Turning Pain Into Purpose with Guest: Jonathan Miller | Ron + Hope: Unfiltered

Foreign. Hello, everybody. This is Ron and Hope. Unfiltered, real, raw and relevant. And we are so glad that you're tuning in today. If you're on YouTube, hit that like button. Hit the subscribe button if you are listening Audio. We are just so blessed to have you download these podcasts, share them with a friend, because we think they're pretty good. Ron, what are you doing?

Why are you trying to be so professional today?

Because I am.

You sound like a news anchor.

Well, you called me Vanna White Sunday.

Yep. Because you get up at the visitors.

And I wave at them and you pose. I welcome them.

You pose.

No, I don't pose. I welcome them.

You do the pageant pose?

No, I do.

And do the. You turn your foot one way and you sit up and you wave at everybody. So I just call her Vanna White. Anyway, actually, Vanna's, like about 90 now, isn't she?

Yeah, she is.

Yeah.

Well, I'm pushing 60, so. Here we go.

I wouldn't tell nobody that. I was gonna tell them you're still in your 40s.

That's a lie.

Well, I am excited. I'm excited to have you back. I had to do a couple without you.

I was here last night.

I know, but I had to do a couple without you. It ain't no fun. It ain't no fun when I got you here.

I'm ministering for the Lord.

I know. She had to do two weeks of Come Higher down in Orlando.

Yes.

And so she was down there and I was doing these things by myself. And when I do them by myself, they're serious. We don't get to cut up together. And anyway, we got somebody sitting in the middle. And everybody said, who is he? Who you got sitting in the middle? And why are y' all talking over him right here?

This is our friend.

This is Pastor Jonathan Miller, and I'm going to give him a chance to greet you in just a moment. But we have some things in common. You know, pain doesn't discriminate.

Amen to that.

We have some things in common.

Pain, I'm telling you, pain does not care how much money you got. Pain does not care who your daddy is. Pain don't care what side of the town you were raised on or the color of your skin. It does not discriminate. And we're going to talk about your new book that you've got and some questions and how you can maybe tell them how this book may be able to answer some of their questions and help them dig through some stuff. But we've got our own testimonies where things we've had to fight through and it all went back to stuff that just gets buried. So, first of all, Pastor Jonathan, I've known you for some time, and back in the day, we're going to do some TBN fundraisers. I remember I followed you one time and you took my scripture where you raised your money, and I didn't know how to raise money because you got up there before I did.

I love that.

But long and short of it, I want you to introduce yourself, tell them what you're doing, and just tell them a little bit of an intro about the book and then we'll get into the guts of it.

Yeah, absolutely. We'll love you guys.

And so thank you for being here.

It's a. It's a blessing. The podcast has been great. People are loving what you guys are doing and just thanks for being great friends and being a great example.

One day we're gonna get to go to Paris together.

You know, we've been trying to do.

It for several years.

Right.

It will happen and we will eat together. We will have a wonderful time. But thank you guys again for letting me be here. This is a great season for us. We're pastoring a great church in Orlando called New Beginnings, and in two services now getting ready to go to a third.

Congratulations.

Growing and doing just wonderful. But this book is a project that I'm really excited about because, and I know a lot of authors say this, it's not a book, it really is a message. And it's a message that was birthed, yes, through an 18 year long crisis that my family and I endured. But now that we're 14 years on the other side of that crisis, I'm still healing, I'm still learning, I'm still growing. And so I've come to learn that even writing the book, the principles of it, the revelation, it's still ever evolving. And healing really is a process I think we're going to be in for the rest of our lives.

It's true. It's not easy either.

No. I have the things where I want to make sure that we talk about the book, but you give me a little bit of permission to go off script.

Of course.

And you said something right there that if I think pastors could just get to that place, you said, I'm still healing pastors.

You mean humans.

Yeah, but pastors will not. There's still this element of pastoring where you gotta have on a cape with an S on the back of it. And I think when we look at our leaders, I don't think we want our leaders to be like us. I think we wanna think they're a little bit different than us. That's why we follow. And the fact is, there is nobody standing on a stage that is not in some level of their journey. Nobody. And they're coming out of something. They're shaking something, they're being processed with something. There's something going on with every leader. And you guys need to understand there's even leading while bleeding. Sometimes there were times where I walked in the building and by God's grace and mercy, you know, preached, and everybody's running laps and falling out, and I get right outside the door and tears are running down my cheeks. And they don't see that. And some of that's our fault because we don't want them to see it. And for you to come right out of the gate, pastoring, growing, you're in front of people and say, I'm still healing. What brings you to that place?

