Priscilla Shirer: God is With You in Seasons of Suffering

This week on Better Together, Priscilla Shirer leads a powerful conversation about how Jesus dealt with suffering. Join the conversation as Laurie Crouch, Chrystal Evans Hurst, Victoria Osteen, and Elaine Fisher join Priscilla Shirer to discuss how God is with you in seasons of suffering.

The pain is what causes you to look into the eyes of God and hear Him whisper: “It’s time. Push.” . . . So push. . .and keep pushing until you are holding all that God has for you in your hands.

Since life is going to come with difficulty, and it is.
You you don’t have to go looking for the storms of life.
You just keep living, and the storms somehow find you.
So since going to happen, then we at least need to be mindful of praying. Okay, lord.
Why have you allowed me to be in this pocket? Yeah.
And would you be glorified through the way I respond, the decisions I make, the way I treat others while I’m in it?
Let me glorify you while I’m here.
I have never looked at the picture of Jesus in the garden of gethsemane, praying to the point of sweating blood, um, the same after having, uh, a conversation with a friend of mine.
We were talking about, suffering and things just being hard and horrible.
I’ve had that conversation with numerous friends over time because, you know, life just has ebbs and flows, but At this current conversation, it was in the middle of
2020.
And, um, I was talking to her about our mom’s passing and just You know, just trying to reconcile some things that when somebody passes away and they’d they’re not ready, you’re not ready, and What does that look like?
Where is god and all that?
And she said to me, the only thing that helps me, the thing that helps me most, and she’s cancer survivor multiple times over, she said, is that Jesus didn’t want to do it.
He he didn’t it’s not just that he can understand ourselves. offering.
It’s not just that he walked on the earth and experienced so many of the things that we experienced, but he didn’t do this from this place of, I’m god, so it’s easier for me.
He and he didn’t just choose death. He chose the path of suffering to death.
That was the part of his journey, and he wrestled with it.
So giving me permission to wrestle with it giving me permission to move forward the process and the path of, um, difficult times in my life and know that sometimes a part of the process and path, um, that leads to resurrection that leads to the joy set before us.
is suffering and that suffering is a part of life we don’t want, but it is also part of life number one that Jesus knows too and then also that for for us that it’s a part of the process.
You know? And so I think that while there’s so many things that god can say was from, he does say was from.
because we live in a lost and fallen world, there’s gonna be hard times that come, things that are difficult, sometimes they’re physical, sometimes they’re emotional, sometimes they’re mental, Sometimes it’s a spiritual wrestling with god when we prayed for something, and he didn’t give us what we wanted.
And sometimes it’s on the rock.
It’s on the stone and gets so many sweat and tears of blood coming down your face and out of your forehead because it’s that painful.
But what it says in Luke chapter 22 verse 44 and being in agony, he was praying very fervently and his sweat became like drops of blood falling down upon the ground.
And then right after that in verse 45, when he rose from prayer, He came to the disciples and found them sleeping and said, why are you sleeping?
Get up and pray. So he’s having this hard prayer. And then what does he do?
He gets up in the midst of his suffering, goes to his disciples and says, get up.
Like, we still have work to do. We stopped to move forward.
And so when I think about what I am learning and have learned through suffering, because I just want it to stop.
You know what I mean? You just Do you ever feel like when there are seasons of suffering, it’s like it’s like, you know, it’s like high tide.
It’s the it’s the role of waves that are higher and all the high ones come at the same time, you know, and you just are like, make it stop.
Um, and then I have to remind myself.
um, you know, god is good, and he can do good things and create great things in my life and answer prayer.
But when the seasons of suffering roll in, like the waves do on a high tide day.
What do I look at Jesus and say? Well, he just got up and he kept going.
And sometimes for me, I know that the next step is the only thing I can do.
Um, because to try to look to the end of the road is too hard, to try to think about where the road could end is too overwhelming, um, to try to think about my frustration, even if Why is god taking so long?
But for me, looking at Jesus example, the lesson that I learned, um, is that he got up and he kept going.
You know, I do I do think that we handle we process things and we handle things differently.
you know, and I, and I, and I have a way to and I think it was the way I was raised.
