Mark 14:32-36; And they came to a place which was named Gethsemane: and he saith to his disciples, Sit ye here, while I shall pray. And he taketh with him Peter and James and John, and began to be sore amazed, and to be very heavy; And saith unto them, My soul is exceeding sorrowful unto death: tarry ye here, and watch. And he went forward a little, and fell on the ground, and prayed that, if it were possible, the hour might pass from him. And he said, Abba, Father, all things are possible unto thee; take away this cup from me: nevertheless not what I will, but what thou wilt.
About 2 months ago when I was here, I saw Becky Evans just before we started chapel. She then proceeded to go upstairs and then I came up to preach my message. After I had finished, she came out from the stairway and let me know she was listening to my sermon.
As we talked, I asked about Dan, her son, to see how he was doing. As most of you know, years ago, Dan lost his wife. She told me some of the struggles they went through together and how he was today.
I mentioned to her that back in 2005 my wife had a medical emergency that, at the time, we thought would lead to her death. Thankfully, it did not, but it has slowly taken away abilities she once had. She’s now disabled and can’t drive due to epilepsy, which is one of many medical issues she has. I also mentioned to Becky the struggles we had with our daughters.
As I was telling Becky this, she said to me, “I wish the men here could hear those stories because so often they see pastors and others coming in here to help and they think that their lives are going fine while theirs is falling apart.” She said that you guys needed to hear these stories.
As soon as she said that, this message that I’m going to preach tonight came to mind. I’ve actually had this message on my heart for years, but I never wanted to preach it. For one, it’s very personal and I tend to cry when I recall it.
When I come here to preach, I only want to give you the Word of God. I don’t want to interject myself into the sermon because, for one, we don’t have a long time together and I know you guys are tired and me droning on about my opinions is not productive. It’s better that I give you the Word of God as concisely and direct as I can. I want you all to be able to take away something to think about throughout the week and it’s better that you think on the Word of God then on my opinions, thoughts, or ideas.
But, when Becky told me that, I felt convicted to take a pause this evening from my normal approach and just tell you my story. Hopefully, it will be helpful to you to show you what God showed my wife and I in a very dark time in our lives.
In 2005 my wife was on her way to pick up the girls from school. For the whole day she had been feeling a sharp pain in her head but she just thought it was a headache.
But, as she got closer to the school she felt like something exploded in her head. As she was driving, her vision started to narrow and she began driving erratically. She was barely able to get the van pulled into the school.
The principal of the school could see out her window toward the parking lot. She could clearly see that something was wrong. When she got outside, Amanda was exiting the vehicle. She had already dialed 911 and then tossed the phone to the principal and said, tell them where I am, and then she collapsed to the ground.
At the time, I was at Walmart picking up some things for dinner that night. My cell phone started ringing and I could see the school was calling. I just thought that Amanda was running late and they wanted to let me know. My wife at the time was a sales rep and her district was central Indiana.
When the principal said, “…the ambulance is here…,” I dropped everything and ran to my car. When I got to the school they were loading her into the ambulance. The only thing that gave me some comfort was that they didn’t have the lights on. I thought if they had the lights on then that was bad.
That day was only the beginning of many bad days to follow. As I watched one nurse after the other come into the room to do various things, there was one doctor that came in that was a specialist who took difficult cases.
As he walked by I heard in my head very clearly, “They will never figure this out.”
That’s not something you want to hear at a time like that.
In the weeks, months and years to follow, we went from one specialist to the next. We were in and out of hospital emergency rooms on a monthly and sometimes weekly basis.
We went to the Mayo Clinic twice with little to no results. With each diagnosis it seemed to be something worse than the previous diagnosis. They all pointed to a very short life, or one that would be fraught with pain, sorrow, and suffering.
I began to think about being a single dad raising two girls that were only 3 and 7 at the time this started. Our lives had just started but it felt like they were ending. She’s the love of my life and I didn’t know what I was going to do.
Thankfully, the Lord didn’t take her home that day, but her life now is filled with ongoing pain,and sorrow and much suffering. There is never a day that she is without one or more of those things.
Her heart doesn’t stay in rhythm. Because of the epilepsy and other neurological conditions she has trouble speaking sometimes. She has trouble remembering things. The side effects of the medication causes its own set of problems.
She can no longer work. She had to fight for over 8 years to get on disability. She’s no longer able to do simple chores around the house. I have to do all of the cooking, cleaning, laundry and other such things.
A few years after the first incident, when we realized she wasn’t going to die in the near future, my health started to fall apart.