I think the integrity of realizing that without that, we find ourselves sabotaged. You talked about this dynamic of leadership, them having an issue, a dysfunction. And as you're talking about that, Pastor Ron, and it made it into the book. It's the story of Naaman, right? Naaman was a great Syrian leader, a great commander, a decorated military official. But.

But.

There's that word, but. But he was a leper. So he has all these great things on his resume, accomplished so many great things. But there was something attached to his resume. And I think leaders need to be honest about their butt. I think they need to be real that it is there. Because if not, Naaman's leprosy could have grown to the point where it became contagious and even sabotaged him to the point where he couldn't lead anymore. And so God gives us, his leaders, opportunities to bleed while we're leading. But there will come a point where he'll make us accountable and say, hey, son, you got to get this fixed now, because it's starting to leak into the body.

When I. I'm 57, when I was in my formative years of ministry, I'd call that my 20s. Cause me and Hope started our church very young, which is probably not wise. But I was 21. And when I was in my formative years, our generation before us, that we were taught, don't let anybody. Don't let anybody see your butt. Don't let anybody see that. The millennials came into power. And when they began to rise in leadership. They took a very opposite approach. Let's show them everything. Let's tell them right up front.

No, let's do it with them.

Yeah. You know, and so you had this. You had this generation where that's the man of God, and then you had this generation of he's just like me.

Right, right.

Where's the healthy spot?

You know, I think it's having transparency with discretion. Right. I can tell you, hey, pray for my wife and I, we're under an attack. Or I can stand up on Sunday and say my wife threw a frying pan at me and called my name.

Right.

You can tell people the truth and you can be transparent, but you have to use discretion. And another thing that I think, really, this generation is failing on. We've become really good with talking about a lot of details, but we have failed in talking about the emotion behind the details. And I think that's become an escape, really. It's a lot easier to talk about what happened to us, who did it, why they did it, instead of how this makes us feel. And I believe if we can get away from details and back onto what this did to me, what it made me feel, what it made me think, then we're having a better conversation.

Yeah. Because we're trying to get to root issues. Not just fruit. Fruit. I mean, it's just. It's already in there. If you got fruit hanging on a tree, you got a deep root. So you gotta dig in and get that root out. You know, I wrote a book about our journey called the Most Beautiful Disaster where I talked about how God makes miracles out of our pain. You know, and he can.

And I think you walk the balance of transparency with discretion too.

Yes. Yes.

You walked a very great line.

I wanna add my agreement to that. Yeah, absolutely.

Yeah. But I know you have a chapter in there and where you talked about. In your book about hiding and I talked. My very first chapter was wearing a mask. I think that's such a dangerous place. And I think that the church probably has made us do that because we're afraid of being canceled. We're afraid of being judged. We're afraid of. Of losing our place in our call, which we know God doesn't do that to us. But we're so afraid. We're afraid to show our issues and our withered hand, you know, and that's.

The lie of the enemy.

It is.

Because transformation is what precedes. Or. Excuse me, transparency is what precedes transformation. The man with the withered hand. His hand became whole when he stretched it out. And there's a lot of theologians and scholars that believe his hand was damaged by an accident or by a fire. So this was something ugly that happened to him. But in that transparency, transformation took place.

And when I've. I've never preached a message on it, but I've referred to it in messages. The man with the withered hand, you know, the thing that struck me right there was Jesus never told him what hand to stretch out.

Right? Right.

He had one good hand. The generation I grew up in, the generation I grew up in, if you said, stretch out your hand, I just showed you my perfect one with a manicure.

Right.

All the good.

And somehow Jesus created an atmosphere where you could reveal your weakness. I want to pastor a church like that. I want to pastor a church where you can walk in and you say, man, I can get real here. This is real ministry, real hurt to get on script. Because I really want you to talk about the guts and the essence of the book and why you wrote it and what's in there. Tell me something about being a pastor's kid that maybe people don't know.

Well, I think the obvious thing, at least for me, being a pastor's kid now, having kids that are in ministry, is that church hurt goes both ways. You know, most people don't believe that. They know that pastors hurt people, but they don't realize that sometimes people, they.

Hurt pastors, they think we're Teflon.

