we're going to look at it as such.

Okay, you guys ready for that? Okay, so we're going to be bouncing all over the Bible. So I almost don't even have a text for today. I mean, I have all the Bibles my text, but we're on about nine or ten verses today, different sets of verses. So a lot of that will be up here. If you're taking notes, I would encourage you to write these things down. But I will say we are going to try to stick to Scripture. We're going to try to let Scripture tell us what to do with this. Okay, that's kind of why we're all over. So today we're really going to focus on two key points. The first is that God offers healing in our pain, and I'm going to use pain as the umbrella term for trauma, for deep questions, for doubt, for all of these kind of things, just suffering, all of these things. I'm just going to envelop them into one word pain. And every once in a while we're going to talk about the varieties of that pain,

but I'm really just going to try to use the word pain and let that mean what it needs to mean. Okay, that God offers healing in our pain, and at the same time, we must go to war with our pain. So God offers healing in our pain. At the same time, we must go to war with our pain. We must let the Holy Spirit kind of shape our view on suffering, on doubt, on trauma, on church hurt, on deep questions, so that we can live free.

So God offers healing. We got to go to war with our pain so that we can live freely. Let's look at pain very quickly. Our pain, the first thing, and I've said this already, the first thing that we should know, need to know is that our pain is a natural reaction to a fallen world. So Habakkuk 1, 2, and 3 help us see this in Scripture. This is the prophet Habakkuk. This is the beginning of the book. This is Habakkuk being upset. Oh Lord, how long shall I cry for help and you will not hear or cry to you violence and you will not save? Why do you make me see iniquity and why do you look idly? Why do you idly look at wrong? Destruction and violence are before me, strife and contention arise. Habakkuk is mad because he does not perceive God to be doing anything about the stuff he sees.

This is a natural reaction. Habakkuk is not rebuked for this. The psalmist, there's many times in the Psalms where this question is happening. There's times in Ecclesiastes where this is being discussed. There's questions in Job. The Bible is not shy about any of this, okay? Anybody that says, you know, the church, they don't want to talk about the, you know, feeling like, you know, God's not around or that, you know, feel like God doesn't exist because he's not kind of with you in your pain. No, man, no, that's all over the Bible. How long, oh Lord, is a refrain in all of Scripture in a lot of the Old Testament? And in answering that question, something like, how could God let this happen? I will simply say that is a whole other sermon. I'll be glad to preach it. I'll be glad to preach it over coffee. That's fine. I preached that sermon many times. I can't preach that sermon today because we got to get passed out a little bit,

but I don't want to just skip it. There is a tapestry that exists as part of this tapestry of God giving real choices and real consequences. Okay, we live in a universe where people choose things and those choices have consequences. If you want to erase that, then you want to erase reality. Okay, I know that's a super pat answer. There's way more to that, but that's helpful. Okay, helpful to know that. And when we experience that amount of pain and we ask the question, how could God let this happen? That reaction is normal. That's a completely normal question to ask. No one should be shouted down because they're asking that question. People should probably be taken to coffee when they're asking that question. People should be listened to whenever they're asking that question, if they're really asking it.

The truth is that God sees and has compassion on us in our pain. Ezekiel 34, 15 and 16. This is God talking about his people. It says, I myself will be the shepherd of my sheep and I will, and I myself will make them lie down, declares the Lord God. I will seek the lost and I will bring back the strayed and I will bind up the injured and I will strengthen the weak and the fat and the strong and I will, sorry, and the fat and the strong. I will destroy. I will feed them in justice. This is God saying, I'm going to do something about this personally. I care about this personally. Psalm 147:3 says the Lord heals the brokenhearted that he binds up the wounds of these people. 2 Peter 3 9 says the Lord is not slow to fulfill his promise as some count slowness, but is patient toward you. Why not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance.

There is a way that God moves in and among us. There's a way that God stretches out time. There's a way that God has planned this universe to be that includes us going through extremely difficult situations and God not immediately relieving that pressure. That is true, but it doesn't mean that God doesn't care. It means a lot more than that. We're going to get into that.

And it's an important truth to remember whenever God feels distance that he's not. He might feel that way, but it's not true. We're going to look at why and why this is particularly confusing. Whatever we talk about healing. I said before that that God offers healing in our pain and we read about healing in the Bible. We read about physical healing, spiritual healing, emotional healing, all kinds of healing and it is true that God offers that kind of healing. Here's what I want to say about that kind of healing and this is how scripture talks about it. The Bible talks about healing in it situates it between two really big pillars. We need to understand this. It situates it between the now and the not yet.

