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Welcome back to Part Two of our discussion on Reconstruction. We talk about some podcast recommendations, focusing on the real person of Jesus, and exploring Why did God let this happen to me? Join me for some more thought provoking content.
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Reconstruction Part Two
[00:00:00] [00:00:33] Welcome back to the podcast. Thank you for being here. And last week we talked about reconstructing our faith. After trauma or abuse and we’re going to continue to talk about that today. There’s lots more tips that I have for you personal experiences and Hopefully this ability. [00:00:58] Hopefully this will be helpful to you[00:01:00] and we’re going to Skip any housekeeping things today. I don’t really have anything to share with you [00:01:07] Let’s get into our show. [00:01:10] We are gonna review, what is Reconstruction? You’re starting at ground zero after leaving an abusive situation or trauma and you’re trying to figure out What you believe. Is this a belief that my parents gave me? Is this faith my own faith? Was These belief systems that I had Were they my own choice, or did somebody make me adopt these things out of coercion? [00:01:45] And I’ve shared my testimony many times, that I chose my faith. I was raised Catholic, but I, um, was led to the Lord by my Baptist cousins. [00:02:00] And it was presented to me, and I chose. To accept that, I believed it to be true. It is not the belief system of my parents or my siblings, but I sincerely chose it for myself. [00:02:16] I was not coerced into it. And, and I still have that faith in the Lord through thick and thin, through trauma and trials. So that is one of the questions that you have to answer for yourself. You have to go back and think, okay, is this a belief of my parents or is it my belief? Is this the belief of my husband or is it my belief? [00:02:38] Do I sincerely believe this to be true? Now, some of you that have been listening for a long time, you know my husband and I have some differing beliefs. I won’t get into that, but I stand very firmly in my beliefs, my doctrines, and he has some of his own. We’ve had conversations about those [00:03:00] and so that is part of the exploration process. [00:03:03] And we talked about with the deconstruction is, there’s some stuff in there that I don’t like. Okay, we have to explore, why is it that I don’t like it? Why don’t I like this part of it, and is it a legitimate beef with the religion? Has it maybe been, twisted, or used against me, or, not explained correctly? [00:03:35] For example, the doctrine of hell or doctrine of that we are all sinners. Um, is it just distasteful because you were never explained the biblical way. We don’t want to focus everything on that we’re sinners. In fact, my pastor was talking about this today. The end goal is not focusing on that [00:04:00] we’re sinners. [00:04:00] We acknowledge it. And we move on to what God has for us. He’s got grace for us, salvation for us. He’s got a plan for our lives. So yeah, we’re sinners, but hey, that’s not all that the gospel is about. And God loves you regardless of our sin. So that’s the introduction and the review [00:04:28] uh, so, where was I on my list here? Let’s jump into that. [00:04:32] If you’re going through a transitionary time, try and watch what you’re, be mindful of what you’re listening to. [00:04:41] Try and find some uplifting music. It doesn’t have to be Christian. I’ve done a lot of podcast episodes on music and the power that it has. Go back and listen to them. I love progressive rock. I love Kansas. Kansas is so [00:05:00] positive and makes me feel good. [00:05:03] I like John Denver. I like classical music and none of those are necessarily, Christian music. So one of them is. Um, it’s probably not the time to listen to death metal or those breakup songs. Not going to put you in the right framework. It’s not a healthy thing to do. I love all kinds of music, so don’t think I’m trying to bash any one kind of music. [00:05:32] The books that you read, the TV that you watch, the podcast you listen to. If you want a list of really good podcasts, hit me up. I will tell you my list. the ones I tell you right now that I never miss is Wayne Stiles. I’ve talked about him a lot. He’s been on the show before, trying to get him back on the show again to talk some more, but I never miss his podcast. [00:06:00] I highly recommend it. [00:06:02] Wayne Stiles podcast is called Live the Bible and he talks about the Bible lands and how to connect the Bible lands to your everyday life. [00:06:15] Books in the Bible that nobody else goes through. He just went through [00:06:20] Leviticus. He conquers the passages that nobody else does. And he’s very funny, has a lot of great stories. [00:06:28] He’s very theologically sound. He’s, very gracious. He’s not, um, severe in any way, or what you would call legalistic. He has a very good balance of Preaching the grace of God while at the same time not ignoring, the problem of sin. So, , Definitely recommend Wayne. [00:06:51] So Jordan Harbinger, I like to listen to, he’s got a lot of different topics. A lot about cult survivors on there.