Suffer Strong - Jay + Katherine Wolf

welcome to Sunday you made it yeah it is 11:45 so it's not that big of a deal that you made it yeah for getting up at 10:00 okay I'm Jay nice to see you excited now right about now you may be thinking like oh my gosh this is really gonna be down there Sunday like a girl's onstage in the wheel chair and that's for a couple and this is really gonna bum me out and like I had red flags and they're ruin the week is ruined like I'm gonna be really really sad leaving here or maybe you're the street lady in the back the sweet church lady that's bless her heart that poor low thing oh my Oh bless them bless them they are just it must be so hard well what you will leave with today is some serious joy in the Lord lot of tins of sadness and I can assure you this is not a bummer this is not a bummer message in the least so hold on never a moment and I'll sit down to safely thank you Paul yeah that would be a downer no we're so excited to share with what is now our home church community we've so pumped oh my gosh to Atlanta a year ago and we're just picking at this new city but passion has just welcomed us with the biggest open arms it's been the sweetest softest landing in this very big transition for our family so we're so grateful and probably late most of y'all our life has been changed by this community by this movement you know whether it's my conference at the church at the Grove or whatever being a door holder our life will never be the same and so we just give so many thanks to God for intersecting our life and our ministry and our family with passion and with you today and we think it's a pretty perfect timing right as we enter into the Sabbath season as a community we come off of this experience of thinking about the extravagant love of God creating this extravagant response of worship in our hearts leading us to this above and beyond sort of journey with a God who is indescribable II more right and so we hope today that our story kind of again fits in the context of what we've been going through as a community that will put some flesh and bones kind of on these ideas and then go into the Sabbath time maybe giving you something to think about in your story a little differently I love that neuroscientists say a story enlivens to both sides of our brains like almost nothing else in the world that we get with our analytical and with our creative part to hear a story and understand things differently about God and ourselves and our place in this world so anyway that's our hope for you today and and that you wouldn't see just this crazy testimony that has nothing to do with your life but in fact you would see your own story in our story because you know what this is God's story God uses all of these things to remind us of what we already know that he is about giving life to things that should be dead giving healing to our deepest wounds so this is your story to friends provocative statement that intact we are all disabled not just those of us with wheelchairs on the outside of our bodies because we all got invisible wheelchairs inside happening so actually all disabled because we can't do this life without each other without Jesus in my opinion and the reality is some of us have like this brand of brokenness on the outside but everybody's got the same story of suffering on the inside mark it down we all got pain we all got Simeon I messed up stuff happening some of us have someone that on the outside but all of us got looks including me on the inside so we're all living out the same story it's only the specifics that are different whether its financial horrific stuff emotional relational we've all got a lot of hard stories where on earth John 16:33 is true there is trouble in this world right so the question is what are we gonna do with it so don't think of this is different from your life and your story this is actually the same it's just a different version of your stuff that's good and Catherine I are from the south I'm from Montgomery Alabama and wait for the wait for it no there's no Montgomery no okay nice to see you I think we went to high school I know I'm just good I don't know I don't live there anymore either I live in Atlanta now so but Catherine is from Athens Georgia millions of people happens around here so we're from the deep south hence are moved back here and we met in college actually a place called Sanford University of Birmingham anybody know their Bulldogs okay so I'm what school just a quick aside is that we moved to California shortly after we married and everybody thought we went to Stanford which we just sort of let them think that often because no offense the Sanford but Stanford I think has you know rocket scientist there's a lot of math a lot of smart people so we're like yeah that that was the one that we went to it wasn't though it was Sanford anyway Birmingham but we decided to do this adventure of life and marriage together at the end of our college career and my dad's a pastor he's at First Baptist Montgomery and he performed our wedding 15 years ago y'all coming up as a miracle rate there's 50 years God is very sweet to let us keep doing this crazy thing together and so we married at this beautiful fall day November 6 2004 and my dad for some reason he felt led to preach out of the end of the Sermon on the Mount Matthew 7 and that sort of section of the Sermon on the Mount Jesus asked the crowd what are you building your house on because it really really really matters what you found your life on because the storms are coming it's not if they come but when they come to you and so really matters what you found your house