The Subject of Suffering: Dr. Henry Cloud

Hey guys, it's good to be here. You know, I do, Tori and I do come here because we moved to Nashville. It's hard, there just aren't any churches in Nashville. It was really hard and finally we kept looking around, here we are. So usually we're back there but it's good to be here, seeing all y'all this morning. When Lyle asked me to do this, Palm Sunday, I mean, seems like you'd want a real professional on Palm Sunday, right? Because Palm Sunday has deep theological truth and I'm gonna start with, before we get into the specifics of that, I just thought I would educate all of y'all who don't know the four great theological truths that you have to know to make it. All right, you ready? Number one, Muslims don't recognize Jews as God's chosen people. Number two, Protestants don't recognize the Pope as the head of the church. Can you believe that? Number three, Jews don't recognize Jesus as the Messiah. And number four, Baptists don't recognize each other at Hooters. Can you believe that? See, that's why you need a professional up here on Palm Sunday.

All right. So let's talk about Palm Sunday for a moment. You know, Palm Sunday is the triumphant entry. Easter, next weekend. Jesus, the King, the one that they were looking to for victory, and he rode in as the King the long-awaited King, and Kings usually ride in with all of this pomp and glory. He rides in on a donkey. And what you see in the beginning of that symbolism is this King who came to rule would come to victory through the humble path of what, what's coming on Friday, of suffering. And this is the King that came to overcome it all, but to overcome it all, he had to overcome sin. And he had to put a death to it. And this is where we get it wrong, and this is the big theological truth for this morning. All of us, we, I mean, there's sin you wanna overcome, right, stuff you do that you don't wanna do anymore. Anybody got anything like that in your life that you do? Anybody not have anything like that, you got it all wired? Because usually somebody thinks they do, and I ask them to raise their hand. Everybody else see what denial looks like? But first thing I want you to do is why are y'all still standing up? Sit, have a seat. Good, nice. It's eight o'clock in the morning.

You see, that's kind of where we, not kind of, it is where we get it wrong. It's where the whole world gets it wrong. If you go on the internet, how do you overcome this? How do you overcome this? How do you overcome this? There's gonna always be two methods in that worldly system that are a lie. One of them is don't do that anymore. Well, if you could not do it anymore, it wouldn't be a problem, would it? Because that's our problem. As Paul says in Romans 7, the good that I would do, I don't do, and the bad that I would not do anymore, I'd just do again. Jesus came to break that cycle. But he didn't come to give us a method, and please hear this, of just willpower and saying, I'm not gonna do that anymore, because Moses did that. Don't do these things. As Paul later says, that's the law and it's weak and powerless to do what only Jesus could do. The second thing about our methods is they wanted it on Palm Sunday. We're looking for the king. They did not know that you can't have it, you can't have the victory first. There's no Sunday without a Friday. So today we're gonna look at the theology of suffering

in a very specific way and that is what does suffering have to do with overcoming the patterns in our lives? You know, if you ask a normal Christian, and these things are true, I mean, how are you going to be done with sin in your life? And you're gonna get some pretty standard answers, you know, spend time in the Word, spend time with God, memorize scripture. All those things are true, but I'm gonna read you a passage that we don't see very often and it relates to Palm Sunday and it relates to overcoming pretty much anything in your life that you want to overcome. Here's what it says. Therefore, since Christ has suffered in the flesh, arm yourselves, now think about this, how are you gonna protect yourself against these patterns in your life? And what patterns are we talking about? Maybe it might be a, how many of you are married? Have you ever had the same argument with your spouse? Over 10,000 different issues, but it's the same argument? It's just the same Mario go around? See, there's just one problem. And these are the patterns we're talking about or something you can't stop doing or whatever it is, we'll enter into some of that. But he says, if you want to protect yourself against that,