[00:07:00] [00:07:00] He’s not a Christian, but he has a really good head on the shoulders and he’s Practices really good Journalism where he fact checks and he doesn’t have certain people on his show that Really can’t back up their stuff with facts. [00:07:17] I listen to Theology in the Raw that is Preston Sprinkles podcast. [00:07:23] He’s excellent Oh, he’s a progressive from what I understand. He has guests on his show and he talks about all different sorts of theology topics. And he tries to look at both sides. It’s very It’s good because it’s healthy to look at both viewpoints when talking about a doctrine or a controversial topic in the news, I highly recommend it. [00:07:49] Let’s see. I Listen to Christian Geek Central. We had Paeter Frandsen on the show If you’re a geek you like geeky [00:08:00] stuff. He has a terrific podcast. He talks about video games and movies and TV shows. And he talks about them in a Christian perspective. He also does a, devotional and he does a very good devotional and he does his homework. [00:08:19] He’s not theologically formally trained as he says, but he does a really great job. He, goes to my church, listen to Pater’s interview. go back and listen to it. He’s very fun guy, very enjoyable to listen to. [00:08:38] The Unshakable Hope Podcast. Uh, that is my very good friend, Kelly, she just started this podcast about finding hope in severe trauma and suffering. She’s got some great guests. She’s only done five episodes. So please, try her show out. She’s an [00:09:00] amazing interviewer. She’s excellent in finding these great guests so far and a dear friend, she has a terrific testimony. [00:09:09] She’s a leader of my Bible study group. So I highly recommend her. You want to talk about suffering and how to deal with that as a believer. [00:09:21] let’s see here. Speaking out on sex abuse. I listened to this show for years. Jimmy Hinton’s been on our show and they just ended the podcast. I’m pretty sure that the, episodes are still up, but him and his mom have stopped producing new episodes because they want to do something else. [00:09:45] Clara, his mom is helping grief survivors. Those who have lost children or loved ones. I think they’re kind of transitioning to that, but go and listen to the rest of The [00:10:00] shows, the back catalog, because he talks a lot about spiritual abuse and trying to get your faith back. Your faith is damaged. And how do you get it back when, you know, like Jimmy’s father, he sexually abused the children in his church for 30 years and even some of his own children were sexually abused and he’s in prison and they’re dealing with that aftermath. [00:10:25] And, yeah, he’s. Admitted he was angry with God. Let’s see, what else do I have on here? [00:10:31] The podcast called You’re Wrong About? That’s definitely out of my bubble. They’re not Christians. Any sense of the word, but they’re both reporters and they do subjects about people, very famous people. High profile stories, for example, they did Sinead O’Connor before she died, and what actually happened with that, ripping the Pope’s picture.[00:11:00] [00:11:00] I didn’t like their sex trafficking episode because I don’t think they did their homework, but for the most part, it gets, gets me out of the bubble and informs me on things that I thought I knew what was going on, but I really didn’t hear the other side of the story. [00:11:13] Christian Ninja, I listen to, he’s got a podcast called Shadowed. He’s been on the show three times. He is a Twitch pastor, so if you’re into Twitch and gaming, he is a gaming pastor. He goes and plays games and then he does devotionals and talks about whatever you want to talk about on Twitch. He preaches on there, he prays with you, and then he’s got a terrific community on Discord. [00:11:43] Well, we talked about community, that’s a community that I’m a part of, and it’s very healthy and excellent. There’s no talking down to each other, the moderators are very, strict about making it a positive place for people. And there’s a lot [00:12:00] of broken people in that community, but they have a safe place to go to talk and to be accepted. [00:12:06] So, check out Christian Ninja. That’s, uh, X T I A N N I N J A. Just Google it. Uh, let’s see. [00:12:16] Fair Game, that is Leah Remini’s podcast. She was, in Sci, her and Mike, who do this podcast. It’s excellent. [00:12:26] Her and Mike are great about defining cults and not just Sci, but all the other kinds of cults. [00:12:35] Preacher Boy’s podcast. This was one of the first podcasts I listened to. Eric Skwarczynski, he, was raised in the Fundamental Baptist Church and, suffered a lot of things. He’s been trying to expose some of the abuse in the Fundamental Baptist Churches, doing a great job. [00:12:57] Now he has. [00:13:00] Recently announced that he is an atheist. He