and your life on ok so if you found it on the sand when the storms come everything's gonna fall apart but if you have founded your life on the rock that is Jesus you can withstand any storm yeah and we're like dad that is the most bummer message ever for a wedding we're 22 what are you talking about storms and houses falling down that's so weird and we like the love chapter would be a better option obviously did we know of course that we would face the great storm in our life just three years after that and so in his wisdom he was tucking this idea away in our heads and in our hearts that it really matters what you give your life to because it will have eternal consequence and sometimes we wait as humans till the next season till I get out of grad school or till we have kids or till I get married or till the kids leave or whatever and Jesus is saying and my dad was helping them press on our hearts don't wait to invest your life and what matters and what matters is the church okay and what matters is the kingdom and what matters is building our lives on Christ so we went from that place of our wedding day to our adventure to California and we didn't know anybody there just had this crazy sort of idea that God was calling us to this new season California I had gotten into Pepperdine law school and Katherine had been doing some acting modeling stuff in the southeast and have gotten an agent in LA so we thought we try our hand at the big city actually you probably heard of me Katherine it's just you know gizelle Katherine my I was I was a really big-time Los Angeles fashion model so I mean I'm sure you knew me free strobe Catherine was I mean household name we brought the pinnacle of my work where I was standing let's see do we have it to that person edition online catalog it was really something out of me my work as a model in Los Angeles when I knew first her I have made it this is it we don't know who that stranger is holding my wife's hand in that picture that was not me and I would never wear that type of shirt and out in public anyway okay so that was there's the picture up there now we know highs and lows in her early marriage right and so one thing we did write of all the things we did wrong one thing we did write is that first Sunday in LA we went to church at a church called bel-air pres and we found this group this young marrieds community that was part of that like a Sunday School class and it was these couples doing life together in that city against all odds you know trying to find Jesus in the mixed and we got this opportunity it was interesting about two weeks after we decided to plug our lives into that church the leaders of the young marriages group moved because you know la is a little flaky the people and so they're like does anybody want to lead the group and we're the good southern volunteers were like believe it and the dumb thing is that they let us lead the group and we had been married like six months and we were 22 real experts on marriage that particular time but that was that was super sweet to allow us to be really intentional in that season when we never could have seen the storm coming to really think about our marriage a disciple to disciple to memorize Scripture to be thinking about harder issues so God is allowing us and inviting us into this preparation for what he has prepared for us in our life we have eyes to see it that way and that's what that season was about and I'm so humbled to say we got to stay in that community for 14 years and Katherine gave the final sermon on our last Sunday in LA just a year ago and that community all changed their life and our story would not be the same we wouldn't be on this stage weren't after the body of Christ so just as a quick aside if don't have a church home let me just tell you actually you do it's right here jump on in and best your life found it on the rock we're here for you this house is incredible will change your life jump in don't wait snap weight and stop Church shopping you found it God brought you here okay you're welcome yeah come on in okay so fast forward to the end of Law School we did something I would never recommend doing when you're in grad school we had a baby okay not a good idea but God's plan his five-year plan was better than ours so we had our son James whom I think is in the audience today on October 16th of 2007 and what is interesting is six months to the day almost exactly from when that picture was taken we would face that storm in our life where everything would change and when that question of what are we founded on would mean everything to us on April 21st 2001 I felt funny for six months I just had a baby I hadn't slept I was breastfeeding all the things this yuck so of course I'm not going to think anything weirds happening when I feel this kind of off and dizzy and so I just decide to get on with the day and check off these feelings of course I have no reason to think that there's anything serious happening I'm 26 years old newly 26 I just had a baby naturally six months before I have no medical history no family history nothing that would indicate this is anything serious so I brushed off these feelings and around lunchtime played baby James out for a nap and I go into the kitchen to make a meal and we're living a pepperdine married housing so Jay comes home for about a 45-minute window in between his law school classes just happens to come home so I'm in the kitchen and I start to feel really dizzy weird I fall to my hands and they go totally numb I start throwing up I'm able to call out to him who's home to call nine-one-one he does the paramedics come quickly determined