What Happens When God Doesn’t Intervene with Davey Blackburn

Transcript

Welcome to the Shameless Podcast, where I help Christian men kill shame, stand strong, and live on mission. I'm your host, Ken P, and I'm bringing you real stories, practical insights, and biblical truths that equip you to break free from your sin, shame, and live a life of purpose. Let's step out of the shadows together and into the light of Christ. Welcome to another episode of the Shameless Podcast. Today I am super excited for our guest. This is Davey Blackburn. He is the founder of Nothing Is Wasted.

He's a husband and father and someone who has walked through tragedy and still lives on mission. Today's topic of what we're going to talk about is what happens when God doesn't intervene. And for some of you, you may have faced your worst fear. And this is what we're going to talk about. David faced one of his worst fears. And not only did it leave him with grief and shame and doubt, but sometimes you may feel silent and what happened. So David, thank you, man, so much for coming on this podcast, man.

Appreciate it. Yeah, Ken, thanks so much. This is such an honor to to meet you and to be a part of this and really encourage your community. Yeah, absolutely, man. and David, you know, we were talking beforehand, so there's going to be a lot of uh depth in this conversation. We're going to go deep really fast. So, I'm just preparing those who are listening to this, like we're going to go deep. Um, but hopefully it's going to be fruit fruitful. As we jump in, I'm just going to give a little context to what we're talking about and I want you to elaborate a little bit more.

Uh, Davey, your your story for a lot of men, this is worst case scenario, right? You had a wife and I believe she was pregnant, right, at the time, right? She's pregnant with her second. Yeah. Pregnant with her second. And um she she gets murdered. And this is worst case scenario for a lot of people. Walk us through that day. What happened? What's going on? And and we'll start unpacking it from there. Yeah. At the time we were pastors, church planters in in Indianapolis, Indiana. And uh we had a 15-month-old and we were 13 weeks along with our second.

And we had just kind of come into the fall season of church where it was probably the first fall that our church was experiencing some momentum. You know, when you church plant, you kind of wonder every single day, is this thing actually going to take or is this going to fizzle out? So, we had put a whole lot of just, you know, sweat and tears and equity into this church. And finally, I remember Amanda looking at me actually a couple of days before she passed away and saying, "Davey, our dreams are coming true.

like we're finally seeing this the work of our hands come to fruition. And that was like on a Sunday that she said that to me on that Tuesday, November 10th, I left to go to the gym early in the morning. It was a normal routine for me on Tuesday mornings to leave early to go to the gym and then go to the coffee shop and write. This time I forgot to pack my bag to go to the coffee shop, to shower at the gym. And so I went back home and walked into what you described it my my greatest and what everybody would probably describe as their worst nightmare.

Um, while I was away at the gym, there were three men who were on a random crime spree through Indianapolis. They made their way from the east part of town to the west part of town where we lived. They broke into the home three doors down from us, and they were in the garage. They pull in a stolen car in the garage of that home they broken into, and they were loading up stolen goods when they saw me leave from the gym. So, they decided to take that opportunity to break into our home, too.

And Amanda got caught up in that. And she was shot three times. And when I came home, I I found her on our living room floor. She was um still breathing but unconscious and unresponsive. And you know, it was a very traumatic moment, Ken, in the sense of obviously that, you know, that sounds like an understatement, but I say that to set up the fact that I had no idea that she had been shot in that moment. I thought something had gone horrifically wrong with the pregnancy.

She had been getting dizzy spells up to that point. I thought, you know, she had passed out, that she had hit this ladder that was lay that was against the wall and it fell down on top of her and that was maybe the explanation for the blood. And I just thought, man, if we get her to the hospital, everything's going to be okay. But part of that, too, was because I I held on to this belief that as long as I'm following after God and as long as we're in the center of God's will, nothing bad's going to happen.

And I don't think I would have ever preached that as a pastor at that time, but that was my functional theology, if you will, that the safest place to be is in the center of God's will. And that there was like this gentleman's agreement between me and God, like, hey, we're going to sacrifice and do a whole bunch of stuff for the kingdom, but you're going to protect our family always. And so, my mind couldn't even compute what was going on in this kind of like naivity.

We get her to the hospital and I fully expect them to say, "Hey, everything's fine. She's we got her vitals are good." And maybe at the very worst, you know, unfortunately you guys lost the baby, but she's going to be okay. And then doctors and investigators came in and started asking me questions. When they realized I had no idea what was going on, they told me that she had three bullet points in her. And the last one was in the back of her head. There was a bullet lodged behind her eye.

They said, "We're going to try to operate if the swelling in her brain goes down, but it doesn't look good." And um you know, even in that moment, can I believe that God was going to heal her? I just it was like this moment of denial or maybe faith or I don't know. It was something that just gripped me that said, "No, God's going to heal her." And I prayed with the doctors, "God, you're going to heal her." And uh for the next 24 hours, we sat and waited to see what would happen.

