Sheila Walsh: Transform Your Sadness into Unshakable Strength | Women of Faith on TBN

how do we Steward our suffering so it becomes an offering my Dad tried to take me out before he took his own life and I think the very thing that the enemy intends for evil and and the way that only God can I don't even can't even fathom becomes the very things of which God shines his light you know I love all our conversations that we've had um but I have to tell you when I knew that today was um knowing the Father's Love it kind of it made me pause for a minute because that's something that I have really struggled with throughout my life and I remember when I was in seminary and you'll know this quote I was reading a book by Tozer and the quote was what comes to your mind when you think about God is the most important thing about you and I remember writing that in the back of my Bible because I thought it was one thing when if you'd said what comes to your mind when you think about Jesus right that would have been different that's like I'm saved I'm loved but what comes to your mind when you think about God the father was really hard for me just because of my own relationship with my my own dad if my dad had just been a violent person I think that would have been I mean it would have been horrible but it would have been predictable but to have a really loving dad who then because of brain injury becomes a violent man the thing that that it left with me and honestly sometimes I still struggle is love can be taken away just as quickly as it can be given or that love is unpredictable yeah at one point and then the next point he was yeah but you know that too I mean your experience Lisa when you were young yeah well I mean when you think of as you were growing up of God as a father what kind of images would have come to you um Allah quote I can still remember reading that and being very similar just kind of taken aback our stories are some similarities some sad similarities um my dad left when I was really little and I loved my dad as most of us do but he he and my mom had a very acrimonious relationship and he left us before they divorced for another woman and I I just was devastated um you know I just thought it had to do partly with me of course and so on one hand the fatherhood of God was really really hard for me to see is safe or as permanent on the other hand the fact that my father left is what drew me to God grew up in a small town and divorce wasn't that common back then in the late 60s and so she took us to another church and I think it was the first Sunday in that church I was five years old um the pastor of this church I'd never been in four tiny little church Baptist Church single aisle spoke on how God as a father doesn't abandon his children and um and I I mean I can remember like it was yesterday holding on the back of the PA them sing is just as I am and I walk forward as a five-year-old because of the idea that God wouldn't leave me so um likey there's some places where I still struggle much more comfortable I know the godhead is we can't segregate them God the Father God Son God the Holy Spirit you get all three not segregate but Jesus Jesus is easier to access for me emotionally yeah it's taken a lot of work to go ask my father he's a good good father and he's not distant I'm still in process I I don't think I was honest enough about the places where I'd been wounded by the lack of safe affection in my childhood until I was in my 30s and I began studying The Song of Solomon Song of Songs as the formal name and and that's the first place that at least I saw in the Bible this intimacy between God and us and the story used and that poetry is a love story it's a historical love story but the bigger picture is the kind of intimacy we can have with God we can have God the Father God send God the Holy Spirit and there's this one verse I talk about it all the time and Song of Solomon where God says to us with one glance of your eyes he captured my heart and I can still remember the first time I was alone that I I kind of saw that fresh or maybe the first time I really read it and the the reality that I was the object of God's affection I mean I I got how he loved people who were you know have been diagnosed with cancer I I got how we love the least of these I just didn't feel like I deserved it and so when I began to be honest about the places where I felt missed and invisible and marginalized and then I felt stupid because I didn't want to be needy so I just tried to be a good Christian girl when I began to realize I unless I learned what it is to be weak I'll never learn what it is to be rescued and to be restored and so I think I think learning to confess to the Lord I need you I can't make it by myself and I feel alone I think that's the gateway to actually experiencing and being healed by the restorative love of a God who never looks away from us and never looks at us with his browse for it with one glance of your eyes he captured his heart I was gonna say I think even the way we're taught scripturous kids makes that emotional junk part you know it's taken me my father has been if anything consistent my Earthly father but I had a lot to parse through thinking oh Jesus the in the image of the invisible God you know and that was a hard jump for me emotionally too and I think it's the way we teach children's scripture sometimes separating Old Testament and New Testament focusing on stories and not really bringing Jesus into the story well and biblical narrative is if you don't get contacts