Honest Christian Conversations
A weekly podcast dealing with cultural and spiritual issues within the Christian faith.
Honest Christian Conversations
Walking Through the Unthinkable
Heather Bradley joins me to share an extraordinary journey through the depths of grief and the heights of spiritual renewal. Heather's heartbreaking experience of losing a child shaped her faith in profound ways, leading her to a deeper connection with Jesus and inspiring her to write a book that offers solace and hope.
Heather Bradley's Website: https://www.truthfreedomministry.com/
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Hello everyone, Welcome back to Honest Christian Conversations. I'm your host, Anna Murby, and this is episode three of season five. I am so excited for today's episode. Heather Bradley is a wonderful woman. She has been through one of the darkest seasons of life losing a baby I can't imagine. I have five children and I can't imagine the pain that comes with losing a young child, or a child in general, but specifically a young one. Her heart for God, her love, her steadfast strength is very contagious, very encouraging. You are going to love hearing her story. This episode will change your life. Let's get started. Before the episode starts, make sure you follow the show so you never miss another episode. Hello, Heather, Thank you so much for coming on the podcast. I'm very excited to talk to you, but first, before we get into all of the details of your amazing book, will you share with us your testimony, which I know we'll weave into the book?
Speaker 1:So you just go with the flow.
Speaker 2:Yeah Well, thank you, anna. I feel so honored to be here. I love anything, and anytime I can talk about Jesus, it's one of my most favorite things to do, which is probably why you have a podcast.
Speaker 2:So I feel honored to be here and I'm super excited to get to know you Again. Yes, I'm Heather Bradley and I wrote my first book this last year published it. I know we're going to talk about my testimony. I can talk a little bit about myself.
Speaker 2:I do weave my testimony into my book, of course, but I spent most of my life as a stay-at-home mom and homeschooler and I would serve the local church that's pretty much what I always did and then eventually went on staff at church in pastoral counseling and that kind of a thing, and I loved that. And about a year or so ago the Lord had asked me to kind of lay that down and focus on writing my book, and so that's kind of how I found the time to do it, which is crazy because it was one of those things that I get when you write a book. It gets interesting because then everybody wants to know how did you know you wanted to write a book and how did you do it? Because a lot of people want to write a book. It gets interesting because then everybody wants to know how did you know you wanted to write a book and how did you do it? Because a lot of people want to write a book, so they want to know the process.
Speaker 1:I've written three different books. Oh wow, so you know, yeah, and people ask you right, how did you do it?
Speaker 2:and how did you know I'm?
Speaker 1:a stay-at-home mom with five kids. I don't know how.
Speaker 2:I did it, you don't know right. We are on the same wavelength there.
Speaker 2:But, I did. I heard the Holy Spirit tell me to cease all activity, just like that, which is kind of crazy. And I was like I have to lay down being on staff at church which I adored and loved because I love people. We were talking about love, talking about Jesus, all the time. And I did.
Speaker 2:And I found that with my personality, I had to hyper-focus on one thing at a time, because before, when I was feeling like the Lord was like you have this message, you're going to write a book. I had it in the background but I never could actually get to that. You know, oh yeah, I'm going to get to it, I'll get it, but it was the one thing that I kept falling off. So, and I had that idea for years upon years. But then, when the Lord was like it's go time, I finally sat down and you know, to make a long story short, I found this selfpublishingcom that's literally who I use. They were a blueprint that somebody prophesied over me that God was going to give me.
Speaker 2:And then I found this company and they're Christians. They were awesome. They literally held my hand from the idea to getting it published and it was exactly what I needed, because I honestly had no clue what I was doing. I just was like, hey, here's the message I have. I have no idea, so anyway, so that's what. That's what I've been doing. Like I said, I homeschooled my kids. My husband and I have been married 30 years this year and my oldest daughter is married. I have my first grandbaby, and she's one, and I have two boys. They're about 20, 22. And I am currently working with my husband in a very new season of my life.