Family came in. We sat by her bedside. And 24 hours later, November 11th, 2015, she was pronounced officially deceased, which happened to begin four years to the day that we had packed a moving van up from South Carolina from this comfortable job at this fast growing church that we were a part of to go and pursue this call to plant the church. Four years to the day. So, it left me wrestling with a whole lot. of course, wrestling with a lot of grief and anguish and sorrow and loneliness for having just lost my best friend, my soulmate, my ministry partner, confusion of what to how to sort through all of this with my son who was 15 months old.

How do I be a single dad to my son now? Um, and then trying to help my congregation figure out how do how do we sort through all of this? And then it was a national news story. So trying to navigate this like media firestorm, the eyes of a lot of people looking into judging how I was walking through this, how I was grieving. And so just feeling conflicted and all of that, but also feeling this sense of almost cause and effect is what it felt like in that was like, well, we here here I am prior to all of this.

Uh I've always been a pretty ambitious person. I've been a high achiever. If you're familiar with Inog, I'm an Inagram three and I'm the thriest of the threes. Like I'm always kicking the hill and I'm charging hard. And so wrestling with this idea of like if we had not pursued this thing that we thought God was calling us to, that we knew God was calling us to, right? If we had not done that, would this have happened? Yeah. And so here I am left with this like kind of facing myself and this feeling of guilt and shame over what had just transpired and what my my part had been in all of that.

Yeah. And and as as you were processing that guilt and shame, I'm sure there's a lot of what ifs like what if I didn't go to the gym that day? What if I would have left later or earlier? Right? Cuz if they didn't see you leave, maybe nothing would have happened. um you know what if you didn't plant the church? How did you start to process all those what ifs and the shame that just came with all that? Well, it was uh I mean initially it was nearly impossible because those you know the enemy does a really good job.

He's very crafty of planting those. Yeah. The enemy knows your story, right? He's not omnicient. He knows your story. He studied you enough. And so he's like, "Hey, I I know that if I head, it's going to send him. It's gonna make him very very comfortable to where he's going to be neutralized for being able to actually partner with God in this to not just recover and heal but also leverage and help. And so I um there were a couple of things you brought up. Yes.

What if I had left earlier or later come to the gym at all? What if I right? But also I left without locking my neighbors and there were se there were reasons for that and really weird reasons to like two weeks before this I was we were getting our house ready to sell and I was going to go and change all the locks. It is a very ironic thing that like a few weeks before this I'm going to the hardware store to buy new locks for our house so that we could get everything.

we're, you know, kind of overhauling, making sure everything's ready for this house to sell. And I call Amanda, I said, "Hey, here are these locks. Here's a couple options. Here's the price, right?" And she goes, "Devi, don't worry about that. That's unnecessary. The new owners, whoever buys our house, they're going to change the locks anyways. Like, just don't worry about. We had one key and so the key was on her key ring. She was a stay at home mom, so I would leave all the time, you know, when she stay." So, I wanted to make sure she had the key to lock the house when she left.

So there were all these reasons that compounded itself. We had just put a Christmas tree up that the day before uh because we were November Christmas tree people, right? With those kinds of I love it. You were doing it the right way. You were doing it the right way. Exactly. Right. We're listening to Christmas music November one. We're But we had the Christmas tree right in front of where our alarm keypad was. So I just that morning just happened to not like want to get behind the Christmas tree and set the alarm.

I was like, "Oh man, a mental note like I need to go and I need to find the key the key fob for the alarm." That kind of thing, right? Yeah. All of that coincidentally happened that leads up to this. So wrestling with these things, these like what if I had done this? What if I had done this? Why wasn't it me that was there? Why wasn't why weren't I the one to protect her? I wasn't and I write about this in in my book, but I had a conversation with her dad and it was a very sobering conversation.

I mean, there's a lot that kind of goes into just like having a conversation with her dad, the person who, you know, held her when she was born and and and and grew her up and instilled so many values and characteristics into her and the one who ultimately had the charge from the Lord to protect her when she was when she was young and then handed that charge off to me. Yeah. And so I remember sitting across this breakfast table with her dad just feeling so overcome with guilt and with shame and with just this feeling that I had failed him and that I had failed her.

And he he lovingly began to point out to me all of the things that looked like coincidence and all of the things that including things like this. He said, "Davey, you um one of the one of the people that came to the hospital was a funeral director that was a part of a church that he had previously pastored and just came to like show up there. And they had received a mistaken shipment of a casket. Like they didn't order it. And the casket happened to be made out of completely made out of reclaimed barnwood.

That was a So Amanda used to refinish furniture. She would like have me go pick up a dresser off of the side of the road that you know like American Pickers and someone had thrown it out, literally thrown it out saying I don't want this anymore. She would have me go pick it up and bring it home. She would restore this and she'd go take it to antique shows and she would sell it for this like ginormous profit. It was crazy. She could take something that literally we got off of for free and she would sell it for $400,500 $600.

I'm like, man, you just she was able to instill value in these things that everybody saw that was was wasted. And reclaimed barnwood was her favorite thing to work with. So, if there's any like if you're thinking about any kind of a casket that you want to lay your wife in, it was going to be for me it was going to be reclaimed barnwood. So two weeks before she passed away, this funeral director who was going to end up being the director of the funeral, the celebration of life service for Amanda, receives this mistaken shipment of reclaimed barnwood casket.