this is something very serious they pack me up on the stretcher and is I'm laying there on the stretcher I have all these thoughts that in way retrospect now it's men ears are funny they weren't funny for a long time and now they are because they're so hilariously where my mind lies and that's the thoughts were like I should grab a toothbrush in case I have to stay the night and I hope they remember to feed baby judge the rice cereal were trialing if I'm not here when you wake up and I think maybe it's the weird burrito I ate yesterday yeah that's gotta be what's going on and of course I have no idea that I would go into a coma before those thoughts were finished before we left the apartment I would only wake up from the coma like state two months later so I needed a little more than a toothbrush burrito and the hair wasn't it yeah no just kidding wasn't burrito was something else but as Kathryn left our married housing apartment that day was our first home that we had made as a couple was the place we brought our son home from the hospital and she would never see that place again the door would slam on that chapter of our life has chapters sometimes and without any closure without any warning and maybe today as we talk about this day that changed everything in our life you're remembering the day that changed everything in your life when you got that diagnosis or that phone call or you lost somebody that you loved and in the in the line of your history there is another line that comes right down across it which you can't ever go back across right this line of demarcation separating before and after and that day for us was April 21st and we rushed to the hospital I grabbed James and to the card and the Pacific Coast Highway following the ambulance didn't even know where they were going but knew they were headed to summer around UCLA and I knew as a college I don't even know had a hospital and I remember we came around the bend and there was this giant billboard that said UCLA Medical Center the best Hospital in the West number three hospital in the country and there was this sense as sort of my life was up ending that there was this God in the midst of the chaos making order which is what God does right he was making a path for us he was taking us to a place I don't even know what to do or where we should go and he was leading the way for us and again it was Monday about 2 p.m. was really confused when I ran into the ER and realized there was familiar faces and it was my church who would come ahead of me to to make manifest this invisible God to make him visible for me when the bottom was falling out of my life and that's what the church that's what we could to give each other you guys it's probably one of the more profound callings on each of us is when the bottom falls out when suffering hits somebody in our community smack in the face or outside of our community for that matter we get to show up in a way that is a ministry of our presence and our tears not a ministry of our platitudes ok there's time for truth we got to know timing and sometimes people have said well many things that have been so hurtful so we don't need to say much less words we like to say are the best words okay especially in those circumstances but my friend showed up in a way that said you're not alone in this pain we don't know what's gonna happen but you're not alone and they gathered around me we kind of walked over to the attending surgeon dr. Nestor Gonzalez who just happened to be on call that day who was double board certified and all these things the renegade surgeon known for taking on the worst and hardest cases and he said I need you to know your wife likely will not survive the day she is experiencing a massive brain stem stroke due to a very rare defect that she's had in her brain since she was born though she probably had no warning until today and it's called an AVM very rare it's so big it's the largest I've ever seen in my career there's four aneurysms on top of it it's taking up almost her her cerebellum it's around her brainstem and the bleeding is causing so much pressure squeezing her brain into her spine and this is not survivable and I'm so sorry and I'm sitting here holding my baby you know just again with all these dreams like we have about what our life is about to be what its gonna be the hopes of our future and I'm about to get out of law school we have this new baby and we have all these golden dreams right in front of us and then in a moment they're just hanging by this thread and that's the reality of the world that we live in you guys it's not safe we need each other we need God in the midst of it because we don't know what tomorrow is gonna hold and that day was the day when it hit me full force that suffering happens to us all the worst things happen to the best people sometimes what are we gonna do with that and so my my community's sort of gather around me and the doctor said look we're I'm gonna go think about it I don't even know if we can do anything for your wife I believe the Holy Spirit spoke to him and said you need to give this mom a second chance and frankly the fact that I was a lawyer was not helping the case from hey he should take it obviously said thankfully Holy Spirit trumped that one and the doctor took her into surgery to attempt to save her life and it's gonna be about eight hours of surgery and so we gathered in the waiting room and as I said I grew up in the church my dad's a pastor but I I'm not sure I ever experienced true church until that night in that waiting room maybe you know what I'm talking about because it wasn't the sense of everything