KO: Well, Hello friends, and welcome to Week 3 of our Dangerous Prayers Online Bible Study.
My name is Kayley Olson and I’ll be your host today and I’m joined with author and
pastor, Craig Groeschel. Welcome!
CG: Yeah, glad to be here Kayley.
KO: So glad to have you here today. Well before we dive into our content, I just want to point
out for everybody who is watching that Week 3 of the study, notoriously, with Online Bible
Studies is usually the week that people decide whether or not they’re going to keep going
or drop off because it’s kind of like building a habit. 21 days, Week 3, and Dangerous Prayers
is not easy to read. It’s a hard book to walk through so if there’s somebody kind
of teeter-tottering on whether or not they want to keep going, what do you have to say
to them?
CG: Well, I agree with you 100% that so often when you’re starting something new that
there is a point of resistance and especially on dangerous prayers. Most people don’t
wake up and say, “I think I’m going to pray something crazy today”. Especially
as we move into the prayer ‘Break Me’, which is the one that just in my experience
people often have the most hesitancy to pray. I would just say that on the other side of
difficult things, that’s where you find the true richness, the true intimacy, so you’ve
gone this far, don’t stop now! This is where it gets really, really good and with a little
bit of persistence and pursuit of generally who God is, He can do something special in
us, so I believe on the other side and in the weeks to come could be where we really
do have breakthroughs and a passionate pursuit of knowing who God is.
KO: That is so good. Well, I’m glad that you brought up that we’re in ‘Break Me’
this week because we were in ‘Search Me’ the last two week,s which that’s hard enough
in and of itself and then now this is even more difficult. But in your book you talk
about the fact that ‘Break Me’ is scary and hard and you say “What are we losing
by clinging to our comfort”, so speak into that a little bit.
CG: Well, interestingly enough, Kayley, so often I think when people think about God
and our prayer lives, we tend to think that He’s kind of like the cosmic genie that
gives us what we want. And that we want a life of comfort, we want a life of ease but
when you think about it how often do things like comfort, prosperity, and ease tend to
produce the worst in us. And yet sometimes the trials and the hardships produce the best.
And so if we really want to be formed in the image of Christ, if we really want to grow
in our faith, if we really want to walk in victory, sometimes the path there is not the
easiest path. And Jesus didn’t say come and be comfortable and follow me. He said
come and deny yourself and then you can follow Me. So, I think if people can have the faith
to recognize that sometimes the best blessings are not on the other side of that which is
easy, but that which stretches us, that which challenges us, convicts us, then we can really
walk in something that is not just easy but can be rich and meaningful.
KO: Yeah, I 100% resonated with what you said and that’s a perfect segue into my story,
and so I’m just gonna jump right in and kind of share what the Lord has been teaching
me through reading your book and it was interesting when Kendra asked me to do this, Week 3 with
you, God kind of said yes to me and I don’t know if you’ve ever had that moment where
the Lord is like, yeah you should do this, but internally I’m thinking oh, gosh do
I really want to share this? But I’m so glad that she asked me and I’m so glad that
I’m right here because I’ve been able to kind of side by side compare what I’ve
been walking through the past 13 months alongside what your book says and I’ve been able to
identify this is where He searched me, this is where I’ve been broken, even though I
haven’t necessarily said, “Break me” because I think He’ll do it whether or not
you really ask Him to do it. So in your book, you write, “Could there be something on
the other side of suffering that somehow makes it worthwhile”, which is what you said earlier
before we got started, but in essence that’s what I’ve had to cling to and so over the
past 13 months my husband and I have been just asking God to help us have a family and
that in itself is a dangerous prayer. Because you have six kids, you probably know, and
it’s weird because on one side it’s a dangerous prayer because kids are scary, and
they bring on hardships in and of themselves, but it’s also a very normal prayer to pray.