doesn’t believe anymore. But, um, that’s just a caveat. I will tell you that he is not a believer anymore. Um, but he is still in the fight to expose some of these horrible people in the churches that abuse children. [00:13:18] So it is very valuable as far as resources and guests. some of it’s really rough to listen to, so be aware of that. [00:13:29] I listen to a lot of podcasts, huh? I’m not going to tell you all of them because some of them you probably don’t want to listen to. [00:13:36] Making elephants fly, Terry Weaver. He went to the same church I did when I went to Bible College. We were in different, age groups. He was in high school and I was in college. [00:13:48] But he now has a great, business. Making Elephants Fly is just the podcast, but he, has [00:14:00] this conference called The Thing, and he teaches people how to be an entrepreneur and quit making excuses and live your best life. He is a Christian. He has a very strong faith, but he doesn’t always talk about religious topics. [00:14:18] He talks about, Action, getting it done, getting out there and changing the world and using your gifts and, uh, so you can, Google The Thing or listen to Making Elephants Fly. He also wrote a book. I highly recommend him. I don’t really like the positive thinking, shallow woo woo crowd. But Terry has a lot of substance and real meat to his, conferences and his, [00:14:50] podcasts. And so I think you’ll get a lot of value from that. And in fact, he’s the one that kind of kicked me in the butt to start this podcast. I’ve been wanting to have him on the show, but it’s just. [00:15:00] Been hard getting him, with his schedule, getting him on here. [00:15:03] What else is on my list here? [00:15:05] Creatively Christian. It talks about different artists on there. Whatever kind of artists they can find. It could be music, it could be a painter, a sculptor, um, somebody who writes music, there’s a poet or makes comic books. They interview them with a Christian, viewpoint, it’s really good. They have some very talented people on this show. And Andrea Sandifer has been on my show. She’s a musician, singer songwriter, so she’s one of the hosts, and, listen to her podcast interview. Actually, she’s been on the show twice, Andrea Sandifer, and she’s got some wonderful music. [00:15:51] Alright, so there you have it. There’s, my list of podcasts that I listen to. [00:15:56] I want to talk mostly about Jesus here. [00:16:00] I don’t want to leave that to the very end because this is very important. When you’re trying to like choose a church, for instance, and cause you’re eventually going to want to choose a church when the smoke clears. And you’re thinking, [00:16:17] where do I start? And I’ve done a podcast, you’re probably sick of me saying that by this point. I had my own pastor, Kyle Fox, on the show that talks about what a healthy church looks like. And you’re not gonna find a perfect church. We made that very clear that there are sinners in the churches. [00:16:41] There’s sinners in every church. And the difference is, are they seeking the Lord? When they make the mistakes, or are they covering up their mistakes? Are they coming clean when, you know, the pastor messes up or the deacons are caught doing something? [00:17:00] That is the key. Are they humble? Are they inviting you in as you are? [00:17:05] And helping you to be a better Christian, or are they judging you? You need to look for those things. And it’s, it is really hard. It took me a long time to find healthy churches. I found a couple along the way. What I want to say is, focus on Jesus. Because it’s overwhelming to look at the entire Bible. [00:17:30] And then look at all the churches out there and think, well, who is doing this right? Which one is teaching the truth and which one is not? And I would say to focus on the Gospels. Focus on Jesus and what He is teaching. Has done what he has said. How does he treat people, the hated ones? Boy, [00:17:55] Pastor Kyle this morning just preached on the woman at the well. Well, it wasn’t the whole [00:18:00] story. We’re in Second Kings, we’re going through a series and a part of his sermon was the woman at the well because we were talking about Samaria and how Samaria came to be. Well, he went into the whole thing about [00:18:13] Jesus going to Samaria to meet this woman, and she was one of the first people to hear that Jesus claimed to be the Messiah. That’s exciting. But Jesus did something that no other Jew would do. One, he was walking through Samaria and giving them the gospel instead of, well, what about the Jews? The Jews and the Samaritans did not talk at all. [00:18:42] They were enemies. And I’ve done a whole podcast on that, so, go listen to The Women at the Well. You’ll get the full story. Jesus spoke to a woman, which wasn’t allowed. Jews didn’t speak to women unless they were in their immediate family. [00:19:00] And Jesus gave her the gospel, regardless of what background she had. [00:19:05] And Jesus said to go and tell others about the living