August 10, 2025 • 51 mins
Disappointments in life will happen and the enemy’s goal is for us to disconnect from God in those moments. But God is near to the brokenhearted! In Week 1 of the ‘Do Not Disturb’ Series, Pastor Brie openly shared her story of losing her son Ace after 14 days of him being born. Through this experience, she taught us that we should know God’s name, nature and nearness in the midst of disappointment. We pray this message gives you a fresh perspective to know that we can hold heartbreak and hope at the same time.
Scripture References
Proverbs 18:10 NLT
1 John 4:8b NLT
Isaiah 45:3 NLT
Psalms 34:18 NLT
Hebrews 4:14-16 NIV
Scripture References
Proverbs 18:10 NLT
1 John 4:8b NLT
Isaiah 45:3 NLT
Psalms 34:18 NLT
Hebrews 4:14-16 NIV
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:02):
Welcome to Transformation Church Podcast, where we represent God to
the lost and found for transformation in Christ. We're so
glad you're here and wherever you're listening from, we believe
God will transform your life.
Speaker 2 (00:14):
Do today's message Today, I have the honor of bringing
this word to you and I am genuinely so excited
about it. I'm going to tell you a little bit
of our story and what we experienced over the last year,
and the prayer is that hopefully this encourages somebody and
bring somebody hope in the midst of their heartache.
Speaker 3 (00:35):
And at the end of this, We're going.
Speaker 2 (00:37):
To have a moment where I'm going to have the
worship team come back up. I'm just giving you the
preview of what all is going to happen, and I'm
asking you to stick around to really just see what
the Holy Spirit may want to say to you and
whatever situation you may.
Speaker 3 (00:48):
Be going through.
Speaker 2 (00:50):
So a little bit of our story talking about disappointment today.
The greatest disappointment of my life happened on July twenty first,
twenty twenty.
Speaker 3 (00:59):
Four, last year, around this time when it.
Speaker 2 (01:02):
Was the first day that I the first time ever
that I got to hold my son, and he was
taking his last breaths.
Speaker 3 (01:11):
In that moment.
Speaker 2 (01:13):
It's hard to explain, explain to you exactly how that feels.
We had such expectations of what our son's life was
gonna bring to our life. We had such expectations of
seeing him on his first birthday, and Aaron and I
had so many conversations around whose personality was he gonna take.
(01:37):
Was he gonna take mine and be the goodie two
shoes or was it gonna take my husband's and not
be the goodie two shoes?
Speaker 3 (01:46):
Was he gonna, you know, love basketball? Is he gonna
be a book nerd like me?
Speaker 2 (01:50):
I mean, what was he gonna Who was he gonna be?
Speaker 3 (01:53):
Was he gonna wear all.
Speaker 2 (01:54):
The Jordans and I mean all the Jordans.
Speaker 3 (01:56):
That Aaron had already bought for him.
Speaker 2 (01:58):
I mean, there was so many expects that we had
of him. I couldn't wait to see how he was
going to be with his cousins, and how he was
going to snuggle with my mom like how I did
growing up, And how he was going to enjoy my
dad's laughter and boldness and craziness all the time like
I could. We had so many expectations of what was
(02:20):
going to happen with our son Ace. We had no
idea that we would only have fourteen days with him.
And we knew that Ace was probably going to be
born with some sickness and some things that, you know,
we were going to have to do some hard work
to really get him through. But we had no idea
that he was going to pass away. And on this day,
(02:42):
this day that I finally got to hold my son
for the first time, this was the last.
Speaker 3 (02:47):
Day that we actually got with him.
Speaker 2 (02:50):
It's the greatest disappointment of my entire life. And I
understand that I'm not alone when it comes to disappointment,
that I am not the only person that has experienced
this situation or something similar to or another disappointment in life.
The definition of disappointment is the pain of an unmet expectation,
(03:13):
the pain of an unmet expectation.
Speaker 3 (03:15):
Every single one.
Speaker 2 (03:16):
Of us have or have had some type of disappointment.
The human experience includes disappointment. Bible even tells a scripture
tells us that we are going to have troubles in
this world. Every person is going to experience some type
of disappointment. Maybe not the same disappointment that I have.
But maybe you thought your mom was going to beat
(03:36):
the cancer, or maybe you thought that that relationship was
going to end a marriage. Maybe you thought that marriage
was going to last forever. Maybe you thought the job
was going to give you a promotion, or the friends
wouldn't betray you.
Speaker 3 (03:51):
We all had these.
Speaker 2 (03:52):
Expectations in life that oftentimes we are disappointed when it
doesn't work out the.
Speaker 3 (03:58):
Way that we thought it would.
Speaker 2 (04:00):
Mary and Martha thought that Jesus was going to heal
their brother before he died. Jonah thought, Oh, there's no
way that God's going to send.
Speaker 3 (04:08):
Me to Nineveh.
Speaker 2 (04:09):
Paul thought, oh, if I pray enough that this thorn
in my flesh, that this will be gone, God will
take it away. But many of us are left with disappointments,
often disappointments that we have to live with for the
rest of our lives. When I think about our story
with Ace, there were so many delights and disappointments along
the way. Aaron and I got married ten years ago,
(04:31):
in twenty fifteen. And when we got married, it was
a delight, it was wonderful. We were madly in love,
so excited about it. And then that first year went
completely downhill.
Speaker 3 (04:42):
Y'all. We never had the honeymoon face. If you want
to know more.
Speaker 2 (04:46):
About that wash one of the sermons that we didn't pass.
I'm not going into all those details, but during that time,
we were learning so much about ourselves and our marriage
was so broken and so shattered that we knew that
there was no way we were ready to be parents.
So we intentionally did not try to get pregnant. That
was not even an option. As a matter of fact,
we had gotten to a point where we didn't even
(05:07):
know if we were going to ever even want to
have a kid. Most of our friends know that when
they would bring up kids, we'd be like, we won't
talk about that. And probably about year five, I started
to feel like, you.
Speaker 3 (05:21):
Know what, maybe this is something that I want to do.
Maybe I do want to be a mom.
Speaker 2 (05:25):
And I remember actually writing for two years in a
row on my crazy Faith card that we.
Speaker 3 (05:31):
Would have a baby ready marriage that I didn't know
if we wanted to really be parents.
Speaker 2 (05:37):
But what I did know is that if we were
ever going to be parents, we wanted a marriage and
a home that was healthy enough that a child could
thrive in it. And so I started praying and asking God, God,
if we could just have a marriage, that if we
decide we want to have a kid, that it will
be a healthy home that we can.
Speaker 3 (05:54):
Bring that child to.
Speaker 2 (05:56):
And for two years I pray for that, and then
finally it was like, you know what, I think, I
actually want to be a mom, like I want to
have a child.
Speaker 3 (06:05):
And I took that to God. I did not.
Speaker 2 (06:08):
Take that to Aaron, okay, because we were not on
the same page yet, And so I.
Speaker 3 (06:12):
Took that to the Lord. And a couple months later, sure.
Speaker 2 (06:15):
Enough, Aaron came to me and we had a conversation.
We knew, okay, we want to actually try to have
a kid. And for two years we tried again, delight
after disappointment, delight after disappointment. We finally decide we want
to have a child, and it takes two years before
we ever get pregnant, and it was very much so
a torturous time for me. If you, as a woman,
have ever walked through the trying to concede process, you know,
(06:39):
every single month you think you're pregnant, you're not. All
the symptoms seem the same, all the things, and you're
disappointed every single time that you take that pregnancy test
and find out that you're not pregnant. And so for
two years we went through that, and then finally we
got a positive pregnancy test, and we.
Speaker 3 (06:56):
Were so excited about it.
Speaker 2 (06:57):
We found out at five am in the morning. We
literally started calling people at five am in the morning
to tell them we were so excited about it, and
we over of course it probably twenty four to forty
eight hours, went around telling our friends and family about it,
and we were making our way through every person that
we wanted to know before we made it a public thing.
Speaker 3 (07:17):
And by the end.
Speaker 2 (07:18):
Of that week, much to our disappointment, we found out
that we were having a miscarriage. And again, delight after disappointment.
So two months later we got another positive pregnancy test,
and this time it was our son Ace, and we
were so excited we went to this time, we.
Speaker 3 (07:39):
Just text everybody and told him.
Speaker 2 (07:40):
We was like, we're not going around told to tell
them everybody again. We just gonna send a text this time.
Speaker 3 (07:47):
And we went to the doctor.
Speaker 2 (07:48):
First doctor's appointment, hurt his heartbeat. That makes everything so
much more real when you hear the heartbeat. And then
we went to his second doctor's appointment, and when we
did this is about twelve.
Speaker 3 (07:58):
Or fourteen weeks.
Speaker 2 (07:59):
We found out that Ace was having some issues. Immediately
started to go see a specialist and went to that
specialist up until we had to move to Houston to
have him, and in that we knew that Ace had
a life threatening situation that was happening. But we took
every intervention that we could, everything that we knew to do,
(08:19):
including surgery and all the things, and moving to Houston
and being with the Houston doctor so that they could
give us some medical attention that we couldn't get here
in Tulsa.
Speaker 3 (08:28):
All the things.
Speaker 2 (08:29):
And we had an expectation that God was going to
heal our.
Speaker 3 (08:32):
Son in the way that we saw it happening.
Speaker 2 (08:34):
And it's very funny because as we found out what
was going on with Ace, we took the situation to God,
and we knew that what we wanted to do was
believe God that he would be a man of his word,
that he was going to heal Ace, and we knew that,
we just didn't know how he was going to do that.
Speaker 3 (08:55):
And so Ace was born and we found out when
he was born that.
Speaker 2 (08:59):
He is his life lungs were severely underdeveloped and that
he was not able to breathe on his own. And
for fourteen days he was in Nicku and in that
time he was able to have a breathing machine the
entire time. He had a major surgery during that time,
a lot of blood transfusions, a lot of things that
took place. And then we got a call from the
(09:20):
doctor one morning to tell us, hey, you need to
come to the hospital because we don't know if Ace
is going to make it the rest of this day.
And and in that moment, we went to the hospital
(09:50):
and we walked in, we knew, like, he doesn't look good,
and we knew that we were probably going to lose
our son that day. And Aaron and I wept and
went to God in prayer and told everyone we could, Hey,
let's pray for Ace and all the things. And we
(10:11):
had thousands of people praying for our son for him
to end up passing away. And here's the thing. We
said that we surrendered to God our son and that
he could heal him however he wanted to, but we
knew he would heal him. And what God did was
heal our son by taking him to Heaven. Ace is
(10:34):
living a better life than any of us are right now.
And what I'm realizing, even over all of this last year,
is how important it is to stay focused on God
in the midst of disappointment. My story is not your story.