Speaker 2:I am working at an RV park as a manager which is way different, which I could do a whole podcast on that, because it's a whole God thing and the people that own the company are absolutely amazing. They are Holy Spirit filled Christians and God brought us to this place. I get to minister here while working and just it's so crazy how God twists and turns our place. I get to minister here while working and just it's so crazy how God twists and turns our life, I guess, is my point. But this is where I'm at right now and I have this book. I said I had three children, but I actually have four, and that's what my book is about. I have a child that we lost in 1999. So I use this story and I open my book with this question you know, have you ever had an unthinkable story? You know, and here's the thing we all do to some degree. I truly believe that every one of us uh, we go through something that's our unthinkable hard story in our life, and so I like to tell people my book would definitely appeal to a parent who's lost a child, because that's what my unthinkable story was. But because the book is so really Jesus-centered and focused on Jesus, you could plug your story in and get to where I go in the book. If that makes sense, it can definitely speak to both. And if that makes sense, yeah.
Speaker 2:So you know, when he asked me my testimony, it's not just a one-time event that really happened.
Speaker 2:It's more like a little journey, I guess you could say, because when I was a little girl I remember several times and I mean I remember going to church and growing up in the church and my grandmothers were very pivotal in all that.
Speaker 2:But before I was ever even in kindergarten this is how young I was I had a couple encounters with God that's the only way I can say it when I felt like a heavy weight came upon me, almost like a paralyzed feeling, and it was later, I guess I figured out that that probably was the weight of His glory. That's the only way I can explain it. It wasn't scary, it wasn't bad, it wasn't anything. It was just me and God and I had this whole weight come upon me and His presence was so thick that in my spirit I knew that it was God and nobody. That was just me and God. He just revealed himself to me like that. So those were my earliest memories and just knowing God is real right, kind of from there just growing up in the church, not always discipled real well, if that makes sense.
Speaker 1:Yeah, no, I was in the same boat. I completely get it.
Speaker 2:Yeah. If you would have asked me like hey, do you believe in Jesus? I'd have been like yes, and I did yeah, but all through high school my life had quite different fruit, if that makes sense.
Speaker 2:Like I just wasn't discipled well, didn't know a lot. With that being said, he was in my mind but he really wasn't just my life, if that makes sense, and I had my daughter my senior year in high school. Kind of had to grow up fast and get my life together at that moment and met my husband, who I'm married to right now. We've been married 30 years and I think my daughter was about a year and a half when I met him and we married when she was three and he adopted her. That was a big, radical change in my life. He did not grow up in a Christian home at all, I did, but we just got married and entered into it like that, not with Jesus, right and so we were married and about I don't know. I don't even can't even think right now how long I'd have to do the math, and I'm not great at math Neither am I.
Speaker 2:It's probably real simple, but anyway, my daughter was about six at the time. So, anyway, that year I got pregnant and I was going to have my second, first baby at that moment because I was, you know, already out of college and all the things. I had a baby. He was born on my husband's birthday. They have the exact same birthday, wow.
Speaker 1:He was born on my husband's birthday.
Speaker 2:They have the exact same birthday. Wow, His name was Brennan. He uh basically, to make a long story short he, he lived for four, for four months. Okay, that was his lifespan four months old. He passed away when he was four months old, and so when I, when I'm weaving in the testimony there, what happened was we and I talk about all this very deeply, more extensively, like the story I know, I'm weaving in the testimony there what happened?
Speaker 1:was we, and I talk about all this very deeply, more extensively like the story.
Speaker 2:I know I'm just kind of giving a quick overview, of course, but basically when he was four months old he stopped breathing and I had to call 911 and we ended up in the hospital and essentially I did not know that he was born with a heart defect, because I guess what the doctors say is a lot of times babies that are born with heart defects they don't thrive very well from the get-go. But he was big and growing and looked, appeared to be thriving right, but underneath there was something terribly going wrong. So he had a heart attack is what happened at four months old. And so we ended up in the hospital and they did revive him. He spent about three days, maybe three or four days, at the hospital and during that time I remember they just were kind of going round and round with.
