Latest / Pastor John Piper's answers / Don’t Wait for the Pain to Stop

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Don’t Wait for the Pain to Stop · Pastor John Piper's answers

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  Speaker 1: Well. Many people believe that joy must wait until the
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  Speaker 1: suffering ends, but the Bible tells a different story. In
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  Speaker 1: this episode, we look at Paul, the Saints, and God's
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  Speaker 1: surprising promise to us that joy can exist even inside
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  Speaker 1: an aching heart. Today, unasked Pastor John, don't wait for
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  Speaker 1: the pain to stop. The question is from an anonymous woman.
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  Speaker 1: Pastor John High, I'm writing you from Indonesia. Your ministry
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  Speaker 1: has been a huge blessing to me over the past
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  Speaker 1: seven years. After waiting ten years for a child, my
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  Speaker 1: husband and I were overjoyed when I became pregnant late
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  Speaker 1: last year, but at the same time I discovered a
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  Speaker 1: lump in my breast. At eleven weeks, our joy turned
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  Speaker 1: to sorrow and we learned our baby no longer had
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  Speaker 1: a heartbeat and I had to undergo a DNC procedure.
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  Speaker 1: Just one week after losing our long awaited child, we
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  Speaker 1: received the devastating news that the lump with stage two
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  Speaker 1: breast cancer. I have just had surgery and I'm now
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  Speaker 1: facing this new battle and my heart is overwhelmed. I
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  Speaker 1: often wake up in the morning consumed by anxiety. My
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  Speaker 1: questions for you are, how can I possibly have a
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  Speaker 1: heart full of joy and peace during such profound loss
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  Speaker 1: and fear. How can I continue to believe that God
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  Speaker 1: is good and that I will see brighter days again.
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  Speaker 2: Perhaps I could share a couple of means by which
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  Speaker 2: God has kept me from the paralyzing discouragement or bitterness
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  Speaker 2: over various disappointments and afflictions and sufferings in my own
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  Speaker 2: life over the past eighty years. One is that He
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  Speaker 2: has taught me from experience and from the Bible that
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  Speaker 2: the presence of great sorrow and great grief in my
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  Speaker 2: heart does not mean that there cannot be great joy
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  Speaker 2: and peace at the same time in the same aching heart.
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  Speaker 2: That seems strange, seems contradictory, seems paradoxical, but it has
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  Speaker 2: been so important to learn. I got the impression in
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  Speaker 2: listening to our friend's question that maybe she has not
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  Speaker 2: yet learned this wonderful truth. I don't know, but maybe not.
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  Speaker 2: She said, she doesn't see how joy and peace can
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  Speaker 2: be in her heart during such profound grief and loss.
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  Speaker 2: So it seems like she has the sense that as
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  Speaker 2: long as she feels profound loss, profound sorrow, profound grief,
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  Speaker 2: joy and peace have to wait. They can't be there
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  Speaker 2: in her heart. So I want to encourage her and
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  Speaker 2: others that they not back themselves into a corner of hopelessness. Here.
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  Speaker 2: If we persuade ourselves that grief and sorrow and loss
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  Speaker 2: must cease before we have joy and peace again, we
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  Speaker 2: will be trapped in a life of hopelessness or hypocrisy.
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  Speaker 2: Hopelessness because there's always going to be sorrow. There will
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  Speaker 2: always be sorrow, or hypocrisy because we're constantly trying to
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  Speaker 2: deny it. The fact is that the more we serve
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  Speaker 2: others like Jesus, the more pain we will have to bear,
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  Speaker 2: either our own or other's pain. In this fallen world,
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  Speaker 2: there is no escaping sorrow and affliction. Through many afflictions,
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  Speaker 2: we must enter the kingdom, the Bible says, So one
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  Speaker 2: great lesson to learn is that you don't have to
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  Speaker 2: wait for the absence of grief and pain in order
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  Speaker 2: to know the presence of joy. We must learn this.