water. That was unheard of in Jesus day. Nobody would do that. [00:19:14] So that gives us a lesson. How are we supposed to treat people? [00:19:19] And we don’t have healing powers, of course, unless you’re a doctor. You may have some healing powers there. [00:19:28] But I would start with the gospel start reading in Matthew and get a highlighter or a notebook and write down Things that you notice about Jesus that the current church isn’t doing. How come we don’t do this when Jesus did this, [00:19:45] you know The gospel is very basic. We went over the gospel last week that Salvation is through faith in Jesus his work on the cross him dying [00:20:00] for our sin [00:20:01] Dying in our place and rose from the dead so we could live in eternity with him [00:20:06] leave the rest to the scholars. When you’re trying to survive and figure out where do I start with my faith. Stick with Jesus, the Son of God. I know a lot of people say that the Apostle Paul was the greatest. The Apostle Paul stirs up a lot of controversy, and a lot of his Pauline epistles are very complex to interpret because of the [00:20:38] context and the environment in which it was written, and many people don’t look into that. They just take it at face value, and they don’t do any kind of research. But for the most part, you know, Jesus is… Who he says he is. [00:20:56] Jesus is kind and loving. He cared for the [00:21:00] oppressed. He forgave. Who was he mean to? Maybe mean isn’t the word, but who would he get upset with? He would get upset with the Pharisees, the Sadducees, the religious leaders. Why? Because they were oppressing his people and enslaving them. The law wasn’t meant to enslave people. [00:21:21] The law was meant to show us that we needed God. We can never be perfect. We can never keep all of the laws. That’s why we need, God. So yeah, he wouldn’t do his ceremonial hand washing. He would be, healing on the Sabbath. He would be eating grain on the Sabbath. He would do all kinds of things. [00:21:42] But he had converts, and the religious leaders were jealous because people would believe in him. [00:21:49] So I know that it’s really hard with the Bible. You’ve been beat over the head with it. You’ve probably been triggered or [00:22:00] traumatized by a lot of Bible verses, and I understand that. There are certain Bible verses that I avoid. I can’t… Read anymore. I’m getting better. I’m getting better because I’m learning what they really mean instead of What I was told they were meant rather than what I was told they meant. You have to do the research on your own. [00:22:25] I did a whole series on Bible study. It’s around the 100 episode some before and some after and some guests on the show that were Really good at studying the Bible And they are all abuse survivors, and they all had different answers as to how they study the Bible. They’re all Christians, but they’re all from different denominations. [00:22:52] They have different doctrinal positions. Nothing really severe, but it’s okay that I [00:23:00] had a Pentecostal person on the show and I’m not Pentecostal. I don’t speak in tongues. not going to get into that. [00:23:06] That’s not a fundamental of the faith I hope that you go back and listen to how to study your Bible. Extremely important when starting over and you will discover, I promise you, you will discover some things that, oh All this time. I thought this meant this. It happens to me all the time. We just did Debra not too long ago, and I’ve said this more than once, I’ve never heard a sermon on Debra. [00:23:34] I know why now. [00:23:36] And don’t be robbed of the joys of reading scripture and discovering some great things. And if you don’t understand it, reach out for help. You know, a lot of my guests on the podcast, you can reach out to them for help. They have more letters after their name than I do. A lot of the guests, [00:24:00] they put Bible resources like software you can use, uh, commentaries, visual aids. So, if you can’t afford to buy commentaries, there’s a lot of free resources on the web. [00:24:14] stick to the resources that are given from my guests. [00:24:18] Because you should come up with the same answers. As far as salvation is concerned, you should come up with the same answers. [00:24:24] So, I’m not going to get into too much detail because I’ve done entire episodes on these things. I just want to remind you. This is part of our journey to explore these things. And in looking for a new church, maybe go out of your comfort zone, again, out of our bubble instead of, okay, I’m going to go find another Baptist church that is healthy. [00:24:51] Maybe try a non denominational church. If you came from a mega church, maybe try a [00:25:00] smaller church. If you came from a, contemporary Christian, dancing in the aisles kind of a place, maybe try a liturgical church like, Methodist or Episcopalian, [00:25:14] Anglican, and just try it for the experience and see how others worship that you can meet with God in different ways. That doesn’t mean you