Speaker 2:We were in El Paso at the time El Paso, texas, and it's a big city, but there's bigger cities like Dallas and Houston in our state that specialize better with children who have these problems. So we were spending a lot of time just seeing how we could stabilize him to get him to one of these places, which never happened, is what happened. So the day that Brennan passed. Basically we were in the hospital still trying to figure out what was going on, and he crashed again. That's kind of what they call that when you code blue. He stopped breathing again and had another heart attack.
Speaker 2:And so I remember the all the nurses and all the doctors they're running around and you have to get out of the way, you have to leave the room. They don't want you in there because they need to work and I remember just like being in this really surreal place and walking out of the room and just I remember the most intense fear I've just come over my body. I just can't even explain it. I was literally shaking from the top of my head to and I found, right down the hallway, a bathroom. It was a single bathroom, not one that anybody else could go in.
Speaker 2:Yeah. And so I went in there and I shut the door and I remember just looking in the mirror and just being like you just feel like you're in the twilight zone. I can't even explain it, it's just this surreal feeling. And at that moment I remember thinking about God for the first time in a really long time and I kind of was just like why am I thinking about God right now? How does this all come together here?
Speaker 2:And that's when I heard the Holy Spirit say really loud and clear to me he said, heather, this is about you coming back to me. And I didn't fully understand it in the moment, but later I understood that you know, brennan was not going to make it. He passed, he died that day shortly after that moment. And it was about Jesus coming into that pain and suffering and grabbing a hold of me and he knew what was going to happen. God did right and he knew that I was going to go through something really hard, but that this is what was going to get me back where I needed to be, with him. And I believe that very fervently. And I remember after that happened people are like God doesn't allow bad things to happen. That doesn't make sense in that and I'm like well, this is my story and this is what happened.
Speaker 1:And.
Speaker 2:I don't believe that God causes the bad things to happen. I believe that because he's sovereign and knows all things, of course he could have reached down in that space right then and there and healed Brennan. I believe that with all my heart. But he allowed it to play out like he did because there was an eternal picture that was much more important than a momentary moment. And I love, love, love the scripture. That scripture that I'm going to read it because I have it written down and it's in 2 Corinthians, 4, 17 through 18. And it says For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. So we fix our eyes not on what is seen but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary but what is unseen is an eternal. And to me that's a scripture almost that sums up my entire experience with that, because he says our light and momentary troubles and when you look at all of how our lifespan is compared to all eternity with Jesus Christ, it's a moment right, the scripture says it's a moment. So, whatever suffering, affliction, anything that this world can throw at us and it throws some bad stuff. Like I said, I don't believe that God's up there saying this is going to happen to you, and he's like that. I believe that he works in the situations that we find ourselves in and for me, when I look at that scripture, what we went through brought us to our knees in Jesus, and that far outweighs that momentary thing that we went through. That was hard and that we suffered because now we get to have eternity with Jesus, because God knew that that's what would bring us to our knees to Him, and that's how I see that.
Speaker 2:And so my husband. He didn't grow up in a Christian home at all. He came to Jesus. My whole entire family line was changed. We might have had Christian people in our life, but then we became Jesus people. You know what I'm saying? Yeah, yeah, that's how I met Jesus. That's really my testimony. It was right then, and there I wish I could say, oh yeah, Jesus showed up in that hospital room and, man, it was simple. After that I just moved on in life and nothing was hard. But of course that's not how it works. Jesus showed up and that's where I if you see the cover of my book, it's about hand. We're reaching up, taking the hand. So that's really what I talk about in the book.
Speaker 2:When we take these hard, hard things that we go through in life, the enemy wants to define us by these things. Satan wants to define us by that, make us that identity, make that who we are and just ruin us. Because he comes to still kill and destroy, right. But when we take these stories that we live that are so painful and so hard and you know many people I've met that have gone through hard things and if they don't know Jesus, guess what? They're still in those places, they can't move forward, they just can't and I think that's a tool of the enemy. He wants to trap us there.
Speaker 2:But really, what I talk about in my book is you take your unthinkable story, like I share mine, and when we hand that to Jesus, when we truly take that story and we give it to Him, he doesn't leave us empty-handed. He's just literally reaching down with His hand and saying trust me, give me your hand, let me walk you through this. He does not leave us nor forsake us. He didn't say that things wouldn't happen. He promised that we would have trials and tribulation, but he doesn't leave us there. And that's the beauty of Jesus. It's an exchange happens.