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  Speaker 2: It is a deep and wonderful discovery. It has rescued
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  Speaker 2: me many times. I saw it in my twenties in
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  Speaker 2: Romans nine, verses two and three, where Paul said I
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  Speaker 2: have great sorrow and unceasing anguish in my heart. I
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  Speaker 2: was just blown away by that word unceasing. Are you
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  Speaker 2: kidding me? You're the great Apostle of Joy. You have
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  Speaker 2: unceasing anguish in your heart because his kinsmen are cut
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  Speaker 2: off from Christ and cursed. This is the same Paul
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  Speaker 2: who said rejoice always in the Lord. And again I
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  Speaker 2: say rejoice always always, And he not only said it,
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  Speaker 2: he did it. Here's Second Crintain seventy four. In all
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  Speaker 2: our affliction, I am overflowing with joy. That's amazing. Second
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  Speaker 2: Crintain sixteen. We are sorrowful yet always rejoicing. So his
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  Speaker 2: anguish over lost loved ones never goes away, and his
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  Speaker 2: afflictions are relentless. They are always reasons for sorrow. We
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  Speaker 2: always will have reasons for sorrow in this world, or
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  Speaker 2: we're loveless. And instead of thinking this means I must
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  Speaker 2: wait for joy, he says, no, I don't have to wait.
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  Speaker 2: I'm not going to wait. I'm going to crowd joy
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  Speaker 2: into my broken heart art and make it exist alongside
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  Speaker 2: my sorrow. What a crucial lesson to learn, and I
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  Speaker 2: thank God for it. I would encourage everybody to just
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  Speaker 2: settle it. You don't have to wait until the season
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  Speaker 2: of sorrow is over in order to know the sweetness
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  Speaker 2: of joy at the same time. Here's the other lesson
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  Speaker 2: I've learned in trying to keep from being overwhelmed with
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  Speaker 2: disappointments and losses and afflictions. For many years I have
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  Speaker 2: considered the example of other Christians to be essential to
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  Speaker 2: my survival. Some of these have been living examples. Most
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  Speaker 2: have died, and I read about them in the Bible
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  Speaker 2: or in biographies. For twenty seven years, for example, I
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  Speaker 2: focused on one dead person each year, a couple biographies,
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  Speaker 2: and then wrote my own little biography of each one
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  Speaker 2: and gave a lecture on it at our pastor's conference,
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  Speaker 2: and then we published him in twenty seven Servants of
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  Speaker 2: Sovereign Joy. You know what I was looking for in
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  Speaker 2: those years, in those lives, those byerphies. How did they endure?
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  Speaker 2: That's what I was looking for. How did they endure
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  Speaker 2: the hardships and losses of life. John Owen lost eleven children,
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  Speaker 2: all of them, all of that's more than job, and
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  Speaker 2: never broke. He wrote beautiful books on how to be
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  Speaker 2: spiritually minded in such situations and how to have sweet
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  Speaker 2: fellowship with Jesus. William Carey saw twelve years of his
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  Speaker 2: life's work burned up in a fire, not to be recovered,
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  Speaker 2: and he knelt down in the ashes and rededicated himself
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  Speaker 2: to start over again. You read that, and you just
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  Speaker 2: to say, yes, Lord, please make me that kind of person.
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  Speaker 2: William Tindale was haunted down, driven out of his homeland,
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  Speaker 2: put in prison, killed, and near the end, in the
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  Speaker 2: cold prison cell, he asked for warmer clothes and a hepredictionary,
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  Speaker 2: a heprew diictionary bless his heart, so he could keep
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  Speaker 2: pressing on with his work of translating the Bible just
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  Speaker 2: before they killed him. How did they do it? They
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  Speaker 2: didn't become bitter, they didn't lose their joy, and they
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  Speaker 2: overflowed in love for Christ and his people. But my
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  Speaker 2: point here is not to say how they did it.