going perfect and so we've got the praise but almost in that the sense of that extravagant series there was this and some longing for God to show up in a way he never had before in our lives and anyway we never needed him before and crying how desperately that God unless you have mercy on us there's no way out there's no way out of this and so we we cried out together we laughed though we we just shared this experience that the church gets to have which is to show up for people to experience this communal sense of praying against all odds that Katherine would live and we we dug into Romans eight which was Catherine's text she had memorized long ago and was really meaningful to her and as you all know some of those most profound promises that the Bible has to offer about God's love and about how he's working sovereignly over us and through us and yet if you've ever read those passages when your life is turning upside down it felt a little hard to swallow that as my wife lay on an operating table dying that God was loving her his love wasn't far from her that he was working out something good in that moment and yet I knew it couldn't just say the verse but I was gonna have to believe it and cling to it and bet my whole life in Katherine's whole life on that promise and the Sun came out that next morning on April 22nd and the doctor came out just absolutely exhausted looking from the from the o.r and he said he hadn't looked at the clock but it had been 16 straight hours of micro brain surgery and he said two words that we to this day celebrate he said Katherine lived and it's kind of what we celebrate April 22nd is the Easter - the Good Friday when she had her stroke but we're so grateful that God spared her life for some reason and so grateful and you know he said we don't know if she'll wake up ever but she's alive she might be vegetative or paralyzed we had to remove half of her cerebellum in order to save her life we had to do damage to her brain stem and to the nerves that give vital function but for now she's alive and little did we know what we were up against but for some reason I knew in that moment that Hope had begun this spark of hope that he had spared her life for a reason and we were gonna fan that flame of hope as long as we can I pray it never goes out it's still burning today as you can imagine but the doctor said look y'all rest she's gonna be in a medically induced coma for several days to give her brain a chance to heal and he went to sleep and I rested I'm sure after that and got a page from the ICU nurse and he rushed back up to the ICU later that night assuming that Katherine had died and the nurse said oh my gosh she won't believe it she's trying to communicate already she's unconscious but she's wiggling your toes so we know she's not paralyzed and she's lifting up her finger so we know she's not brain-dead and it was the first of many miracles but as you can imagine they don't make medically induced comas that can keep this woman from communicating to the world it's the feet said didn't I hold on I'm in here and don't give up don't give up on me just yet please and it was a great yes but um she would be taken to ICU where her body would learn to breathe again and as you if he put on life support for 40 days and I'm so powerful and honestly didn't even strike us until later and I pray during this time of Sabbath maybe there is something that comes to light in your story where you said oh my goodness God was telling me something in the detail of my life right there and I missed it because it was too close before but now that I've got some time to look back and read tell that story to myself I see God and so God allowed her to be there not 39 or 41 days about 40 days you guys which is this sort of number in the Bible that just breathes that God is with us in this wilderness he's leading us toward a promise and just because he is silent doesn't mean he's abandoned us and that's what he was telling us during this season what's called an AVM which is basically now formed blood vessels that you many times are born with so it was formed in my mother's womb when I was fearfully and wonderfully made and these blood vessels are grew and grew in this big club and one day they ruptured causing the massive brainstem stroke now here's where it gets really interesting so my body's pretty messed up like I can't walk I can't see well like here's you guys and there's you guys up there cuz I double vision and I'm nearly blind in my eye and I'm deaf in one ear my face is paralyzed and my hand doesn't work and there's a whole lot wrong with this Mahdi and yet this isn't because I had a stroke it is but it isn't because I wouldn't have had the surgery if I didn't however all of these issues are because the surgeon decided to sustain my life do you understand by wounding me very deeply my healing could happen it's such a beautiful biblical concept that my deep wounding my healing could come and in our stories all our stories let this knee a word picture there is wounding but it's I'm here I am like alive because you made the decision to win me yeah heroic powerful concept of course I'm sharing that years later it's an eleven and a half years that I can say he wanted me barely and they healed me and this you have a pulse you have a purpose to know Jesus and when I'm waking up two months after this happened I can't even understand I've got a tube in my stomach and I can't eat I can no longer walk my entire life has been turns completely upside down and honestly I didn't even know what a stroke was I think somebody's grandfather has won one time but by and large I'm like certainly a