and you don't get Jesus didn't just come unseen the New Testament he's been there since the very beginning Old Testament anytime they talked about the name of God it was Yahweh so Jewish the theological anthropology there is he wasn't an approachable father the whole point of the fatherhood of God an old testament old Covenant is more the Holiness of God it's you don't get that covenantal in in the Redemptive history you don't get the Covenant relationship in the word of I've adopted you you're my children and so I think if I agree with you you've got to be reading old new at the same time so they go oh because otherwise you get us mixed up with Jewish anthropology and you go oh we can't approach God that's I love the the amount of transfiguration because you poor Peter is up there going oh we're about to get fried because it's the cloud that comes down and he thinks back to Texas and goes oh we can't get close to the club that's the Holiness of God and then the voice of God says come look at my son and then you'll be going to see oh fatherhood takes on this imminence in the New Testament that's much warmer and so I agree I don't think we teach it um as well as we should I think too there's for me there was a lot of Shame associated with the idea of a father because because my father died by Suicide um in a small conservative Scottish tone and because he was a deacon in the church he was buried in an unmarked grave and we had to leave town and there was so much shame attached to that yeah that even when I remember the night I became a Christian I was 11 years old and my mom took me to here Scotland's only gospel group I bet they were good but I remember the guy the Evangelist Ian Leach who was an awesome guy said God has no grandchildren he only has sons and daughters which I love that and a lot of people went forward that night and I couldn't I was literally shaking in my seat so when I got home and I tried to go to sleep and I couldn't and I came back down and I asked my mom the stupidest question but it was an honest question I said mom is God still awake and she said what do you mean I said well I don't know what hours he keeps I actually would like to pray that prayer and so my mom was the one that led me into relationship with the Lord but she said something that would be good news to most people but I heard it through the broken window of my own understanding she said not only is Jesus your savior and you get to make him the Lord of your life you have a Heavenly Father watching over you and I love it I remember so clearly thinking I've got one more chance whatever my Earthly dad saw in me that made him hate me my heavenly father is never going to say I'm going to be the perfect Christian if it kills me yeah and it almost did my own father before his brain injury was a wonderful Godly fun man but after his brain injury he became a very angry and ultimately violent person and my father attempted to take me out before he eventually died by suicide himself and it just left me with this idea that a Father's Love can easily be lost you know it can be given and it can be taken away and so even when I became a Christian and I gave my life to Christ when I was 11 I remember thinking I have got one more chance to get it right whatever my Earthly father saw in me that made him turn against me my heavenly father is not going to see that so I had such a skewed idea of who God the Father really is and I think it's one of the greatest injuries still that exists within the church if we understood for a loving Godly Heavenly Father we have it would change so much in our lives I'm a lover of the story behind you know and Marvel at how Jesus and the father and the spirit kind of um brings brings themselves into our lives it's it's I I guess just listening to the stories I'm such a story person and I hold a story so well I mean my father was was gone by the time I was nine and um kind of a powerful force in the house you know Pentecostal charismatic hanging from chandeliers you know that kind of like Jesus is coming the clouds are opening up and so I I but he was also a rageaholic and so but there were six kids in in our family so I'm five of the six and by the time I got there he was a little bit more mellow and so tired but yeah a little bit a little bit tired but he when he died of cancer in the house I remember struggling because he was in he was very caught up in the faith movement name it claim it you know didn't get any medical attention because God was going to heal him that kind of thing so religion was a big thing for me because there was so much of a religious force in the household but I I've always just found it just incredibly um just mind-blowing to me how you know my oldest sister that's next to me is 14 months older than I am and her take on his death was completely different than my take on his death so we're all raised in this beautiful understanding of Jesus but all six of us have this completely different experience of the loss of a father and I I've often wondered is is that lost just not based on characteristics and personalities but also based on what we will become wow and how the Lord will will use that story in our lives and the journeys that we have because I you know for me it was just a it was a hard process of for with with the concept of love I must have not been loved that's why he did that God didn't heal him because my my dad this thing that was just wrong to probably do but I'm sure that when you're when you're dying and you're at the end of the end you'll do