(10:54):
Your story is not my story. This story you may
hear and you think, I don't even know if I
can go through that. I probably could hear some of
your story and think I don't know if I could
go through that myself. Every single one of us have
some type of disappointment in life, but it's not until
we meet that disappointment that we are able to see.
Can I fix my eyes on God in the midst
(11:16):
of this disappointment? And what we experience is, even through
the heartbreak of trying to conceive and then having a
miscarriage and having a sudden him passing away, is that
God's goodness never really runs out.
Speaker 3 (11:32):
It never really runs out.
Speaker 2 (11:33):
And I want to talk to you about this because
I have for the last year it's almost felt like
I've been waiting for God.
Speaker 3 (11:41):
When can I tell this story?
Speaker 2 (11:43):
Because the truth is, it is the love and the
kindness of God that has absolutely saved us over this
last year.
Speaker 3 (11:51):
In the midst of deep grief.
Speaker 2 (11:55):
The thing about disappointment that I think that sometimes we
struggle with as a church, and by the church, I
mean capital C church, is you have to wrestle with
God and disappointment. Oftentimes, when we are disappointed by something,
we do one of two things as believers.
Speaker 3 (12:12):
We either run away from God and completely.
Speaker 2 (12:14):
Disconnect because he didn't answer the prayer the way that
we wanted him to answer the prayer, or we completely
spiritually bypass all the emotions that actually come with real
disappointment for all the people who are maybe the glass
have fool people. Sometimes we can focus on that so
much that we don't recognize like half your glass is empty,
(12:35):
and it is okay to actually greed that half of
your glass is empty. And so today what I want
to do is try to give permission for us to
do both and wrestle with God.
Speaker 3 (12:48):
And your disappointment, be.
Speaker 2 (12:50):
Angry, be upset, be sad, be all the things, just
be it with God. I think about the story of
Jacob and how he wrestled with the Angel and he said,
I will not let go until you bless me. And
that's exactly the demeanor that.
Speaker 3 (13:07):
Aaron and I took in our situation.
Speaker 2 (13:09):
God, we do not understand, we do not like this,
but we will not let go of You until we
feel the blessing come upon us from this situation.
Speaker 3 (13:18):
And so when I think about.
Speaker 2 (13:20):
This, I have to be completely honest and sharing with
you today. I disagree with my son passing away.
Speaker 3 (13:32):
I disagree with it.
Speaker 2 (13:34):
I would one hundred percent rather be at home with
my baby right now than sitting up on this dage
teaching you. If it was my choice and I was God,
I would have let Ace live and I would have
healed them miraculously, and then I would have tried to
tell that testimony until probably I forgot about it and
moved on.
Speaker 3 (13:51):
With something else in life.
Speaker 2 (13:53):
But I would have done something very, very different in
this situation. I can disagree with God and still trust him.
This is the permission that I want to try to
give somebody today. It's okay if you don't agree with
(14:14):
how God allows something to go. I do not believe
that God took my son, but I do believe he
allowed it, and I have wrestled with him on that
time and time.
Speaker 3 (14:23):
Again over this last year.
Speaker 2 (14:25):
God, why it doesn't make sense to me? God, you
could have went a different way. God couldn't have testimony
been so much more powerful if you had healed as
the way that I saw it happening. But here's what
I know. I'm not all knowing. I'm not all powerful.
Speaker 3 (14:40):
His ways are not my ways.
Speaker 2 (14:42):
I am not King of kings and Lord of lords.
I do not know the end from the beginning.
Speaker 3 (14:47):
All I know.
Speaker 2 (14:47):
I don't even know five minutes from right now what's
going to happen. What I do know is that I
am a human just trying to stay surrendered.
Speaker 3 (14:54):
To the Lord right now.
Speaker 2 (14:56):
And so at the end of the day, if you
must rest, so wrestle, just do it with God, whatever
the disappointment is. I do believe that we can live
a life where we can both hand hand hold the
heartache and hope at the same time. That God has
(15:17):
not asked us to choose from whether we were going
to be heartbroken or we're going to be hopeful. You
can be both, and you can really hold onto that
heartache and God, why I wish it would win another
way and still hold onto the hope of the future.
And that's what I believe that God has given us
permission to do. As Jesus stood at the tomb of Lazarus,
(15:40):
knowing full well that he was going to raise him
from the dead, knowing full well that he was going
to heal Lazarus.
Speaker 3 (15:47):
He still wept. He was still in the moment. And
for me, the only way that.
Speaker 2 (15:55):
I could not just survive this last year, the only
way I could thrive through this.
Speaker 3 (16:00):
Last year was to do two things.
Speaker 2 (16:03):
To be honest with God and remind myself of God's truth.
When I go to God in prayer, the first thing
I'm gonna do is tell you exactly how I feel.
Speaker 4 (16:14):
God.
Speaker 2 (16:15):
This is how I feel about this situation. This is
not okay, this is how I wanted it to go, this, that,
and the other. I'm gonna be honest with God. But
after being honest with God, I'm gonna remind myself of
God's truth. But I know You're a redeemer, and I
know you're a healer, and I know that you know
how to take this broken heart and put it back together. God,
(16:36):
I know that Ace's life was for a reason, and
if there is a reason, I'm gonna find that reason.
I'm gonna keep moving that reason forward. And there is
hope that can happen in the middle of heartache.
Speaker 3 (16:49):
So what do we do when we experience disappointment? Three things?
Speaker 2 (16:54):
Three things that we can do as we experience disappointment
in our life things a focus on. The three things
that we can focus on is God's name, God's nature,
and God's nearness. God's name, God's nature, and God's nearness.
In the Scripture, it tells us in Proverbs eighteen and ten,
(17:17):
it says, the name of the Lord is a strong fortress,
and the godly run to him and are safe the
name of God. When we experience disappointment, we're gonna call
on somebody. You may call on your mama, you may
call on your friend, you may call on yourself to
get you through that disappointment. But if we can remember
(17:39):
the name of God in the middle of a disappointment,
it changes everything. Because God's name is not just a name.
God's name is actually a place. It is a strong tower,
a strong fortress that we run into so that we.
Speaker 3 (17:55):
Are saved God. This is a beautiful thing about God.
Speaker 2 (17:58):
When you think of just a regular human being. We
all have a name and maybe a couple of nicknames.
We got that Boo Boo, that Kiki.
Speaker 3 (18:03):
Whatever our nickname may be. But when it comes to
the name of God.
Speaker 2 (18:07):
There are literally dozens of names of God. There are
dozens of names that we can call on. And when
I sat and NICKI with my son, I was calling
on God the Father. God, I need you as a
father in this moment, to be with me and see
me as your daughter, and treat and treat me.
Speaker 3 (18:24):
Like your daughter.
Speaker 2 (18:25):
I could call on God the healer. God, you are
the only one.
Speaker 3 (18:28):
That can heal.
Speaker 2 (18:30):
I do not know what to do in this situation.
My hands are tied. The doctors don't know what to do.
You are the only one.
Speaker 3 (18:36):
Back in heal. And when as.
Speaker 2 (18:37):
Passed, I had to call on God the Redeemer. I said, God,
this situation didn't look the way that I wanted it
to look. But I know you can redeem it. I
know that you can bring something from it. And so
in the middle of your disappointment, who are you calling on?
In the middle of your disappointment.
Speaker 3 (18:58):
You will call on someone. Let that be the name
of God.
Speaker 2 (19:03):
Familiarize yourself with the names of God, because.
Speaker 3 (19:08):
Everything that we need he is.
Speaker 2 (19:12):
When Moses stood in front of that burning bush, God said.
Speaker 3 (19:15):
I am that I am.
Speaker 2 (19:17):
I am literally everything that you could ever need or
want in your life. That is Me, That is who
our God is. And so the beautiful thing about us
as believers walking through disappointment is we always have.
Speaker 3 (19:31):
A name to call on, and that may look.
Speaker 2 (19:34):
Different in different situations, but it is the same one
God that we call on every time we find ourselves
backed up against the wall in life.
Speaker 3 (19:42):
Call on the name of God.
Speaker 2 (19:47):
I think about all the moments laying in bed and
airing asleep and no one's up. Who do I pick
up the phone and call in a moment like that?
Who do you call on when you're going through the
worst thing in your life?
Speaker 3 (20:05):
But the name of God.
Speaker 2 (20:10):
If you want to not be distracted by the disappointments
in your life, cling to the name of God. It
is the only name by which we are saved. It
is the name above every name. I know there's some
names that maybe you think can come and rescue you
from a situation, the name of money, or the name
(20:32):
of friends, or the name of family. But it is
the only name that is above every other name, is
the name of God. And in our situation, that's all
we could call on, and that became our safe place.
Focus on the name of God. The second thing is
(20:53):
focus on the nature of God. Now one of the
things that this is near and dear to my heart
because in First John it tells us that God is love.
It means that God cannot act outside of love ever,
like there's nothing that he can do that is not
loving and not full of love, because that's who God is. Now,
(21:15):
we say I love you to one another, and oftentimes
we still have actions or behaviors or responses to one
another that are not actually built in love. But God,
that is not the case. When my husband and I
were in the first couple of years of our marriage
and we were rebuilding something back from scratch, I knew
that I needed to remind myself of God's love. For
(21:36):
all of my life, I had been the quote unquote
good girl, and I really did boil down God's love
to my performance that if I perform well, that God
would love me well, and that if I'm a good
person that God would love me well. In that situation,
when I found out being a good person don't mean
you're gonna have a good life all the time, I
really needed to learn about the love.
Speaker 3 (21:55):
Of God, and in that it took me.
Speaker 2 (21:59):
Probably a fool year but I took some time to
just learn about.
Speaker 3 (22:03):
The way that God loves me. And I'm telling you something.
Speaker 2 (22:09):
It absolutely dug my roots into his love in a
way that is very much so unexplainable. Today. This is
what I know about God. I know that he loves me.
I know he loves you. I know that I am
the apple of his eye, that you are the apple
of his eye.
Speaker 3 (22:28):
I know that we are his dream come true.
Speaker 2 (22:32):
Out of it one chance out of forty billion chances,
that we made it to this earth. That means that
He absolutely formed and made us and made us the
people that he wanted to be on this earth.
Speaker 3 (22:44):
That He is madly in love.
Speaker 2 (22:46):
With us, that he passionately pursues us.
Speaker 3 (22:49):
And when we are rooted in that love.
Speaker 2 (22:52):
Although disappointment will shake us, it won't break us. Although
disappointment comes, it won't shake the fact that we know that.
Speaker 3 (23:01):
Our God is all loving and here is a thing.
Speaker 2 (23:04):
If we understand that, it'll stop us from disconnecting from
God in the middle of disappointment. Because the enemy's design
for disappointment is distraction. He wants us to be absolutely
distracted by the disappointment that we have in our life
and by that, I mean distracted from the calling of
God on our life, distracted from the love of God
(23:27):
in our lives, distracted and from our relationship with God.