Okay, let me show you what I mean from scripture. First John 3 2. It says beloved. We are God's children now and what we will be has not yet appeared, but we know that when he appears we shall be like him because we shall see him as he is. John 1 John John writing to churches here saying God we are God's children now, but what we will be has not yet appeared. There's something that's coming that is better than what is now. What is now is still substantive, but it's not what is coming. Here's another verse for you. 1 Corinthians 13 12. This is a little bit more of a famous version of this thought for now. We see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face now. I know in part then I shall know fully even as I have been fully known. So now I'm seeing in a mirror dimly now. I know in part.

Then later in the not yet. I'm going to see God face to face. Amen. That's going to be a good day. And then I will know him fully as I am fully known. That's amazing. But the point in me sharing this with you is to show you that there is a now and a not yet. In Scripture in the New Testament all over the New Testament. Actually, it's all over the whole Bible and the now in the now. Our healing is partial.

In the now right now before the not yet before the before times in the before times in the now our healing is partial Romans 8 10. It says but if Christ is in you, although the body is dead because of sin, the Spirit is life because of righteousness. There is a sense that in the now God is doing something in you that is not yet complete. Right. God is it we feel that dissonance. We feel the difference between the now and the not yet. There's things that we long for that we won't ever see until the end of time or until we're in heaven. Right. We won't see for example. These are kind of ideals that we have. We won't see perfect justice on this side of heaven. We won't. We could strive for it and we should. We won't see it. We won't see perfect beauty this side of heaven.

We won't see perfect community on this side of heaven. All these things are ideals that we long for and push for and hope for. And we experience harshly. We've seen something beautiful before. We have stood in awe of a sunrise before. We have experienced moments with people and it felt like family that we never wanted to leave before. We've we've felt those things partially.

It never lasts forever. The now our healing is partial and if you think about it even Lazarus whom Jesus raised from the dead died again. He's gonna rise again, but he died again. It's partial. That's the now the not yet in the not yet. Our healing is permanent and that's those verses that we already looked at in 1 John 3 2 it says we shall be like him 1 Corinthians 13 12. So we shall see him face to face. We shall know him fully even as we are fully known that day that is coming in part the reason why it's going to be so good is because our healing will be permanent. There will be no more sin. There will be no more nothing.

And so because we exist in the now and we're not yet to the not yet because all this is true our pain our trauma doubt suffering all of these things it needs direct attention. We need to know what to do with what we are dealing with. And that really is a lot of what we're dealing with. We must go to war with our pain. We must go to war with our pain. And it doesn't mean that that the enemy is doubt or that the enemy is fear or that the enemy is your trauma or the enemy is it doesn't mean that it means that those are the weapons that the enemy will use in the war on your mind. This is why scriptures talk so much about renewing your mind is because that's where the battle is going on. Right. What's the the devil is called the accuser. Well, what does an accuser do an accuser tricks you into thinking that you're guilty of something that you're not guilty of?

The accuser says things that that are no longer true if you are in Christ. No longer true about you. And so why does he accuse you he accuses you to convince you what you think he's going to convince God. No, that's not why he accuses you. He accuses you to you. He accuses you to you. He wants you to think about yourself only in terms of being broken only in terms of being hopeless only in terms of being tainted by whatever you did or whatever was done to you. The enemy wants to show you that the only thing you are is sin.

Or the result of sin or broken beyond repair because of sin. That's why the enemy accuses you and so going to war with the enemy is still it's in your mind. So Ephesians 6 does a great job helping us understand this it talks about the armor of God. Here's kind of the prelude to that. Just put on the whole armor of God. That you may be able to stand against the schemes of the devil.

For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood but against the rulers against the authorities against the cosmic powers over this present darkness against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places. I realize that when you read this it can sound a little cosmic right. It sounds a little grand. It sounds a little far-stretching but it all has to do with what's between your ears.