And he drove home from the hospital after we got the news that she wasn't going to make it. And he called his wife and said, "I know why we received that shipment." Wow. Ken, I could share with you story after story after story after story just like that where you can see unmistakably the hand of God and his kindness walking our family through all of this. And her dad that morning lovingly reminded me of that and said, "Davey, you can either believe that this whole thing is some random string of events, but that is a hopeless philosophy of life.

You can believe that you have the ability to control everything in your life, but that is recipe for absolute anxiety or you can trust that God is sovereign and that he is good and that he is seeing our family through all of this. You know, the the Hebrew language u Rabbi Daniel Lapen says this, I love he says that the Hebrew language is God's language. And so if the word doesn't exist in the Hebrew language, the concept doesn't exist. It's just a madeup concept. It's funny, he notes that retirement is one of those.

He's like, "Retirement's a madeup western concept, right? What what was Moses's retirement?" Well, he went up on Mount Si, looked at the promised land, and and then he went home to be with God, right? So there's no idea. But so he kind of like untangles some of this, but he says he makes this point. He goes, "One of the most profound words that there is no word for in the Hebrew language is the word coincidence." And that's because in God's economy, everything is providence. And I think there's something about not just knowing that God is sovereign, but trusting in his goodness and his kindness even when we don't understand it.

There's something about that that brings peace. Yeah. That doesn't come without a whole lot of wrestling. That doesn't come without It's not like one conversation did it for me, Ken. But that was a very pivotal moment that began to fuel some wrestling with the Lord where I had to go, God, would you just begin to show me who you are? I'm going to dismantle and deconstruct who I thought you were, but I need you to show me who you really are. And when we do that, it's amazing.

He shows he he showed me he's he's more of a protector than I thought he was. He's more of a healer than I thought he was. He's a better father than I thought he was. Like when I begin to wrestle with him through these things, I begin to realize I begin to see who my who I am for like who I am, you know, in light of who he is, both in the things that he says about me where he says, "You are chosen. You're a son.

You are favored. You I love you. My my my um my purposes are on you." And in the things that like he said to Job where he's like, "Hey, where were you when I hung Orion in the sky?" Like who who are you to like tell me how this universe should operate? Did you write the the laws of the universe, David? Like, so you begin to be you feel both humbled by it and you feel like this beautiful like like I don't want to say bigness in the sense of like ego, but bigness in the sense of like, man, God loves me.

Yeah. All at the same time. And that right there is what began to start unraveling for me the the whatifs and some of the shame that I was experiencing. So, so David, you know, there there's so much to unpack there and thank you one for sharing your story, right? Like I'm I'm sure some people listening to this like, "How can he be so chill uh show sharing the story?" Well, one, you've gone 10 years of just healing. Yeah. Right. And sharing it all the time. Yeah.

Right. Like I was forced to share this, Ken, early on. And what I realized is like God laid out a path of cognitive behavioral therapy for me that I didn't know because here I am. I'm preaching. I'm sharing it. I'm sharing it. I'm sharing it. And you I'm sure you encourage your your audience this way, right? It's like, hey, if you get out in the open, if you expose to light the things in the dark, it one, it doesn't have power over you anymore. It's way more powerful when it's hidden.

When you get out into the light, man, it becomes it's like, this doesn't have power over me anymore. So you So it actually becomes easier and easier to share it. Now it's still hurts, still heavy, but I'm stronger. It's not that it's like less heavy. It's just no, I become stronger to be able to carry it and to carry it with a purpose now. Yeah. And and how did you start to move towards that? And and and I want to talk about moving from pain to purpose here in a second, but there are people who are listening to this and they might not have lost a wife.

Some may have lost a wife, right, and a child. Um, but for those who are listening to this, we've all gone through some pain. We've all gone through some suffering. And we're wrestling through the question, God, how could you have allowed this to happen to me? Yeah. I mean, I like I I was sharing this with you, Dave. I've shared this on the podcast numerous times. I was sexually abused. And I remember when I was a young kid, I was like, God, I was just a child.

Why would you let this happen to me? Yeah. And so, so cognitively, right, we know God is sovereign. We know God is loving. We know God is good, but still it's hard to comprehend it on the practical side of things, right? When it's like, wait, we got hurt. How would you help a guy who's listening to this be like, yeah, that's me right now. I'm struggling to trust that God is kind and good like you're talking about. Yeah. Well, I think the question of God, how could you allow this to happen to me is a very difficult question to wrap our heads around.

Yeah. And so what I encourage people to do instead is to first ask the question, God, where were you when this happened? And what is your heart over what has happened to me? because I think we begin to start to see a little bit more about who God is and um how his heart breaks for the pain and the suffering and the sin of this world more than our heart could ever break for it. It it breaks so much that he sent his son Jesus to go through the most excruciating suffering that any of us could imagine.

Talk about your worst nightmare. My pain that I've gone through pales in comparison to what Jesus went through for us. The injustice that I experience, although it's extremely unjust, pales in comparison to the perfect God man dying a criminal's death. Yeah. So when I begin to see that God's answer to us is not some kind of explanation. God's answer to us as incarnation is saying, "Hey, I'm going to walk with you in this suffering and I'm going to endure suffering to the extent that you could never imagine on your behalf so that you can walk in freedom no matter what the suffering is that befalls your life." That's when it begins to peel back some of those questions because then the question shifts.