listen to this, since Jesus suffered in the flesh, arm yourselves with the same purpose to suffer. You ready for the kicker here? Because the one who has suffered in the flesh is done with sin. You just never hear that, do you? See, we have a gospel that is 180 degrees different than the way we think. We think to overcome stuff, you gotta be strong. What the Bible says is to be strong, you gotta get weak. Now, if you think about it, that's the whole created order. How many of you have ever had babies? Now, not you men, you didn't do much. And for you, your part was great. This boy's smiling right here. How many kids you got? He's got four, no wonder he's smiling. But you've had babies, you've all seen babies if you've never had one. You ever tried to play chess with a six month old? Or ever tried them to get to do the dishes? Tried to get them to do the dishes? No, that's a strength that comes, but that strength comes through a process of weakness. That first year of life is all about weakness. And in our weakness dependency, where grace transforms that weakness into about the second year, you begin to see something emerge

called self-control and choice and freedom. Now, that's gotta be disciplined. That's gotta be a discipline. But what we wanna do is we wanna act like we can be strong before we can be weak. You know the Bible's word for wean? When you wean a child. See, we think, we think we're gonna be strong before we can be weak. Gotta wean, gotta get strong. We think we're gonna be strong before we can be weak. The Hebrew word for wean means We think we're gonna be strong before we can be weak. to have been dealt bountifully with. If there is this period of putting into weakness, strength from the outside. But to do that, we gotta enter into weakness. We gotta enter into the suffering. And if you don't think being a baby is suffering, then you hadn't had one. Because you see the very picture of hell on their face. Remember, Jesus said, what is hell? Weeping and gnashing of teeth. Wee, wee. That's hell. And what do they do? They reach out in that weakness and they get it transformed. But we gotta enter into that. So let's talk about some weakness.

I'm gonna call you into some suffering this morning. I'm gonna give you a couple more verses just to reiterate this. And in Romans 5, Paul puts it this way. Not only so, but we also glory in our sufferings because we know that suffering produces perseverance, perseverance character and character hope. And that word there for suffering means being locked in to a suffering in which there's no escape. So I'm gonna ask you to lock yourselves in as you go out of here today. Arm yourselves with a path of suffering. Aren't y'all glad y'all came this morning? But it's a different kind of suffering. It's a different kind of suffering because it's entering in. You don't need strength to do it. You just gotta surrender into some things that are very weak. And we all have that ability if we choose. All right, so let's hop into this. Suffering number one. There is a clock up there. Y'all are lucky there's a clock up there because you're gonna get out of here before three o'clock this afternoon. These are kinds of sufferings that I find when people, you know, when I've worked with people over the years, most of the people really tried everything. Usually finally end up in a shrink's office

because something wasn't working. You know, how many of you have issues? All right. How many of you brought that issue with you this morning and they're sitting next to you? Tell them to listen. All right. Here's the first suffering I wanna invite you into. We avoid the suffering of dealing with our unhealed wounds that we still carry around that are causing the suffering in life that we're going through. One of my favorite quotes, I think it was R.D. Lange that said this. He was a famous British psychiatrist. And he said, pain is unavoidable. Same thing Jesus said. In this world you will have trouble. There is no such thing as a pain-free life. Pain is unavoidable. But sometimes some of the worst pain, and the only pain that's avoidable is the pain that comes from trying to avoid pain. The pain that comes from trying to avoid pain. Remember one time, one of our girls, I don't remember which one, but they had a splinter in their foot and it had gotten swollen and they couldn't walk on it. I said, well, come, I'll help you. And, you know, I got the needle out to pull the splinter out.