But what I know is God's purpose is death. That
we can deepen even from a disappointment. But where we
deepen is in his love. That it is his love
that changes us from the inside out, and it is
(23:49):
his love that roots us. And if I were to
say there's one thing to study in the word of God,
if you were wondering where should I even start, I
would say study the love of God changes everything. It
changes everything when I know how God feels about me.
God's tone of voice with me is not like an
old pastor or a mean parent.
Speaker 3 (24:10):
Or anything like that. God's tone and voice for me
is one that is.
Speaker 2 (24:14):
Feeling of love and of tenderness and of joy. And
He is so excited to see me wake up every
single day, and he beams over us every day, and
he sings songs over us.
Speaker 3 (24:25):
He is so so madly in love with us.
Speaker 2 (24:29):
And if we struggle to believe that, which is normal,
we will struggle to believe that He loves us, especially
in the middle of disappointment. One thing that was important
to me when going through this situation was that I
remember and remind myself of the love of God, because
(24:50):
when life hits you and hits you hard, it almost
feels like God's doing it. It almost feels like he
is the one to blame. God.
Speaker 3 (24:59):
I've been praying for as why haven't you healed him?
Speaker 2 (25:02):
God? We did everything we knew to do to try
to intervene with this situation.
Speaker 3 (25:05):
Why haven't you? Why has none of that worked? God?
Speaker 2 (25:08):
We've been trying for so many years to have a baby,
and we finally got to a place where we felt
like we could do it and we felt healthy enough,
and then we try and all these things God.
Speaker 3 (25:16):
And really, what the enemy would love for us to do.
Speaker 2 (25:20):
Is to blame God for the disappointments in our life,
whatever it is you may be experiencing in your life.
Speaker 3 (25:28):
If you feel any blame towards.
Speaker 2 (25:30):
God in that situation, know that that is the plan
of the Enemy. That he wants us to disconnect from
Him in a way that we don't believe that God
loves us because of what we are experiencing. God may
have allowed it, but he didn't cause it. And when
God allows something in our life, he has something in
(25:52):
the middle of that, and Isaiah says, I have hidden
treasures in darkness, have hidden treasures in darkness, that even
in your darkest situation, I have some treasures down there
for you.
Speaker 3 (26:07):
I promise you.
Speaker 2 (26:08):
I will not leave you in this situation with nothing
to offer you. I promise you you can get something
out of this situation. I promise you that you can
be like a tree planted by the rivers of water,
bearing fruit in every single season. I promise you I
have something to give you, even though that looks like
you have lost it all.
Speaker 3 (26:25):
I promise you I am not a god that will
trick you. I am not a God that will give.
Speaker 2 (26:31):
You this fantastic fantasy of.
Speaker 3 (26:33):
Life and to trick you.
Speaker 2 (26:35):
I promise you I'm going to give you abundant life.
Speaker 3 (26:38):
I promise you. I am a man of my word.
I promise you that I love you. I promise you
that something will come from this. I promise you that
I can make.
Speaker 2 (26:47):
Every single thing work out.
Speaker 3 (26:49):
For your good. I promise you that's how much God
loves us, that in every situation he will.
Speaker 2 (27:01):
Find the good in it, he will make something out
of it. When we surrender that disappointment to him. He
will meet us right there and He will give us
some good out of it, some fruit out of it,
some blessings, even out of the most painful, hurtful things
(27:21):
in our lives. So we must know God's nature, that
God's nature cannot be disconnected from love. And when we
know that, we can continue to serve and stay connected
to Him. Even in our wrestling. You can wrestle with
the God. Wrestling does not mean disobedience, and it doesn't
(27:43):
mean a lack of faith.
Speaker 3 (27:45):
Wrestling means intimacy.
Speaker 2 (27:48):
If you have a real good relationship, a good friendship
with somebody, y'all can argue and fight about something and
we still gonna love each other after this conversation. That
is what we can do. God said, I am your friend.
Come to me like you would your friend. Let's talk
about it. Let's wrestle over this thing. Don't disconnect. So
(28:11):
when we're in disappointment, we focus on the name of God,
we focus on.
Speaker 3 (28:14):
The nature of God.
Speaker 2 (28:16):
And the last thing is focus on God's nearness. Now,
if there is one thing that I could teach for
the rest of my life, it would be about the
nearness of God outside the love of God. It'd be
about the nearness of God, because I do believe, especially
in a world where we have a social media situation
where we are disconnected from one another all the time,
(28:38):
we live pretty much in a pandemic of loneliness that
oftentimes we believe we are by ourselves when we go
into that meeting, where by ourselves when we go to
have that conversational, by ourselves. If there was one thing
that I could teach for the rest of my life,
it will be about the nearness of God, because we
serve a God who really is King of kings and
Lord of lords, like he is huge expansive.
Speaker 3 (29:00):
Scriptures say that the earth is his footstool.
Speaker 2 (29:02):
That's how big our God is. But scriptures also tell
us that he delights in the details of our life.
That God is closer to you than your very own breath,
that God is with.
Speaker 3 (29:16):
You and mirror you at all times.
Speaker 2 (29:18):
As a matter of fact, in Psalms, it says in
Psalms thirty four and eighteen that God is close to
the broken hearted, and he rescues those spirits who are crushed.
I would teach about the nearness of God only if
I had one thing to talk about because I think
it changes things when we believe that God and everything
(29:40):
that God has to offer us is with us at
every moment of the day. There is not one second
of the day that He looks to the left or
is distracted by something else, that his full attention is
on us all day, every day, that He is with us.
That if you put your hand to your face and
feel your breath that's coming out of your mouth, stinky
(30:01):
or not, that that is.
Speaker 3 (30:02):
How close God is to you. It changes things. I
have this.
Speaker 2 (30:10):
Spiritual practice that I do that where I sometimes imagine
Jesus with me in a room or wherever I am,
and I do this.
Speaker 3 (30:19):
Now.
Speaker 2 (30:19):
I do a lot of contemplative practices because those really
do root me and ground me in.
Speaker 3 (30:24):
The presence of God.
Speaker 2 (30:25):
But in this practice, however Jesus looks to me at
that time, I would just imagine Him in the space
with me because it gives me calm and ease and
even makes me feel more confident in what I'm doing.
When I walk up on this stage, I imagine me
and Jesus walked up here together, and it just gives
me confidence to know I'm not alone, I'm not by
myself and I belong here because Jesus is with me.
(30:46):
And when we were in Houston, when we initially found
out that something was wrong with Ace, we went to
meet with a series of doctors. And in those meetings,
we sit down and we're at a table, a circle table,
and there's four chairs at the table and it's Aaron
and I and then there's a doctor that we're talking to.
And we've talked to probably four different doctors at this point.
(31:08):
We're finally on the last doctor that we're talking to.
And when we're talking to him, he is you know
the dry eyes commercial. Okay, he is like dry eyes,
very just bland, plane, straightforward, very black and white, not
really how do I say, emotionally available?
Speaker 3 (31:27):
Okay?
Speaker 2 (31:29):
And so he's talking to us and he's telling us,
you know, here's a prognosis, here's what we think. He
even in this conversation shared with us a lot of
people who experience something like this decide to terminate their pregnancy,
and that's an option if we want to do that.
Speaker 3 (31:43):
And all these different things that he's talking to us about.
Speaker 2 (31:45):
And I don't blame him being in the medical fear
that feel that long.
Speaker 3 (31:49):
I don't know what it does to you.
Speaker 2 (31:50):
So if nothing else, I'm like, hey, just give us
the details.
Speaker 3 (31:53):
We're fine with that. But in the midst of all
of this, I am.
Speaker 2 (31:56):
Completely like sobbing, like I am crying hard. It's hard
for me to really understand what everyone's saying because it's
now the fourth or fifth doctor we've talked to, and
there's so many medical terms. I don't get it all.
And so in the moment I go, I think to myself,
oh my gosh, I've been going through all of these
meetings with the doctors and I forgot that I can
(32:17):
imagine Jesus in the room with me, and so he's
talking to us, and Aaron and I are looking at him,
talking to him, and I tell myself, you know, I'm
gonna imagine Christ in the room and this empty seat
that we have, it's four cheers.
Speaker 3 (32:29):
And only three of us.
Speaker 2 (32:30):
So I imagine Jesus in this seat. And I kid you not,
this is the Holy Spirit all by self. We're talking
to the doctor and we're looking at each other and
in my imagination, because I do believe God gave us
an imagination so that we can imagine good things like
That's what positive thinking is. Anyways, so I'm looking at
(32:51):
the doctor and Jesus is over here, but Jesus is
only looking at me, And in my imagination, while I
was concerned about Ace and trying to figure out what
was going on with him, and the doctor was telling
us everything that we needed to be aware of, Jesus
(33:11):
was concerned about me. And that as I'm looking at
these doctors and talking to them, that Jesus is concerned
about his daughter.
Speaker 3 (33:22):
Well, I'm concerned about my child.
Speaker 2 (33:24):
He's concerned about his child, and he's looking at me
this entire time. And I know that's only the Holy Spirit,
because why would I know to even think that. But
here's the thing, it's those practices that helped me to remember.
Speaker 3 (33:39):
Jesus is near us, that he's with you.
Speaker 2 (33:44):
That God doesn't once you get saved. He doesn't ask you, okay,
go figure it out on your own.
Speaker 3 (33:49):
He doesn't stand on.
Speaker 2 (33:50):
The other side of your sin telling you to clean
up your own mess. That instead, he walks and talks
with us, that he is with us like nobody else can,
Like when you just have no words to even say,
He's right there saying I know, I get it, I'm sorry,
I understand that Jesus is that near to us. When
(34:13):
we know the name of God and we call on
it in the midst of disappointment, when we understand and
tried to grasp the nature of God and how much
He loves us, and when we are experiencing and aware
of the nearness.
Speaker 3 (34:31):
Of God, it changes things.
Speaker 2 (34:37):
There was a point when on the day that Ace
was passing, and we went up to the hospital and
like I said, the doctor called us and said, you
guys need to get up here because we don't.
Speaker 3 (34:49):
Know how much longer we have with him. And we
went to the.
Speaker 2 (34:53):
Hospital and we were there for quite some time. As
a matter of fact, our whole intended purpose was we
were to see, you know, if the medicine was going
to take and his vitals were going to change or
if not. And if his vitals were not going to change,
then he his heart rate was going to slow down.
And that's how we knew that he was on his
way to passing. And we were sitting there for hours.
(35:16):
Matter of fact, it was a Sunday, so we streamed
church from there and put church in his little Niku
cube and we were there for hours, you know, just
seeing what God was going to do and very hard
to explain the experience of literally watching your child die,
Like that's very hard to explain. And there was a
(35:37):
certain point where I told Aaron, I was like, I
need a break.
Speaker 3 (35:41):
It's just hard.