They do. And it's a hard thing to reconcile, especially when you are a pk. You've had people that have traveled the world with your family because of your family. You've given up Christmas presents so they can have some, and the next thing you know, they're at another church talking about your family and your church. And you watch your family going to the same church you go into, because you don't get to leave church when you get hurt. When you're a pastor, you don't get to, oh, I think we'll go here next week. You're there. And so it's a lot to reconcile. And I think, for me, it was really a painful thing to realize that the people we've poured in the most to, that we've loved the most are often the people who betray us. But when you think about the ministry of Jesus and you think about his track record, he didn't have a very successful track record with that either. And the people he poured the most.

Into, how did he sit down and eat meals with Judas for three and a half years, knowing the entire time.

He would betray him.

This guy is going to totally completely throw me under the bus. That's grace.

It is grace.

That is a high level of grace. Help, Grace.

Lord, help us.

Grace. You know, Hope and I, my dad, we had no money. Some people when they say don't have no money, mean they don't have much. When we started our church, we remember in our little 800 square foot apartment grabbing hands and believing God for groceries and would open the door and there's a bag of groceries sitting on the thing. Those are the kind of stories we have. And I wouldn't take nothing for them. But my father paid for us to go to this little pastors conference. We didn't have the money to go to pastor's conference. It was down on the coast of South Carolina and it had all age group of pastors. And you know, me and my wife, I'm 21, she's 20, or I'm 22, she's 21 and the world's lost and we're going to save it. I just got out of Bible school, you know, here's Jesus and I'm right here beside him, you know, and we got around these older pastors and every one of them were so bitter. I was having conversations, if you can do anything else other than this, you need to do it, son.

Run, son.

I mean, over. And I remember I got back in my room that night, I'm like, why are all these guys so cynical and bitter? And now Having done it 38 years.

We lived a little bit.

Now we have the answer.

I have the answer. I understand after, you know, how many lawsuits and I mean, you know, splits and betrayal, you know, I understand how that can happen. So the real quest is can you process the pain that's being dished out and still get up and love people? Because if you ever get, and you talk about it in here, I want to talk the bitterness and all, if you ever get toxified with that stuff, you will spew it all over everybody.

It's inevitable.

Talk to me about the bitterness.

It's in your heart, it's coming out.

And I think from the leadership perspective, because we do, we get hurt, people lie, they sue, all of that. For me, I had to forgive. And we'll talk a little bit more about my family story, I'm sure later. But, but for me, the whole focal point of ministry is not because I love people, although I do. I love God's people, I love the sheep, I love Church. But I don't minister to the people because I love the people. I do it because I love God. That's where my heart is.

That's a great point.

That is. And so that will never change. My love for him does not change based on what they do and what they don't do. But I will tell you that I've come to see that unforgiveness is probably one of the most crippling diseases, if I could call it that, in the body of Christ today. And it does start from the pulpit. If you listen. And I'm not a preacher that preaches about preachers. That's not what I do. But there's so many messages you hear that almost breed contempt and unforgiveness and frustration. There's a lot of unhealed people, blind people leading the blind into a ditch.

Yeah, it's true.

Tell us more. The experiences that, you know, pastor's kid, your youth coming up, family that. That led to you having to pin down these words in your book. Give us a little bit of background.

Can I just get into my family story a little bit? 12 years old, my life fell apart. I'll rewind the tape on that a little bit. In 1980, my parents planted a church in a small community. It grew to be a great church, large church. My father was a phenomenal pastor, very prophetic, very anointed. But there were a lot of insecurities that were not dealt with as a faith movement. You couldn't talk about being afraid, having security or having a. Like anything was off limits. So he internalized. You mentioned that earlier in the. In the program, just buried it. And even though he's a great dad, a great husband, in most ways, a great pastor, he had gotten involved in adulterous relationships with a few women inside the church. So when I was 12, he confessed to my mom, then confessed to the church. You know, 95% of the church walked out. Haven't seen him since. You know, hurt, angry, understandably so. My mom filed for a divorce. She was hurt, understandably so. Fast forward about seven months into this. We had lost our home, our cars, our church. My parents were about to lose their marriage.

Nuclear meltdown.

Nuclear meltdown. My dad was at a point where he had attempted to take his life. God intervened, made a way for him to go to Minneton Meyer for almost three weeks in Chicago. During that time, my mom went to visit him, did some counseling with him on her own. And she saw that my dad was really broken like that. The process of Repentance was beginning because repentance is not a one time thing.

No, no, no.

It's a process.

Right.