healthy 26 year old girl could not have this kind of issue and I don't even know people who don't eat like how could I not eat now and I can't I mean nothing works on my body I couldn't see I couldn't speak yeah nothing and I started the worst pain of all of it was maybe James and sweet baby James is here and doing awesome so I could tell this story but I'm one way and they still cry buddy but this half of Tears um you may be seeing a picture of my first Mother's Day and that is a lot of pain for me because I have no memory of that day James for months would be growing and I have no memory and then even once I do have a cognitive memory again I was not able to care for him and it was horrific absolutely by far the worst pain was not being able to care for baby James every day was like Groundhog Day where I thought today would be the day he'd get to come live with me in the hospital and Sam I that was mommy and I figure out how to modestly breastfeed and take care of him and I didn't understand for months that I couldn't do that anymore and finally I caught on it was just it was like the stuff of your nightmares and I like to say to the Christian community that there is a place for sadness in our stories everything doesn't have to be you redeemed um honors you know I'll never get those days back with baby James and I am screaming the joy of the Lord absolutely but it still stings that I didn't have that time with James it hurts there I could have 10,000 babies and that will never redeem the time with James and that's okay to say out loud in my opinion they're just Christians we need to be about there is a tenor of sadness people where on earth I love that Crowder song butters has no sorrow but heaven can't heal because I believe heaven is where the real healing is that there's a lot of counterfeit and there's a lot of redemption of our stories on earth but there can be a sting that this lifelong and that's okay and why would we think it would not be that way like who lied to who to say that it can't be good so good and so hard and sad at the same time that's ludicrous it's most anyway moving on I was able to okay I was able to move to the group rehab so after being deemed medically fit which was not much to move to the brain rehab I would live at for another year and a half and that's why I'd really reload to eat start and sneak a walk again and it was a very dark place there was a lot of people not getting well a lot of really hard stuff hard stories and yet I was healing in this context it was very spiritually complicated for me um everyone asked if I had a real low point my ordeal and the mother stay on earth anymore I'd like to say that no not really but kind of yes because I came dangerously close in the fall of 2008 it was right before Thanksgiving and I just knew I knew what God had for me was to hold a big turkey lay about 6 giving and give God the glory is gonna be awesome and of course I take the solo test and I fail it so I don't swallow and this is the night test that I'd taken to see if I could swallow and I just knew and so how can this be and so Jay bells me back to the house we're living in and there's this big room in this house I've ever Silla taken emails me and keep in mind I'm just failed my 9th follow test I'm in the wheelchair he proceeded to the front of this big room where his sisters who were in town and maybe James who's now one years old are at like the front of this room so like watching the scene of this like in my mind at least like frolicking happy family and I'm like in the back of the room watching so it's suddenly like dawns on me that I don't fit here and it like lands hard God made a mistake this this couldn't be what he intended I'm caught between life and death I'm not in heaven but I'm not fully able to live and so I'm trapped and I I don't know this must be a mistake God can't be here it is if I were dead Jay could remarry James can have normal mommy eventually everyone would stop being so sad so ultimately I know best here and I'm logically thinking it through and please insert your name right now these are feelings you have because in that moment I never know how to put words around it but this deep sensation that I know was supernatural of everything I've ever known and believed since receiving Christ I was four years old like kicked in and I mean it was like God says through the power of his word in that moment Catherine you are not a mistake because I don't make mistakes I know better then you know I'm God you're not all of this Gabe I've all of this is somehow somehow that you can't understand yet somehow part of what I am doing big Hector you don't get it yet but you will Katherine this is very special you don't know but I have chosen you for this you will never necessarily fully grasp how I selected you and your wheelchair that you see as like you're stuck in the chair you're relegated to it is this honor that I'm raising you up by sitting you down in a way that only the upside down Kingdom would allow for Jay could never replace you as a wife that's the true story and God said that - it's very true James could never have a mommy like you think what this will mean for his life he gets to count as a blessing and will inform who he is as a person in all of you people with all the issues that may be on the outside your children are better for it it informs how they live and the Lord was saying to me above all else and missus rapid fire just scriptures concepts thoughts that Ephesians 4:1 you are called to live a life worthy of the special calling that I've given to you and that right now is to recognize this is your assignment don't fight