have to agree with their doctrine or how they run their church But I’m saying this is part of your research. [00:25:31] Maybe if you came from a traditional Hymns type of a church, maybe try a contemporary church once. I promise, You’re not gonna die This is an experiment. This is an exploration to see what you’ve been missing out on You’re looking at other people’s perspectives, other ways of worshiping, other styles of preaching. [00:25:56] If you come from a screamer church like I did [00:26:00] where the louder they were and the harder they pounded on the pulpit, the more spiritual they were. I can’t, can’t deal with that anymore. I can’t go to a church with screamers. Uh uh. Nope. My pastor, I’ve never heard him yell or scream. Hopefully the only time I will hear that is if the building’s on fire, folks. [00:26:20] you know, if you came from a cult and you are [00:26:25] just traumatized right now and you can’t bear to walk in a church. I know, uh, Christian Ninja, I just mentioned. He’s the Twitch pastor, and he went through a lot of spiritual abuse. You really need to hear his story. It was horrible, and he’s still going through recovery because he could not go into a church as a layman without being physically sick. [00:26:53] He’s not a pastor in a physical church anymore. He can’t sing certain [00:27:00] hymns, he can’t do anything but sit there in the back of the church. That is part of his journey of healing. And he recently just asked a pastor that, um, is head of the church where he is attending right now and asked, Hey, you want to have a cup of coffee and have a chat? [00:27:20] That’s a step that he’s taking. And [00:27:23] another option is to watch church online. I know that sounds like a cop out. Hear me out on this. We all learned how to do it in the pandemic. I don’t want to get into that controversial thing, but our church, we had a choice if you wanted to come into church or if you wanted to do the online services. [00:27:43] Our online services are on the internet for everybody to watch. You can watch, Bible study classes on your own. You can listen to all the sermons. I do the greeting on the online services. Once a month and I [00:28:00] say welcome, if there’s anything I can do for you, anything you need prayer for, if you have any questions about the church, that’s what I do. [00:28:08] That’s part of my ministry. Because I know that there are you out there that won’t step foot in a church right now. Mm .Mm. Oh, but this is a good way if you watch church online. You get the feel of the pastor, kind of get a little sense of what the culture’s like, and you can go on their website, and see what, they’re like, what their doctrine’s like. [00:28:34] I have a co worker that has been looking for a church. Now he’s not an abuse survivor, he doesn’t have that to deal with. But he… He just found a church that he’s trying out, and he first watched online, and then he decided to go in person, and he’s been meeting some of the people there. [00:28:53] And he says, I think I’m going to try this for a while. And it looks like it’s very promising. [00:29:00] So try that. If you, you can’t walk into a church right now, go online. I have a few pastor friends that have online services. That you can watch. Let’s see. I’m gonna look on my list here. We just had… [00:29:18] Alright, so Scott Distler. He was on the show. He’s awesome. He’s a pastor. And he has been through abuse. Very similar to Christian Ninja. And you can go on his, church and watch him preach. And he’s amazing. So that is episode 135. You want to listen to him talk. He’s wrote a great book, The Cave. let’s see, I’ve got, [00:29:45] I’ve got Mark Sowersby. He’s been on the show twice. He’s a pastor. and he has online services. He’s terrific. You can listen to him. let’s see. [00:29:56] Anyway, those are a couple that you can listen [00:30:00] to. [00:30:00] Wayne Stiles, he goes to Chuck Swindoll’s church, I believe, last time I checked. I know that’s kind of a big church, but I do believe they broadcast their services. And, I’ve listened to Chuck Swindoll when I first got baptized. And Wayne’s podcast is basically him teaching the Sunday school classes he teaches the, over 50 crowd. [00:30:25] But I want to address that sometimes… You’re not ready to do any of that. That’s okay. It takes time. You’re shell shocked. You might not be wanting to do any of that for a while. What I do encourage you, if you don’t want to pray or read your Bible or go online or go to a church, is try and spend some time out in nature, enjoying either the forest or, well, I live in the [00:31:00] desert, so enjoy the desert, uh, Pine trees up north, a park, a garden. [00:31:08] Go out and enjoy nature. It sounds very, New Age ish, [00:31:12] but God created that nature. Go out and take a walk. Focus on the smells. other things that you can do is, [00:31:21] is to take care of your body. [00:31:23] We talked about listening to good music, and we all joke about the bubble baths, but take a bubble bath. Oh, I got