It doesn't become like, "How could you allow this to happen?" It's like, "God, where are you?" Yeah. Yeah. That's why Psalm 23:4 says, "Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil. For why? For you are with me." Yeah. Your rod and your staff, they comfort me. And so, you know, I can like break down theologically some things. There's still a lot of things that are left in mystery, which is as it should be because our finite minds cannot comprehend the ways of God.

His ways are much higher than our ways. No eye is seen, no ears heard, no mind can fathom what he has in store for us. But I can kind of like parse out and break down theologically like, okay, did God caused this to happen? Did he allow this to happen? What's the interplay between the two? I can say some kind of pathy phrases that are true but maybe not really helpful. Like, hey, God doesn't always intervene to prevent things from happening, but he always intervenes to produce something good out of it.

But, but the way you get to those true phrases is by way of wrestling and asking those questions that say, "Where are you, God?" Yeah. and and what is your heart for this right here? Can I'll never forget I was coaching these when we first started the ministry. I I started out just coaching people. I had no idea what it would look like. God told us step away from the church, keep doing the podcast. We've been doing the Nothing is Wasted podcast since 2017. And in 2019, he said, "Step away from the church, keep doing the podcast, and figure out what it looks like to make nothing is wasted ministries into a full-fledged ministry." And I'm like, "What the heck?

I don't have no idea." Like, I don't know. I can't support my family on a podcast. Like, you know this, you don't monetize a podcast. You pour everything you can into it. Cost you money, right? Yeah. So, I'm like, okay. So, I started coaching people. I had this one couple that I started coaching. They lost their son to suicide. Uh, I think it was 19-year-old son, 17-year-old, some something around there, right around that 18-year-old age. and they didn't have a real robust relationship with God, but they were seeking and searching and they just were like so confused.

And I remember feeling just completely inept. I'm like, I don't know how to help them. What am I doing right now? Right? Like, who do I'm not the expert in this. And so, I literally I threw up a Hail Mary. I go, here's what I want you to do between this session and next session. I want you to go and ask God, God, where were you when my son took his life? And then I'm like, "Dear Lord, please show up. Show up." Like, you're like, "I got a week to figure this out now." Like, I don't know what to do right here, you know?

And so they come back the next session and she's got tears in her eyes. She said, "Dave, you didn't know this, but between last session, this session was our son's birthday." And I woke up that night from a dream. She said, "Now, this is going to blow so many people's theology out of the water, but this is how God is. He blows it up sometimes, right? She goes, "In my dream, my son was sitting in the driver's seat of a car and Jesus was in the back seat.

They had found their son when he committed he committed suicide in a car." She said, "But the crazy thing was it wasn't his car. I don't know. It was a white sedan." She said she woke up, told her husband about the dream, and her husband goes, "I did I've never shared this with you, but the car that he was found in was not his car. It was a rental car that was a white city. She said, "Davey, I know that Jesus was there." And I can't theologically break that down for her.

I can't give her an explanation, but what she experienced is that Jesus cares for her, was there for her, and is speaking to her so personally that she has no shadow of a doubt like she she's like, I believe firmly that God is going to do something in me that's going to heal me and carry us through this. And sometimes that's all we need to know. Yeah. You know, um Davey, we were talking about my story a little bit before here and and one of the things that I have wrestled with a lot of men who struggled with abuse is that uh a big issue is that they struggle with isolation.

They feel like they're all alone in their suffering. And that's one of the big side effects of of suffering, right? We just feel like no one understand us. No one knows what's going on. Like who can possibly know? And I remember when I thought about committing suicide and I was getting ready to end my life, I asked those questions like, "God, where were you? Like, why weren't you here?" Like, I feel so alone. And when God miraculously intervene, so when you share those stories, I'm like, "Dude, I have so many stories of my own and like stories of clients that like it it just happens." I just remember God miraculously, dude, I cannot tell you even theologically how to still explain this.

And I have degrees on it, right? Um, but he came into my room and he's like, "Ken, like it was Joshua 19, right? Do not be discouraged. Do not be dismayed. For the Lord your God is with you wherever you go." And it was the first time I felt like God was with me. And when God's presence is with you, it allows you to go through that suffering and be able to to deal with it. And very similar to what you were saying, we could have all the theological answers, the apologetical arguments for it, but at the end of the day, we don't need an answer.

We need a person. That's it. And and that person is Jesus. And man, like that's how I started finding healing. It sounds like that's how you started to find healing and and people started to find healing with the Nothing is wasted coaching program. Right. And that's what I want people to hear is that like you need to experience the person of Jesus in the midst of your suffering and that can be sometimes the hardest thing. Yeah. Um so good theology is so helpful. It's good. It gives us some it gives us some like framework for how we understand this world, how we understand God, and how we understand ourselves.