this go with it this is the assignment I have given you on earth and you have the opportunity to flourish with it and you have my love you have so good from that moment when we got just filled up by this purpose and the sense of what God was doing it would still be another six months until Katherine passed a swallow test you know you're certain sometimes think like you've got this vision of what God's doing your life and then everything's gonna change because that's sort of this transactional way in which we sometimes view God right yeah and God would continue to lead us on this journey of faith and trust so another year until you could learn to walk a little bit with the cane another year and a half from that moment when Katherine just felt this calling on her life another year and a half until we get to go back home out of the hospital and I think in so many ways we think when we go through hard stuff that we've made a bargain with God right like we've made a bargain that I've been through all the hard stuff god it wasn't great don't want to go back there we'll check that off our bucket lists we will move on to the vacation line items okay and let's this this is a deal that we made and God is saying so gingerly and tenderly and lovingly that that's not how this works and I'm inviting you into something way deeper than this sort of tit for tat and I remember that fall after we moved back to LA to our community you know we again just anticipated this straight-up trajectory and we went to see dr. Gonzales who down her surgery and he came into the waiting room and was crying which is not great when your doctor is crying when he comes to tell you something about your life and your health and yeah this man who had become a dear friend just said I don't know how to tell you this but you have a separate aneurysm in your brain separate from your what you caused your stroke and it's behind your good eye and I'm so sorry and you know at that moment we felt kind of kicked in the gut like God at least you take the brain stuff off at the table for us right like we've been through so much already and God invites us into this picture of a crossroads and I and I see it in my mind right now and really every day when I wake up and you all to this is the same sort of crossroads that we stand at we're God asked what is it that you want from me in this relationship do you just want me to give you the good gifts that you know I'll give you if you say the right words or did the right things or do you want to know the giver of every good and perfect gift that's what I'm offering you as myself not these outcomes you're missing the point do you want to just stop hurting or do you want to know the healer of the world that's me and so God again has invited us to this new normal this life we never saw ourselves living and so often we get caught up we didn't get the miracle we had people had visions she was gonna be driving and God is like you are the miracle shouldn't be here you are the miracle and when you try to get healing of your body you're setting the bar too low in this moment I'm offering you healing for your soul that's what I want to do for you and so God has invited us into this really beautifully bittersweet joyful painful good and a hard journey with him and friends that is the journey he's calling us all to and he is calling us more than that to say I have given you something not just so you can keep it to yourself but that you might give it away and Paul says in second Corinthians 1 that we have been given comfort not just so we can be comfortable I mean who doesn't want to be comfortable it's great especially when you've been up through hard things but as I've given you comfort so you can be a conduit of that comfort other people who need it and in the giving away of what I've given you they will know the God of all comfort too and so this act of hoping it forward is what got it has called us to all of us to and the the ironic thing is that this is most profoundly done when we go back and offer the comfort we've received to the people who are experiencing the same wounding that has hurt us right so we can't really find our truest healing I believe until we go back to the place of our wounding and we're a part of somebody else's healing so as Kathryn said the brain rehab was awful it was painful we hope to never go back and God said but I want you to go back to those places to the people with the brain injuries and the strokes and the disability and all the places that were so painful and dark because when you tell them it's not the end of their story they're gonna listen to you and they have and so God allowed us to have this vision for the community with disabilities which sidenote is the largest minority group in the whole world according to the United Nations and the most unchurched people group in the world - and yet there are people these are our peers these are our people and so we get to be a voice for this population and we created a thing called Hope Hills Camp three years ago for families with disabilities just like us find in the world volunteers camp and the way sorry I know Surtur but the way we knew that this camp was something really really special is the first day of my walked in the door to the cafeteria and people had flown in from all over the country and there was just like so overwhelming all these disabilities all these people there were eight just agents and holding the door is a passion city door holder who'd volunteered to come and she leaned over and she said I met you a passion city I'm here to hold the door for you Camp [Applause] no way and we thought you know