I touch it, and they just, no, no, no. Because it's gonna hurt for a second, right? And we all do that. And then I got really smart. Put the tweezers on it and said, Olivia, look at that bird out there. And she goes like this, and I'm like, yank it out. She goes, ah! And I said, now step on it, it was fine. Do you know that God sometimes puts us in stuff that's gonna make us face our issues? And we're just screaming about, no, no, not that. And James tells us, consider it all joy when you encounter various trials. Because the perseverance through that will make you complete, lacking in nothing. So I don't know what your external deal is right now. We all have them. But I want you to ask God, whatever conflict I'm having. having, whatever circumstance in my life I'm having, what are you asking me to face so I can be done with this and move on? Let me give you an example. I was working with a couple one time. You know, one of the problems of, I get to talk to y'all every now and then, I don't remember what stories I've told you. So, I might have shared this with you before. I've got a couple of those, but one of them, this couple comes in and they're just having

a lot of conflict, you know, just, and majority of their conflict from her side was he was not that detail-oriented. Now, I don't know if that's ever happened in your relationship, but men kinda lost that chip along the way sometimes, and he would just forget stuff and not do stuff, and she would just explode. I can't believe you, how could you not pay the light bill? And the night before they came in, the power had gone off because he forgot to pay the light bill, and she is railing on him. She's railing on him. Now, people had talked about her reactivity and her anger many times, and oh, I gotta control it. And she had worked on it, worked on it, but to no avail, she would still erupt. And so, they get into this, and then what's he gonna do when she gets like this? Well, you, you know, it's gonna get into that back and forth, but she's mad. I said, just hold on a second. I turned to her and I said, what are you feeling? She goes, well, I just feel like he's so irresponsible. I go, I feel like he's irresponsible is not an emotion. That's not a feeling. What are you feeling? She says, well, I'm mad. I said, no, you're not. I mean, you're acting mad, but I don't think that's what you're really feeling.

She stopped, and I said, come on. What does it feel like when he doesn't do what he promised to do? And she stopped for a second, and she looks at me, and she says, well, it's, and then she literally broke and started sobbing to where she couldn't get the words out. And she said, it feels just like it felt when I was growing up. I said, tell me about that, and she went on to tell the story of the alcoholic father and the bipolar mother that she grew up with, and the house was never stable. Was always walking on eggshells and reacting, and she had learned, she has to control everything, and she would control him to no end, and then he would react, but if he did anything that would trigger, popular word today, misused sometimes, but valid in a lot of instances, would trigger this, what would she do? The sin of anger and overreacting. But see, there was a deeper suffering that she had never faced, and that was allowing God to heal the brokenness that had never been healed. And see, what we don't understand, one of the stupidest things you'll ever hear is a lot of times you'll go into groups and people with sexual abuse or trauma or other stuff, and they'll get into a group or go see a psychologist or a counselor, and they'll want them to start to process wounds. And some Christian will come along and say,

the Bible says forget the past. You are a new creation in Christ Jesus. You're only supposed to think about the future. Forget all of that. And they'll quote a scripture where Paul says, forgetting what lies behind. Very interesting use of the Bible in that moment. He says forgetting what lies behind after like 14 verses of talking about it. We skip the talking about it. And you know what? What he's talking about in that context has nothing to do with woundedness or healing. He's talking about I used to attain righteousness by trying to do the works of the law, but I'm forgetting that. I have repented to a new faith. The Bible talks about healing brokenheartedness. When did brokenheartedness happen? It happened before today. and until it's healed, it's alive. The Bible talks about forgiveness. Forgiving what? What happened before today? You see, whoever said time heals all things, try that with an infected tooth. Give it another year. Time plus grace plus some kind of truth will transform everything. But we gotta get to the truth and bring grace to it.

So she went into the process and we talked a lot about that. But what was very interesting was as she broke down and stopped railing on him, and broke down in that moment, there on the couch there in front of me, he changed and he looked at her in her suffering and he moved over and he held her. He said, I would never wanna make you feel that way. And the healing began for her that day because she was put into a circumstance, like Paul says in Romans, where she could not escape. I would not let her escape looking at that. I mean, you see this all the time. Why do addicts walk the aisle 10,000 times, I'll never look at porn again, I'll never do drugs again, I'll never do this again. They feel so bad and they stay in this loop and they keep doing it over and over again. Because they're depending on their ability to walk out and not do that again. Until some recovered addict comes up to them and says, dude, that ain't gonna work. Here, come with me. Because they've been there before. And they take them over to a recovery group where they walk in and they don't find, you gotta get better. They say, I'm an addict and everybody goes, we're glad you're here.