We talk about in the pain and purpose course that we have our introductory session is like if a loving God exists, how could pain and suffering exist and what do I do about mine? Right. Yeah. And we talk about what I call the four perpetrators of pain. And then we talk about God's plan for pain. And we talk about like here's the And we try to bring those tough cookies to the bottom shelf so that everyone can understand it and grasp it. But you nailed it.

Like that really the answer God's answer to pain is Jesus. Yeah. And and you know what's crazy is that sometimes it could feel like that's just the Sunday school answer. Yeah. But it's in the in those moments that Sunday school answer it has to be the most profound thing. And not like a abstract like, hey, go just read a book about Jesus. Like you actually need to experience Jesus, right? And and those are two very different things. Yeah. Um and and for you, Dave, I'm I'm curious as you started to walk through this, you experienced the person of Jesus.

He started to walk you through um how did you shift the gears from your pain to purpose? Um it started pretty early for me on my journey partially because I was a pastor of a church. Yeah. So it you know three months later I was back preaching to my congregation. And I I'm not I'm not saying that's prescriptive. I'm just saying that's descriptive. I'm not necessarily suggesting that that's what I would do if I were someone. I didn't have a manual for this. I just was trying to walk this out.

And I actually I actually remember very where I felt like I was the first week that this happened was I felt like I was the disciples in John 6 where Jesus lays this hard teaching down and everybody walks away and he looks at the disciples and goes are you not going to walk away too and they go where are we going to go you have the words of life and that's what I felt like I said I was like Lord I am hanging on to you I have no idea what you're doing in this and I don't know if I trust you right now like you have but I but I'm choosing to because I've seen you show up in my life faithfully all the way up to this like for the first 30 years of my life and I'm and this has been so jarring and so dislodging but but I don't know where else to go.

So I'm going to say yes to whatever you put in front of me and so you just open up whatever door. So God laid out this like healing path for me that I can't take credit for. It's not like I strategically went and said okay hey chat GPT what's the best way to you know it's like it's like God you do that whatever it is. And so I remember feeling this stirring three months into it where I was like there's so much that I felt like the enemy had robbed from me, like taken territory from me.

And I felt like the only way that I could re-engage that with a like masculine warrior spirit because I mean I felt all the feelings of rage and wanting revenge and all of that stuff. But the Lord reminded me that that battle is not in the natural or the carnal. It's in the spiritual. And the best way for me to get revenge in this situation to actually undo the work of the enemy is to begin fighting the battle in the spiritual by disrupting the real enemy's work.

And the only way to disrupt the real enemy's work is to bring life and you know call people into life not to death not to perpetuate this thing that has happened to me but to like do the opposite. So I just started I was like I got to get up and preach. And I don't know if I have answers. I'm not putting everything in like tying everything up with a bow at the end of my messages. I'm actually like leaving a lot more questions than there were answers.

But as I begin to do that, I begin to feel a lot of purpose because I begin to see other people come forward and go, "Hey, I also am hurting." And it's unrelated to you, Dave. It's my own story. And God began to grow my empathy for other people because I could I could understand how they were feeling. And it got me out of my pain and started looking at like the pain of this world and going, "Man, God, would you do something about this?" And God's like, "Yeah, I'm I'm calling you to help me do something about this." Right.

And so that began to fuel this purpose that and you know, many of your listeners are familiar with Victor Victor Frankle, right? The Holocaust survivor. Yeah. He's a contemporary of um Sigman Freud who Sigman Freud said that man's chief aim is to avoid pain and pursue pleasure. And Victor Frankle said, "No, there's something beyond that, transcendent of that that like carries man through the darkest of moments, and that's purpose." And I experienced that the more I began to help other people out of my pain, even if I wasn't fully healed, the more that I began to actually heal because purpose was was fueling a lot of that healing.

And so it started early. I was started just kind of sharing what God was doing in my life, watching other people be healed by that, watching other people be encouraged by that. And then about a year into that, um, as I was meeting these incredible people along the way and along the journey, I was blogging at the time and there were it was, you know, God was gracious. He was there's about tens of thousands of people reading that blog. But I realized, man, I can talk faster than I can write.

I don't feel like I can keep up with updating people on how West and I are doing in my writing. and I've met all these incredible people along the journey that I want I want you guys to hear from them because that's who I'm borrowing faith from. So, we started the Nothing is Wasted podcast and that just continued to fuel purpose for me because I would people would write in and they would, you know, as they started listening, they're like, "These stories encourage me so much." And I'm like, "This is amazing." Like, we really do overcome by the blood of the lamb and the word of our testimony as Revelation 12 says.

So that just kind of began to there was these aha moments through that was like there is something about moving into a place of purpose that doesn't take the pain away but it does help to begin to be a salve for that pain and it creates a resilience and strength like a divine resilience and strength in you that helps you carry that pain and carry it differently. Yeah. So and I love that. I I love that, David, because I I talked to a lot of the guys about this, too, where it's like, hey, sometimes we think about healing from like abuse or if they're struggling with pornography, they're like, I just got to get rid of this.