Like, you know what? When my kids would fall down, scraped their knee, I’m like, you’re okay. okay. Come on.
Come on. Come on. You’re okay. You’re okay.
You know, and and I think it may be the generation that my mother was raised in, and I was raised in that it’s like Okay.
Just don’t worry about that. We can’t look at that. We can’t think of that.
We can’t we can’t pro take time to process that. You know, we’ve gotta move forward.
We’ve just got them in Ford. And sometimes I think it results in stuffing things down.
You know, and and maybe that has you know, uh, detrimental effects.
Yeah.
And, uh, I think the way I process thing is is I try to ignore certain things, you know, and I, like, of course, I process it through prayer and talking to god, and I think, but, you know, it’s how we it’s how we find ourselves doing different things, different situations.
You know, like, you’re talking about your mother’s death.
You know, you probably I don’t know if you even process it the same way. Nope.
If you found yourself doing it differently — Mhmm.
—
but, I mean, you can’t you can’t get any more suffering than death. and loss like that.
You know, that’s just a that tears your soul. You know, that’s a tearing away, literally.
And so, uh, I think I think that we shouldn’t be ashamed that we process it differently or feel like this one did it better than I did, or you know, so I think sometimes I just think about people listening, and and they’re thinking, well, how should I process suffering?
You know, I mean, I think the first thing we need to do is run to the father.
That’s right.
Because he’s the only one that can help us. And to be truthful with him
—
Honest.
—
and honest and open and, You know, David, you could hear in his in in in in his writings.
You know, he was open. He was honest with god, but it was as he began to talk, he began to shift Yeah.
That’s right.
His perspective.
That’s right. And
it was it was only by the power of the Holy Spirit.
It was only by god, you know, shifting that for him.
and helping him see things in a different way and enlighten him in a in a different way.
But I I think that I can just hear some people say, well, how am I supposed to and I think you have to do it by going to God and in your own personal way.
That’s right. That’s right.
And and also the ministry of community. Yes. People who have suffered as you are suffering.
I think that’s at least one of the benefits that come out of tough times in our individual lives is that we come out of that tunnel to the other side that we never thought we’d make it through, and then the lord gives us opportunity to comfort those with the comfort that we have been given.
And to give them that same hope that, listen, I just went through this tunnel and made it out.
Let me tell you and let me show you how the Holy Spirit helped me.
how, um, prayer works, how, you know, community during my time of suffering was so important. People encouraging me.
Now let me offer that same encouragement to you.
Um, Victoria, you know, your your husband did that for me.
He called me while mom was sick.
And I mean that man encouraged me and just said, you know, we we walked through real difficult times as well.
So let me remind you of some of the things that it’s so easy either to forget or to just have so dulled and pushed down underneath all of the the, um, urgent sort of things that are that you’re facing in the middle of a crisis, it can be so dull that you just need someone to come along side of you and say, let me remind you of who Jesus is, that he still is who he says he is, that he is still able and fully capable of covering you and your family.
to have people’s voices in your ear who can remind you of that and can also give you perspective from their own seasons of suffering.
it buies you up and keeps you going to the next 24 hours like nothing else.
Like nothing else.
Yeah. You know, I I always think going through suffering and hardships and people dying that you’ve believed god for.
Yeah. I mean, we’ve we’ve all put our faith on the line for so many things and just god, please, you know, please let this happen.
And and to think that Jesus got the fathers. No. As well.
You know, he he got he got, no. And so I think praying the Ghasimonies prayer.
It’s it’s god. I know you can. I know you can deliver me. I know you can do this.
I know you’re the great physician.
I know you, you know, you are the the father and the husband to the husbandless and all the things that you are, you’re the great position.
And I know you can do it.
But if you don’t, thy kingdom come, thy will be done. And Jesus had to do that.
Yeah.
Please let this cut pass from me.
We can we can say who god is, and then we can pray, god, please don’t make me do this.
Don’t let don’t let me and my children have to walk this road.
But then it’s but not my will, but thine be done. Yeah. You know?
And and knowing the faithfulness and the love of god and the comfort of the Holy Spirit to take us in the grace and the mercy of god to bring us out
of
those times to to to strengthen us. I mean, think about some of the hardest things you’ve gone through.