we wanted to give families like ours with disabilities rest and relationships and resources spiritual resources and encouragement that this isn't the end and we thought it was gonna be little regional thing about an hour north of Birmingham we go to a camp there and it ends up this this was our third year we just finished a few weeks ago we had 800 participants from 35 states plus the UK 33 kinds of disabilities and ages 0 to 78 anyway blown our mind and passion has poured into this idea and this ministry and lifted it up so thank you guys for being a part of the community so deep and it's just like this electrifying energy at camp and I have a theory that the reason why is all the mess at once like all the wheelchairs all the people who are talking to themselves and all the issues and all the ages and stages that everybody comes together and there's like this moment where everybody there realizes like we we don't have the option of hiding some of our stuff so we are gonna get to come together and not try to heal each other or change each other fix each other but just celebrate who Jesus is in our pain and it's electrifying basically what we are doing as a community is disrupting the deep lie that a pain-free life is the only life where there is joy coz that's ludicrous that's so messed up on this way instead we're coming together and celebrating but life is hard and painful but there is joy and there is good in the heart and there is hard and the good and these people are living it and they get that inside though aren't we all are we sick of hiding ever attending we've got it all together and then so wouldn't there be freedom and churches being like that I think mr. just God like that hmm but how beautiful it is what's really cool is this community is burst a new message that we have to share and we have a book coming out of February and we're kind of launching it today guys it's not available till February but pre-order today let's go drumroll please supper strong have to survive anything by redefining everything and here's the deal this is this is a message the passion has refined and lifted up and encouraged in our life too so this is really this is you guys have a part in this such a huge part in it and we're so humbled to get to share it with you guys today we're so excited about just this next phase of ministry guys leading us into this message that there is strength on the other side of our suffering because of who Jesus is that there is flourishing even within the greatest limitations of our life because Jesus has overcome every constraint that there ever was right and so that is the hope and we can't wait to share this with the world and so passion you guys are the launching pad from it and for so many things and so we have a special little sort of thing to invite you into today if you feel so led and you may know them their names are LuAnn Shelley kikyo it's so cool and we're so humbled again they've they've ministered to us and spoken into this message so powerfully so we invite you into that to humbly and with a great joy to say this is the the message we get to share with the world that is on the the precipice of despair so many of us is not sure how we're gonna get out of bed and do this life that we never imagined we have to live and yet that's all of us you know that the space between our expectations and our reality is the space of our suffering really and how do we make that be a space of flourish and we do it through Jesus and we do it together in closing we're gonna tell you a super-crook story cuz we're already overrun time and I just have to tell you a really just cool God story so way back in the day 2014 after having an aneurysm successfully removed from my brain and giving like the siding off of all my various doctors I was deemed fit to biologically have the babies so summer 2015 I did I had a baby boy named John nester was he was in bloom right now so thank you so John is now four years old laughs tell you about his name John you may have heard of John kind of Cola means the Lord has been gracious and he has been so gracious John and my favorite passage of John is John 9 3 where someone asked Jesus why was this man born blind and Jesus says so that the works of God might be displayed in him and of course that is our prayer for our John that the works of God might be displayed the news lights and his middle name Nestor is for my neurosurgeon Nestor Gonzalez said God be honest um recalls his office and said this mister have a middle name and and they said ro and we said Ness ha ha ha so master master you guys in the Hebrew means seeker of miracles she can't make this stuff up I know I know so tank so jaundice sir was a sister joy he is hardcore will headful making us nuts make him disabled mama crazy about the die constantly but he's just this profound guest and honestly he's the gospel he's near death new life broken things new things he is what we believe many healing and wholeness come from broken things and nice really really special to share that joy with you and that little guy over there in bloom is um it's a special part of this Alice and so's that guy that was so grateful

Channel: Passion City Church

Views: 25,482

Rating: 4.9439998 out of 5

Keywords: louie giglio, passion city church, passion church, passion city church worship, louie giglio sermons, passion city, giglio louie, louie giglio 2019, city church, passion, giglio, passion city church sermons, jay and katherine wolf, Suffer Strong, jay and katherine wolf story, hope heals, Worship Matters, W2O2R2S2H2I2P

Id: pMHStB_hATk

Length: 45min 41sec (2741 seconds)

Published: Tue Aug 20 2019