anything to try to get God's attention I'm sure and he took us each aside in a room and so I was about seven or eight and he said if you pray for me God's going to heal me and so there was that thing put on me of oh I have the power to heal him and so prayer became this big thing for me so when he wasn't healed I carried that more than I carried whether or not God loves me it was I'm not worthy of God's attention right because I don't have the power to to get God's ear and so that was kind of my my journey but the funny thing in that story is years later when I'm traveling and singing and and actually have this incredible testimony of finding the Lord in it my sister this my my sister Roxanne is just 14 months older she came out on a conference with me and she's a homeschooling mom she stayed home most of the time and she heard me tell my testimony for the first time and we went to lunch and I said how was that for you and and she's like I just never heard you to say all the things you had gone through after he died and I said well what what happened I mean how did you deal with it and this is just the difference between two siblings she said I I made a sandwich and I said what and she said well you know I'm nine she's ten right she's like I saddled that old horse when he died that we had and I made a sandwich for God and I made a sandwich for myself and I wrote out on that we were we lived on 350 acres in California and she said I laid out a blanket she's 10 years old laid out a blanket put God's sandwich on one side and I had my sandwich on the other and I unwrapped God's sandwich and I said well God I guess you'll have to be my dad now oh my goodness now my sarcasm Rose around the table and I was like I have been through hell and you made a sandwich but there's something so profound about myself yes and she is the sandwich maker yeah and always has been and her journey and the way that the fatherless and learning The Father's love was so different of an encounter than mine but she could never have met up or journeyed the way that she did if she hadn't made that sandwich that's one of the most amazing things I've ever heard what's so kind is good human fathers Luke speaks to this EJ your boys are very different and he loves them he doesn't want them to be exactly the same I think how kind that God did give you your way you wouldn't have written the songs you've written for the church Universal you would not have you would have not been just on your face before the cross had you made him a sandwich and so knowing your gift and your gift of the body of Christ God said this peanut she's gonna exercise this way this one's going to be a little more linear but because of what I've called them to because he's a kind God so he would have it was like he was being cruel going well Rita's going to take a lot longer exactly it was to me it's his kindness as a father that you did process different than Roxanne and I think if we understand that God has our characters and our personalities and our completely under his thumb that he knows exactly what we need and that that was Revelation to me it was like whoa but you know it's so interesting when I think about my own family Dynamic from the day of my father's funeral my sister who's two years older than me and my brother who's two years younger we never talked about it not once either did we not once it was and once I tried to bring up with a photograph when I was maybe 17 and that did not go well and I think because I wonder about that yeah it's like when you all go through different because you I mean I know parts of now I know part of your story we all go through suffering but we come out of it so differently and I think one of the greatest challenges one of the things in the last year I've been really thinking about is how do we Steward our suffering yeah so it becomes an offering my Dad tried to take me out before he took his own life and I think the very thing that the enemy intends for evil and and the way that only God can I don't even can't even fathom becomes the very thing through which God shines his light you know one of the things that was clear to me after my father's death by Suicide is that even though there were three children at an older sister and a younger brother we all processed pain differently but what I've discovered is that God is a very individual God that the path that he took me on was different than the path that he took my sister on on the path that my brothers on he knows us so intimately and he knows what we need I mean right now whatever you are walking through God knows that and it's not as if we all come out like little Christian clones where God treats us all the same and we all look alike it's not like that at all the God who made you who designed every cell of your being knows exactly who you are and what you need and that's how God will move in your life

Channel: Women of Faith on TBN

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Keywords: women of faith, shelia walsh, sheila walsh testimony, tbn, sheila walsh sermons, better together tv, depression, better together, sheila walsh praying woman, sheila walsh christian, women of faith on tbn, praise, praise on tbn, women in ministry, women support women, W9O6F3, WO96, OF63, 9W6O3F, WOF963, faith, hope, prayer, hearing god's voice, waiting on god, laurie crouch, pray, god, strength, sadness, sadness into happiness, sad, emotions, god is in control, love, building strength, power

Id: ImainbqTqz0

Length: 18min 27sec (1107 seconds)

Published: Mon Jul 24 2023