It started one day when my head was hurting really bad. I had headaches for a while but this was more than a regular headache. I was laying down at my parents house on the couch. I went to get up, but then immediately hit the floor. I thought I had gotten up too quickly. But when I tried it again, I just fell down again.
When I made it to the emergency room they said I had one of the worst sinus infections they had ever seen. If I didn’t come in sooner, it could have gone into my brain and killed me. Because of that I couldn’t sleep for a long time, I had trouble keeping my balance and I’m still dealing with it to this day.
It took over a year, but when that started to clear up, I then had another episode that took me to the hospital. I thought I was having a heart attack. When I got to the emergency room they quickly determined that I was having a panic attack. They gave me some medicine to calm me down and then I went back home.
A few nights later however, I had another attack so bad that I actually prayed to God to take me to heaven. If you’ve had one of those, then you know what I’m talking about. For the next several years after that I had to constantly fight against panic and anxiety attacks on a daily basis.
I just wanted to crawl into a hole and hide but I couldn’t because I still needed to take care of my wife and daughters. Through all of this, I was still doing Bible Studies, still preaching and teaching. I did my best to look like I was put together but I was falling apart inside.
The attacks got so bad that I needed my dad to drive me to work a few times because I couldn’t even do that on my own. When I was at work, if the attacks came over me and too many people were around, I would excuse myself and go hide in the bathroom or go hide in a network closet because I worked in IT and I had access to various rooms that were locked.
I didn’t want to admit that I was weak, so I never told my doctor how bad things were. The only time I could get relief from the anxiety was when I went into my closet and prayed. I would cover myself with a blanket and crawl underneath the cloths.
Eventually, I did get help. The doctor put me on some medicine that helps with anxiety. Several times I tried to get off of the medicine just to only have to go back to it because the panic attacks would quickly return.
As more time passed, my vertigo problems from the sinus infection improved, the anxiety was still there but under control. I started doing more with respect to ministry. I helped to start a church, became an elder, continued teaching and preaching, and even started writing some books.
But, in 2015, when I had just finished the rough draft of my third book, my father went into the hospital. A few years before this, he had esophageal cancer, but he beat it, or so we thought.
It was on his 69th birthday that he went into the hospital. Later we found out the cancer had come back with a vengeance and this time, he didn’t want to fight it. He was concerned that it would bankrupt my mom and he didn’t want to take away funds from her. So he decided to just die.
His birthday was on September 18th. My oldest daughter’s birthday is September 20th, 2 days later. That year, 2015, she turned 18. The day after her birthday, she ran away.
That morning, I was backing out of the garage to go to work. Her bedroom was just above the garage. As I pulled out, I briefly looked up and then backed out. I noticed something odd about her window so I turned around to go back and look.
She had cut the screen on the window and literally climbed out the window with a bedsheet. I tried to call her phone but she had left it on the bed. I had to kick down the door because she locked it from the inside.
We didn’t know where she was…but, unbeknownst to us, some of my wife’s family was in contact with her. She had a burner phone that we didn’t know about. They knew that number…but they wouldn’t give it to us. To cut to the quick…the reason they didn’t tell us was because they never approved of our faith in Jesus Christ.
They thought we had brainwashed our kids with that awful religion so therefore, we were reaping what we had sown.
So…my dad is dying from cancer. My daughter is in the wind. My wife’s family is treating us like leapers, and I feel like I just failed everyone. I failed my wife and daughters. I failed my church. And worst yet, I failed the Lord.
Only…by the grace of God, we found our daughter. It literally was the Lord and not my wife’s family that showed us where she was. We had a short window of time to go get her before she was gone. She was in a bus station in Columbus, Ohio heading toward Salt Lake City, Utah.
The only thing that convinced her to come home was that her grandfather was dying and he wanted to see her before he left this world.
Like I said earlier, my dad went into the hospital on September 18th. He died on October 1st. We only had a few days with him.
After the funeral things only got worse. My daughter had spread so many lies about us that all the family from my side that was coming to Thanksgiving that year…didn’t come. Before my father had even passed away, my father-in-law gave my daughter a bunch of books on atheism. Basically, guide books on how to get rid of your parent’s religion. He couldn’t wait until my father was 6 feet under before he made his move.
Even though we brought our daughter back, she didn’t live with us. She went to live with my mother. We tried to talk with her but my own mother wanted us to get out of her way. She said to me one evening as I was leaving her house, “Jeff, will you be mad at me when I succeed where you failed?” In my mind, I felt like a failure. But now my mother was vocalizing my most agonizing thoughts.
As the months and years went on, my oldest got caught up in witchcraft, satanism, psychedelic drugs, alcohol and many other things that I never wanted her to experience. Some of those things I won’t speak of, but it’s the type of thing that will stay with you for the rest of your life.