Speaker 2 (35:42):
This is just really hard to sit here and watch
this and not know what was happening. There were no
changes positive or negative. It was just kind of staying
the same. So we went to the car and decided
to take a break. And when we went to the car,
we recognized that we got to the car and I
(36:04):
just knew I needed to pray.
Speaker 3 (36:07):
I needed to pray and talk to God. And Nick,
you is very quiet, so you can't.
Speaker 2 (36:10):
Really, you know, say too many things out loud. You
show can't be Shonda bowing up in there. Okay, that
is not the place for that. And so I.
Speaker 3 (36:18):
Went to the car and I started praying, and I mean.
Speaker 2 (36:24):
I was begging God, begging God to.
Speaker 3 (36:37):
Change the situation. And I was, I mean literally screaming God.
Speaker 2 (36:46):
Please, please, please, please, please, please do something. Don't let
this be our story, don't let this in like this,
save our son, Please God, please, and just crying out
and asking God, you know, to come and do something.
Speaker 3 (37:05):
And after praying like that. I don't know how long.
Speaker 2 (37:10):
Aaron probably has more regulation of that story than I do,
but after praying for quite some time, it felt like
there was suddenly just the peace, and I felt myself
(37:34):
surrender the situation to God and surrender ace to God.
Speaker 3 (37:42):
And my prayers went.
Speaker 2 (37:43):
From God, I begging you, please don't let this happen.
Speaker 3 (37:47):
Please God, Please, to.
Speaker 2 (37:52):
Whatever happens, just let us be okay. And I don't
know what You're going to allow to have, but can
you bring some good from it?
Speaker 3 (38:05):
And can we live after this?
Speaker 2 (38:07):
Please? Let us have some joy after this experience. Please,
whatever happens.
Speaker 4 (38:16):
And I don't know where that shift came from other
than the Holy Spirit in that prayer, but it was
like at first I was clinching with all of my might,
trying to really force God to do something the way.
Speaker 3 (38:32):
That I saw it. And sometimes we think that's what
prayer is.
Speaker 2 (38:37):
I just got to say the right thing at the
right time, and I could do the magic trick.
Speaker 3 (38:42):
To get him do exactly what I want him to do.
But that prayer ended in surrender.
Speaker 2 (38:50):
And when I think about that today, it reminds me
of the greatest disappointment in history, and although not as
intense and not as weighty, it reminded me of Jesus
in the Garden of gaseimone before he went to go
(39:10):
be crucified, and he begged and pleaded.
Speaker 3 (39:15):
God, please, please, please, please.
Speaker 2 (39:18):
Let's do something different. If there's another plan, please let's
go that direction. If you could do it a different way, God, please,
And eventually he says, not my will, but your will
be done.
Speaker 3 (39:35):
And in that.
Speaker 2 (39:36):
Surrender, the greatest disappointment in history took place, but also
the greatest good in history took place too. The greatest
thing that God could do was redeem a terrible situation.
And although we would choose to not have to go
(39:58):
through terrible situations, we had the power in our hands,
we would choose to never have to do it, never
have to go through any trial, any pain, anything.
Speaker 3 (40:07):
That is going to wreck our lives.
Speaker 2 (40:09):
Here's my promise to you, which is a promise from God.
He'll bring good from it. He can bring good from
the divorce, he can bring good from the loss. He
can bring good from the termination or the layoff.
Speaker 3 (40:30):
He can bring good.
Speaker 2 (40:31):
From the broken betrayal or the broken relationship. He really
can bring some good from it, but you have to
surrender it. God wants to bring something really good from
things that are truly terrible in our lives. But it's
our choice on whether or not we will wrestle with
(40:54):
him to a point till we get to surrender.
Speaker 3 (41:00):
Wrestle with God, he invites it.
Speaker 2 (41:04):
At the end of that wrestle, choose to surrender it
to him.
Speaker 3 (41:10):
There is no way.
Speaker 2 (41:13):
That I could put a bow on my son's story.
I will live the rest of my life without my
son here, and that tears my heart to shreds.
Speaker 3 (41:26):
But what I know is.
Speaker 2 (41:29):
Although I will not have him, I will.
Speaker 3 (41:32):
Have God's goodness.
Speaker 2 (41:35):
I will see the goodness of God and the land
of the Living.
Speaker 3 (41:47):
As a church, we will not gloss over pain.
Speaker 2 (41:52):
It's real, and oftentimes it sticks with us even.
Speaker 3 (41:57):
Longer when we try to ignore it and avoid it.
Speaker 2 (42:01):
I'm at a point in my life now where when
I say, oh, I've had a good day, it's not
because I didn't cry or I didn't grieve.
Speaker 3 (42:10):
It's if that grief came.
Speaker 2 (42:11):
To the surface and I gave it some space, and
if I allowed myself to cry when the tears came,
instead of trying to hold them back. Or try to
slap a scripture on and act like it's not a
real thing, or disconnect from God.
Speaker 3 (42:25):
And go into my hole and allow it to take
me under.
Speaker 2 (42:29):
You can hold heartache and hope in the midst of disappointment.
My prayer today is that hearing just a little bit
of this story. There's so many details that I can't
share today, but hearing just a little bit of it,
that you understand that.
Speaker 3 (42:48):
God is not this far off being.
Speaker 2 (42:53):
That is not good to us and does not have
good intentions for us.
Speaker 3 (42:57):
But that He is a God that is really, really.
Speaker 2 (43:00):
Real, and that even in the midst of the hardest
thing that you can't experience, he's not far He's very close.
Speaker 3 (43:10):
The moment.
Speaker 2 (43:13):
That our son took his last breath, he was holding
him in my arm, and Aaron was holding me in
his arms, and it was a moment that Heaven met Earth,
that in the midst of our grief and our sorrow,
(43:37):
that all.
Speaker 3 (43:38):
Of Heaven was leaned in with us in the moment.
Don't you know that God has leaned into you, that.
Speaker 2 (43:53):
He has never once taken his eyes off of you,
and that your heartache does not mean that He is
far off, but when you're.
Speaker 3 (44:04):
Going through what you're going through, He's crying with you,
and he's standing with you.
Speaker 2 (44:11):
And in my situation, he understands because he lost the
son too. And hebrews in with this scripture four fourteen
through sixteen, it says, therefore, since we have high, a
(44:32):
great high priest who is ascended into heaven, Jesus the
Son of God, let us hold firmly to the faith
that we possess.
Speaker 3 (44:44):
For we do not have a high priest who.
Speaker 2 (44:46):
Is unable to empathize with our weaknesses, but we have
one who is tempted in every way just as we are.
Speaker 3 (44:54):
Yet he did not sin.
Speaker 2 (44:56):
Let us then approach God's throne of grace with go confidence,
so that we may receive mercy and find grace to
help us in our time of me My encouragement to
you today is you are not alone in the midst
of that disappointment. God is with you. No matter what's
(45:18):
going on. God is with you. And not only is
he with you physically with you, but he empathizes with you,
and he understands, and he's not afraid to wrestle with you,
and he's not afraid to go toe to toe with you.
And he's not afraid of whatever lack of faith you
(45:41):
may have. He's just asking you to invite him into it.
Inviting Jesus in to our life. Over this last year,
and everything that we have experienced has saved our life.
There's no way in the world that I will be
able to share at all anything with anybody else had
(46:04):
not God been with us.
Speaker 3 (46:08):
So God in this place today, we're really really grateful.
Speaker 2 (46:17):
That you are a God that sticks closer than a brother,
That God you are near us, that you love us
the way that you do, and that your name is
a strong power that we can run into in whatever
situations we may be going through today or tomorrow or
(46:40):
the next day, that we know where we can run,
that we get to run to the King of Kings
and the Lord of lords, that we get to run
to our provider, our healer, our protector. That you are
everything that we need. I know all too well.
Speaker 3 (47:03):
That you can be everything that we need.
Speaker 2 (47:08):
We thank you that as we leave this place, that
we don't leave this place alone, That as we go
to work and back to home and all the other
places that we may have on our agenda, that.
Speaker 3 (47:22):
We have a God that sticks with us.
Speaker 2 (47:26):
And that out of every situation, no matter how bad
it looks, you can bring good. That God, out of
every situation, you can bring love, you can bring joy,
you can bring peace. God, that you can bring empathy
and compassion for other people, that you can deepen our
roots in you, and that we will not be distracted
(47:47):
by disappointment in the name of Jesus.
Speaker 3 (47:52):
Maybe you're in this room or you are.
Speaker 2 (47:54):
Watching online and you hear us talk about this relationship
with God, but maybe you want to enter into your
own relationship with Him and today you want to receive
the free gift of salvation. I talked about Jesus being
in the garden of Gassemone before he went to the cross,
and he was asking God, Hey, if there's another plan,
can we do something else? But instead he decided to
(48:17):
do what God's will was, and that was to die
on the cross for every single one of our sins
that we've ever committed.
Speaker 3 (48:24):
Or ever will commit. And he took it all to
the cross for us.
Speaker 2 (48:28):
If today you want to receive the salvation that he offered,
what I want you to do is pray a prayer
with me. I'm going to ask everybody in Transformation Church
Transformation Nation, to pray this prayer together as we pray
as a family. If you're receiving the gift of salvation today,
all you have to do is confess with your mouth
and believe in your heart that Jesus Christ is Lord,
(48:51):
and that he is your Lord.
Speaker 3 (48:53):
Now, so pray this prayer.
Speaker 2 (48:54):
Repeat after me, say, Dear God, I admit I've made mistakes.
Speaker 3 (49:00):
I admit I need a savior.
Speaker 2 (49:04):
I asked you to change my heart, change my motives.
I believe you lived, and you died and you rose
again just for me. Please change me, renew me, transform me.
(49:27):
I receive the free gift of salvation.
Speaker 3 (49:32):
In the name of Jesus. We pray. Amen, Amen, Amen.
Speaker 2 (49:37):
If today you received that free gift of salvation, what
we're gonna ask you to do.
Speaker 3 (49:43):
Is just lift your hand in the air.
Speaker 2 (49:44):
If you're around somebody that has their hand up, celebrate
with them. We got some folks back there in the back.
If you are receiving that free gift, how do we
celebrate Transformation Church. Somebody receiving the gift of salvation.
Speaker 3 (49:57):
It has changed all of our lives.
Speaker 2 (50:00):
Listen, we are so grateful that you received that today.
If that is you and you want to get some
more information, you can text saved to eight two eight
two A two and we can give you some more information.
Do not take this journey alone. Transformation Church, we love
you so very much. If at all you need prayer,
we'll have all to workers coming up to the front.
Speaker 3 (50:20):
And to the back of the room.
Speaker 2 (50:22):
If you need prayer for anything, you can come and
receive prayer.
Speaker 3 (50:25):
We love you so much. Go out and live a
transform life.