Because the grace invites them. To go through the process. To do the moral inventory. To be healed of stuff. So the first thing is, what recurring pattern do we have and we're avoiding the suffering of dealing with that? The splinter in our foot that's triggering the not being able to walk. That's number one. I'll still have time to get up and leave if you want, because it gets worse. Number two, avoiding the suffering of swallowing our pride or shame. Usually shame, a lot of times. And confessing our sins. Confessing our sins, repenting, and apologizing for the damage we might have caused somebody. What we oftentimes do is we read 1 John 1, 9, confess, if we confess our sins, God will forgive us of our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness. It's pretty easy to confess to God, because ain't nobody else listening. I mean, the Catholics had this great. Now, you wouldn't know who's listening, because it's in a dark little phone booth, but at least somebody is listening. You gotta take the fig leaf off that we use to cover our vulnerability, starting in Genesis 3.

And you've gotta get naked and unashamed again. Do you see the redemption of God moving us back to the created order? Where we get naked before someone with our confession. And you know what the Bible also says about confession? It says, confess your faults to one another. Why, in James 5, 16? Why would you confess to one another? You've been forgiven by God already. And the Bible's verse right there, it does not say confess to one another so that you may be forgiven. It says confess to one another so that you may be healed. So I'm gonna call you into that second path of suffering. Get with somebody and get naked. Now, I don't mean that way. I mean, dude, you gotta slow it down a little bit. That house is gonna, you're gonna have an army. We gotta have somebody, you're only as sick as your secrets. You're only as sick as your secrets. You gotta find somebody. And then sometimes we gotta go to whomever we've hurt. Sometimes. The Bible says that will block our prayers. Jesus said, if you come to offer your alms and all this stuff before God, but your brother has ought against you, what does that mean? Well, we ought to have done better with somebody

and we didn't. What he says is put down your offering and go and be reconciled first. Because God doesn't like compartmentalization, where we're good with him and not okay with somebody else. That's suffering. And we don't know how that compartmentalizes our soul, but any part of your soul that's compartmentalized has a life of its own. And Ephesians 5 says that when we bring something to the light, it says everything that's brought to the light becomes light. It's transformed by the light. So find somebody and get naked. And just be real. That's why some people, they don't ever get healed till they go to counseling, because they've found a safe place. I mean, that person can't tell anybody. You can sue them if they do, right? But find somebody trustworthy. God has created a body of Christ. And Ephesians 4 says that this body knitted together, held together by every joint that's in you, that's all of us together, heals itself as each part does its work. Now, how does your body heal itself? Because you got an infection, and that infection is connected to the healing aspects of the body. Your T-cells go to that infection,

and they help contain it in your immune system. The heart sends new oxygenated blood there, and it begins to move stuff out, and it goes through the kidneys and all that stuff, and we flush it out. But a lot of times, the infection inside of us is a part of the body, and it's a part of the body itself. It's not connected to a member of the body. So it's not getting healed. You might have heard the term or known somebody, we call them the dry drunk. And it's a big term in recovery circles. Somebody that, for some reason, does have the willpower to stop their addiction, but they never did the internal work that was driving it, and they're just as wacko or worse later. In fact, I've heard people say, God, I liked him a lot better when he was drinking, because they never dealt with these patterns. And the generational patterns, it's so fascinating. The Bible says, confess your sins in the sins of your fathers. And generational patterns need to be brought to the light. And they will be broken. So sometimes we got some confession to do. And the Bible says that over and over and over. And I don't know any confession that the Friday part of this session, which is the opening our mouths and saying this, that's a suffering moment.