It took a long time before she would speak to us, but we were able to eventually encourage her to get into therapy and get help.
She still sees herself as a pagan, but we talk on a regular basis. We visit with each other when we can. We are actually going to visit her and her fiance in Florida next month.
But, as you know, the devil never sleeps. As things got better with my oldest, then my youngest decided it was time to tell my wife and I to take a hike. I won’t tell you the things she said to us, but one statement was very clear. She said, “You showed me how to NOT be a family.”
Obviously, for the sake of time I’m leaving out a lot of detail and only giving you the highlights. For me, I’m constantly asking God, “why am I a pastor?” I can’t tell you how many times I wanted to throw in the towel and just leave it all behind.
Even though I was certain that God wanted my wife and I to start a house church in Columbus, IN back in 2018, I couldn’t help but think I got it wrong. In fact, I was driving home one night and I was begging God to confirm if this is what he wanted me to do. We didn’t have very many people coming to our church. It didn’t seem to be working. But in that moment of prayer all I heard God say was, “Have I said anything different?”
Needless to say, we felt like our lives went off the rails multiple times. I can’t remember the day or even the year, but I know it was some time after my wife became ill and I had started having panic attacks.
I was on my knees begging God to take it all away. I had my fill of it. I wanted it to stop. It was more than I thought I could bear.
As I was pouring out my heart to God, crying, begging, pleading for Him to fix all of this, I finally said, “I hate this.” Almost immediately I heard, “I do too.”
I’ve only heard that clear voice in my life a few times. I knew it was the Lord. But, instead of being comforted, I got mad.
I thought, what do you mean, “you do too?” You’re God. You can fix this immediately. I’ve given my life to you. Why is this happening? And then immediately, he took me to the verse I read to you earlier.
Mark 14:32-36; And they came to a place which was named Gethsemane: and he saith to his disciples, Sit ye here, while I shall pray. And he taketh with him Peter and James and John, and began to be sore amazed, and to be very heavy; And saith unto them, My soul is exceeding sorrowful unto death: tarry ye here, and watch. And he went forward a little, and fell on the ground, and prayed that, if it were possible, the hour might pass from him. And he said, Abba, Father, all things are possible unto thee; take away this cup from me: nevertheless not what I will, but what thou wilt.
If it were possible…that’s the phrase he took me to. If it were possible.
If God could have saved us any other way, he would have done it that way. If the blood of bulls and goats and sheep would have saved us, he would have done it that way.
But there was no other way that we could be saved. It had to be this way. Jesus had to go to the Cross. It was for that very reason he came.
By taking me to that verse, God was saying to me. “Jeff, there was no other way to change the two of you, except this way.”
You see my wife and I, before her health problems, before my panic attacks, before our kids rebelled against us and our family turned on us, we both prayed, “God, do whatever it takes to change us and to make us into vessels fit for your use.”
If there was another way in which God could have done this work, he would have done it that way. And I know he would have because all things are possible with God.
I know that God the Father listens to his Son, Jesus Christ. And Jesus asked three times for another way. His heart was filled with great sorrow. He was so filled with grief and anxiety that it says he sweated great drops of blood.
There’s a condition where you can become so panicked and grief stricken that your blood vessels rupture and seep out through your sweat glands. They saw this happen in London in WWII when the Germans were constantly bombing the city and people didn’t know if they would be killed any minute. People under those conditions actually sweated blood. And here’s Jesus filled with tremendous sorrow over what he’s about to go through and he’s asking the Father for another way.
But there was no other way. Therefore the Son submitted himself to the Father when he said, “not what I will, but what thou wilt.”
In that moment, the Lord showed me that our suffering had purpose. This was not a useless exercise that brought some kind of demented pleasure to God. If there was another way, he would have done that. But there was no other way.
I know that our suffering will continue in this life, because they did continue even after the Lord showed me those things. But you see…this life will end, and our new lives will one day begin.
The apostle Paul said in 2 Corinthians 4:17-18; For our light affliction, which is but for a moment, worketh for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory; While we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen: for the things which are seen are temporal; but the things which are not seen are eternal.
I’m confident that each one of you has a tremendous story filled with sorrow and pain. But it is not a story that goes unread by God. In fact, more than likely, he’s the one writing the story.
- Not to condemn you, but to set you free.
- Not to mock you before the world, but so that you may overcome the world.
- Not to reject you, but to make you his child.
- And not to punish you, but to make you into the image of His Son, Jesus Christ.
Let’s Pray!
Family Bible Church 