It's a lifestyle. And so coming out of those couple weeks, she decided, let's give the marriage another chance. And you would think, okay, melt down into a miracle. Here's the breakthrough. But really, that's when the trial and the crisis really began, when news of them getting back together became public. These women who had actually apologized to my mom, said that they were in love with my dad, started the affairs, then went to law enforcement and said he used his position of authority to coerce them into their actions. In other words, they weren't responsible for their own actions. And I'll say this, they're trying to.

Go from inappropriate to illegal.

And let me tell you, it paid handsomely. $50,000 and $25,000. And that's a matter of state public record. So they were paid handsomely for this testimony. Very public trial. We never thought anything would come of it. But after two and a half weeks, they found my dad guilty and sentenced him to over 30 years in prison for adultery. You hear what I'm saying? For adultery. For committing adultery. My mom stayed married to him. She knew that he had committed sin, but not committed crimes. She knew he was repentant, fought for his release, pastored the church with less than 14 people. She worked at a mall kiosk, dug water wells. She worked on a farm, did anything to keep money on the table. I went a little crazy. Drugs, alcohol. But I never stopped loving God. At 17, I recommitted my life to the Lord. Preached my first sermon when I was 17. That was 27 years ago this June. Clap. Thank you, Jesus. But let me put the tail on this. After 18 years of my father serving time in prison for something he didn't do, God moved on the heart of a governor, granted him an executive clemency, which is a pardon. And in 18 years, this 18 year struggle, within a single moment came to a screeching halt with the signature of this one man's hand. I'm gonna get on a plane in a couple days and my mom and dad are picking me up. They're still married. Happily, not perfectly married, but happily married. God's a miracle working out.

That's he is.

It is a miracle. And even when I'm telling it, I've told it so many times, it's 14 years ago since he came home and it feels like it was yesterday. Mentally, I still can't process.

So God can do anything.

He can do anything. Tell the people listening he can and will do anything. And even if you have to wait, which I did, 18 years is a long time to wait. Thirteen to 30, the most formative years of my life. I went through that situation without my father and never gave up hope. And I'm standing here as living proof he is a miracle working God.

Now, I'm just curious. I'm just going to ask a question. Let's get to the real part.

Yeah.

What were the lingering effects of that? The lingering effect? I know the nuclear meltdown is survival because we've been there. That's just. Okay. I made it through today. Thank you, Jesus.

Yeah.

Okay. Okay. 1012. It's in rearview mirror. What are the lingering effects that it does to the soul of a person?

The book that I wrote is called Healing Hurts. And they're already talking to me about a second.

I'm sorry, I should have already said that.

No, no, no, it's okay. They're already talking to me about a second book. And I'm toying around with the idea of miracles Hurt because I have had to heal as much during the restoration and the miracle as I did when we were broken. Someone asked me, a mutual friend of ours, about seven months after my dad came home, how do you feel? And I told him, I don't feel any different today than I did seven months ago. When you fall into an icy pond, you're in there for two minutes. It's going to take you two hours to warm up. And psychologically, I'm just being very vulnerable. I am still learning how not to live like this. 18 years. I got a phone call from my dad at 9:15 every night. This is an inmate from an Ohio correctional facility. I remember it like it was yesterday, waiting for the other shoe to drop. Waiting for tragedy, waiting for trauma. Not giving myself permission to say, it's okay to be okay. I'm still getting counseling, I'm still getting help from my spiritual authority on helping me to know it's okay to be okay. Just being real.

It's that hyper vigilance when you go through so much trauma for so long, you don't know how to be normal.

You don't. You don't.

You don't know what normal feels like.

That is your normal.

It is.

And if you're not in fight mode and you're not in dealing with the. My wife even told me, says sometimes you just make up trauma and tragedy. You just make up. She's like, would you chill? Everything's okay. We're not dying. You're okay. And so I'm still healing hurts. I wrote the book, but I'm still living it.

Sure.

Yeah.

Well, we had. You know, there was like a. In our family, there was what I call. There was a slow deterioration. It just. And hope, you know, when I met hope, she was just. I was smitten. I was just. I'd have made you sick. I just. I was. Eat up. But I knew she brought out all of my protective instincts because I knew within all that beauty, there was something fragile about her. I couldn't explain it. I was just 19. I didn't know. I don't know anything about healing hurts in psychology, and I don't know anything about. But there's something fragile, and it made me even want to not let the world touch her, you know? And after, you know, our children and sometime, and the pressure of ministry and the megachurch pressure and the eyeballs in the glass house, I watched her just slow. Just sink. And it was years until finally the nuclear bomb blast, where everything just comes out. So that was nine, 10 years. And then the bomb blast. It's a good year of even trying to get your head on straight. And then the journey out. So you look and you got 14, 15, 16 years have passed and we're.