Nobody ever said, I gotta go tell you how screwed up I am. Until, you see that in recovery circles, because they've gotten used to it, and they've found it is a blessing. But after that initial moment, you find the resurrection of Sunday, which is the healing. The guilt and the shame goes away, and a new path can begin. because what has also happened in that moment is you've received something, some care, some compassion, some support. Like with that woman I talked about, when she processed that, her husband began to hold her. I began to be there with her and support her, and she's internalizing the grace and it's strengthening her capacities. So number two, confession. I told y'all this was gonna get worse. You want another one, or are you done? The third one, avoiding the suffering of leaning into and facing your fears. Leaning into and facing your fears. If the Bible says anything over and over and over and over and over, it tells us that fear is a problem. It's so interesting, I heard a sermon not long ago, the antidote to fear is faith, certainly faith. But what the scripture actually says is perfect love casts out fear.

And you know what it takes to step into a fear? It takes the faith that even if I fail, I'm gonna be loved. Whatever I'm afraid of, the faith that there will be love on the other side. Couples don't enter into the fear of conflict sometimes. They gloss it over. And they never resolve it. Because if any of you've ever been in any kind of relationship, you know if something's wrong, something's wrong. And when you gloss it over, it's gonna squeak out somewhere. You know, it's gonna come out, sarcastic comment, passive aggressive comments. I grew up in the South. Bless your heart. If you ever notice any time you say something negative about somebody, you gotta say bless their heart. That ain't no blessing that somebody is saying right before that. It's like, you know, that's a beautiful dress. Didn't they have it in your size? These little digs, little rolling of the eyes. What hasn't been talked about? But see, that takes faith that the love is gonna be there on the other side of whatever we need to process. That's one kind of fear. Another kind of fear is just when we are afraid

to go do something. Let me tell you something. I can promise you as a psychologist and as a fellow struggler, if you don't think I've ever had issues, go read my book, Why I Believe. I'm not trying to push books on you, but I'm trying to let you know two things, that if you think you're struggling in life, you're not the only one. You think you could never get better, you're not the only one. And if you think there's no answer to my suffering, you're not the only one that ever felt that way. Because I wrote a book about my faith journey. And it's called Why I Believe, and the subtitle is a psychologist's thoughts on suffering, miracles, suffering, and suffering. Science and faith. And why those four? Because that was my path. I hit bottom in college and I couldn't function. I was severely depressed. I wrote about all this. Had to drop out of school for a semester. But then God stepped in with some miracles. And there's a whole section in there about the miracles I've seen in his healing process. But then I had to face into the fear

and I'm in college and people are telling me, well, the Bible's full of myths and that's not true. I can't believe, science is just really, and you gotta go to the fear of facing your doubts. And God answered every one of them. And I talk about the answers he provided. And then how that ends up in a faith that can literally give you a different path. But we gotta face into our fears of what we're avoiding. And I'll give you an example. I might have shared this with you, but I'll say it again for those who haven't heard it. When I was in the seventh grade, I had to give an oral book report in class. And so I get up there and I start talking, and I don't know what my outline, somehow I got a little nervous. I had done this a thousand times. I was in school plays, and I didn't have a problem talking in front of people. But I kind of got rattled, and then I got rattled about being rattled. And then I got really afraid, and then I couldn't talk. And I literally kind of had a crash and burn moment there. And I couldn't get through it. I was stammering and stuttering. And a speech impediment I had had from when I was a little kid that I had grown out of reemerged. And the teacher said,

just sit down. And then she said, you will never become successful in life if you can't speak in front of people. She said that in front of the whole class. I don't know where she went to teacher encouragement school, but the girl needs to go down. And I was devastated. And then she said, in fact, you said one day, one of the things you're thinking about, you might want to become a lawyer. You'll never be a lawyer, because they have to talk in front of courtrooms. So sit down. I developed, from that moment, a paralyzing fear of speaking up in class. No way I'm giving an oral book report again, or giving a speech, or anything like that. And so I just avoided it. I was fine. I didn't need to do that. I was fine. Played sports, all that kind of stuff. Could talk to my friends, fine. But if ever I had to talk to a group, it was lights out. And it was not a, I just won't do it. It was, I couldn't do it.