Speaker 2:Look what happened to Jesus on the cross. Right, he got up on that cross. It looked really bad and for three days the disciples and the people who had put all this faith and thought they were like what in the world? The world has ended. They had so much grief, they were suffering, but then Jesus rose right. Grief, they were suffering, but then Jesus rose, right, he rose from the dead and everything changed.
Speaker 2:That's kind of like what we go through, because we want to identify with Jesus in the resurrection, we want to identify with Him in the really great things the mountaintop, right, yeah, but we also have to identify with Him in suffering, and he talks about it in the Word. And so when we do that, he supernaturally enters into these stories and he radically changes them. We get purpose out of them, we get freedom, we get healing and it becomes more about Jesus than the story. We don't forget what happened to us, but then what happens is our perspective and paradigm changes so much that it's like, yes, I went through this, but Jesus did all this. And that's where we overcome, that's where we live in freedom and purpose and healing, and we can't stop talking about it because it's so amazing and it's a supernatural exchange.
Speaker 2:Jesus does so much for us in these places when we can truly humbly surrender them at His feet and truly say, I can't do this If you don't show up, I've got nothing and then lay it there and allow Him to walk us through it and however long that takes, but trusting he's going to do it right, and then we get this beautiful exchange on the other side of faith and we learn how to suffer. Well, learn how to you know what I think too. When we can suffer, well we it may be first about us. We got to get through our heartache but when we can truly lay that down at Jesus' feet and he supernaturally does something with it, it really is about others, because now we're free to go minister to others, we're free to go help them get free, right, and say, hey, this is what happened to me, but this is what Jesus did. And let me show you, let me get you there, let me introduce you to the person who radically set me free. It's really about others.
Speaker 2:Everything Jesus did was about others. What can we learn from him and why he suffered? Well, it's because he was willing to be obedient to the Father's will. And it wasn't about Him, it was about us, it was about others. And we can model that and live that same concept here on earth. But we can only do that by the power of the Holy Spirit, right? We can only do that with Him in us and allowing Him to shape those stories, and not the world or us, or the enemy, for sure you know.
Speaker 1:Hey, friends, have you joined the Honest Christian Conversations online group yet, friends? Have you joined the Honest Christian Conversations online group yet? If you haven't, you're missing out on a perfect opportunity to grow your relationship with Jesus Christ. This is a community for those who want to go deeper in their relationship. You can do Bible studies together, ask the questions you have biblically and get the answers that you might need or maybe you're somebody who has answers to somebody else's questions. You can leave your prayer requests. You can leave your praise reports.
Speaker 1:This is a community. This is what church is supposed to be, and I am so glad that I finally took that step to make this group so that people's lives can flourish in Jesus' name. Also, if you haven't signed up for the mailing list, you're missing out on an opportunity there as well. I send out a weekly email chocked full of so much awesome content that I don't have time right now to share it all with you. But when you do sign up for that mailing list, you get my seven-day free devotional that I created just for those who sign up for that mailing list. You get my seven-day free devotional that I created just for those who sign up for the mailing list. If you haven't joined either of these, you can go to my website honestchristianconversationscom and sign up there, or you can use the links for it in the show notes. Yeah, you just preached a sermon. I love it.
Speaker 2:I love it. I'm very passionate about this topic.
Speaker 1:Yeah, after what you've been through, I can't even imagine losing a child, especially that young. I can see why you would have such a deep love for God. You either you either in something like that. You would either go towards him or we. You would go away from him.
Speaker 2:There's no middle ground at that point it's.