Right, like if you’ve been married for a while and you feel like this is our next step,
then God loves kids, surely this is all going to work out right? And I didn’t think that
it would take this long, and I didn’t think that I would still be sitting here 13 months
later and I’m the same. I think I imagined myself this morning, like on a day like today,
dropping said kid off at daycare and then coming here to tell you how it all tied up
in a nice neat bow. But, it hasn’t, and I do want to pause right here and there’s
probably someone watching right now who is going through alot longer of a period of infertility
than I am, or your struggle might be way harder than mine is. But for everybody who is going
through suffering, this is your first time through that journey and so 13 months still
feels like a really long time for me, so wherever you are there is so much compassion that Proverbs
has for you. But before I go into what God has shown me in this process I do want to
go back to ‘Search Me’ because I found specifically what God showed me through that
part of your book. I think you were writing about when your wife Amy got sick after giving
birth to one of your children, and you closed that chapter with “what fears are you withholding
from God”. And this is one of those, like, mind-blowing
moments where for me the idea of withholding something from God kind of looked like this
wall that I had built up between me and God. Not necessarily to try to keep him out, but
to protect my heart from being broken. Because, nobody wants that, I mean like you said it
earlier, nobody wants to invite brokenness into their lives and so I think I built this
wall up and it was kind of like I just gave myself low expectations, and I was like Ok,
God, anytime, we’re good, I’m good when I don’t know what I was thinking that would
actually help but I built this wall up between me and God but then I also did it with people
who were close to me, or people who didn’t really know what was going on and they would
say, “How are you, how can I pray for you?” and I would joke it off and say like, “I’m
good, we’re good, we’re fine”, which you know typically that’s a sign that somebody
doesn’t really want to talk about what’s going on in their heart and I said stuff like
that because I was just fearful the worst would happen and in a sense, it kind of has
because I’m still here in the middle, kind of waiting and I was just afraid that if I
exposed my heart’s desires to the Lord, and to my friends that I would break. Which
is so funny because the prayer in the book is ‘Break Me’. And it’s just gonna happen
and I just didn’t want to be the girl that made a big deal out of this. Like, I didn’t
want to be the one who everybody knew was broken or who everyone knew was going through
something because I don’t want to be labeled as that, I mean I still want to be Kayley,
and I still want to be joyful and so I just kind of shoved things aside. But in your book
in the ‘Break Me’ section, you wrote, “when you’re broken, you’ll know it,
there will be no question, you will not have to ask”. And so, in the past 13 months there
have been a few very distinct occasions where it felt like God took a cannonball to that
wall and I remember one specific moment, I mean whenever you’re a couples years in
your marriage, all your friends are kind of on the same path as you are if they feel led,
and so simultaneously I’m going through this and I’m throwing baby showers for my
friends, but I’m good, I’m fine, and then one of my friends had just had the most beautiful
baby boy and my husband and I went over to go see them and I was holding her little boy
and my husband and her husband walked out of the room and all of a sudden, I don’t
know if you’ve ever had a moment like this, you’re a man, I don’t know how tender
you are, but sometimes I can be very tender, but again, wall.
CG: I can be surprisingly tender, don’t let the black jacket fool you.
KO: I mean you do look a little tough in that jacket, but whenever I was holding him it
was just like weeping, I mean like uncontrollable, instant. And I was like, what is going on?
I’m strong, we’re strong, we’re good. And I remember in that moment and a couple
of other moments where the Lord just distinctly said you have got to let Me in. Like I have
got to break this down between Me and you, because I need all of your heart. I need access
to all of you and I want to be there when you’re hurting. You could have cried after
month one and I still would have been there, you don’t even have to wait to be disappointed
that this still hasn’t happened. And with my friends, you wrote in your book - we connect
through common struggles, like what was I doing by keeping the people out who wanted
to know what was going on most deeply in my heart. I mean that didn’t help me and that
certainly didn’t help them because me saying, oh, I’m okay, doesn’t really tell them
how to help me and then you never know too whenever you open up to somebody else they
might be going through the same thing too and then it becomes a catalyst for conversation.
And so again, I just don’t know in retrospect after reading this and really processing through,
I don’t know what I was hiding and I’m so thankful that the Lord has just been gracious
enough to show me that I was, and He’s given me permission to, I guess just be sad but
be hopeful and change the way that I pray about this situation but then everything in
my life because it showed me not only is this something that I’m trying to control my
emotions about, but what else in my life am I trying to pray my prayers or do things my
way but it’s had to shift in my heart, and in the way that I live, to just be like ok,
I can’t, and I trust You and You’ve got me and 13 months is fine, a year is fine,
2 years, whatever it is, just help me know that on the other side of this it’s going
to be worthwhile. And so, I wish that it tied up in a bow and I think maybe there might
be some other people who share their stories while we’re on set with you that they are
on the other side of it. But that’s kind of where I am, but I think reading your book
and going back through and seeing your own personal experiences has helped me a lot to
just identify where I am and resonate with what you said at the very beginning that God
doesn’t invite us to live a life of comfort. He wants to work through really hard things
and so wanted to give you an opportunity to speak if you had any thoughts.