And the answer is not always like, hey, I'm going to stop this and do nothing. It's like, no, I need to stop it and move towards something. Like, take all that energy and and go into being on mission for God and being on purpose. And if you're not doing that, it you just easily fall back into either your your sinful addictions or you allow that pain to me to overcome you, right? And and that's why you need that. And as you're you know, as you're thinking about this, and the time of the recording, uh you and I were talking about this earlier, today marks um the day before Charlie Kirk was assassinated.

And there are a lot of people who are hearing this and when we're talking about death. Yeah. You know, many times we think about death as an abstract, right? We see the statistics, it's a number and we're like, "Okay, yeah, that person died." But I think this feels way more personal cuz a lot of people saw uh Charlie Kirk's, you know, platform. They probably watched his stuff. They were encouraged by it. And then some of us, unfortunately, saw the actual video. And now that's etched in our minds.

And for you, you're like, "Yeah, I have etched in my mind the death of my late wife." And now, now Charlie, how do you speak to people who right now there's all that rage? You know, you were talking about initially you had this rage, this anger. You're like, I want to fight and you don't know where to take it. Yeah, there's a lot of people on social media, I mean, saying some nasty stuff and and you're just like, God, how do I respond to this? So, how do you help people heal in this moment that there's so much emotionally charged um anger and some of it righteous anger because we just saw someone murdered, right, and who is trying to do the work of God.

Yeah. Well, there's a few things. Um, I think you you definitely spoke to it right there, Ken, that we become so desensitized to these things. Yeah. You know, we watch movies and I mean, I'm just as guilty as everybody, right? I'm, you know, watching different movies that I told my wife this morning, she asked me, I told you this before. She said, "How are you feeling about this?" I haven't up to this point, I haven't made any kind of public statement or written anything on my socials or anything.

watching everybody else combing through my feed, seeing everybody else post different things and watching both the encouraging things that people are saying as well as the vitrial that people are are throwing and heaping on to this whole thing and it breaks my heart. And so Christie asked me, she says, "How you feeling about this right now, especially given like with what you've experienced, springing anything up?" I said, "It's bringing a whole lot up right now." You know, I told you this, Ken, so you guys who are listening to this, I'm kind of processing this out loud.

I haven't really constructed any kind of like a an actual statement, but I'd rather process this kind of stuff out loud. Honestly, I think it's really healthy, too. Um, we've become desensitized to this so much that we forget people are human. We forget people have very real experiences, real lives, real hurts, real real dreams, real hopes. And so all of a sudden this kind of a thing becomes a lever or a pawn for our presuppositions, our agendas or our political beliefs. And you know, Ken, after Amanda passed away, I had a Congress person uh reach out to me and ask me to be their special guest at the State of the Union address that year.

And I was like, "Wow, that sound that's like what an honor." You know, like I mean that's kind of a bucket list item in general, right? It's just to be there at the State of the Union address. Doesn't matter who was in the presidency at the time. Like I wouldn't have cared. Just be in that room at the State of the Union address. That'd be amazing. And the initial the initial reach out to me at first I thought was like a very empathetic, we just want to wrap our arms around you.

We're so sorry for what you've gone through. And then I find out later that there was actually a political agenda involved that they wanted to bring anybody in who had just experienced um they were victims of gun violence. And I don't need to like talk about my stance on gun violence and this that's not what this is all about. Yeah. But I but I ended up declining that invitation respectfully and I told them I said hey my story and most importantly Amanda's story is not going to be used as a pawn for some kind of a political agenda.

Doesn't matter what side of the argument there is because Amanda was an unbelievably special woman. And I think that as human beings, as Americans, we've forgotten just the dignity of humans, that God has created all of us. I'm going through this with my kids in homeschool right now. It's amazing. We're talking about inalienable rights. We're talking about natural rights. We're literally I'm leading them up to the American Revolution right now in homeschool. And I'm being reminded of just the IMO day that he's created each one of us with that we are there.

We are sacred beings. And when we forget that about other people, that's what causes us to descend into this hatred and this vitrial and not be able to actually sit down and have civil discourse, but to resort to violence. It just is so uh it it's so uncivilized just from a pure like civilization is so univilized. And then to watch the comments and see different things like regardless of what you think about Charlie Kurt, regardless of whether you agreed with him or not, regardless of to what extent you agreed with him or not, like you're never going to fully agree with anybody, doesn't matter to what extent you agree with him, but the fact that anybody would post things like he deserved it.

What? Like that kind of stuff just makes me so angry on one hand because I've experienced Ken, I've experienced my wife now being on the tail end of people commenting things to her about coming out of their conspiracies that I was involved in my wife's murder. Wow. And saying I and literally saying to her, I hope that you're next. Dude, they don't know her. They don't. And I'm like, how could anybody be so unhuman and so full of hatred and hurt that they would for one think that, but then to actually like post that or comment that?

And so I think that across the board it's just like the I look at these things I'm like is there is there any hope for us to be able to get back to a place of like civility? when when this kind of stuff is going on. And it makes me go, "Wow, we really need a savior." Yeah. Wow. We really need Jesus to step in and make all of this right. Like it's not we're not It's policy is not going to do it. Doesn't matter who's sitting in the White House.