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  Speaker 2: You need to read it for yourself, but to say
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  Speaker 2: that this was a lifeline for me to read story
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  Speaker 2: after story in the Bible and in biographies of men
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  Speaker 2: and women who suffered are more than I have and
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  Speaker 2: did not give up, maintained a life of peace and
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  Speaker 2: love and joy and usefulness. I still do this downstairs
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  Speaker 2: right now as I'm talking to you on my chair.
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  Speaker 2: Beside my chair is a little paperback by Dick McClellan
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  Speaker 2: titled Warriors of Ethiopia, The Extraordinary Story of How the
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  Speaker 2: Gospel Came to a remote region of Africa. Each chapter
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  Speaker 2: is about a different faithful, suffering evangelist. I read about
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  Speaker 2: one chapter more or less each evening because they're very short,
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  Speaker 2: simply to remind myself of the incredible sufferings of indigenous
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  Speaker 2: missionaries and evangelists in Ethiopia and around the world who
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  Speaker 2: have paid ultimate prices to get the Gospel out. These
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  Speaker 2: are people who had virtually none of my advance or
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  Speaker 2: my comforts, or my protections or my health care. They
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  Speaker 2: endured beatings, sleepless nights, dangers, torture, martyrdom because they love
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  Speaker 2: Jesus Christ and his wonderful news of the forgiveness of sins,
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  Speaker 2: or better because they knew they were loved by Him.
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  Speaker 2: So my point is this, the sheer fact that there
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  Speaker 2: are people like this in the world today, and that
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  Speaker 2: there have always been people like this has been one
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  Speaker 2: means over five plus decades of ministry that God has
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  Speaker 2: used to keep me enduring and rejoicing alongside my sorrows,
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  Speaker 2: not instead of them, but at the same time. So
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  Speaker 2: I would say very gently to our struggling friend who
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  Speaker 2: has lost her child and dealing with cancer. Let the
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  Speaker 2: example of Paul in the New Testament and thousands of
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  Speaker 2: ordinary saints through the centuries give you a fresh confidence.
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  Speaker 2: With God's enabling grace, you can endure this season of
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  Speaker 2: your life. In fact, God will help you discover the
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  Speaker 2: secret that you don't even have to wait for this
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  Speaker 2: season to be over. He will help you drink the
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  Speaker 2: cup of sorrow and at the same time feel the
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  Speaker 2: sunshine of His love and his sustaining grace and his
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  Speaker 2: promise to bring you through.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah. He has taught me from experience and from the
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  Speaker 1: Bible that the presence of great sorrow and great grief
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  Speaker 1: in my heart does not mean that there cannot be
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  Speaker 1: great joy and peace at the same time in the
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  Speaker 1: same aching heart. That seems strange, seems contradictory, seems paradoxical,
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  Speaker 1: but it has been so important to learn. That's a
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  Speaker 1: lesson learned from experience. For you, Pastor John, It's not
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  Speaker 1: a theory found in those biographies. It's a truth learned
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  Speaker 1: through tears. In nineteen seventy four, when Pastor John, you
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  Speaker 1: receive the stunning news that your mother had died in
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  Speaker 1: a tragic car accident in Israel. For more on that
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  Speaker 1: story and how it relates to sorrowful yet always rejoicing,
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  Speaker 1: see the Aspestor John book on page three ninety two
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  Speaker 1: for more. That is one of those pages I've wrote it,
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  Speaker 1: but as a stand back and read it again. Is
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  Speaker 1: just flipping through it right now. It's one of those
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  Speaker 1: pages I read with holy awe. Thank you, Pastor John,
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  Speaker 1: and thanks for joining us today. If you have a
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  Speaker 1: question to ask Pstor John, find a link to email
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  Speaker 1: us and find our complete episode archive at the same
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  Speaker 1: place ask Pastor John dot com. Well God is sovereign,
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  Speaker 1: but how sovereign is he? Next time the God over
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  Speaker 1: Dice and Tony Rank. You will see you on Thursday.