Speaker 1:it's too deep of a wound to just say you know God's good, but I don't know if I can trust him. You can't you can't have those both. You have to pick a side. And, like you said, if you don't have helping you, you're not going to grow, you're not going to heal, you're just going to stay stagnant. And I went through a very painful divorce during my second marriage. Because I didn't want it. It blindsided me. At the point, I mean hindsight, I'm totally fine that it happened because, I love my husband, who I'm with
Speaker 1:now, but it wrecked me. That's what brought me back to God. I grew up in the church. I knew all the things I said. I was a believer and sometimes you could see it in my life. But when I decided to go full 180 and just do whatever I wanted to do, you couldn't tell that I was a Christian. I had to tell you for you to know. And then one day I'm at a church, god's trying to talk to me, and all I said was I hear you, but I'm going to keep doing what I want to do. And left. And a week later my husband at the time was like I'm out, we're done. I got an apartment.
Speaker 2:I'm gone.
Speaker 1:It wrecked me. I was in a depression for a good week, and his mom was the one who broke me out of it, even though she didn't really like me much, but God uses who he uses. And that completely changed me. I got on my knees, repented, got up, was completely different and haven't looked back since.
Speaker 1:And yes, my life has not been easy. I have gone through so many trials, but I have stood firm, knowing that God is always there. He's always going to take care of me, because I was in the dark pits where I had put myself. I mean, it's not like you put yourself in that to lose your son.
Speaker 1:But we can. But yeah, sometimes we put ourselves in those dark pits, but he still pulls us out. How can you not want to follow him at that point when you've done something wrong or thought something wrong? I mean, I'm sure it wasn't just a quick. I love you, god, even though this hurts. I'm pretty sure you probably wrote it in your book how frustrating it was at first. It was not like you just got out of that bathroom and you immediately were in love with.
Speaker 1:Jesus. It was a process. It's a process for us because we have our human emotions. But how can you not want to follow him when he's willing to pick you out of a place where you may have put yourself? In my case, I put myself there willingly. I was a Christian. I knew everything I was doing was wrong, so I put myself in a position to do those things and he still didn't give up on me. How can I not want to follow him at that point and him healing you through everything that you went through? How could you not want to spend the rest?
Speaker 1:of your life talking about it and preaching about that to people, especially people who are in your position, who you know. Maybe they didn't go through that, but they're going through their own tough season and they just can't see a way out. So I love your passion, the fact that you are able to talk about this. I'm pretty sure it's still painful, even to this day, to have to talk about it, but God doesn't waste anything. He doesn't waste any of our pain. He uses it for His glory and I love your story. Your passion is amazing. How did your husband handle the situation at first? Was it really hard for him? Because I am, having not come from a Christian background?
Speaker 1:I can't imagine that it was easy for him to trust God, because there's that whole. Well, how could a loving God fill in? The blank so how did he handle that and how did you come alongside him during that, being somebody who's had that spiritual foundation?
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's just kind of a weird situation though, because when it happened I was like Jesus just spoke to me in the bathroom and I didn't share that also the night, that about how, when I was a really little girl, the weight of God's glory would come upon me and I just knew who it was. That happened that night and I had only experienced that as a little girl, and when that happened we left the hospital and went to our house. I think, honestly, my husband at first was just trying to be really strong for me. I mean, it's his, it's their child too. But you know how, your husband, they just want to protect, they want to help you.
Speaker 2:And I know that he was in that mode very much at first because I remember it so clearly. But when we got home from the hospital that night and we were just sitting in our room and it's just like you don't even know what to do with yourself, you're just existing, right. You're just there and you're trying to process how is this, my world right? Your whole entire paradigm shifts. It's like the rug is pulled out from you and I know I experienced post PTSD from that because I watched him not breathing. I watched him. He died in my arms.
Speaker 2:I held him and we go through these things. That are the emotions. But that night, when I was laying on my bed, we were sitting there and I just remember we were just sitting in our room and I had that weight of God's glory come upon me and in my mind I saw I can't fully explain and understand because it was dark but I saw Brennan's outline, like his spirit.
Speaker 2:I don't even know how to put that in words, but I felt the Lord's energy literally come upon me and pass through me and I was like, oh my gosh, that's that feeling again. And I knew in that space and I knew in that moment that God was allowing me, that Jesus was allowing me to see him and to know I have him, it's okay and I've got you Now. I heard those things, I knew those things and then, like you said, I'm trying to explain these things to my husband. So we weren't involved in any church back then at that time or anything. We had some friends that went to church and all this stuff. So they were trying to help and get us involved. So they were like come and see our pastor, let him meet with you, and blah, blah, blah.