I literally could not talk in front of a group. So I just didn't do it. Through high school, through college, through graduate school. Then I went into practice in my 20s. And if you're a psychologist, the local community's gonna ask you, will you come speak on anxiety? Will you come speak on this, or speak at church? I said, no, I don't do that. And I would always refuse. Then one day, I'm at the gym, working out. I did go a few times. Hey, guys, I've lost 35 pounds, all right? Because I've, y'all might have, I might have been here when I was still really a hobbler and I had two knee replacements and spine surgery and got really fat. But now I'm on my way back. Anyway, I was at the gym. And this big, naked guy walks up to me. I'm walking to the showers. And this big, naked guy walks up to me. It was weird. Back then, locker rooms were different. Today, everybody's all, I don't know, it's just different times. This big, naked guy walks up to me. I mean, he was huge. He was like six, six and huge, tall.

And he comes up to me and says, are you a Christian? I said, yeah. He said, well, God just told me to tell you something. Now, you're looking for a weird moment in your life. Some naked giant walks up to you, telling you God just told him to tell you something. And I'm like, I'm also a psychologist. I can help make those voices go away. And he said, look, this is not weird. I said, don't tell me it's not weird. He says, no, no, it's not. He said, I'm a pastor. I said, no, it just got weirder. I said, what church? He told me it was a local vineyard church that I knew well. It's a good church. I said, all right, I'll talk to you. So we went next door, sat down for a cup of coffee. I said, so what are you talking about? And here's what he said. He said, God told me to tell you that when you were a kid, something happened to you that made you afraid to speak in front of people. and you've avoided it ever since. And he wants you to begin to speak for him. And he's gonna open some doors and you're to walk through them. I didn't have a choice. I mean, if I don't go do this,

I'm gonna get swallowed by a whale. Seriously, that's the way the story goes. The next week, I got two calls to go speak to very small gatherings. I was petrified. Called a friend of mine who's a speech therapist and she let me practice in front of her all week. See, that's grace. The weakness that brings the grace of God's help and compassion through his body. And then she came and sat on the front row and I just talked to her. And barely got through it, but I got through it. And there was no Sunday. I'm telling you, that was Friday late night. And it took about a year and a half or two years of absolute trepidation every time I had to go do it. But see, the thing about fear is fear is a lot of things that go into creating our fears, but your brain has learned that there's something to be afraid of. And through facing that fear, gradually, gradually, gradually, your brain gives up. Oh, I was gonna do this anyway. I guess there's nothing to be afraid of and your entire neurological system begins to change. And God knew this when he told us to fear not, have courage, why?

Because you can do it. No, because I will be with you. And that's the faith part of it. Not the faith that you can do it. The faith that love will be on the other side of it. No matter what happens. So we gotta lean into our fears. I don't know how I'm gonna do this in 28 seconds, but I'm gonna race through a little story here. And there's one more I wanna give you if you can't identify with any of those three. The last one is facing the suffering of the slow, incremental, patience-building process it takes to overcome anything and get to victory. There are instantaneous healings. There are, I've seen them. But more often than not, when it has to do with our personhood, it is a process the Bible calls sanctification. And Paul says, not that I have seen it. Paul says, not that I have obtained it already, but I press on. And what do you press on in? Doing the big, I've spoken thousands of times now, and to arenas. I mean, audiences. I'm not trying to sound cool. I'm trying to show what the process. But it started, I had to start small