Still dealing with residual effects with our.

Kids, with the pain it caused, the collateral damages, everything. You said pain can be a teacher, but you said you don't need to let it be your master. Talk about that.

Pain cannot be our prison. And I think what we have to first do is reconcile. Say it again. Pain can't be our prison. It can't be. Pain is inevitable. It's unavoidable. You said it. Culture, race, color, skin, it doesn't matter. So you gotta understand, pain is real. It's powerful. And pain can be crippling. It can be debilitating. But pain can also be one of the greatest catalysts in our life. It can to launch us into destiny, to launch us into purpose. If you look at people, whether in sports world or tech world, anyone who's accomplished something, if they've done something great, there's a really good chance they've been through a great tragedy. Oh, yeah, right. But what separates them out is their ability to turn that pain into purpose and into power. It's not a prison. It's a fuel. It's a motivator. I was just preaching for our friend Kevin Wallace two weeks ago, and what a great church.

He's going to be here tomorrow as well.

Great church to preach to great atmosphere. And I was telling him a little bit about this story. And When I was 12, 13, 14 years old, I would tell the devil every day almost, I'm going to make you pay for what you did to my family. I'm going to turn this pain into something Joker. You go regret the day you mentioned my name, touch my dad. And I prayed that prayer. 12, 13. Well, I preached my first sermon at 17. And the last thing I did before walking up the steps, bowed my head and said, remember what I told you? I'm gonna make you pay for what you did to me. And I told Kevin's people, I said, that was 27 years ago. And let me give you a little secret. The last thing I did before walking up the stage today, same thing I did 27 years ago. I'm gonna make you pay for what you did to me. I'm still experiencing the pain of what happened to me. I'm still going through it. But that pain is not my prison. No, it is my fuel.

You're not letting it tear you down. You're letting it build you up. You're not letting it tear your down, your ministry down and your passion down.

Yes, it's my. Why? Because I won't, I won't go to bed at night if I haven't done everything in my power to help someone that felt the same pain that I felt, feel like they have another day.

To live when powers activate.

I tell people. I have people all the time, you know, look at me like, you know, Ron, we never, we never heard every, how, how do you make, how'd you survive that? How do you make it through that? And I have like a one word answer when I tell those guys because I don't go into all of it. It's too much, too long, too big a period of time. There is a point where you have to fall in love with the thing that hurts you the most.

Right? Right. Run to it.

Does that make sense?

It makes total sense.

You have to. If God is, we say he's a redeemer. Well, there's gotta be something to redeem.

Yeah.

He redeemed you from what?

And if he allows that pain to touch you, then he obviously wants to use it for your good and for his glory.

That was kind of my hope. Had a journey and I had a journey out. And my journey was I had to turn around and say, do I believe these sermons I preach?

Right.

Do they work for everybody else or do they work for me too? And I found out that everything that I Preach does work, and it came out of that Bible. It works, but I never wanted to live it. I would much rather have preached it than having to walk through it. And then I had to walk through those things. And that was my survival and repowering and redemption tool was over time, I saw the redemption of God. I saw the restoration of God. I remember going to sleep on the restoration scriptures in the Bible. And that was the only thing that gave me hope. I mean, the only hope I had, you know, God. Because there was nothing I could look at, nothing to answer that would give me hope. So I just. I pillowed my head on that promise. He'll give it back and more. And so stay in the game. He'll give it back and more. But I've learned now to look back on that with some level of love. Not that I enjoyed it. I'm not talking about twisted affection, but I embrace it as the fact that it launched us into much better people, much greater purpose, and honestly, a much greater marriage. And so I think if people can take their pain, not let it be their master, but like you said, find a way to let it not be in front of you, but be behind you pushing you.

I think that was so key too, in us making it in our marriage. And I'm sure your parents, too. And even as a son going through it, our children had to go through pain. But letting your pain not be your prison, but part of your purpose. Pain's inevitable, but that's the lie of the enemy, is to trap you in that pain so that he silences your mouth.

And I think another lie with that is. And I still deal with it, can I still be me if I don't feel this?

Because it was so a part of who you are.