It makes you who you are today.
It gives you
some backbone. Absolutely. The tenacity. I mean, If it’s given me nothing but tenacity to believe god even harder the next time.
Yep.
Whether it happened or not, it it does something on the inside of us to strengthen our faith, I believe.
That is correct.
If you don’t Let go. If you don’t stop, if you don’t give up and — Yeah.
—
you know.
And don’t you think that we have to retrain our own thinking and make sure we do this with the children or the other people that we’re discipling and pouring into as Christians, we can tend to think or pretend that a good life is mutually exclusive of paint, a painful life that those 2 things can’t exist, that we’re we’re striving for ease and happiness, and we’re looking for that.
And I know people that’s that’s kind of a a western kind of perspective on on being a believer that ease is what we’re after, that happiness is what we’re after.
There are some people Christians in other parts of the world Um, I remember someone saying to me that that lives in another part of the world that when there is suffering happening amongst them, that their first prayer is not deliverance from that suffering.
They pray that too, but that’s not the first prayer.
The first prayer is Lord helped me to glorify you in this suffering.
Yeah. Yeah.
While I’m here, since I’m here, can your name be made great somehow? through this suffering.
Now, lord, yes, heal, and deliver, and free.
And we know you can do all that, but while while you’re gonna leave us here in this moment for whatever time frame it is, a week or a month or whatever.
Lord, would your name be made great while we’re here?
Right.
And I just thought, It it’s important for me.
And then as e even as I talk to my sons about what it means to to walk with the lord and be a believer and be a Christian, it doesn’t mean ease It means that when there is pain and suffering, god can still be glorified through your life and that he is fully able to turn the situation around.
but since life is going to come with difficulty, and it is.
You you don’t have to go looking for the storms of life.
You just keep living, and the storms somehow find you.
So since that’s going to happen, then we at least need to be mindful of praying. Okay, lord.
Why have you allowed me to be in this pocket?
Yeah.
And would you be glorified through the way I respond, the decisions I make, the way I treat others while I’m in it?
Let me glorify you while I’m here.
I think there’s a gift of presence too in the midst of suffering.
Like, I’m sure if we asked, you could say, somehow, god was there throughout these moments.
And, you know, I just talked to a woman who lost her husband, um, suddenly during the last couple months, actually.
And she said, you know, it was weird because I was sitting in the moment.
I kept going, God, I’m okay. And it was like she was shocked that she was okay.
She thought it would destroy her.
And she said, but it was so sweet of the lord because he had sustained me and almost prepared me for it.
And she was like, of course, you are devastated and you’re grieving, but it was like, I she kept going, I was just standing in shock like, god.
I’m okay. Like, you’re here with me. I’m in this moment. You actually prepared me for this.
Your presence was with me, and And I think for us, that’s one thing that he never left us.
He never first say because he’s never like, oh, you’re in suffering.
I’ll pick you up on the other side of the tunnel. You know?
Like, it’s I’m with you through that, and it’s the one thing that I believe we can do.
I don’t always know what to say to you in your moment of suffering or grief, but I know that I can show up.
I can bring a meal and I can sit in the moment with you. Okay.
And I can be in your suffering with you and not have the perfect answer not have the answer to the problem that you’re facing, but I can have the gift of presence to go and remind you like Pastor Jewell did of like, hey, God’s with you, and he will cover you in this grace is sufficient in this moment.
And all those these moments feel a little extra positive and such a painful moment, my gift of presents can be here to remind you, there’s people that will be with you through this.
And I think that’s what I have found suite of the lord of, like, in those moments.
Like, I had the same thing. My hardest season. I remember the Lord just said, keep showing up.
And I was like, you don’t understand what you just said to me. That’s rude. And but it is.
It’s like, you just every day, you get stronger every day that I know time doesn’t heal, and I’m not trying to say that.
but there is a process and learning to lament learning to process your grief, learning to go to the father, and David did it so excellently where he would say God, I acknowledge your god, but I also need to acknowledge my pain.
And here’s what I’m asking, but whether you do it or not, here’s my prayer of Thanksgiving because you are still worthy of it despite what happens.