It all has to do with what you tell yourself. I've heard often and this is just some this is just wisdom given to me. This maybe is not. Founded scripture written like this. But in everybody's life there is what is happening to you and then there is the story that you were telling yourself about what is happening to you. Right. Those are and those two are not the same. You have the facts of what's happening to you and then you have the story that you're telling yourself about what's happening to you and what you find what you find the war that's going on in your mind is that the enemy is continuing to try to control the story that you're telling yourself about yourself. The enemy is continuing to try to try to direct the narrative to make you believe something that isn't true about you or to blow up something that is small as something that is your identity or something that

is past something that is your identity. The armor of God it goes on to list that the armor of God think about it the armor of God is is truth. The armor of God is righteousness the righteousness that Jesus gives the armor of God is readiness to share the gospel. The armor of God is assurance of salvation. The armor of God is faith. The armor of God is includes the word of God the only offensive weapon. In the armor of God, but I want you to think about that truth righteousness that Jesus gives readiness to show the gospel assurance of salvation faith all of those things are things that are inside there. There are things that you believe in this war enemy the enemy uses pain as a loudspeaker.

And if you try to ignore that loudspeaker the volume just gets turned up and the enemy just keeps coming back and you won't win. You cannot ignore this to death. If you have doubts and you just think to yourself I shouldn't have doubts. I'm going to quit having doubts that won't erase your doubts that won't deal with your doubts. If you got shame and you think well, I'm I feel shameful. I shouldn't feel shameful. I'm going to quit feeling shameful. Good luck with that.

It's not going to happen. It's not you're going to wallow in that or be victimized by it at some capacity until you deal with it until you find it because it is a great sharp tool in the hands of an enemy. To make you feel ashamed at a moment's notice. So let's say that you've done something that you deeply regret. Okay, so let's take shame right the enemy is going to use that shame as an instrument on you as a weapon against you. Okay, and when you attempt to obey the Holy Spirit in any capacity that that enemy is going to use that shame and come at you and just say you're not you. What do you what are you doing singing this song? What are you doing praying? What are you doing reading the Bible? What are you doing trying to trying to help somebody trying to serve somebody?

Who are you? You're nothing. You're nobody. You remember what you did? Listen, if every time you tried to do something spiritual the enemy starts bringing up something that you did that you still regret that you still feel shame over it's going to work. It's going to work because you're giving it that power. How do you fight to win the war? You need to lean into the power that is available to you. So let's let's talk about shame here. So you're dealing with shame when the volume goes up.

Here's what you can do and I'm going to we're going to talk about faith using the shield of faith as it talks about in Ephesians 6. What does it mean to use the shield of faith? It means that you ask God. You pray and you say God help me remember help me help me connect my value to your work on my behalf. Help me God help me remember. I'm not remembering this now. You can be honest about what's going on. God's perfectly aware of every situation happening. You can say in your mind you can pray you pray out loud and you can say God I am not connecting your work on my behalf to my value. I'm determining my value based on something I did but you tell me that my values based on what you did for me. That's using the shield of faith. That's what that's the essence of what you believe is a Christian you believe is a Christian just in case you're wondering in case you don't know Christians believe

the core tenet of what a Christian believes if a Christian doesn't believe this thing. They're not a Christian. They believe that God in heaven did something of immense transformative value on their behalf that they did not deserve period. I mean of course we can explain more but at its core that's that's what it is to believe. That's what it is to be a Christian. That's where it is to have faith in Jesus having faith in Jesus doesn't mean that you think you're able to do something that would be faith in yourself.

Faith in Jesus means that you you believe you understand that God did something on your behalf and that changes you that changes your value. It changes your future changes everything about you actually it transforms you. So this is what it means to use the shield of faith you ask God you ask God to connect your value to his work you reach out to people who love you and can help you remember that. In the long term you develop habits. We talked about this. There's so many avenues to grow in the gospel. One of them is habit you develop habits to reinforce. The things that you believe in the things that you need to remember in real time. The problem is the problem is not that that we have bad theology if you would quiz most people if you if you'd quiz all of Burleson and just say if you went knocked on everybody's door you say did Jesus die for your sins. Look the majority of people are going to say yes.