Speaker 1 (50:30):
Thank you for joining us today. If you said that
prayer and accept it Jesus into your heart, it's the
best decision you could ever make.
Speaker 3 (50:37):
We want to.
Speaker 1 (50:37):
Celebrate with you, and we have some tools to help
you on your journey. Text saved to A two A
two A two and to find out more about TC
text connect to A two A two A two. Be
sure to subscribe and share this podcast with your friends.
Thanks for listening. Now go out and live a transform life.
Welcome to Transformation Church Podcast, where we represent God to
the lost and found for transformation in Christ. We're so
glad you're here and wherever you're listening from, we believe
God will transform your life.
Speaker 2 (00:14):
Do today's message Today, I have the honor of bringing
this word to you and I am genuinely so excited
about it. I'm going to tell you a little bit
of our story and what we experienced over the last year,
and the prayer is that hopefully this encourages somebody and
bring somebody hope in the midst of their heartache.
Speaker 3 (00:35):
And at the end of this, We're going.
Speaker 2 (00:37):
To have a moment where I'm going to have the
worship team come back up. I'm just giving you the
preview of what all is going to happen, and I'm
asking you to stick around to really just see what
the Holy Spirit may want to say to you and
whatever situation you may.
Speaker 3 (00:48):
Be going through.
Speaker 2 (00:50):
So a little bit of our story talking about disappointment today.
The greatest disappointment of my life happened on July twenty first,
twenty twenty.
Speaker 3 (00:59):
Four, last year, around this time when it.
Speaker 2 (01:02):
Was the first day that I the first time ever
that I got to hold my son, and he was
taking his last breaths.
Speaker 3 (01:11):
In that moment.
Speaker 2 (01:13):
It's hard to explain, explain to you exactly how that feels.
We had such expectations of what our son's life was
gonna bring to our life. We had such expectations of
seeing him on his first birthday, and Aaron and I
had so many conversations around whose personality was he gonna take.
(01:37):
Was he gonna take mine and be the goodie two
shoes or was it gonna take my husband's and not
be the goodie two shoes?
Speaker 3 (01:46):
Was he gonna, you know, love basketball? Is he gonna
be a book nerd like me?
Speaker 2 (01:50):
I mean, what was he gonna Who was he gonna be?
Speaker 3 (01:53):
Was he gonna wear all.
Speaker 2 (01:54):
The Jordans and I mean all the Jordans.
Speaker 3 (01:56):
That Aaron had already bought for him.
Speaker 2 (01:58):
I mean, there was so many expects that we had
of him. I couldn't wait to see how he was
going to be with his cousins, and how he was
going to snuggle with my mom like how I did
growing up, And how he was going to enjoy my
dad's laughter and boldness and craziness all the time like
I could. We had so many expectations of what was
(02:20):
going to happen with our son Ace. We had no
idea that we would only have fourteen days with him.
And we knew that Ace was probably going to be
born with some sickness and some things that, you know,
we were going to have to do some hard work
to really get him through. But we had no idea
that he was going to pass away. And on this day,
(02:42):
this day that I finally got to hold my son
for the first time, this was the last.
Speaker 3 (02:47):
Day that we actually got with him.
Speaker 2 (02:50):
It's the greatest disappointment of my entire life. And I
understand that I'm not alone when it comes to disappointment,
that I am not the only person that has experienced
this situation or something similar to or another disappointment in life.
The definition of disappointment is the pain of an unmet expectation,
(03:13):
the pain of an unmet expectation.
Speaker 3 (03:15):
Every single one.
Speaker 2 (03:16):
Of us have or have had some type of disappointment.
The human experience includes disappointment. Bible even tells a scripture
tells us that we are going to have troubles in
this world. Every person is going to experience some type
of disappointment. Maybe not the same disappointment that I have.
But maybe you thought your mom was going to beat
(03:36):
the cancer, or maybe you thought that that relationship was
going to end a marriage. Maybe you thought that marriage
was going to last forever. Maybe you thought the job
was going to give you a promotion, or the friends
wouldn't betray you.
Speaker 3 (03:51):
We all had these.
Speaker 2 (03:52):
Expectations in life that oftentimes we are disappointed when it
doesn't work out the.
Speaker 3 (03:58):
Way that we thought it would.
Speaker 2 (04:00):
Mary and Martha thought that Jesus was going to heal
their brother before he died. Jonah thought, Oh, there's no
way that God's going to send.
Speaker 3 (04:08):
Me to Nineveh.
Speaker 2 (04:09):
Paul thought, oh, if I pray enough that this thorn
in my flesh, that this will be gone, God will
take it away. But many of us are left with disappointments,
often disappointments that we have to live with for the
rest of our lives. When I think about our story
with Ace, there were so many delights and disappointments along
the way. Aaron and I got married ten years ago,
(04:31):
in twenty fifteen. And when we got married, it was
a delight, it was wonderful. We were madly in love,
so excited about it. And then that first year went
completely downhill.
Speaker 3 (04:42):
Y'all. We never had the honeymoon face. If you want
to know more.
Speaker 2 (04:46):
About that wash one of the sermons that we didn't pass.
I'm not going into all those details, but during that time,
we were learning so much about ourselves and our marriage
was so broken and so shattered that we knew that
there was no way we were ready to be parents.
So we intentionally did not try to get pregnant. That
was not even an option. As a matter of fact,
we had gotten to a point where we didn't even
(05:07):
know if we were going to ever even want to
have a kid. Most of our friends know that when
they would bring up kids, we'd be like, we won't
talk about that. And probably about year five, I started
to feel like, you.
Speaker 3 (05:21):
Know what, maybe this is something that I want to do.
Maybe I do want to be a mom.
Speaker 2 (05:25):
And I remember actually writing for two years in a
row on my crazy Faith card that we.
Speaker 3 (05:31):
Would have a baby ready marriage that I didn't know
if we wanted to really be parents.
Speaker 2 (05:37):
But what I did know is that if we were
ever going to be parents, we wanted a marriage and
a home that was healthy enough that a child could
thrive in it. And so I started praying and asking God, God,
if we could just have a marriage, that if we
decide we want to have a kid, that it will
be a healthy home that we can.
Speaker 3 (05:54):
Bring that child to.
Speaker 2 (05:56):
And for two years I pray for that, and then
finally it was like, you know what, I think, I
actually want to be a mom, like I want to
have a child.
Speaker 3 (06:05):
And I took that to God. I did not.
Speaker 2 (06:08):
Take that to Aaron, okay, because we were not on
the same page yet, And so I.
Speaker 3 (06:12):
Took that to the Lord. And a couple months later, sure.
Speaker 2 (06:15):
Enough, Aaron came to me and we had a conversation.
We knew, okay, we want to actually try to have
a kid. And for two years we tried again, delight
after disappointment, delight after disappointment. We finally decide we want
to have a child, and it takes two years before
we ever get pregnant, and it was very much so
a torturous time for me. If you, as a woman,
have ever walked through the trying to concede process, you know,
(06:39):
every single month you think you're pregnant, you're not. All
the symptoms seem the same, all the things, and you're
disappointed every single time that you take that pregnancy test
and find out that you're not pregnant. And so for
two years we went through that, and then finally we
got a positive pregnancy test, and we.
Speaker 3 (06:56):
Were so excited about it.
Speaker 2 (06:57):
We found out at five am in the morning. We
literally started calling people at five am in the morning
to tell them we were so excited about it, and
we over of course it probably twenty four to forty
eight hours, went around telling our friends and family about it,
and we were making our way through every person that
we wanted to know before we made it a public thing.
Speaker 3 (07:17):
And by the end.
Speaker 2 (07:18):
Of that week, much to our disappointment, we found out
that we were having a miscarriage. And again, delight after disappointment.
So two months later we got another positive pregnancy test,
and this time it was our son Ace, and we
were so excited we went to this time, we.
Speaker 3 (07:39):
Just text everybody and told him.
Speaker 2 (07:40):
We was like, we're not going around told to tell
them everybody again. We just gonna send a text this time.
Speaker 3 (07:47):
And we went to the doctor.
Speaker 2 (07:48):
First doctor's appointment, hurt his heartbeat. That makes everything so
much more real when you hear the heartbeat. And then
we went to his second doctor's appointment, and when we
did this is about twelve.
Speaker 3 (07:58):
Or fourteen weeks.
Speaker 2 (07:59):
We found out that Ace was having some issues. Immediately
started to go see a specialist and went to that
specialist up until we had to move to Houston to
have him, and in that we knew that Ace had
a life threatening situation that was happening. But we took
every intervention that we could, everything that we knew to do,
(08:19):
including surgery and all the things, and moving to Houston
and being with the Houston doctor so that they could
give us some medical attention that we couldn't get here
in Tulsa.
Speaker 3 (08:28):
All the things.
Speaker 2 (08:29):
And we had an expectation that God was going to
heal our.
Speaker 3 (08:32):
Son in the way that we saw it happening.
Speaker 2 (08:34):
And it's very funny because as we found out what
was going on with Ace, we took the situation to God,
and we knew that what we wanted to do was
believe God that he would be a man of his word,
that he was going to heal Ace, and we knew that,
we just didn't know how he was going to do that.
Speaker 3 (08:55):
And so Ace was born and we found out when
he was born that.
Speaker 2 (08:59):
He is his life lungs were severely underdeveloped and that
he was not able to breathe on his own. And
for fourteen days he was in Nicku and in that
time he was able to have a breathing machine the
entire time. He had a major surgery during that time,
a lot of blood transfusions, a lot of things that
took place. And then we got a call from the
(09:20):
doctor one morning to tell us, hey, you need to
come to the hospital because we don't know if Ace
is going to make it the rest of this day.
And and in that moment, we went to the hospital
(09:50):
and we walked in, we knew, like, he doesn't look good,
and we knew that we were probably going to lose
our son that day. And Aaron and I wept and
went to God in prayer and told everyone we could, Hey,
let's pray for Ace and all the things. And we
(10:11):
had thousands of people praying for our son for him
to end up passing away. And here's the thing. We
said that we surrendered to God our son and that
he could heal him however he wanted to, but we
knew he would heal him. And what God did was
heal our son by taking him to Heaven. Ace is
(10:34):
living a better life than any of us are right now.
And what I'm realizing, even over all of this last year,
is how important it is to stay focused on God
in the midst of disappointment. My story is not your story.
(10:54):
Your story is not my story. This story you may
hear and you think, I don't even know if I
can go through that. I probably could hear some of
your story and think I don't know if I could
go through that myself. Every single one of us have
some type of disappointment in life, but it's not until
we meet that disappointment that we are able to see.
Can I fix my eyes on God in the midst
(11:16):
of this disappointment? And what we experience is, even through
the heartbreak of trying to conceive and then having a
miscarriage and having a sudden him passing away, is that
God's goodness never really runs out.
Speaker 3 (11:32):
It never really runs out.