It's so a part of who I am. It's what formed me. It's what made me. And I've come to a place of trust in God that my character is formed enough, my identity is formed enough, that I don't have to feel that to still be what it made me to be. I'm forged. I don't have to feel it anymore.

No, it's like I tell you, I have a scar right here, and you can barely, barely even see it. And I've told this, I think, before on our podcast, but this was when I was in the second grade and I wanted to go out with my daddy cutting wood. And I begged always to carry the chainsaw. And he never would let me, of course, until this time, he let me carry it while I tripped on a branch and I fell over on the chainsaw and slit my arm open, just bleeding. Had to go to the hospital, get stitches. It hurt for so long, and you could see the scar for. But today I can slap it, I can pinch it, I can talk about it, but I don't feel the pain of it.

It's not a wound.

That's the last chapter of the book. Did you know that? No. Don't hide your scars. This is what people have taught me growing up, that God will bring you to such a point that he'll even remove the scars. And I understand the principle of that. But theologically, I argue, if the scars weren't removed from the hands of Christ, why would he remove them from me? It was the scars on the that identified him. We give Thomas all this trouble, but Thomas, he might have had more faith than what we think because he's the one that said, I'm not going to believe it unless you verify by what you've been through. You are verifying to me that you're my Christ, you're my Lord. Not just because you resurrected. I want to know what you went through. And when he saw the scars, that's when he said, you are Jesus. So I've made it a point.

If you can live through that and still be resurrected, I can believe in you.

It's like Jesus.

I can believe in you, then you are healed. You are Him.

It's like Jesus in Gethsemane. That pain, he went through a pain.

And those scars, those scars that we say that have to be healed, the scars that we have are actually not an indication of our injury. They're an indication of our healing.

That's right.

The wound is the indication of the injury. If you're still bleeding and emoting, crippling you, that's the injury. But those scars, they're banners, they're badges that we wear to say we've been there, done that, kicked the devil's tail, and got the T shirt to show.

Them the other side of it.

We're on the other side of it. Those scars are our badges of honor. And they are the indication that healing took place. I'm not bleeding anymore. It hurts. I got a memory, but the pain is gone.

Yeah, I love it.

I want to get to these last two questions, but just something here I was thinking about. I have a 2015. I did a teaching called Mind World, and in that I did a journey. And I was amazed at how much the Bible dealt with the soul and the mind, because I was Raised in hyper holiness and hyper Holy Ghost. Spirit, spirit, spirit, spirit, spirit, spirit, spirit. We know everybody walking around.

Let's not throw it out.

Yeah, everybody's walking around in terrible health in their body. And nobody ever paid any attention to their soul, their mind or its health. It was just everything. Spirit anointing spirit, you know, glory, spirit anointing mantles, you know, everything was in that category. I was raised in it. And I was amazed at how, you know, even Romans 7 says, it's with the mind that we serve, we serve the Lord. Even that was like, oh, wow. When I really started to just sit and meditate on these scriptures. And I tell people, I don't think there's such a thing as being stuck in life. I have a lot of people come to altar calls, Pastor. I just feel stuck. I mean, I'm not going anywhere. I don't think you get stuck in life. I think you get stuck in your mind and as a man thinketh in his heart. So, Izzy, that what's happening in your head is usually gonna play out in time in your life. And so I think there's a lot of people that hit a trauma, a pain or a hurt, and in their mind, they never move past it. And when your mind stops, your life stops.

100%, you're in prison.

So one of the last questions have here, and I want to read it just like it's down here. How can somebody start, especially if they like feel stuck or paralysis from a trauma, how can they start their healing journey right now?

So it's being transparent, it's integrity, it's the acknowledgement of I am stuck. So many people are in a condition they're not willing to acknowledge. It's amazing. When you read the Gospels and you read the miracles that Jesus performed, he's all knowing he knew the answer to every question he asked, but he asked questions, how long you been like this? How's your faith? How do you feel about this? When did it happen last time? Because that transparency is what does precede transformation. So the first thing to do is to acknowledge that I am stuck. And it's not. I'm stuck because life is stuck. My mind is stuck. I've not grown beyond that. As we pastor people, how many 60 year olds do we know that are living this 12 year old trapped in a 60 year old body because they've stopped growing, they've stopped developing past that point. We talked about your scar and I'm answering your question. I've got one on my hand which made it into the Book Tresol went into my hand. I went back to work the same day, didn't cover it up, didn't clean it. It got infected, went back to the same hospital and instead of getting stitches, they took a scrub brush and began to scrub. There's the title for healing hurts. Right. Because it hurt more for them to cleanse it, to clean it out than the original injury. And so when trauma hits our life and we don't have the tools to process it properly, God will require us to go back and have the proper tools to deal with it again. So healing sometimes actually hurts more than the traumatic experience itself. Because when you're alive, you've got the tools to process it and feel it. It actually weighs a lot more. It hurts a lot more.