The majority the vast majority actually something like 85 to 90 percent of people are going to say yes to that. They don't have bad theology per se. They believe the core tenet of what it is to be a Christian. It's what they do in real time that makes the difference. It's what they do when they go through the shame and the guilt. It's what they do when they go through the temptation. It's what they go through. It's what they do whenever they go through the trauma when they go through being triggered again. It's what they do then. You and I probably know more than we need to actually to to just kind of walk with the Lord. Okay, we know more than that. There's a there's a very small amount of things that you actually have to know to just start following the Lord. Okay, hallelujah, but practically using discernment to put that on to purposely do that in the middle of

temptation in the middle of a trial in the middle of being tempted in the middle of all those things that that is what the Lord wants to help you do. That's how the Lord wants to help you grow. That's what it means to be weak-minded. Is it it's not that it's not that you can listen to a sermon or that you can follow along in a Bible. It's that in real time when you're having somebody shout you down and tell you that you're a moron that you know enough to believe that that's not true. You know enough to believe to step back and say listen. Hey, let's finish this conversation later. Whenever maybe you're a little more calm and having the discipline to walk away having the Holy Spirit power to walk away. Right. That's the difference. That's what it means to be weak-minded. That's why we're answering these kinds of questions here because in the middle of the war in the middle of the

battle when you're getting a sword swung at your face, you have to know what to do. You have to be able to fight back. We're going to discuss this more. I want to take a just a second to look at therapy and medicine. Okay. I'm gonna look at therapy and medicine in terms of what it means for healing. Okay, I will say this healing only happens at the feet of Jesus.

Healing only happens at the feet of Jesus. It doesn't discount therapy and medicine. It just puts it in its right place. Healing only happens at the feet of Jesus. Jesus will heal when and where he wants to. In that healing process. He is always inviting people into a relationship with him. Okay, that's always happening. The purpose of therapy and medicine and a lot of other things like that, they can help shed light on what we need. Okay, so this is like I said, I'm saying therapy and medicine. I'm including like counseling. I'm including biblical counseling, all kinds, right? There's a lot you can throw in that drawer and I'm doing that on purpose because I'm not condemning it.

What I'm saying is that it can help its use is to help shed light on what we need. So I will give you two examples. You might go to therapy and or counseling and you might begin to recognize patterns of disobedience in your life. Okay, that's a common thing that people find in the middle of counseling. They see, okay, my life is on this loop. Okay, I keep making this same mistake over and over and over again. And these are my triggers. And this is this is how I typically kind of act. Okay, however, you cannot change yourself enough to heal.

No one can. You cannot, you cannot discipline your body enough to bring healing upon you. That only happens at the feet of Jesus. The therapy can shed light on the fact that you need to be in the feet of Jesus and that's good. It's valuable. Be wary of any therapy or teaching or preaching or anything like that that talks about complete deliverance. Like I'm serious. There's a guy in DFW Todd white others that others that are kind of in his in his game and they're talking about complete deliverance. Todd white claims he hadn't sinned in six years or something crazy like that. And I love you laugh. I'm being he's being dead serious. And he's telling he's telling millions of people that they can also walk in that complete deliverance.

Right. And what you what you get is you get people that are dealing with complete brokenness. They are feeling deep shame. They are and they they are willing to say and do and believe anything to be able to experience some of that healing and really what Todd white and others are saying is that you can you can work yourself. You can spiritually habit yourself into healing that you can rid yourself. Of sin of sinful practices therapy medicine can help you recognize patterns of disobedience. But they can't heal you another thing that therapy and medicine can do is to identify origins of pain of hurt. Okay, so like they can take you back to a childhood memory. They can take you back to a painful season of your life. They can take you back to and they can say look look here's where you learned that bad thing and here's why you're still afraid of it. Here's where you experience that trauma and here's the

triggers and here's why you go through this again. Okay, that's not bad. Period. That's not bad to do at all. It's actually can be super helpful. However, just because you name your offender. It doesn't mean you're healed. Of what they did to you. Even if you punish the offender, right? If the offender if the offender was arrested or if you've punished the offender in some capacity that doesn't heal you.

It doesn't heal you and just because you can name it. It's not the same thing. It's helpful. It's helpful. It can give you understanding. It can tell you how to pray. It's helpful. But it cannot it can't do the work of healing in you only Jesus can do that only the Spirit can do that. Medicine. I will say this about medicine. I've had many friends that and I don't mean Advil. Okay, I mean specifically I mean psychotropic drugs. I mean drugs that alter your state of mind. Okay, this is for the for the for the better. Okay, obviously, I'm not talking about LSD. I don't I'm not promoting that so I'm talking about medicine. Sorry. I got to be so specific. I get emails guys.

Psychotropic drugs. Sometimes often maybe are vilified in especially in Christian circles. And part of the reason is or part of the thinking is that they're trying to you're trying to replace the Holy Spirit. You're trying to. Here's I've had like I said, I've had many good friends Christians who've been on a psychotropic drug and here's what they've told me. They've said. Drew when I when I take that drug, it doesn't make me feel better. It just gets me to zero.