Like honest it does not ma like do I have political opinions? Do I you know am I engaged in that? Absolutely. I'm very engaged in that stuff. But like the problem is is most people are like what's your political opinion? what do you want to like and they go for that and you're like never mind like never mind those things let's talk about being human let's talk about just like holding up upholding the dignity of all human lives the sanctity of life and I'm like this just it just absolutely blows my mind that this has happened and that people would heap on to this and resort to the lowest common denominator with any kind of comments other than Man, we're praying for Charlie's family, his wife, his kids.

We hold them up in our thoughts and our prayers. And just remember that they are hurting people right now. Yeah. So, those are kind of my unprocessed thoughts on it. I'm sure I'll have a lot more thoughts, but I do know this that the light shines the brightest in the darkness. And the only way for us to actually begin to push back against darkness is not going to be fighting fire with fire because hurt people hurt people. It just perpets 100%. Right? It's not going to be that.

Hurt people can also heal people. And that's what you're doing on this platform is you're trying to help people who have acted out of their hurt, right? who have like who have like they're they're they're they're experiencing a lot of hurt and so they're we're resorting to out of our own shame out of our own we're resorting to maladaptive coping mechanisms that go no we can actually be healed and we can heal others out of this. We can become whole again. We can really like despite what's been done to us and what we've done, we can actually be a people that brings life and brings hope into this world.

But the only way we're gonna do it is fighting with different kinds of weapons. Yeah. And and that that Davey is so important because I think you know you say earlier like we're in a spiritual battle and I I was like with you. I was texting some friends of mine earlier this morning. I was like I am so mad right now for what's happening and then how the people are reacting. And I I think I saw it in other social media posts before and other when other people die, right?

It's like the the vitriol and I'm just like wa everybody calm down, you know, like grieve. Someone just died, right? And and this one hits a little bit harder for us because he's a believer. He was doing something that uh for a lot of us we we we thought he was standing for truth, right? And a friend of mine was like, Ken, remember we are in a spiritual battle. And if anything, I think this is waking us up. It is. and to say, "Hey, remember there are demonic forces trying to steal, kill, and destroy you.

There were demonic forces trying to steal, kill, and destroy you when you were a church planter and you thought that like you guys are finally making momentum." Yeah. and Amanda loses her life and now God like but God has used that, you know, God like that's the crazy part is that God has used her death of and and the death of your your unborn son um or child to say, "Hey, you know what? I'm going to double down on nothing is wasted." And millions and millions of people have been listening to the podcast, finding healing, finding hope, finding encouragement.

Man, this is this is what we're called to do. We can't, like you said earlier, we can't fight fire with fire. And I I have to remind myself in this season right now is like, what would God want us to do? We have to love our enemies. We have to forgive. We have to pray. Like, uh, I I wrote a post that I said, um, I want to pray for God's judgment. And this is like so hard for me to say um right now, but it's like pray for God's judgment for for all these murderers that either they feel the wrath of God or that they feel the mercies of God and that they come to salvation.

I think a lot of believers right now are like wrath all day long. Let's go. Wrath, wrath, wrath. But like, are we praying for their their souls to to truly come to know Jesus and say, you know what, everyone can come to saving faith in Christ? That's right. And if if we're not there in our hearts, too, as believers, like, man, there's something that we got to keep keep in check. That's so true. Have places that we have to be healed. Think about Paul. I mean, Paul co-signed on the martyrdom of Steven when he was Saul.

So I do I agree like you know I've shared with this before several time I speak I'm like hey I pray that the men who killed Amanda would come to know Christ. Yeah. And people are like how could you do that? Right? I'm like okay well hold on. Let's just step back and let's just think about what Jesus said. He said love your enemies. Pray for those who persecute you. He said when they're thirsty give them something to drink. When they're hungry give them something to eat.

This is them in prison. like this is the upside down kingdom that he came to bring to remind us of the humanity of all things. He also said that hey the same hatred that's in your heart is the same hatred that fueled the murder of my wife, right? Like it's the same sin. It's not Yeah. You know, and so the so for us to forget that it's like air but for the grace of God here go I is just lumping us back in that category of just being judgmental and self-righteous which is just as bad.

So, so what we have to pray for is exactly what you said. Like God is the ultimate judge and arbiter of all cases. He sees the heart of all men and women and like so he's going to fully and finally restore. And his justice is restorative justice. It's not retributive justice. It's not tip for tat. It's not eye for eye. It's restorative. He restores all things. Sometimes that means that he brings somebody back because he's patient as first Peter says. He wishes that nobody would perish.

He's not slow in keeping his promises. Some sometimes that means he brings somebody into a place of mercy and grace where they lose themselves and realize that that they need they need to walk in salvation. And sometimes they don't. Sometimes they're turned over to an irreparable mind. We don't get the opportunity to be the judges in that case. We're not the arbiter in that case. He is. And so I think that's what we are agents of reconciliation is what scripture tells us. As believers, we're ambassadors.