with one woman giving my talk to her and barely making it through it. And see, whether it's resolving your marriage conflict or a problem with your kid or changing your career, as my buddy Dave Ramsey shares all the time, getting out of debt. People don't go to that debt-free scream on day one. He says, it's rice and beans until you pay off that debt. That's suffering, and it's incremental, and it's not on Palm Sunday. It's through the week and through the suffering of the small steps. And so we gotta face into the suffering of whatever is of value is going to take time. But it's time of doing little bitty things that you don't think move the needle at all. Wee, wee, wee. She wakes up at three in the morning, goes and picks up the kid, holds him, and then they go into the milk coma and they're done. But only for about three or four hours. It didn't move the needle, did it? I didn't eat that dessert to go step on the scales. I'm still fat. Well, keep doing it. Keep doing it. My kid's out of control. Psychologist said sit down and listen to them and connect with them. I did.

They're still out of control. Keep doing it. Keep doing it. I tried to be nicer to my spouse and he or she's still, keep doing it. Keep doing it. You know, I'll close with this. When I was in graduate school, you know, school, four years, internship, and then you gotta write a dissertation. A dissertation's kinda like writing a book, but it involves a lot of research and I had to write that dissertation and it was just overwhelming. I can't write a dissertation. And so I would do what I always do when I get overwhelmed, I'd go play golf. Well, the problem with that is there's a timeline and if you don't finish it by eight years, you don't get a doctorate. So all that work wasted if I don't finish it. So about, I don't know, about six months out, I'm looking at this deadline and now I went from overwhelmed to afraid and I did what I do when I'm afraid and I went and prayed and when I went and prayed, God told me to read a certain passage and I go look up that passage and here's what it says. Basically, I'm gonna paraphrase. Get off your butt, oh sluggard.

Go observe the ant, oh sluggard. The ant? And this is who saves up in the summer and does this, does all these little bitty tasks. I said, how's watching ants gonna help me write a dissertation? And I didn't get it, so I went and told a friend and they bought me an ant farm. It's a true story. God said, go observe the ant, you're gonna go watch the ant. So I get the ant farm. You know, you get in this aquarium, you pour the sand in there and you get a little test tube with these ants and you dump them in and they're like, oh, like this from the trip. And they're, you know. I go, there's no dissertation forming here, so I took a week off avoiding again. Put it in my office, I came back, I walked in, I turned on the light, I hadn't forgotten about it. I turned on the light and there's that ant farm. And these ants had built a city. It was a metropolis. There were highways and tunnels and byways. And I'm going, how does this ant do that? And I looked at them and here's what they did. By this time they had stretched out, they'd pick up a grain of sand

and they'd walk it over here. It took like 15 minutes and they would set it down and then they'd turn around and they'd walk over here and they'd keep doing this over and over and over and over. I said, I don't see a dissertation anywhere. And then it occurred to me, an ant can't build a city. I can't write a dissertation. What an ant does is they pick up a grain of sand and they move it. And I said, what are the grains of sand to writing a dissertation? Well, I gotta pick a topic. Well, I love a lot of topics, I can do that. And then you gotta get a committee, three professors. How do you do that? Take them to lunch and ask them, I can do lunch. And then you gotta go to the library and look up all the stuff that's been done on this. I spent my life in the library. Doing research. So I just started picking up the grains of sand. Day after day, the little bitty things. And I got lost in the process in a good way. I just started loving doing the process. Forgetting about that I'm not there yet, but just doing the process. And then one day, after about four months, I looked on my desk and there was a printed out full dissertation. And you know what they did at that moment?

They started calling the sluggard doctor. That's a miracle. That's a miracle. I don't know if it's your relationship with your kid or your spouse or your career or your debt or an addiction, but it ain't Easter till next week, baby. We got a lot of steps to go through. of patiently awaiting for the harvest to come through planting the seeds and weeding the garden throughout the months will get you to the victory that God promised. So, that's the good news. I want all of you in whatever area of your life that you needed to have a resurrection. But the way that the story goes is we can't have the resurrection without the death. And we've got to die to the need to avoid our suffering and enter into those sufferings. And I promise you, you'll see a resurrection. God bless you guys.