And what happens with what happens in their lives is they they try to build they try to grow like, you know, like they're making progress and all of a sudden they crater because of something that happened some trigger some some something and they crater and they bottom out and they are just and they can't build anything and they've lost years of their life on trying to gain this momentum to build this thing over here. What psychotropic drugs can do is they can just help level you out so that you can begin to build. This is how it's been explained to me.

I also have friends that that really hate psychotropic drugs and that tell other people that it's the devil and you should so, you know, it's sometimes it's weird for me to have two of my friends around. Okay, that's makes for interesting conversation. I would just say that I would say that if you are going to engage in psychotropic drugs as medicine. I would say do it with a physician every time because you you can't tell how your mood is altered. It's actually impossible. You can't there's no way so you need to do it with somebody that you trust and a doctor don't just do it with your doctor tell somebody else that you're doing it help them help you. Okay, you need to do that with a community. I'm saying it's helpful because it can get you to zero and it can help you begin to see things a little more clearly. Medicine and therapy and counseling and all these things

they have a place and it can be a good place. Obviously, they can all be abused. Lots of things can be abused. It lots of really great things can be abused. But it is limited healing can only happen at the feet of Jesus. So I just want to recap real quick. God offers healing now and God offers complete healing in the not yet that's coming in the now we must fight against our pain. We must make make war with our trauma. Doubt or suffering. And so I want to I want to try to look at how we're going to do this.

God desires us to live in freedom. Through our pain. Okay, let me say that again because you need to catch this. God desires us to live in freedom not despite our pain. Not in the absence of pain. But through our pain. God has a plan in our pain. Timothy Keller in the reason for God says if you have a God great enough to be angry at for allowing suffering you also have a God great enough to have reasons for allowing it that you can't understand.

It's a fun read by the way the reason for God is a great read if you ever want to read it, but that's a that's a really good thing to remember that. You don't we don't worship a God that we can explain in three sentences. And trying to explain trauma trying to explain theodicy, you know, why do why do three-year-olds get cancer, right? What why all of these really difficult questions what you're really asking at the end of the day is would you explain life to me?

That's really what you're doing because life is filled with this kind of pain. No one's immune to it. You're either going to deal with it. Well, you're not you're either going to make war on it or you're not. God does not get jammed up by your pain. God is not with you in your prayer and all of a sudden like you have this huge doubt in God's like whoa tap the brakes. You're having a doubt right now. I don't know the whole plan is a skew. I guess we're going to have to start all over. Maybe I'll go start with another person. I look I'm being silly, but that's how a lot of people think that's how most of us act that that when we kind of do something that is particularly un-Christian. We're somehow disqualified forever.

We're not. I mean, I hope not. The message of the Bible doesn't seem to say that. They were not God's not jammed up by your pain, whether it's self-inflicted or not. God's not God's not wondering what to do with that. He's using that. God knew that was going to be there. God has such intricate knowledge of that whole scenario that it makes us uncomfortable to think about like did God plan the whole thing?

Yeah, look even the really bad things. God's not clutching his pearls. He knows and I'm not even trying to be too funny right now. I'm really just trying to be honest and say it's it's hard. It's hard to go through something difficult and to know in your heart, the Lord could have stopped this but he didn't and he has a reason for it. And more than just a reason he has a plan for you to live in freedom.

The rule it Romans 5 says this much more eloquently than I could. It's not only that but we rejoice in our sufferings knowing that suffering produces endurance, endurance produces character, character produces hope. Hope does not put us to shame because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us. I want to challenge you today.

I wanted you to I want to challenge you to pray for hope and joy. I want you to ask God to help you see your doubt, your shame, your trauma, your hurt as avenues for knowing him more. And this is really different than how a lot of us think about it, right? So if somebody is going through or has just gone through a traumatic experience, let's say there's been let's say it's a it's a really bad wreck that they were T-boned in. Okay, so they were their life was altered by somebody else wrecking them. Okay. I've got a couple of car wreck victims in the house.

Let's say that's that happened to you, right? And you're going to have physical and emotional trauma from that. Like just there's no way out of that. You're going to have that right? You're going to have a sequence where you're going to be like brought right back there emotionally and you're going to react physically to that that will happen. That's part of experiencing trauma. That even that is an avenue to know the Lord more. It's not an avenue to avoid for the rest of your life. It's an avenue to explore and I'm not saying this lightly and I'm not saying this is somebody who has never done it.