CG: Well, first of all my heart goes out to you. And, we were, I think it was 13 months
in, without being able to conceive as well, and so I remember very distinctly that feeling
of “where are you God? What’s wrong with us?” And 13 months is a long time. I know
there’s some people watching right now that if that are waiting for something longer and
really painful situations and it’s so interesting that oftentimes when we’re there we do tend
to withdraw and we’ll put up, like you said, we’ll kind of put up a wall between us and
God or even the people around us, and I think that’s the problem with not being broken
is we at that point we still think we can handle things on our own. And we’re not
designed to handle things on our own. We’re designed to need God and one of the ways God
reveals Himself to us is through His loving people. And that’s the, I mean it’s horrible,
no one wants to end up where you are at this place, where you feel like you’re on the
edge of tears and if someone jiggles you they’re going to fall out. And that’s kind of almost
an ever present feeling, you don’t want that, but when you do let Him shake you just
enough to when the tears do fall,what you’re met with a God who comforts those who mourn
and you experience Him in a real way. And the, the beauty of it is the people who come
around you and just hurt with you and not even like I’m going to give you answer like
yes, and you’re going to be like us and you’re going to have six kids one day, you
know, it might be, you know the truth is, none of us know what’s going to happen on
the other side. But the fact that you can just come together and be with each other
in the presence of a very real, very comforting God, it’s one of the most painfully powerful
things that you can imagine. You know, when I taught this prayer to the church, my daughter
Mandy said she was going to pray that prayer, and on the other side of it she got sick and
now it’s four years later and she’s still sick and it’s just like your situation there’s
no knowing the end of it. And it’s been the most brutal, we’ve cried more tears
than you can imagine over her situation and I asked her recently, would you change it,
if you could undo it and go back to just the normal life, would you change it? And she
just, through the tears, she said no, Dad I wouldn’t you know she said it’s been
really hard I wouldn’t wish this on anybody but I’ve never been closer to God and had
the support of my community. And so it’s through the brokenness that she found the
treasure that she might not have otherwise.
KO: I resonate with that so much too, and it’s like you can resist the brokenness
and you can be mad and you can be bitter, or I don’t want to say you can welcome it
with open arms, but you can just expect it and know God’s going to meet you, and the
hard thing about your book I think is that there’s no formula to it. There are three
prayers, but there’s no time limit on either one of those and I think that’s the hardest
thing to walk through but it’s all good, and God teaches us and meets us right where
we are.
CG: I just want to say to you, is that I feel like we’re in the presence of God together
in this moment of breaking in your life. And on the other side, whether it’s you know,
healthy baby boy, healthy baby girl, two children, three children, whether it’s adoption, whether
it’s, I mean it could be anything, that you will see the goodness of God and the path
between now and then may not be an easy one but you will see the presence of God. And
the next time, there will be some point of thanking Him, looking back, there He was,
there was His faithfulness, there was His goodness, there was His provision and I don’t
know what it’s gonna look like but you know it will be there, and it may be on the other
side of tears, but it will be there.
KO: Well, speaking of tears, we’re both a little teary-eyed right now, I don’t know
maybe you are too, maybe God used this moment to really just speak to you in the middle
of your brokenness and show you that it’s okay to cry, it’s okay to let people in
but you know as you’re going through this study you’re in the middle and just take
the opportunity to be in the middle and let God speak to you right there. I think this
is time where we wrap up.
CG: It’s probably good before it gets ugly.
KO: So I just want to say thank you. I know, before we keep talking any more and anymore
teary. Guys, thank you for joining us, thank you Pastor Craig for joining us this week.
At Proverbs 31 Ministries we have this saying and this is the way we end all of our videos.
And it’s that we believe that if you know the Truth, and live the Truth, it changes
everything. We’ll see you next time.