There is one of the counselors that Hope and I were seeing in our journey back. I forget that word they put on it. It's on the tip of my tongue. Deprement. They said if you were to go in a emergency room situation in maybe a large city, gunshots, car wrecks, accident, all these things happening, people coming in there, life threatening situations. She told us there's a. A word called deprement.

Debrament.

I think debrement or deprement said that in the emergency room in life altering situations, there is more time cleaning a wound than there is putting them back in, repairing it. Wow. They spend more time cleaning the wound than they do sewing them up or whatever needed to be done.

If you've had a motorcycle accident on asphalt and stones are everywhere and glasses everywhere, they gotta clean it out.

If you've had a life trauma, Ron Carpenter was probably the kind of guy, I was a tough guy. I was a football player, raised on a farm, hay hauling, tough guy. I'm the kind of guy, I could take a real bad hurt and just start sewing it right and go on. But there comes a time you're like, ouch, that hurt.

Yeah, yeah.

You will confront it. You have to until it's cleaned out.

Listen, that was such a word though. That is a word. You have to clean out this pain. You can't just say, oh, I'm gonna be okay.

I'm all right, I'm fine.

That didn't do.

That's not reality. No. I don't think God is.

Clean it out or it will be infected and it'll be worse than it was originally. And it's gonna grow roots.

Yeah.

Which leads to cycles. I'm sorry, babe. What's the most important takeaway? If I just sat down right now and said, I'm going home this evening and get me a cup of coffee and I'm not going to put the book down until I finish it. What's my biggest takeaway?

Healing hurts. But it's worth is a process, it is a journey. And I'll tell you something very, very vulnerable. My father helped write this book. He didn't know that he helped me, but he helped me write this book. I visited with him 18 years on a table that was about half the size of this, that high off the ground. And we talked about character over gifting, character over blessing. And I let my dad read the manuscript when, when Charisma signed off on it, we had the final, final manuscript and took him about three days to read it. Came over to my house, put the manuscript down. I said, dad, I just want to know, are you proud of me? And he said, dad, I'm not even going to tell you I'm proud of you. You know the answer. That's a stupid question. He said, of course I'm proud of you. But he looked at me and he said, if someone would have given me this book before I did what I did, I would have never did what I did. And that's the takeaway that there's a lot of trauma that we've been through, but there's a lot more awaiting us that we can avoid. There's a lot more pitfalls, a lot more disappointments that wait for us if we can get a hold of our lives today and get the process of healing started.

I call it this. Please let my pain be your wisdom. Yeah, you know, that's good. That is a journey that can help them come out. But there's also can help you avoid some landmines if you listen to the wisdom that's in it. Because I do not believe every mistake has to be repeated. I do not believe that.

I agree.

I've always told people, I said, you can't get out of the bumps and bruises of life. But I don't believe if you've got wise counsel. I don't believe that life has to be a series of train wrecks.

Right.

I don't believe that. Especially in counsel. Exactly. And so this book may be some of that wise counsel, maybe that voice. They need.

Some people. I know that I over my life, in my traveling, in my speaking, in my trying to help people get healed, I have found that people choose to stay bitter because they feel like it's their right to entitled. Like I'm entitled to feel this pain. I'm entitled to Be mad. I'm entitled. You hurt me. Not knowing that, that is holding them in that prison.

The attitude, I call it a spirit of entitlement, is the antithesis of the grace of God and it's the antithesis of the Ministry of the Cross. I was doing a program yesterday and someone said, how do you forgive someone who molested you? How do you forgive someone who lied about you? How do you forgive someone who doesn't deserve to be forgiven? And that's the key. How you forgive is realizing whoever you need to forgive, they don't deserve to be forgiven. Just go ahead and cross that. Check that box. They don't deserve to be forgiven, but neither do I. Neither do you. None of us do. That's why it's called Amazing Grace. And may we always remember, people want to take Matthew 7 out of the Bible. Right? The book of James and Matthew 7. Get out. Whatever measure you judge, that's the measure that you're going to be judged. So grace is equally accessible, but it doesn't mean it's equally distributed.