Speaker 2 (11:33):
And I want to talk to you about this because
I have for the last year it's almost felt like
I've been waiting for God.
Speaker 3 (11:41):
When can I tell this story?
Speaker 2 (11:43):
Because the truth is, it is the love and the
kindness of God that has absolutely saved us over this
last year.
Speaker 3 (11:51):
In the midst of deep grief.
Speaker 2 (11:55):
The thing about disappointment that I think that sometimes we
struggle with as a church, and by the church, I
mean capital C church, is you have to wrestle with
God and disappointment. Oftentimes, when we are disappointed by something,
we do one of two things as believers.
Speaker 3 (12:12):
We either run away from God and completely.
Speaker 2 (12:14):
Disconnect because he didn't answer the prayer the way that
we wanted him to answer the prayer, or we completely
spiritually bypass all the emotions that actually come with real
disappointment for all the people who are maybe the glass
have fool people. Sometimes we can focus on that so
much that we don't recognize like half your glass is empty,
(12:35):
and it is okay to actually greed that half of
your glass is empty. And so today what I want
to do is try to give permission for us to
do both and wrestle with God.
Speaker 3 (12:48):
And your disappointment, be.
Speaker 2 (12:50):
Angry, be upset, be sad, be all the things, just
be it with God. I think about the story of
Jacob and how he wrestled with the Angel and he said,
I will not let go until you bless me. And
that's exactly the demeanor that.
Speaker 3 (13:07):
Aaron and I took in our situation.
Speaker 2 (13:09):
God, we do not understand, we do not like this,
but we will not let go of You until we
feel the blessing come upon us from this situation.
Speaker 3 (13:18):
And so when I think about.
Speaker 2 (13:20):
This, I have to be completely honest and sharing with
you today. I disagree with my son passing away.
Speaker 3 (13:32):
I disagree with it.
Speaker 2 (13:34):
I would one hundred percent rather be at home with
my baby right now than sitting up on this dage
teaching you. If it was my choice and I was God,
I would have let Ace live and I would have
healed them miraculously, and then I would have tried to
tell that testimony until probably I forgot about it and
moved on.
Speaker 3 (13:51):
With something else in life.
Speaker 2 (13:53):
But I would have done something very, very different in
this situation. I can disagree with God and still trust him.
This is the permission that I want to try to
give somebody today. It's okay if you don't agree with
(14:14):
how God allows something to go. I do not believe
that God took my son, but I do believe he
allowed it, and I have wrestled with him on that
time and time.
Speaker 3 (14:23):
Again over this last year.
Speaker 2 (14:25):
God, why it doesn't make sense to me? God, you
could have went a different way. God couldn't have testimony
been so much more powerful if you had healed as
the way that I saw it happening. But here's what
I know. I'm not all knowing. I'm not all powerful.
Speaker 3 (14:40):
His ways are not my ways.
Speaker 2 (14:42):
I am not King of kings and Lord of lords.
I do not know the end from the beginning.
Speaker 3 (14:47):
All I know.
Speaker 2 (14:47):
I don't even know five minutes from right now what's
going to happen. What I do know is that I
am a human just trying to stay surrendered.
Speaker 3 (14:54):
To the Lord right now.
Speaker 2 (14:56):
And so at the end of the day, if you
must rest, so wrestle, just do it with God, whatever
the disappointment is. I do believe that we can live
a life where we can both hand hand hold the
heartache and hope at the same time. That God has
(15:17):
not asked us to choose from whether we were going
to be heartbroken or we're going to be hopeful. You
can be both, and you can really hold onto that
heartache and God, why I wish it would win another
way and still hold onto the hope of the future.
And that's what I believe that God has given us
permission to do. As Jesus stood at the tomb of Lazarus,
(15:40):
knowing full well that he was going to raise him
from the dead, knowing full well that he was going
to heal Lazarus.
Speaker 3 (15:47):
He still wept. He was still in the moment. And
for me, the only way that.
Speaker 2 (15:55):
I could not just survive this last year, the only
way I could thrive through this.
Speaker 3 (16:00):
Last year was to do two things.
Speaker 2 (16:03):
To be honest with God and remind myself of God's truth.
When I go to God in prayer, the first thing
I'm gonna do is tell you exactly how I feel.
Speaker 4 (16:14):
God.
Speaker 2 (16:15):
This is how I feel about this situation. This is
not okay, this is how I wanted it to go, this, that,
and the other. I'm gonna be honest with God. But
after being honest with God, I'm gonna remind myself of
God's truth. But I know You're a redeemer, and I
know you're a healer, and I know that you know
how to take this broken heart and put it back together. God,
(16:36):
I know that Ace's life was for a reason, and
if there is a reason, I'm gonna find that reason.
I'm gonna keep moving that reason forward. And there is
hope that can happen in the middle of heartache.
Speaker 3 (16:49):
So what do we do when we experience disappointment? Three things?
Speaker 2 (16:54):
Three things that we can do as we experience disappointment
in our life things a focus on. The three things
that we can focus on is God's name, God's nature,
and God's nearness. God's name, God's nature, and God's nearness.
In the Scripture, it tells us in Proverbs eighteen and ten,
(17:17):
it says, the name of the Lord is a strong fortress,
and the godly run to him and are safe the
name of God. When we experience disappointment, we're gonna call
on somebody. You may call on your mama, you may
call on your friend, you may call on yourself to
get you through that disappointment. But if we can remember
(17:39):
the name of God in the middle of a disappointment,
it changes everything. Because God's name is not just a name.
God's name is actually a place. It is a strong tower,
a strong fortress that we run into so that we.
Speaker 3 (17:55):
Are saved God. This is a beautiful thing about God.
Speaker 2 (17:58):
When you think of just a regular human being. We
all have a name and maybe a couple of nicknames.
We got that Boo Boo, that Kiki.
Speaker 3 (18:03):
Whatever our nickname may be. But when it comes to
the name of God.
Speaker 2 (18:07):
There are literally dozens of names of God. There are
dozens of names that we can call on. And when
I sat and NICKI with my son, I was calling
on God the Father. God, I need you as a
father in this moment, to be with me and see
me as your daughter, and treat and treat me.
Speaker 3 (18:24):
Like your daughter.
Speaker 2 (18:25):
I could call on God the healer. God, you are
the only one.
Speaker 3 (18:28):
That can heal.
Speaker 2 (18:30):
I do not know what to do in this situation.
My hands are tied. The doctors don't know what to do.
You are the only one.
Speaker 3 (18:36):
Back in heal. And when as.
Speaker 2 (18:37):
Passed, I had to call on God the Redeemer. I said, God,
this situation didn't look the way that I wanted it
to look. But I know you can redeem it. I
know that you can bring something from it. And so
in the middle of your disappointment, who are you calling on?
In the middle of your disappointment.
Speaker 3 (18:58):
You will call on someone. Let that be the name
of God.
Speaker 2 (19:03):
Familiarize yourself with the names of God, because.
Speaker 3 (19:08):
Everything that we need he is.
Speaker 2 (19:12):
When Moses stood in front of that burning bush, God said.
Speaker 3 (19:15):
I am that I am.
Speaker 2 (19:17):
I am literally everything that you could ever need or
want in your life. That is Me, That is who
our God is. And so the beautiful thing about us
as believers walking through disappointment is we always have.
Speaker 3 (19:31):
A name to call on, and that may look.
Speaker 2 (19:34):
Different in different situations, but it is the same one
God that we call on every time we find ourselves
backed up against the wall in life.
Speaker 3 (19:42):
Call on the name of God.
Speaker 2 (19:47):
I think about all the moments laying in bed and
airing asleep and no one's up. Who do I pick
up the phone and call in a moment like that?
Who do you call on when you're going through the
worst thing in your life?
Speaker 3 (20:05):
But the name of God.
Speaker 2 (20:10):
If you want to not be distracted by the disappointments
in your life, cling to the name of God. It
is the only name by which we are saved. It
is the name above every name. I know there's some
names that maybe you think can come and rescue you
from a situation, the name of money, or the name
(20:32):
of friends, or the name of family. But it is
the only name that is above every other name, is
the name of God. And in our situation, that's all
we could call on, and that became our safe place.
Focus on the name of God. The second thing is
(20:53):
focus on the nature of God. Now one of the
things that this is near and dear to my heart
because in First John it tells us that God is love.
It means that God cannot act outside of love ever,
like there's nothing that he can do that is not
loving and not full of love, because that's who God is. Now,
(21:15):
we say I love you to one another, and oftentimes
we still have actions or behaviors or responses to one
another that are not actually built in love. But God,
that is not the case. When my husband and I
were in the first couple of years of our marriage
and we were rebuilding something back from scratch, I knew
that I needed to remind myself of God's love. For
(21:36):
all of my life, I had been the quote unquote
good girl, and I really did boil down God's love
to my performance that if I perform well, that God
would love me well, and that if I'm a good
person that God would love me well. In that situation,
when I found out being a good person don't mean
you're gonna have a good life all the time, I
really needed to learn about the love.
Speaker 3 (21:55):
Of God, and in that it took me.
Speaker 2 (21:59):
Probably a fool year but I took some time to
just learn about.
Speaker 3 (22:03):
The way that God loves me. And I'm telling you something.
Speaker 2 (22:09):
It absolutely dug my roots into his love in a
way that is very much so unexplainable. Today. This is
what I know about God. I know that he loves me.
I know he loves you. I know that I am
the apple of his eye, that you are the apple
of his eye.
Speaker 3 (22:28):
I know that we are his dream come true.
Speaker 2 (22:32):
Out of it one chance out of forty billion chances,
that we made it to this earth. That means that
He absolutely formed and made us and made us the
people that he wanted to be on this earth.
Speaker 3 (22:44):
That He is madly in love.
Speaker 2 (22:46):
With us, that he passionately pursues us.
Speaker 3 (22:49):
And when we are rooted in that love.
Speaker 2 (22:52):
Although disappointment will shake us, it won't break us. Although
disappointment comes, it won't shake the fact that we know that.
Speaker 3 (23:01):
Our God is all loving and here is a thing.
Speaker 2 (23:04):
If we understand that, it'll stop us from disconnecting from
God in the middle of disappointment. Because the enemy's design
for disappointment is distraction. He wants us to be absolutely
distracted by the disappointment that we have in our life
and by that, I mean distracted from the calling of
God on our life, distracted from the love of God
(23:27):
in our lives, distracted and from our relationship with God.
But what I know is God's purpose is death. That
we can deepen even from a disappointment. But where we
deepen is in his love. That it is his love
that changes us from the inside out, and it is
(23:49):
his love that roots us. And if I were to
say there's one thing to study in the word of God,
if you were wondering where should I even start, I
would say study the love of God changes everything. It
changes everything when I know how God feels about me.
God's tone of voice with me is not like an
old pastor or a mean parent.
