Lysa TerKeurst: Is God Allowing Your Pain?

Lysa TerKeurst joins Chad Veach on TBN’s Praise to share her journey with rejection and unmet expectations. Be empowered as she dives into overcoming deep hurt and finding identity.

I felt like God could fix this and yet he was choosing not to. That’s hard.
You see, we serve a really good God.
Yeah, but we also serve a really good God who does allow hurt.
And that’s at that point where our feelings and our faith come in conflict sometimes.
So here, here you go, you face this emotional pain and this physical pain.
Do, do you ever go to a dark place mentally? Of all the, all the scriptures?
You know, I, I ask you that with, with a lot of respect you’ve written how many books you’re a New York Times best seller.
Uh Millions of people being ministered to through Proverbs 31.
I mean, from a distance from the outside, you are, you’ve got it all together.
I’ve been to your home, your home is immaculate.
You know, it not today but, but there’s no food there because of the whole fasting thing.
But, but I, but I enjoy going there.
But um but but did, did you ever go to a dark place?
Of course, I did, of course, talk to me about that because I, I need to know it.
Will, it will help me personally just knowing that you also because I think some people look at someone like you with so much success, so much going for you and talk to me.
What does that look like for you? Um To me it was God’s promises seemed doubtful.
His lack of intervention hurtful and his timing questionable.
And that those were the moments where I was like, you know, God, I feel like somehow I have fallen through the cracks of your good plan.
And I think a lot of people feel that way.
I, I think, I think it’s hard.
I think those three things, you know, when his promises seem to apply to everyone else around you, you know, when they’re walking in the blessing of a promise and you’re just in the process of a promise, right?
It feels unfair. Right? And when his timing Is so difficult, you know, 2016 was a year of extreme highs and extreme lows.
I mean, here I was walking through the most devastating situation with my husband and three of my five kids got married in 2016.
You know, so that, that when God said you need to trust my timing, like that was a really hard, it was easy in the moment, praying and fasting like you forgot, I trust your timing until I knew what that really meant.
Right. And sitting in all those wedding ceremonies and not telling my kids what we were going through because I didn’t want to ruin their special day.
So, carrying it inside, you know, it was, yeah, of course, I had the darkest moments of my life and, and when I felt like God could fix this and yet he was choosing not to.
That’s hard. You see, we serve a really good God, but we also serve a really good God who does allow hurt.
And that’s at that point where our feelings and our faith come in conflict sometimes.
And that’s those dark moments of the soul where I don’t, I don’t have a quick, easy answer for you chad, what, what I can say?
It’s in those moments where I felt my faith slipping that I had to call my friends and say, help me stand on your faith today and you, you were one of those friends we had, we had a conversation in the midst of some of my darkest times and you know, I am thankful, I’m thankful that um that I picked up the phone and I’m thankful that I had other people who could speak life back into me in those moments.
But you know, some, some moments you’re gonna feel like the victory is possible and some moments you’re gonna feel like a victim of your circumstances and you’re not sure which way this whole thing is gonna turn out.
I, I, I love what you’re saying because I always feel like that Proverb is so true.
A man that isolates himself, seeks his own desire and rages against all wisdom.
So but most of us when we get into a dark place, we wanna hide, we wanna stay in bed.
We don’t wanna talk to anybody, but I love that you were smart enough to go.
I’m gonna get around people. I’m gonna pick up the phone.
But let me say I did not want to do this.
Let me tell you like I can isolate with the best of them.
You know, let me tell you my moments of isolation.
I am not fasting, I’m easy, whatever I wanna eat in those moments. OK?
So, but I did, I did this thing and it was so outside of my comfort zone and so not what I wanted to do.
But I made myself go on a pilgrimage of visiting people who I knew I could, I could stand on their feet even if it was just for a couple of days.
I remember I called my friend Shelley Giglio. I went and stayed her house for a couple of days.
I called my friend Collette went and stayed at her house for a week and then another week and then it may have been a third week.
I, I went and visited friends in Nashville and when I couldn’t go visit people, I picked up the phone and I called him.
None of those things felt comfortable. But I was blessed every single time.
It was like the Lord had little gifts for me tucked inside those people waiting.
I just had to take that step and make the connection.
I love that and, and you know, talk to me about um, and I’m sure that you touch on it in the book which I can’t wait to read.
Everyone’s gonna read. Can I get it? Amen? Everyone’s gonna read. Yeah. Ok.
I just want, I just want, I’m just checking to make sure they’re, they’re reading the book but at what point and, and maybe we, you know, we’re gonna go, we’re gonna go to a video here in a second but talk to me at what point do you start to feel like I’m gonna get through this?
Someone said to me recently, people aren’t afraid of failure, they’re afraid of the identity of failure.
Most of us, when we get to a dark place, we think my legacy is ruined my, my fam everything I’ve built.
When did you start to go?
I can sense I might just get through this thing. Ok.
Well, there’s a moment I talk about in the book.
Uh and uh I, I the Lord was saying, Lisa, I, I really want you to conquer fear, but fear and anxiety, those things had gripped me in this season like worse than what I can ever tell you.
I mean, when you’re waking up for 20 years in your life and your husband’s right beside you and all of a sudden he’s not beside you and you wake up at two AM and you reach across the covers and he’s not there.
And you’re reminded all over again about just the gravity of heartache in your life.
You know, it’s, it’s painful and fear and anxiety started to grip me.
And so one day I woke up and I just felt like you’ve got to do one thing to conquer this and you, you can’t really like say, I’m gonna conquer fear today, right?
So I decided to drive to Target and buy a two piece bathing suit, which I have to say does not line up with my biology or my theology.
Thank you very much. But I knew I was afraid of that and I knew I could do it today.
So I drove, I got this two piece bathing suit from Target.
I, as I was driving home, I ripped the tags off so I couldn’t return it.
I went in my bedroom, I put this bathing suit on and then I had a crisis because it wasn’t putting the bathing suit on that.
I was so afraid of. It was turning toward the mirror and facing myself and my scar from my surgery.
And just the reality that In Genesis 2 25, 1 of my favorite verses, it says that Adam and Eve stood there naked and unashamed.
And the reason Adam and Eve could stand there naked and unashamed is because they had no other opinion to contend with, but the absolute love of God himself.
And that was my day to say Lisa, are you gonna be able to silence all the other voices?
It, it wasn’t God’s voice that didn’t want me to turn toward the mirror. It wasn’t even my own voice.
It was all the voices of rejection, all the voices of heartache, all the voices feeding that anxiety in me that I cannot stand here naked and unashamed.
And I remember fighting those voices, one by one.
I would ask the Lord bring to mind those voices of rejection.
You see, rejection steals the best of who we are by reinforcing the worst that’s been said to us.
And so I let the Lord address every single voice of rejection.
And finally, after all of them had been addressed, I turned and I faced the mirror and I stood there not completely naked, ok?
But in my two piece bathing suit and then I felt so empowered.
I thought, well, I’m just gonna go sit by the pool, Jesus take the wheel.
He did and I did not walk outside.
It was just a moment between me and the Lord.
I packed up that two piece bathing suit and called it my fear lesson.
And I haven’t put it on since, but it was quite a moment.
Well, you’re, you’re a hero that for you to be able to do that and to silence those voices and let the Lord.
It’s one thing for us to think I’m gonna silence these critics.
But for you to let the Lord and the Holy Spirit do that. You are a hero.