kids. Okay, maybe the bubble bath might not work, but, getting more sleep, hiring a babysitter to go and take care of your kids so you can do something fun, they have those painting classes with, you can paint something, they teach you how to paint, and then you have, wine, or you have snacks, or ice cream, or whatever, and I’ve done one of those, it’s, it’s really fun. [00:31:58] They make sure that you go home with [00:32:00] something that looks really nice. They’ll help you. You know, do something fun for yourself. [00:32:05] It goes back to developing healthy coping methods. What is healthy? Okay, nutrition. Eating, right and getting some exercise. I don’t mean CrossFit. I don’t like CrossFit. A lot of people think CrossFit is a cult, so, um… Heads up on that if you decide to do a CrossFit, be mindful that you can do CrossFit, just go and do the class and go home. Make it an obsession, you don’t want to do that. , yeah, exercise can just mean taking a walk. [00:32:37] You need to take care of yourself, your body. We talked about going to the doctor. [00:32:44] And. Your children, you want to be there for them if you have kids. [00:32:48] If you’re not healthy, then, um, your children are not going to be healthy because they’re following your example. Focus on breaking the cycle with your [00:33:00] children. You don’t want to continue this cycle of abuse. You don’t want to create a cycle of unbelief. You don’t want them to lose their faith. They’re at a delicate age, I’m sure. [00:33:12] when your children come to you with questions, be honest with them. I don’t know. Let me find out for you, or let’s… Let’s go research together if they’re at an age to do so, but just do the best you can, but be honest with where you are in your healing journey. You don’t have to tell them the ugly stuff, unless they’re old enough to understand, and they’re teenagers or something. [00:33:40] The little kids, [00:33:41] the little kids, they need to know that they have a parent, that [00:33:46] little kids need a parent. That is stable, that they can lean on, ask questions, and get honest answers, not be punished for asking questions. [00:33:56] Believe them when they tell you something. [00:33:59] Maybe it’s [00:34:00] your children that were abused. Get them some support. I already mentioned that. [00:34:04] You can journey together along this road to healing. If you’ve done some things in response to abuse that you probably shouldn’t have done. Humble yourself and apologize to them. I’m sorry for not listening to you or not being there for you or not believing you, um, shouting at you in anger, punishing you when I should not have. [00:34:29] That’s hard. It’s hard to humble ourselves and admit to our our family that we messed up. We are messed up, but we’re trying to get better. [00:34:41] And do your best to not break their little hearts again with God’s help with some support [00:34:50] and um, Yeah, I’m on a ramble here. [00:34:53] Okay, so to close reconstruction is a journey and It’s not an easy journey, but [00:35:00] it’s worth that journey. Just keep going forward reach out to Jesus ask him for help. It’s all prayer is really is It doesn’t have to be formal. [00:35:12] God, show yourself to me. I’m, um, seeking you right now. Please show me the answers. Please help me. And he will. He’ll bring some help for you. If you’re seeking it, he will bring you some help. [00:35:27] If you’re open. If you’re angry with God, he understands that. You’re on the couch with God. I ain’t talking with you yet, God. That’s all right. It’s okay to take a break. to regroup, but don’t stay there. Don’t stay on that couch [00:35:43] because he’s got a lot more in store for you in this life. And when we’re talking about being angry with God, we didn’t really address this in the deconstruction podcast episode. Why did God let this happen to me? [00:36:00] Every single person I’ve talked to has that same question and I am not going to sit here and pretend that I know the answers to that. [00:36:10] That is a hard question, and there’s probably multiple answers to that. [00:36:16] We live in a fallen, sinful world. We talked about this. We have people with, [00:36:22] Free will who do horrible things. [00:36:25] And you think, well, doesn’t God have the power to stop these things? Well, yes. In God’s foreknowledge, his infinite knowledge, he can see ahead. He has a purpose. He does not promise us, that we don’t have any suffering in this life. And we’ve talked about that before. It’s a hard pill to swallow. [00:36:51] This is a fallen world and Just breathing you are going to have problems. You are going to have struggles and [00:37:00] suffering. [00:37:00] And I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but that is the reality of our world. [00:37:05] Sometimes our suffering is natural consequences. [00:37:10] And sometimes it’s somebody else’s sin is why we are suffering, and that’s wrong, and we feel that pain. [00:37:19] But what God does promise to us is that He is there with us, and He