How God Uses Our Most Painful Times (with Chuck Swindoll)
My Confidence in God’s Plan Despite My Hardships
In many ways, I had to grow up quickly and become the adult of the household even though I was just a child. My mother was married and divorced several times, a raging alcoholic—and it wasn’t until much later that I found out the man whose name was on my birth certificate was not actually my biological father. In fact, I was the product of a one night stand.
I jokingly tell people I was raised by wolves.
But looking back, I can confidently say that God had a plan for me before I was even born. And I think that’s true for all of us.
I can see that even the bad things I faced in life were preparing me for what I needed to do: see my need for Jesus Christ (which happened when I was 17).
In my talk with Chuck Swindoll, he shared about what I found to be a parallel in our lives. Each of his siblings were favored by his parents and neglected Chuck. When he was only around 5 years old, his mother told him he was an accident and a mistake.
I believe the trials we both faced, in childhood and forward, played into what we both became and ended up doing.
Conversation Excerpt: How God Uses Pain
Greg Laurie: The hardest thing we’ve gone through is, is when our son died in an automobile accident-
Chuck Swindoll: 2008?
Greg Laurie: Yes, it was. And it was-
Chuck Swindoll: I couldn’t believe it when I heard it. Everything in my life at that moment stopped. I’m serious. We prayed for you as a family, and Cynthia and I as a couple, because we identified—we have two boys and we have two girls—and so, I couldn’t imagine losing one of them just like you couldn’t. So if you don’t mind, walk through that with us.
Greg Laurie: …He was on his way to church early that morning. It was about 9:01, and he collided with a Caltrans vehicle.
…My wife was having a Bible study with his wife, Brittany, and some other ladies. Brittany was texting Christopher… And I texted him, and no answer. Then I was calling the church, I couldn’t get an answer. I knew something was terribly wrong, but I didn’t know what it was.
Then people started showing up at my house. Finally, some of our pastors told me that Christopher went to be with the Lord.
I don’t know how to describe it. It was like all the air left the room. It was like time stopped. I collapsed.
…I’m a Christian. I’m a pastor, but I just thought my world just ended. Like, how could you survive this?
I felt if words could kill you, I could have died from hearing those words. And Cathe saw me and actually took my face in her hands and said, “It’s gonna be okay. ” She doesn’t even remember saying this, and there’s only one person who could have said that to me, and it was her. And “okay” meaning not that this is good, but that we will survive this… And even though, as a pastor, I’d presided over many services—sadly, many for children who died—I thought, “Well, I know a little bit about this.”
Chuck Swindoll: It’s quite different when it’s your own.
Greg Laurie: It’s completely different.
Chuck Swindoll: Did you take some time off?
Greg Laurie: I did take some time off.
But, you know, here’s the interesting thing. I just fell on the floor and I prayed a Job-like prayer. And I said, “Lord, You gave him to us, and I give him back to You.”
And people have asked me, “When have you felt the presence of God more than any other time in your life?” And I would say that was the moment that God was with me.
You know, His strength is made perfect in weakness.
And I was listening… interestingly, Chuck, you kind of play a role in this in your teaching, from a distance… I was listening to your teaching on the radio, and you talked—and I don’t remember the exact quote. It might be a Tozer quote—but it’s something “before God can use a man, He has to hurt him.” Does this ring a bell?
Chuck Swindoll: Yeah. Tozer. “It is doubtful God can use anyone greatly until he has hurt him deeply.”
Greg Laurie: Yes, that’s a hard one.
Chuck Swindoll: That’s a tough one.
I’ve had some people say, “I don’t believe that. That makes God cruel.”
On the contrary, when you have been hurt deeply, you change, Greg. You deepen. You deepen. You get quiet. You become more thoughtful. More compassionate, more caring, more understanding.
Greg Laurie: Yes.
Chuck Swindoll: That is the making of a good shepherd.
There’s a Scottish saying: “Some things are better felt than telt.”
Greg Laurie: Yeah.
Chuck Swindoll: People can tell when you have a heart. You don’t get a heart by taking a course on how to get a heart.
Greg Laurie: Yeah.
Chuck Swindoll: You don’t read a book on, “Here’s how to develop a heart.”
You go through the heartbreaks of life, and out of that emerges an incredible world that never had been developed before.
Greg Laurie: Yes.
Chuck Swindoll: So that you have a capacity now that few have, because you have lost someone so close to your own heart that you’ll never forget it.
It prepares you to touch the lives of those who come with that empty, dreadful expression: “I feel lost. I feel like I can’t go on. I feel like I’ve reached the end.”
And you can say, “You’re gonna make it. And let me tell you how I know.” And you can tell them your story.
I love another Tozer quote, and you’ll love this:
“May not the inadequacy of much of our spiritual experience be traced back to our habit of skipping through the corridors of the kingdom like children in the marketplace, always chattering about everything, but pausing to learn the true value of nothing?”
Greg Laurie: Wow.
Chuck Swindoll: I love that quote.
You’ve learned the true value of life, and the true meaning of death, and grief, and sorrow, and bone-deep pain.
There aren’t words you can use to describe what you and Cathe endured. You may try, but only those who have lost one of their own will say, “That’s exactly the way it was with me.”
Greg Laurie: Yeah.
Chuck Swindoll: Gives you a capacity, a depth.
And that may explain, Greg, why even though you may not have had all the academic training you may have wished you would have had, or you may not have had all the breaks that you would love to have had, or those first 17, 18, 20 years of your life, you know, at the knee of some godly individual—
Wait, wait, wait.
You’ve had the Lord Jesus Christ right there in the depth of your life at moments that defied explanation.
As He reached in and quietly developed you in ways you would not have been developed.
Job writes, Job 23:10–12. Get this:
“But He knows the way that I take. When he has tried me, I will come forth as gold. My foot has held his steps. His way have I kept and not declined. Neither have I turned back from the command of his lips. I’ve esteemed, prized, valued the words of his mouth more than my necessary food.”
That’s why in deep grief you lose your appetite. You’re feeding on divine manna that comes to minister to you from the heavenlies provided for you by the Lord your God.
I so respect you for going through it, and being able to talk about it, and letting it change you…