Speaker 3 (24:10):
Or anything like that. God's tone and voice for me
is one that is.
Speaker 2 (24:14):
Feeling of love and of tenderness and of joy. And
He is so excited to see me wake up every
single day, and he beams over us every day, and
he sings songs over us.
Speaker 3 (24:25):
He is so so madly in love with us.
Speaker 2 (24:29):
And if we struggle to believe that, which is normal,
we will struggle to believe that He loves us, especially
in the middle of disappointment. One thing that was important
to me when going through this situation was that I
remember and remind myself of the love of God, because
(24:50):
when life hits you and hits you hard, it almost
feels like God's doing it. It almost feels like he
is the one to blame. God.
Speaker 3 (24:59):
I've been praying for as why haven't you healed him?
Speaker 2 (25:02):
God? We did everything we knew to do to try
to intervene with this situation.
Speaker 3 (25:05):
Why haven't you? Why has none of that worked? God?
Speaker 2 (25:08):
We've been trying for so many years to have a baby,
and we finally got to a place where we felt
like we could do it and we felt healthy enough,
and then we try and all these things God.
Speaker 3 (25:16):
And really, what the enemy would love for us to do.
Speaker 2 (25:20):
Is to blame God for the disappointments in our life,
whatever it is you may be experiencing in your life.
Speaker 3 (25:28):
If you feel any blame towards.
Speaker 2 (25:30):
God in that situation, know that that is the plan
of the Enemy. That he wants us to disconnect from
Him in a way that we don't believe that God
loves us because of what we are experiencing. God may
have allowed it, but he didn't cause it. And when
God allows something in our life, he has something in
(25:52):
the middle of that, and Isaiah says, I have hidden
treasures in darkness, have hidden treasures in darkness, that even
in your darkest situation, I have some treasures down there
for you.
Speaker 3 (26:07):
I promise you.
Speaker 2 (26:08):
I will not leave you in this situation with nothing
to offer you. I promise you you can get something
out of this situation. I promise you that you can
be like a tree planted by the rivers of water,
bearing fruit in every single season. I promise you I
have something to give you, even though that looks like
you have lost it all.
Speaker 3 (26:25):
I promise you I am not a god that will
trick you. I am not a God that will give.
Speaker 2 (26:31):
You this fantastic fantasy of.
Speaker 3 (26:33):
Life and to trick you.
Speaker 2 (26:35):
I promise you I'm going to give you abundant life.
Speaker 3 (26:38):
I promise you. I am a man of my word.
I promise you that I love you. I promise you
that something will come from this. I promise you that
I can make.
Speaker 2 (26:47):
Every single thing work out.
Speaker 3 (26:49):
For your good. I promise you that's how much God
loves us, that in every situation he will.
Speaker 2 (27:01):
Find the good in it, he will make something out
of it. When we surrender that disappointment to him. He
will meet us right there and He will give us
some good out of it, some fruit out of it,
some blessings, even out of the most painful, hurtful things
(27:21):
in our lives. So we must know God's nature, that
God's nature cannot be disconnected from love. And when we
know that, we can continue to serve and stay connected
to Him. Even in our wrestling. You can wrestle with
the God. Wrestling does not mean disobedience, and it doesn't
(27:43):
mean a lack of faith.
Speaker 3 (27:45):
Wrestling means intimacy.
Speaker 2 (27:48):
If you have a real good relationship, a good friendship
with somebody, y'all can argue and fight about something and
we still gonna love each other after this conversation. That
is what we can do. God said, I am your friend.
Come to me like you would your friend. Let's talk
about it. Let's wrestle over this thing. Don't disconnect. So
(28:11):
when we're in disappointment, we focus on the name of God,
we focus on.
Speaker 3 (28:14):
The nature of God.
Speaker 2 (28:16):
And the last thing is focus on God's nearness. Now,
if there is one thing that I could teach for
the rest of my life, it would be about the
nearness of God outside the love of God. It'd be
about the nearness of God, because I do believe, especially
in a world where we have a social media situation
where we are disconnected from one another all the time,
(28:38):
we live pretty much in a pandemic of loneliness that
oftentimes we believe we are by ourselves when we go
into that meeting, where by ourselves when we go to
have that conversational, by ourselves. If there was one thing
that I could teach for the rest of my life,
it will be about the nearness of God, because we
serve a God who really is King of kings and
Lord of lords, like he is huge expansive.
Speaker 3 (29:00):
Scriptures say that the earth is his footstool.
Speaker 2 (29:02):
That's how big our God is. But scriptures also tell
us that he delights in the details of our life.
That God is closer to you than your very own breath,
that God is with.
Speaker 3 (29:16):
You and mirror you at all times.
Speaker 2 (29:18):
As a matter of fact, in Psalms, it says in
Psalms thirty four and eighteen that God is close to
the broken hearted, and he rescues those spirits who are crushed.
I would teach about the nearness of God only if
I had one thing to talk about because I think
it changes things when we believe that God and everything
(29:40):
that God has to offer us is with us at
every moment of the day. There is not one second
of the day that He looks to the left or
is distracted by something else, that his full attention is
on us all day, every day, that He is with us.
That if you put your hand to your face and
feel your breath that's coming out of your mouth, stinky
(30:01):
or not, that that is.
Speaker 3 (30:02):
How close God is to you. It changes things. I
have this.
Speaker 2 (30:10):
Spiritual practice that I do that where I sometimes imagine
Jesus with me in a room or wherever I am,
and I do this.
Speaker 3 (30:19):
Now.
Speaker 2 (30:19):
I do a lot of contemplative practices because those really
do root me and ground me in.
Speaker 3 (30:24):
The presence of God.
Speaker 2 (30:25):
But in this practice, however Jesus looks to me at
that time, I would just imagine Him in the space
with me because it gives me calm and ease and
even makes me feel more confident in what I'm doing.
When I walk up on this stage, I imagine me
and Jesus walked up here together, and it just gives
me confidence to know I'm not alone, I'm not by
myself and I belong here because Jesus is with me.
(30:46):
And when we were in Houston, when we initially found
out that something was wrong with Ace, we went to
meet with a series of doctors. And in those meetings,
we sit down and we're at a table, a circle table,
and there's four chairs at the table and it's Aaron
and I and then there's a doctor that we're talking to.
And we've talked to probably four different doctors at this point.
(31:08):
We're finally on the last doctor that we're talking to.
And when we're talking to him, he is you know
the dry eyes commercial. Okay, he is like dry eyes,
very just bland, plane, straightforward, very black and white, not
really how do I say, emotionally available?
Speaker 3 (31:27):
Okay?
Speaker 2 (31:29):
And so he's talking to us and he's telling us,
you know, here's a prognosis, here's what we think. He
even in this conversation shared with us a lot of
people who experience something like this decide to terminate their pregnancy,
and that's an option if we want to do that.
Speaker 3 (31:43):
And all these different things that he's talking to us about.
Speaker 2 (31:45):
And I don't blame him being in the medical fear
that feel that long.
Speaker 3 (31:49):
I don't know what it does to you.
Speaker 2 (31:50):
So if nothing else, I'm like, hey, just give us
the details.
Speaker 3 (31:53):
We're fine with that. But in the midst of all
of this, I am.
Speaker 2 (31:56):
Completely like sobbing, like I am crying hard. It's hard
for me to really understand what everyone's saying because it's
now the fourth or fifth doctor we've talked to, and
there's so many medical terms. I don't get it all.
And so in the moment I go, I think to myself,
oh my gosh, I've been going through all of these
meetings with the doctors and I forgot that I can
(32:17):
imagine Jesus in the room with me, and so he's
talking to us, and Aaron and I are looking at him,
talking to him, and I tell myself, you know, I'm
gonna imagine Christ in the room and this empty seat
that we have, it's four cheers.
Speaker 3 (32:29):
And only three of us.
Speaker 2 (32:30):
So I imagine Jesus in this seat. And I kid you not,
this is the Holy Spirit all by self. We're talking
to the doctor and we're looking at each other and
in my imagination, because I do believe God gave us
an imagination so that we can imagine good things like
That's what positive thinking is. Anyways, so I'm looking at
(32:51):
the doctor and Jesus is over here, but Jesus is
only looking at me, And in my imagination, while I
was concerned about Ace and trying to figure out what
was going on with him, and the doctor was telling
us everything that we needed to be aware of, Jesus
(33:11):
was concerned about me. And that as I'm looking at
these doctors and talking to them, that Jesus is concerned
about his daughter.
Speaker 3 (33:22):
Well, I'm concerned about my child.
Speaker 2 (33:24):
He's concerned about his child, and he's looking at me
this entire time. And I know that's only the Holy Spirit,
because why would I know to even think that. But
here's the thing, it's those practices that helped me to remember.
Speaker 3 (33:39):
Jesus is near us, that he's with you.
Speaker 2 (33:44):
That God doesn't once you get saved. He doesn't ask you, okay,
go figure it out on your own.
Speaker 3 (33:49):
He doesn't stand on.
Speaker 2 (33:50):
The other side of your sin telling you to clean
up your own mess. That instead, he walks and talks
with us, that he is with us like nobody else can,
Like when you just have no words to even say,
He's right there saying I know, I get it, I'm sorry,
I understand that Jesus is that near to us. When
(34:13):
we know the name of God and we call on
it in the midst of disappointment, when we understand and
tried to grasp the nature of God and how much
He loves us, and when we are experiencing and aware
of the nearness.
Speaker 3 (34:31):
Of God, it changes things.
Speaker 2 (34:37):
There was a point when on the day that Ace
was passing, and we went up to the hospital and
like I said, the doctor called us and said, you
guys need to get up here because we don't.
Speaker 3 (34:49):
Know how much longer we have with him. And we
went to the.
Speaker 2 (34:53):
Hospital and we were there for quite some time. As
a matter of fact, our whole intended purpose was we
were to see, you know, if the medicine was going
to take and his vitals were going to change or
if not. And if his vitals were not going to change,
then he his heart rate was going to slow down.
And that's how we knew that he was on his
way to passing. And we were sitting there for hours.
(35:16):
Matter of fact, it was a Sunday, so we streamed
church from there and put church in his little Niku
cube and we were there for hours, you know, just
seeing what God was going to do and very hard
to explain the experience of literally watching your child die,
Like that's very hard to explain. And there was a
(35:37):
certain point where I told Aaron, I was like, I
need a break.
Speaker 3 (35:41):
It's just hard.
Speaker 2 (35:42):
This is just really hard to sit here and watch
this and not know what was happening. There were no
changes positive or negative. It was just kind of staying
the same. So we went to the car and decided
to take a break. And when we went to the car,
we recognized that we got to the car and I
(36:04):
just knew I needed to pray.
Speaker 3 (36:07):
I needed to pray and talk to God. And Nick,
you is very quiet, so you can't.