And I think we don’t teach that. We don’t teach the process of lament and grief to allow people to.
So they they shove it down or they go to, you know, the whole trend of we’re we’re self caring.
It’s a great trend. Go get therapy. It’s an amazing gift. and it’s freeing.
And it’s a good thing, and we need to do it.
And we need to be okay with sitting in our pain, but not living there.
and not making it our identity because our identity is not what has been done.
It’s who he has what he will do with it.
And I think that’s the part where I’ve had to process Okay, god. You’re faithful through it all.
And I’ll just continue to show up. I’ll continue to press in.
I’ll learn to lament like David did in his Psalms and Psalms are great prayers to pray in these moments because he says it so eloquently, and I don’t in my prayers, so I read his.
And so it’s just ways that we can process it all. and be there for others around us.
Yeah. Yeah. I love this idea of presence too because it takes the pressure off of me uh, as a friend, someone who wants to be a good friend to someone else.
Um, you know, and as someone who wants to do something to be helpful, And sometimes I think we we make it worse when we try to make ourselves do something just because we’re looking for something to do.
When really We can’t fix it. What we can do is be present. Yeah.
Um, we don’t have to say the right thing. We don’t have to do the magical thing.
If it’s in our hand or heart to do, then great.
But especially if it’s someone that you that you know well, just being there is super important showing up, um, them knowing that that I cared enough or whoever cared enough to be present.
And then this idea of processing that, you know, as you were saying, Victoria, that we we are designed differently So how we process is different.
You know? Some of us wanna write.
Some of us wanna holler and cry and mean, there have been many times.
Who wants to holler
and try?
I think we do both do
a little bit of both of those throwing rocks or not. I definitely holler and cry.
There have been people on the road. They’re looking in the car, and they’re probably like, is she okay?
Listen, the car is safe. Nobody can hear me. nobody they I care about and seeing me do it.
I hope not. But, I mean, there have been times I I just remember one time pulling out of the Target parking lot.
and heading up the service road, and there was this long line of cars to get through this light.
And I was anxious and frustrated and I don’t even remember what about.
I just remember the build up of not getting what I needed at Target, being stuck in a light, and already being upset about something else, I mean, I literally was banging my steering wheel.
Yeah.
And just and I just was yelling at god. And I was like, you’ve got to be kidding me. Yeah.
I mean, it was really I was saying you’ve got to be kidding me about the traffic light, but what about the film?
Yeah. You know what it was to build up?
And and that’s the thing when you are not intentional — Right.
—
about acknowledging where you hurt That’s what’ll happen.
Yeah.
Right. It’ll it’ll build up, and it can do bad things to your body. Yeah.
Uh, because we are uh, beings where our physiological self connects with our spiritual self. Right. Or you explode.
And pain that is unaddressed can come out in so many different ways.
Um, it can come out and, you know, sadness can um, anger. Processes anger, and you’re angry.
Nobody knows why you’re angry, but really what it is is you’re sad about something that you haven’t addressed.
Um, so, you know, one of the things that I look at to know when there is something that I need to process and, you know, suffering being a part of that is, um, is looking at where things are overflowing and coming out.
That that, you know, why am I yelling and banging my my, um, steering wheel at a light.
It’s not about the light. You know, you and and sometimes the people that are in your life have a window, and we get irritated because they’ll say, what’s what’s wrong with you?
Nothing’s wrong with me. What’s wrong with you? You know? You know?
But Sometimes the people that love us or that are around us most can pick up on things that we are so busy pushing past.
Um, and so that’s a signal of, you know, when do I need to stop and deal with it?
When I need to go to therapy? When do I need to talk to a friend?
I mean, we have one moment where she remembers.
I called her in the middle of snowmageddon last year, and it was an explosion.
Snowmigan?
It was an explosion. You know, Texas, we don’t do winter storms as well.
No, we don’t.
And, uh, we had a bad one and pipes reversed and all these things that are happening.
And I literally went into my room, into my closet, into the back corner, and I called Priscilla.
And, I mean, I just hollered for a second. You said you’re worried about me for a minute.
Are you come get you there? Yeah. Yeah.
But, I mean, it had just been a series of things, and it everybody’s gonna be like, oh, she yells.