I have lots of things in my past that are pretty difficult for me to think about for a long time. But what the Lord has done is he's brought me through those exact things and allowed me to swim in it and to see his goodness in it and to understand that that was a seasoning for me a time of preparation for me. I want you to ask God to help you see that and then I want you to ask for joy in the middle of it based on all that. I just said ask for joy in the middle of it not to pretend like it doesn't hurt. Okay, we're not there's always this story and I kind of love and hate the story. But here's how the story goes. There's a lady who finds her husband dead in the kitchen because he's had a heart attack. She can tell he had heart trouble right the whole thing. She finds him dead in the kitchen and this is a true story as far as I can tell. And I know some of the wives in here just like your blood

pressure just went up. I know I'm sorry. This is just the story. She sees her husband and then she breaks out into a worship song. I love and hate that story. Right. I love that story in part because I'm like God bless that one. I hope it's real. I hope some lady busted out and praise the Lord over her dead husband's body because she knew this was going to bring her closer to him. She knew this is part of his plan all that but like come on. You're not like falling to the ground in tears. I mean your life is totally different in that moment.

I love it because it gives glory to God. I don't love it because it can maybe set up some unrealistic expectations for what happens whenever we go through something difficult. But man when you lose your job and you want to just be upset for a couple of hours dude call somebody. Be upset for a couple hours more in that thing. You lose a parent more than that.

You get a bad diagnosis a horrible diagnosis more than that but also ask for joy. Knowing that God is going to use that to shape you and to bless others. Elisabeth Elliot knows something about suffering. Elisabeth Elliot was a missionary to a country where it's a famous story. Jim Elliot is her husband. There were four families four men four women and a couple of children and they went to Papua New Guinea. I think is the country Ecuador. Thank you can and she knows the story. I always think this country wrong. So they all go and as soon as they're there for you know a little bit they're starting to make some kind of headway learning the language.

But the locals that are there in Ecuador and this is in the 60s 50s something like that early long time ago 100 years ago. It's not 100 but it's a long time and so the 60s were not 100 years ago. I know I know. Sorry to make you feel old. It's not what I was trying to do. They all you're going to feel bad for laughing here in a second but they they went and all four of those men died. They were killed by the villagers that they were ministering to. They made four widows and in an instant and a couple of more than a handful of orphans. Okay Elisabeth Elliot is the wife of one of those men who was killed and she went back to Ecuador and administered to the people of Ecuador for over a decade after that. She like left mourned her husband and came back to the same village administered to those people and again, I love and hate that story for the same reasons. Right because if somebody didn't want to go back

I'd be like I don't blame you sister. I mean but here's what she wrote. She wrote a book called suffering is not for nothing never for nothing. Excuse me. Here's your quote. God's story never ends with ashes. The cross was not the end. The cross was the worst thing that ever happened in human history but God turned it into the best thing. Look when you are considering your life. I want you to consider that God turned the gruesome death of Jesus into the most glorious thing ever. This is the God we serve. This is the Jesus that we follow.

It doesn't end all your pain now, but he makes good on it. Eventually. That one day it will all make sense. In fact one day it will all be turned out for good. It's a hard thing to believe right now. So here's what I want you to own in with this. I want to ask you to consider now one of the worst things that has ever happened to you. I realize this might not be super comfortable. Promise it won't be long.

Think about it seriously. Think about one of the worst things that ever happened to you and I just want to ask you this question. What have you done with your pain? It doesn't have to be an indictment. I'm not trying to heap shame and guilt on you. I want you to consider. What have you done with that pain? You tried to ignore it. If you let it consume you that all you can think about does it build fear and anxiety to the point where it's crippling for you.

You let the pain make you bitter resentful. I want to challenge you not to ignore your pain anymore. I want you to remember that God gives us hope in our pain because gives us hope for our pain and God gives us hope beyond our pain. Let's pray. Lord we thank you for our pain. What a weird thing to pray. What a weird thing to be thankful for. The thing that we run from the thing that we work to avoid at all costs the reason that we don't touch hot pans. We don't want pain. It is a deterrent.

And yet and yet you bless it. You use it. You orchestrate it for your purposes. Your call is not for us to avoid pain at all costs. Your call is for us to engage that pain and to find you in it. Find you unafraid of it. Lord we thank you for this morning. Help us to be thankful for our pain. It's your name that we pray. Amen.