Speaker 2:And this was shortly after Brennan had passed. And we did go and I remember standing in his office still to this day, and I remember him. I remember we talked about all the things and I don't quite remember what I said, but I must have told him that I had grown up knowing who Jesus was, but that I had kind of been living for myself, kind of like how we were talking. I remember he had me and my husband and him stand in a little circle together in his office and I'm sure we were all holding hands and basically he prayed with us for everything that was going on. But my husband accepted Jesus right then and there, in that moment, and I rededicated my life to him is kind of how I think I remember that prayer going. This was within a week of Brennan's passing and I still remember and you can even ask my husband this, I still remember to this day. We walked out of that space and left, walked outside and went into the street to go get in our car and we were like something has changed and it you know, jesus, we were born again, right, whatever you want to call it. But something changed. Now, of course we knew it and we knew that that happened. But you know, going back to just how you said, oh, it just didn't happen. And then you woke up the next day and everything was great. No, I can tell you without a shadow of a doubt, just like you said when you went through that divorce and how hard that was, and you know God's mercy and compassion, we know this in grace. We know all these things from the Bible, but they, in His presence, are really in very tangible and hard things. We feel them so much because that just shows his heart for us. Right, and you felt that you knew that. But, like you said, we're still human, we still have to go through grief. I mean, jesus wept, right, we go through grief. He knows, he understands, and I did.
Speaker 2:I had a really hard, hard, hard. Two years and I know it was two years because I can remember the exact amount of time that it was. I would get up every day and I would just get out my Bible and this was me. I knew Bible stories from growing up, but I didn't know the Bible. Here I am trying to start in Genesis and the Old Testament. I have no idea what I'm doing and I'm just reading it and I'm like God, you're desperate, you're so desperate in a moment like that, and so I would just read my Bible and I would try to pray and I would just exist. That's the only thing I can explain it. It was like I just existed.
Speaker 2:I had horrible vertigo, horrible migraines. I did not feel good. For two years I had PTSD.
Speaker 2:We lived in Austin at the time Texas, a big city. I could not drive my car across the from like North Austin to South Austin. When I did, I wanted to have a panic attack. I don't know how to explain it, but I don't know what the word is. I'm thinking I guess when you have post-traumatic stress syndrome, your nerves are shot. If that's the saying I can, it's like you can't handle anything else. You're over the top with your emotions, and so the slightest thing like the traffic was intense made me feel undone. I can't even explain it. I just fell undone. I can't. It's too stressful, I can't do this. I can't go Right. It was horrible. I'm not going to lie. It was a horrible two years.
Speaker 2:One of the really sweetest things, though, that I remember during that time. I don't know if I've ever actually talked about my grandma on the podcast, but I just thought of her right now because there was a sweet thing, because God is always oh when you just look back and think of the little things that Jesus does his mercy. So my grandmother lost her first baby, and he was stillborn, and our babies are buried right next to each other in the same space Well, you know the same cemetery. I remember that after Brennan died, we would go to her house. She would have us. She lived about three and a half hours from us and she had us go there. We would go down about once or twice a month because I at that moment needed to go to that cemetery.
Speaker 2:Because when you lose someone at first you've got to be involved in that. It's just therapeutic somehow. You know you have to go. That's how I felt. So she would make us lunch and we'd drive down. We'd spend the day with her and I loved my grandmother so much. She was so pivotal in my life. But she understood Do you know what I'm saying?
Speaker 1:She understood what I was going through.
Speaker 2:And we didn't go there and she wouldn't be like Heather, how are you? Do you need to talk about that? She never. We didn't have to talk. It was like we were in both invited, not invited, but we were both put into a club that we never asked to be invited to.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we both lost children and it was just an understanding. She knew what I was going through, so she just allowed me to come whenever I needed to. We'd come and she'd make us this yummy, elaborate meal because that was her thing, and we would go visit the cemetery and we would stay as long as we needed to and she just let us be. It was so healing to be able to do that, but it was like we had this thing we both belonged to, but we didn't have to say a word, she just got me. Do you know what I'm saying?