Well, she gets upset. But I mean, it’s Yes. I do. Yeah.
But I I just think we have to give ourselves the freedom to just be present
—
Yeah.
—
if that’s all we have to give.
Right.
And then we have to give ourselves the freedom to process however and whenever that time comes.
But just to accept that sometimes with suffering, there’s nothing to do but go through it.
We cannot live and not have any suffering, any painful times, any seasons that we wouldn’t prefer, you’re going to.
It’s guaranteed just by virtue that we’re alive.
And, man, I can remember there were 3 women, um, that each going through separate hard times.
This is maybe 3 years ago.
And during that year, there were 3 women in my life that were all going through, I mean, hard stuff, illness, trauma, and each of them were at such a low point, a hard point with their physicality.
that they either didn’t have the strength to literally pick up their Bible and read, or they couldn’t attend church anymore because of their health issues.
they literally could not function in the way they usually would because of what was happening in their life. Yeah.
And each of them independently of each other. They don’t even know each other.
But as I was talking to them individually, um, and spending time with them, they each said something similar.
They said, I’m so glad that me and the lord already had a thing going on. Yes.
Because now that I’m in the midst of this, where maybe I can’t even get out of the bed, there are scripture verses that will come to my mind.
Wow. Or there’s hyms. Yeah. Right. Mom was one of them. There are hyms that mom would just start singing.
when she couldn’t even move anymore.
She would just start singing these little hymns that that were buried on the inside of her.
she would be encouraged by it.
These women were encouraged by things that the Holy Spirit would bring to their mind, um, about their friendship with the Lord.
They were so glad that they had stabilized themselves in good times in preparation for bad times.
And
so I think that’s so critical for all of us knowing that we’re going to walk through suffering.
There are going to be things that come in our lives that we do not prefer.
Well, then when things are pretty steady, we better be using that time to cultivate a friendship and
a stability with the lord. one of my mother’s, um, statements when she was really, really sick.
She started crying, and she said, because we had people from our church that would come and walk around our house every day at
12.
Um, and she said, all of these people praying for me around the house, and cards were coming from all over the world.
All of these people all over the world praying for me. And she started crying.
And she said, I don’t want them to lose faith.
Whether or not god heals me or not, I don’t want my suffering or my death to cause them to lose faith.
And so I think just as she was praying for the many people who were praying for her, I wanna pray for those who are watching because we don’t want your current suffering, to cause you to lose faith.
You know? Lord Jesus, I just am so grateful for this discussion that we can have because we know that we all will go through difficult times.
You said in your word, in this world, you will have trouble, but you have overcome the world.
And overcoming often means that we get to see your overcoming grace and power as you come through in our answered prayers, as we speak healing over our lives and speak deliverance over our lives and see you make a way out of no way covering us protecting us, being a banner over us that spells love, And then sometimes we pray and we move forward, and it’s just still hard.
So, lord, I just pray, to the power of the Holy Spirit, that those who are right now, not in a suffering circumstance, that you would not allow this session um, to release them that you would cause this session or talk today to arrest them to the point where they are motivated more than they ever had been before to study your word learn your word, commune with you, connect with you to get full of you so that when those time comes, they are ready.
But I don’t wanna forget those who are struggling now, even tempted to lose faith because you’re not answering the way they’d hope or you’re not answering as soon as they’d hoped, or it’s still hard, very painful, physically, emotionally, spiritually, and They are tempted right now to walk away from the faith because what good god would allow this difficult suffering.
And I
pray for that person who’s watching, would you now, holy spirit, the same way that you can arrest us and cause us to be motivated, inspired, and convicted to pick up your word?
Would you simply, lord, love Holy Spirit, on those who just need to know that you care despite the hardship, on those that just need to know that you are with them through the suffering and on those that need to know that even in the darkest of times, that you are always thinking about their future their future with you on this earth and in eternity and that there is joy set before them so that they would be encouraged to hold on even through the difficult time.
Holy Spirit, we know you can do both, and I pray for each person watching, that they would be strong in the faith, that they would go the distance with you and that they would know that even in suffering that you are still lord god.
In Jesus’ name, we pray. Amen.