And so we carry the ministry of reconciliation. We don't carry the ministry of judgment. Now, we've been given this by the IMO day, we've been given this justice gene inside of us that causes us to rise up and say that's not right. And come to the protection of other people. Yes. But what we do with that determines whether it's going to be righteous justice or whether it's going to be unrighteous justice. And the way that we operate, we have to operate in upside down kingdom. We have to operate with weapons of righteousness.

as Paul wrote to the Corinthians. So, so we we as believers have to remember that the kingdom that we're a part of is one that restores even the furthest away from God. And if he can do that for Saul who was killing Christians and then on the road to Damascus got completely turned around and he became the biggest proponent of Christianity, spreading the gospel, then he can do that for any of us. And this is the story of God. He has always used what the enemy means for evil and turned it for good.

That's why Timothy Keller says God gives evil enough space that it ultimately terminates itself. Like the very act of evil the enemy tries to inflict, God uses that very thing to undo the work of the enemy happens. It's happened all throughout history. It's happened all throughout scripture and it will continue to happen in the narrative that we play out. And we get to be a part of that if we partner with God to take back this story. Amen. Amen. Davey, I think you and I could talk for a long time on this topic.

But, um, I appreciate your insights. I think hopefully this is helpful for people both if you're grieving, right, a personal loss, if you're suffering, and then also if you're like right now just just dealing with the the the pain and grief of seeing Charlie die. Um, as we wrap up, you know, we think about death. Death is so unnatural for so many people uh and for the world. Death is death is part of the fall. How would you just encourage people if they are struggling right now with pain and suffering?

What's a good next step? Any final words that you want to just share with them uh as we wrap up our time here? Yeah, I know that it can be extremely excruciating to lean into that pain, but I think one of the biggest things that as men we tend to do is we tend to either stuff that pain or suppress it or we form something some kind of as you would call maladaptive coping mechanism, some kind of a an idol in our life, a dependency on something that we think like takes away that pain.

It's very easy for us to whether there are good things, bad things, or just inherently neutral things, it doesn't matter. My encouragement would be to lean into that pain, to address it, to confront it, to not try to numb from it because you can't selectively numb. That if you if you numb the pain that you're going through, you're going to numb the the same receptors, pain and joy, right? You're going to numb the joy that you want to experience eventually. Yeah. You won't always be in this place and in this season.

A lie from the enemy says it will always feel like this. It won't always feel like that. and a lie from the enemy says this is you. This is what you always do. And that's not true. Because Jesus has put, if you are a believer, the same spirit that raised him from the dead inside of you. Which means that he empowers you to walk through all of this to confront every single one of those demons that are facing you right now. And I mean demons in the sense of the things you have to confront of your past.

And you can confront those and you can face those and they will not hold power over you as you confront them. And as you do that, you will you will realize the strength that he has emboldened you with, the grace that he has empowered you with, and you will be a completely different person. And you will be a person that you are proud of in the truest and best sense of the term because you're going, man, look what God has brought me through. You won't be the hollow empty shell of yourself that you used to be.

But you got to lean into it because out of death, dying of the old self, comes a new self. And that new self is waiting for you. Amen. Amen. David, thank you so much for that. Uh what's the best way for people to reach you if they're like, I need your help or I just need to hear more of your wisdom. What's the best way? Yeah, we have the Nothing is Wasted podcast. We share stories. We we're about like almost 400 now. Um share stories of people who've gone through hard things and God shows up for them and they just get testimony of that.

And then nothing is wasted is nothing wasted.com. Nothing iswasted ministries is our is our ministry. nothing's wasted.com. And uh what one of the biggest things we have is a course called pain to purpose. It's a 12-week curriculum. We launch it in churches all over the country, college campuses. We're in some correctional facilities, but that's what I spend most of my time doing now is helping these organizations launch this course to provide a space where people can experience healing and wholeness no matter what they've gone through.

Whether it's loss of a loved one or whether it's childhood trauma or addiction or whatever it is, we take the common denominators of pain and a healing journey and couple that with scripture and we bring that forward to help people on that pathway. Um, so nothingweast.com, there's all kinds of things. There's coaches there. We've got about three dozen coaches that can coach with you, coach you one-on-one. I don't coach people anymore because we've got people who do it way better than I do because you heard earlier, I'm just like, God, you're going to have to have a dream or something.

But we have people who are trauma certified. They're trained to be able to coach people one-on-one. And what's distinct about it, Ken, is that we help people and we match them story for story. So if someone is like lost a child, we connect them with our child loss coach. They've been there. They've gone through it. They understand what you're going through. You said this earlier. You said many of us believe we're the only ones going through what we're going through. isolated, but scripture tells us 1 Peter 5, let us not forget that there are saints all over the world suffering in the same way that we are.

And so, we have the power of technology. And so, we've just decided to leverage the truth of God's word and the power of technology to connect people with other people who are going through the same thing they're going through. And so, we'd love to help you get connected if that's the case. So, I love it. I love it. Nothingwasted.com. I'll put all that stuff in the show notes. Davey, thank you so much again for for being on the podcast, sharing your story, and I hope this finds healing uh to many of you men who are listening to that.

And as always, I remember to tell you, make sure you kill shame, stand strong, and be on mission. Hope you guys have a great day, and God bless. Thanks for joining us today. If you found this episode helpful, make sure to subscribe and leave a review. Remember, killing shame isn't just about breaking free from the past. It's about walking boldly into the future God has for you.