Right.

We all have the same amount of grace that's available, but it doesn't mean it's equally distributed. The measure I give is the measure that I get. And so forgiveness becomes essential when I remember that I too need it. And I'm not going to hold on to entitlement when I realize I too need forgiveness. Forgiveness.

So what would you say to our listeners today?

He'd say, buy my book. That's what he would say. Buy my book.

Today.

You need to. But just a spur, just to spur some people on who might just be holding on to some pain. Yeah.

You know, when I was getting ready this morning, I. I called my wife. Our house in Florida has been without air conditioning for six days.

In Florida.

In Florida, I'm glad to be in a hotel. Come on, somebody. But I was talking to her about it when I got off the phone. I was thinking, we have a beautiful house, many square feet, beautiful tile roof, beautiful landscaping. The house is wonderful. But something isn't functioning. And there's so many of you, whether in ministry. You've got a gift. You're charismatic, you're spirit filled. You're anointed. Maybe you're running an amazing business, an amazing company, but maybe there's something in your life that's broken, something that's not functioning. I believe the book Healing Hurts is going to help you. Of course I do. I believe that will really help. You have a manuscript to get those things fixed. But my hope and my prayer for you as I feel the anointing of the Holy Spirit is that you'd have the willingness and the integrity to say, hey, God, whatever it is broken in me. Go ahead and take a look. And that was the scary part, why it's become a six day problem because when they opened up the air conditioning, they found we didn't have one problem, we had three problems. And it's scary when you let God look under the hood. It's scary what you may find. But I pray for you to have the strength and the courage to face the pain. Healing does hurt, but it's worth it because if you face it, you will step into abundant life.

Hallelujah. That's so good, guys.

I hope that you have enjoyed this. Not only have y' all heard me and Hope be very transparent about our journey many times over the last 10, 12 years, but we always want to have people around with us who can testify that God did. Maybe from a different place, maybe a little bit of a different journey, maybe for different reasons. But God does restore.

Yes, he does.

He does. It is not a fleeting promise. It is something you can pillow your head on. God will restore you. And I've told people who look at us in bewilderment say, man, I can't believe I'm like, I wouldn't trade where I am now for anything I've ever had. That's a strong statement because we went to hell and back. But I wouldn't trade what I have for what I had. And that is the wreck.

But it didn't happen overnight.

No, no, no, no, no.

It's a process.

And it was opening yourself up and saying, God, do the surgery. And I know this is not going to be fun. And it's the path less chosen. It's the path left chosen. So I appreciate you, I really do. Pastor, being here with us and you and I have not spent a ton of time together, but we've known each other a long time and I appreciate your life and ministry and I'm glad things are going well. Go get the book. When's the book coming out?

November 4th is the official date.

November 4th. We're going to get it.

Yeah. Amazon, Amazon, everywhere. You pre order pre orders are Amazon. And I'm sure we can get the link and put all that on the screen. But Amazon pre sales are available now and I think they're even like a dollar or two off.

So that's great.

Get yourself a box, guys. I can vouch for this gentleman. I've known him a long time. Not only that, but his journey. Some of it I just found out today. I didn't know I found out when you did. And so go and get the book. Not only would it be a blessing to him, I'm sure it'll be a blessing to you, baby doll. Anything we need to tell him?

Well, we have our LXP tomorrow.

It's dropping tomorrow. This weekend.

It's going to be so good.

Wait. The night service is streamed. The day service is not. The night service is streamed live.

Where do they find that?

Just go to redemption. MyRedemption CC and hit redemption online right there, the little icon, and it'll put you right in the building with us having a time.

And in January, January 15th through 17th, calling all queens. I'm hosting a women's conference in San Antonio, Texas, right in the center of the United States, so that we can just have a clarion call of women who are wanting to pursue God and pursue their purpose. Go to hopecarpenter.com events and get registered and I'll see you there.

One more. February, the second week. Yes, second week of February, we've got our marriage conference in Monterey, California, and we're at the Embassy Suites, literally overlooking the Pacific Ocean. Beautiful, beautiful place. We've been doing these for almost 25 years. I would love to see you there. We've got enough for 500 couples. That's 1,000 people. Totally. And generally, they get close to being sold out just about every time. So go register. We would love to see you there. And until next time, it is Ron.

And Hope Unfiltered, real, raw and relevant.

Bless you, guys. We'll see you soon.