will bring something good out of it if we let Him. We don’t want to be angry and mad with God forever. Now He can take it. I read the book of Job. [00:37:35] Job asks a lot of questions to God, and I haven’t tackled Job yet for the podcast. I may do that. Next. He suffered terribly. [00:37:46] When God gave him so much more in the end and he did not lose his faith regardless of his wife and his friends Taunting him. Just curse God and die. I’m glad he didn’t curse [00:38:00] God and die because there was so much more for him. And yes, it’s very controversial that book. [00:38:06] And we’ll probably won’t get into that. [00:38:09] God is God and he has his plans You [00:38:12] He is with us and he’s there to comfort us and to get us through, give us strength to get through. And [00:38:20] I’ve said this before in other podcasts, he’s not this big genie here to grant our wishes. But he wants a relationship with us, and he loves and cares for each of his creation dearly. [00:38:33] And because we all suffer, some of us suffer more than others, the saints in the Bible all suffered greatly. There’s very, very few followers of Christ that did not suffer. Did God use them greatly? Yes. Was it fun? Probably not. Do [00:38:53] you believe in an afterlife? You believe in a heaven? Yes. They’ve been rewarded. Sometimes we’re [00:39:00] rewarded in this life, like Job was, but I’m saying don’t give up. Don’t give up on the Lord. Keep going. Keep moving forward. In this journey, you might have one step forward, two steps back. [00:39:14] We do this exercise in Mending the Soul, and we create a timeline of our life. First, it’s the basic major events of our life, and then we put in the smaller events, the turning points in our lives. Some good and the bad and every one of us looks back on that timeline and says Wow, you know God protected me here. [00:39:41] God was with me here in this terrible time. God sent a person in my life to help me. God reached out to me in this way [00:39:52] well, this this situation could have been a whole lot worse, but God spared me from that. And That’s [00:40:00] why we have the exercise in that In the workbook, in many MTS groups, because it’s very powerful. When you are out of the abuse situation and you can look back at those timelines, look back on that timeline, you have a better perspective. [00:40:18] Hang in there if you’re still in the midst of it. Hang in there. Because he suffers along with you. He cries with you. He mourns with you. He is glad with you. You say, but I can’t see that. No, we can’t. We can’t see him. Sometimes you can feel it. I have felt it. I have felt it before. And I’ve told the story. [00:40:44] So, sorry if you’ve already heard the story, but when I moved in with my best friend, I left my abuser. I expected God’s wrath to fall on me because I left my husband. And it really surprised me, but [00:41:00] I had felt nothing but compassion and love and tenderness towards me. [00:41:06] And that was a feeling that I had, and I don’t have a Bible verse for it. I don’t. In the church that I would go to in the past, they would say, well, that’s just your feelings. You can’t trust your feelings. Um, but God gave us feelings. There’s nothing wrong with acknowledging those feelings that you have, whether it’s depression or anxiety or comfort. [00:41:30] Love. He was there for me. I could feel it. Can I feel it all the time? No. When I lost my job for eight months, you all were here with me. I felt God’s presence. I felt the prayers of his people. Do I have a Bible verse for that? No, I don’t. Um, [00:41:51] but he’s there. [00:41:52] I’ve talked long enough, but I hope this has been helpful for you to at least get you started in [00:42:00] your faith if it’s been damaged. Reach out to me if you have any questions. If there’s something I didn’t cover. Oh, Diana, you skipped this part. Um, reach out to me. Ask me to do a podcast on whatever whatever you had in mind. I’m here for you to have the podcast that’s helpful for you Okay? I can come up with lots of topics, but if you have one that you want tell me. If you want to meet up on zoom I can meet with you on zoom and we can talk. If you need help finding a new church helping With a scripture verse you have problems with you don’t understand I can get you some resources. [00:42:51] I’m going into surgery in September. I have a lot of time in my hands. So we have lots of guests coming up. We have four interviews that [00:43:00] I’m doing. One, tomorrow I’m really excited about. [00:43:04] It’s, a gal that runs a organization that. takes in people’s pets who are, transitioning from an abusive relationship into their new home. And I can’t wait to meet her. And so please come back next week because you’re going to love her. I was watching some of her other interviews, and I’ve never seen anybody do this before, so be sure to come back next week, thank you for listening, for being here for me, we will see you next week. [00:43:38] God bless. Bye for now. [00:43:40] [00:43:40] [00:44:00]