Speaker 2 (36:10):
Really, you know, say too many things out loud. You
show can't be Shonda bowing up in there. Okay, that
is not the place for that. And so I.
Speaker 3 (36:18):
Went to the car and I started praying, and I mean.
Speaker 2 (36:24):
I was begging God, begging God to.
Speaker 3 (36:37):
Change the situation. And I was, I mean literally screaming God.
Speaker 2 (36:46):
Please, please, please, please, please, please do something. Don't let
this be our story, don't let this in like this,
save our son, Please God, please, and just crying out
and asking God, you know, to come and do something.
Speaker 3 (37:05):
And after praying like that. I don't know how long.
Speaker 2 (37:10):
Aaron probably has more regulation of that story than I do,
but after praying for quite some time, it felt like
there was suddenly just the peace, and I felt myself
(37:34):
surrender the situation to God and surrender ace to God.
Speaker 3 (37:42):
And my prayers went.
Speaker 2 (37:43):
From God, I begging you, please don't let this happen.
Speaker 3 (37:47):
Please God, Please, to.
Speaker 2 (37:52):
Whatever happens, just let us be okay. And I don't
know what You're going to allow to have, but can
you bring some good from it?
Speaker 3 (38:05):
And can we live after this?
Speaker 2 (38:07):
Please? Let us have some joy after this experience. Please,
whatever happens.
Speaker 4 (38:16):
And I don't know where that shift came from other
than the Holy Spirit in that prayer, but it was
like at first I was clinching with all of my might,
trying to really force God to do something the way.
Speaker 3 (38:32):
That I saw it. And sometimes we think that's what
prayer is.
Speaker 2 (38:37):
I just got to say the right thing at the
right time, and I could do the magic trick.
Speaker 3 (38:42):
To get him do exactly what I want him to do.
But that prayer ended in surrender.
Speaker 2 (38:50):
And when I think about that today, it reminds me
of the greatest disappointment in history, and although not as
intense and not as weighty, it reminded me of Jesus
in the Garden of gaseimone before he went to go
(39:10):
be crucified, and he begged and pleaded.
Speaker 3 (39:15):
God, please, please, please, please.
Speaker 2 (39:18):
Let's do something different. If there's another plan, please let's
go that direction. If you could do it a different way, God, please,
And eventually he says, not my will, but your will
be done.
Speaker 3 (39:35):
And in that.
Speaker 2 (39:36):
Surrender, the greatest disappointment in history took place, but also
the greatest good in history took place too. The greatest
thing that God could do was redeem a terrible situation.
And although we would choose to not have to go
(39:58):
through terrible situations, we had the power in our hands,
we would choose to never have to do it, never
have to go through any trial, any pain, anything.
Speaker 3 (40:07):
That is going to wreck our lives.
Speaker 2 (40:09):
Here's my promise to you, which is a promise from God.
He'll bring good from it. He can bring good from
the divorce, he can bring good from the loss. He
can bring good from the termination or the layoff.
Speaker 3 (40:30):
He can bring good.
Speaker 2 (40:31):
From the broken betrayal or the broken relationship. He really
can bring some good from it, but you have to
surrender it. God wants to bring something really good from
things that are truly terrible in our lives. But it's
our choice on whether or not we will wrestle with
(40:54):
him to a point till we get to surrender.
Speaker 3 (41:00):
Wrestle with God, he invites it.
Speaker 2 (41:04):
At the end of that wrestle, choose to surrender it
to him.
Speaker 3 (41:10):
There is no way.
Speaker 2 (41:13):
That I could put a bow on my son's story.
I will live the rest of my life without my
son here, and that tears my heart to shreds.
Speaker 3 (41:26):
But what I know is.
Speaker 2 (41:29):
Although I will not have him, I will.
Speaker 3 (41:32):
Have God's goodness.
Speaker 2 (41:35):
I will see the goodness of God and the land
of the Living.
Speaker 3 (41:47):
As a church, we will not gloss over pain.
Speaker 2 (41:52):
It's real, and oftentimes it sticks with us even.
Speaker 3 (41:57):
Longer when we try to ignore it and avoid it.
Speaker 2 (42:01):
I'm at a point in my life now where when
I say, oh, I've had a good day, it's not
because I didn't cry or I didn't grieve.
Speaker 3 (42:10):
It's if that grief came.
Speaker 2 (42:11):
To the surface and I gave it some space, and
if I allowed myself to cry when the tears came,
instead of trying to hold them back. Or try to
slap a scripture on and act like it's not a
real thing, or disconnect from God.
Speaker 3 (42:25):
And go into my hole and allow it to take
me under.
Speaker 2 (42:29):
You can hold heartache and hope in the midst of disappointment.
My prayer today is that hearing just a little bit
of this story. There's so many details that I can't
share today, but hearing just a little bit of it,
that you understand that.
Speaker 3 (42:48):
God is not this far off being.
Speaker 2 (42:53):
That is not good to us and does not have
good intentions for us.
Speaker 3 (42:57):
But that He is a God that is really, really.
Speaker 2 (43:00):
Real, and that even in the midst of the hardest
thing that you can't experience, he's not far He's very close.
Speaker 3 (43:10):
The moment.
Speaker 2 (43:13):
That our son took his last breath, he was holding
him in my arm, and Aaron was holding me in
his arms, and it was a moment that Heaven met Earth,
that in the midst of our grief and our sorrow,
(43:37):
that all.
Speaker 3 (43:38):
Of Heaven was leaned in with us in the moment.
Don't you know that God has leaned into you, that.
Speaker 2 (43:53):
He has never once taken his eyes off of you,
and that your heartache does not mean that He is
far off, but when you're.
Speaker 3 (44:04):
Going through what you're going through, He's crying with you,
and he's standing with you.
Speaker 2 (44:11):
And in my situation, he understands because he lost the
son too. And hebrews in with this scripture four fourteen
through sixteen, it says, therefore, since we have high, a
(44:32):
great high priest who is ascended into heaven, Jesus the
Son of God, let us hold firmly to the faith
that we possess.
Speaker 3 (44:44):
For we do not have a high priest who.
Speaker 2 (44:46):
Is unable to empathize with our weaknesses, but we have
one who is tempted in every way just as we are.
Speaker 3 (44:54):
Yet he did not sin.
Speaker 2 (44:56):
Let us then approach God's throne of grace with go confidence,
so that we may receive mercy and find grace to
help us in our time of me My encouragement to
you today is you are not alone in the midst
of that disappointment. God is with you. No matter what's
(45:18):
going on. God is with you. And not only is
he with you physically with you, but he empathizes with you,
and he understands, and he's not afraid to wrestle with you,
and he's not afraid to go toe to toe with you.
And he's not afraid of whatever lack of faith you
(45:41):
may have. He's just asking you to invite him into it.
Inviting Jesus in to our life. Over this last year,
and everything that we have experienced has saved our life.
There's no way in the world that I will be
able to share at all anything with anybody else had
(46:04):
not God been with us.
Speaker 3 (46:08):
So God in this place today, we're really really grateful.
Speaker 2 (46:17):
That you are a God that sticks closer than a brother,
That God you are near us, that you love us
the way that you do, and that your name is
a strong power that we can run into in whatever
situations we may be going through today or tomorrow or
(46:40):
the next day, that we know where we can run,
that we get to run to the King of Kings
and the Lord of lords, that we get to run
to our provider, our healer, our protector. That you are
everything that we need. I know all too well.
Speaker 3 (47:03):
That you can be everything that we need.
Speaker 2 (47:08):
We thank you that as we leave this place, that
we don't leave this place alone, That as we go
to work and back to home and all the other
places that we may have on our agenda, that.
Speaker 3 (47:22):
We have a God that sticks with us.
Speaker 2 (47:26):
And that out of every situation, no matter how bad
it looks, you can bring good. That God, out of
every situation, you can bring love, you can bring joy,
you can bring peace. God, that you can bring empathy
and compassion for other people, that you can deepen our
roots in you, and that we will not be distracted
(47:47):
by disappointment in the name of Jesus.
Speaker 3 (47:52):
Maybe you're in this room or you are.
Speaker 2 (47:54):
Watching online and you hear us talk about this relationship
with God, but maybe you want to enter into your
own relationship with Him and today you want to receive
the free gift of salvation. I talked about Jesus being
in the garden of Gassemone before he went to the cross,
and he was asking God, Hey, if there's another plan,
can we do something else? But instead he decided to
(48:17):
do what God's will was, and that was to die
on the cross for every single one of our sins
that we've ever committed.
Speaker 3 (48:24):
Or ever will commit. And he took it all to
the cross for us.
Speaker 2 (48:28):
If today you want to receive the salvation that he offered,
what I want you to do is pray a prayer
with me. I'm going to ask everybody in Transformation Church
Transformation Nation, to pray this prayer together as we pray
as a family. If you're receiving the gift of salvation today,
all you have to do is confess with your mouth
and believe in your heart that Jesus Christ is Lord,
(48:51):
and that he is your Lord.
Speaker 3 (48:53):
Now, so pray this prayer.
Speaker 2 (48:54):
Repeat after me, say, Dear God, I admit I've made mistakes.
Speaker 3 (49:00):
I admit I need a savior.
Speaker 2 (49:04):
I asked you to change my heart, change my motives.
I believe you lived, and you died and you rose
again just for me. Please change me, renew me, transform me.
(49:27):
I receive the free gift of salvation.
Speaker 3 (49:32):
In the name of Jesus. We pray. Amen, Amen, Amen.
Speaker 2 (49:37):
If today you received that free gift of salvation, what
we're gonna ask you to do.
Speaker 3 (49:43):
Is just lift your hand in the air.
Speaker 2 (49:44):
If you're around somebody that has their hand up, celebrate
with them. We got some folks back there in the back.
If you are receiving that free gift, how do we
celebrate Transformation Church. Somebody receiving the gift of salvation.
Speaker 3 (49:57):
It has changed all of our lives.
Speaker 2 (50:00):
Listen, we are so grateful that you received that today.
If that is you and you want to get some
more information, you can text saved to eight two eight
two A two and we can give you some more information.
Do not take this journey alone. Transformation Church, we love
you so very much. If at all you need prayer,
we'll have all to workers coming up to the front.
Speaker 3 (50:20):
And to the back of the room.
Speaker 2 (50:22):
If you need prayer for anything, you can come and
receive prayer.
Speaker 3 (50:25):
We love you so much. Go out and live a
transform life.
Speaker 1 (50:30):
Thank you for joining us today. If you said that
prayer and accept it Jesus into your heart, it's the
best decision you could ever make.
Speaker 3 (50:37):
We want to.
Speaker 1 (50:37):
Celebrate with you, and we have some tools to help
you on your journey. Text saved to A two A
two A two and to find out more about TC
text connect to A two A two A two. Be
sure to subscribe and share this podcast with your friends.
Thanks for listening. Now go out and live a transform life.
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