Speaker 2:yeah and that was so therapeutic back then. I just remember it just meant a lot to me. But going back to my husband, I do believe he just kind of followed I don't know what else to say. It was like I'm going this way and I am now passionate about going back to Jesus and, yes, I'm hurting and I'm all over the mess, but this is not going anywhere. So get on board is probably how I thought. I do feel like when you're going in so much grief like that and you're trying to figure out life on the other side of a paradigm shift, you kind of get a little self-focused. I can't really explain it. I could only manage myself.
Speaker 1:Me and Jesus, that's all I had. I get that. Yeah, yeah, yeah, you know, it's like you kind of you get in your own head space and you're you got to take care of yourself is what you're thinking. And, yeah, you know. Yeah, you just you don't have much else to give past that. You know what I'm saying?
Speaker 2:Yeah, but yeah, you know, people ask me all the time like, oh you just, you were just healed like that fast and you lost someone. And then the next day I'm like, no, it's a process. Yeah, but Jesus was in it. And that's what I'm trying to say. Yeah, I'm trying to say in our worst possible place.
Speaker 2:He enters in when we allow him to. We don't all not all of us allow him to. He wants to. He enters in and he walks us through the other side and the biggest thing that we get out of that is we get His presence and we get His supernatural healing and we get purpose in our pain and we get to serve others and minister to others and we get to tell people about Jesus. I believe that that's what he does in these places and he gives us so much because he's such a good Father, you know, and he doesn't want us to live in there. It hurts His heart that we have to go through these things. But it's so crazy when you really think about the mercy of God. Suffering really is a place of God's mercy, because if we didn't experience some of the afflictions and sufferings we go through, how many times, if you really think about it do. People meet God in those places Quite often.
Speaker 2:It's not because everything's going good and oh, I need Jesus. No, it's because we went through something bad and he gets our attention in it and that's His mercy, because now, guess what, we get on a different trajectory and now we get to spend eternity with Him. He uses that to get us to Him. Do you know what I mean? He knows how to work in that. You know it goes back to that scripture. You know what the enemy means for harm. God can use for good, you know. And he turns beauty from ashes Like. There's so many scriptures that talk about that. And the enemy hates that. He hates that he can't destroy us and something like that. When we give our hearts back to God because his work is destroyed in that space when it didn't go as he thought he was going to do to us. You know.
Speaker 1:Satan must be mad at you because you did not go anywhere close to where he probably thought you were going to go with life. Yeah, he doesn't know our hearts.
Speaker 2:And that's when I read the book of Job and I was learning, like through all that, I always ask why? How did God know the story? He was going to go all through this stuff and Job was radically changed in that because he knew about God and then he really knew God. There's a difference about knowing and really knowing, and the Lord told me the never knew Job's heart.
Speaker 1:Yeah. That's where he goes wrong. He doesn't know us the way he thinks he does, and it didn't show like the great thing about Job is.
Speaker 2:He suffered and he went all over the map with his emotions, just like we do, but God knew his heart and he knew where he was going to be when he walked through that you know. I believe that God knew that Job would come out like that because the enemy wanted to approach him and say huh, this one I can take down. He only serves you. Why? Because you bless him and God was like OK, we'll see. You know, I'll tell you yeah, I know.
Speaker 1:It sounds kind of like crazy but crazy. But that's what the Bible says unthinkable tragedy and I am so in awe of how you have come out of that and healed from that and are able to help others who are also going through something like that. Where can people get your book?
Speaker 2:Well, my book is easy to find because you can just hop onto Amazon and have it delivered straight to you. Nice, I love Amazon. Yeah, me too. It's my fave, nice.
Speaker 1:Well, thank you so much for coming on and sharing and preaching. I mean honestly, it's necessary. There are so many people hurting nowadays, so they are definitely going to get encouraged by what you had to say and hopefully that'll change the trajectory of their life.
Speaker 2:yes, that's what we want. Yes,
