Preaching Through Pain

Preaching Through Pain
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I know this blog may not be for everyone. Some of you may find it very depressing. But I have always tried to be as real and transparent as possible. That’s all I have ever done, and it’s all I will ever do.


I sincerely pray that it is helping someone out there who may be walking this same horrible journey. But if not for anyone else, I know it is helping me. Along with my personal journaling, prayer, and reading the Bible, many devotionals and books dealing with grief have been a source of strength for me.


My heart truly goes out to anyone who is walking this lonely road of traumatic loss and devastating grief. It’s lonely because we all experience grief in our own personal way. I’m sending you virtual hugs right now. We’ve never experienced pain like this.

                                  _________________________


Sometime around the end of October last year, I felt something begin to shift in my world. It wasn’t a good shift. I began waking up around 3:00 a.m. every morning with a heavy sense of dread. It was a panicky feeling that wrought fear in my heart.


I would immediately begin to pray. I asked God to please protect my whole family, keep us safe, and keep us out of harm’s way. But it continued to happen several times a month. I finally began to feel like something ominous was hovering over our lives, and I had no idea when it was going to descend upon us. I continued to pray.


Then God began to give me powerful sermons about being refined. I began to preach on “The Refiner’s Fire,” linking it to the fiery furnace and to Joseph’s unfathomable journey from the pit to the palace, back to the pit, and back to the palace again. God was moving powerfully through those sermons, but now I wonder if those messages were intended mostly for me.


Still, the dread and fear continued to wake me in the early morning hours, and I continued to pray for protection for my family and all of my loved ones. I felt as if an “enormous thing” was going to happen.


A few hurtful things happened during that time. Certainly, they were not devastating things, but they were discouraging and unexpected. I wondered, “Is that what the dread was about?” No. The nagging feeling remained.


One after another, events began to happen that caught me off guard and caused deeper distress as they increased in severity. After each occurrence, I would think, “Well, that surely must have been the enormous thing!” But no, the feeling of dread continued.


                                   Warnings or Preparation?

For the past few years, I have been attending the Acts 6:4 Conference in Texarkana, Texas. It’s always held during the first week of January. With all these issues happening and the continuing sense of dread, I almost decided not to go.


At the last minute, and after some relentless tugging from the Holy Spirit, I decided I needed to be there. When I arrived, I soon learned the theme of the conference was “Preaching Through Pain.” Coincidence? Maybe. Hopefully...


As each speaker took the platform and began to minister on how God empowered them to preach through some of the most mind-bending pain of their lives, I got the overwhelming feeling that this conference was for me. Not because of what I had been through, but because of what I was about to go through.


Then Pastor Sam Rijfkogel, pastor of Grand Rapids First Assembly in Wyoming, Michigan, took the platform. He began to speak of his precious daughter, Sarah, and her battle with Stage 4 colon cancer at the age of twenty-seven.


Sarah was a worship leader with a powerful anointing and a beautiful voice, much like my Hannah. Their worship styles were similar. Sarah fearlessly led worship until she physically couldn’t do it anymore.


Sarah fought cancer. Hannah fought depression. It might appear to some as though cancer won in Sarah’s battle and depression won in Hannah’s. But death did not win! I definitely believe they are both worshiping today before the throne of God.


I wept like a baby through Pastor Sam’s entire message. I couldn’t believe how powerful it was and how anointed he was in sharing such a heart-wrenching experience. What a devastating loss! How could he even go on after that?


But even then, I still had no idea.


On the way home from the conference, I told my friend Sue, “I think that whole conference was meant for me. I feel like I’m about to go through something really, really hard, some enormous thing, and God is going to ask me to preach through my pain.”


I honestly thought I was going to be diagnosed with some life-threatening disease. I didn't want to be caught off guard, so I made sure I got all my physical exams taken care of. Nothing was wrong. My doctor said everything looked good, and all my test results were perfect.


In mid-January, God gave me the vision for a camp meeting with the theme “Unshakable.” I organized it, and registration filled up almost immediately. But I had no idea my faith was going to be shaken to the core. My whole world was about to be shaken by a 9.5-magnitude earthquake.


Our dearly loved and cherished daughter, Hannah, took her own life. This was the enormous thing.


Though my whole family and I were shaken, God wasn’t. Nothing surprises God or catches Him off guard. He intentionally gave me that theme and the Scripture He wanted me to use for this year’s camp meeting, and He knew exactly what I would go through before it even arrived.


When we lost Hannah suddenly and unexpectedly, I didn’t think I could survive it. I had to make a decision: blame God and turn away from Him, or run into His arms for comfort and healing.


This was the moment when Satan had attempted to sift me. Did I truly believe what I preached about God? When the unthinkable happens, is God still good? Is He still a loving God?


Now it was up to me. Would I be able to preach through my pain? And if so, how? I can’t even see through my own tears most days.
This was definitely the most enormous thing I had ever encountered. This was the reason for all my dread. All along the way, I had this horrible feeling of fear and sorrow. And this was why... our precious Hannah.


I asked God, “Why would You allow me to have this horrible sense of fear and dread and not allow me to see something, do something, or prevent this? Why didn’t You do something?”


He softly whispered, “I did. I had you pray, not only for yourself, but most of all for your family and all your loved ones in preparation for the pain you were all going to go through. My Holy Spirit prayed through you, for you, when you didn't have the words nor knowledge of what was to come. And I have not left your side for one second of this pain. Even though you might not have felt Me there. Even when you wanted to push Me away, I stayed. And I’m still here. I’m not going anywhere.”


Though I had hundreds of questions and admittedly ran to Him again and again, pounding His chest with my fists and demanding that He tell me why, this one thing remained true: my world, my life, my joy, and my heart might have been shaken, but my faith in God my Father and my faith in His truth were not. He had been there all along, silently preparing me for the unspeakable pain to come, and then wrapping His loving arms around me through it all, and even now.


So...I must continue to preach what I know to be true about God. I might have to walk through excruciating pain and heartbreak for the rest of my life, but He is walking with me, carrying me when I can’t walk, and nothing I do for Him will ever be in vain.


I have determined to remain unshakable in my faith in God because He is unshakable in His love and faithfulness to me.


Yes! I will preach through my pain, just as you will. Even though you may or may not stand behind a pulpit or speak to huge audiences of people, your life is still preaching. People are still watching to see whether you stand strong through your “enormous thing” and continue to believe in God.


They will wonder: Has your foundation been shaken to the point of crumbling beneath you, causing you to fall away from Him? Will you still trust God after He allowed such tragic pain to befall you or your family? Will you even survive?


My prayer for you, for all of us, is that we will always hold fast to the One who cannot be shaken, our God, who knows all the details when we can make no sense of them at all. May our actions and our love for Him speak even more loudly as we preach through our pain.


“...my loved brothers and sisters, you must stand firm, unshakable, excelling in the work of the Lord as always, because you know that your labor isn’t going to be for nothing in the Lord.”
1 Corinthians 15:58 CEB (emphasis mine)


“Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves receive from God. For just as we share abundantly in the sufferings of Christ, so also our comfort abounds through Christ.”
2 Corinthians 1:3-5 (NIV)
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Preach through your pain, and if necessary, use words.
Love always,
Donna