On Sunday, Pastor Chris spoke to us about roadblocks. Check the message out here.
What is a roadblock?
It is a message from God that the path we’ve chosen won’t get us to the place where we think we need to go.
My wife and I were trying to raise a young family and I was trying to carve out a career as an author when we hit a roadblock.
It was the middle of the night. My wife woke me out of a sound sleep and said, “I can’t breathe.”
I was trying to make sense of what she was saying, when she threw off the covers, and ran out of the room down the hall. I stumbled after her and found her in the living room where we had a window air conditioner running. Her mouth was pressed up against the vent, and she was taking great gasping breaths of air.
Scary.
I hoped it would be a one off thing, but it wasn’t. It happened again. And again. After a while, she couldn’t stay inside because it was too confining, but she couldn’t go outside because miles of atmosphere where pressing down against her.
We finally went to the doctor, and he gave this thing a name. She was having panic attacks.
Medication was prescribed. It helped. She saw a Christian counselor. That helped some. We prayed; people prayed. It all helped a little. But if she forgot to take her medication, the panic was so bad she didn’t want to live.
We lived like this for four or five years, and then an old friend sent us a cassette tape. On the tape, someone was describing a way of bringing Jesus into the broken places in our lives. As we listened to this amazing half hour talk, we looked at each other and said, “If even half of this is true, we need to check this out.”
So we found someone in Madison who knew how to do this. He knew how to invite Jesus into those painful places in our lives. So two days after the 9/11 attacks, we sat down in Steve’s office feeling a mixture of apprehension and hope. For the first hour, I just grilled Steve with questions. My wife was in a fragile place, and I sure didn’t want him to make it worse.
Satisfied with his answers, I stepped out for 30 minutes. Steve prayed with Kim, inviting Jesus into her pain.
The next morning Kim did something we would NEVER recommend to anyone: She set her medication aside, and lived panic free without it for the next 18 months.
More importantly, this “roadblock” forever changed the direction of our lives. Kim and I both met with Jesus hundreds of times, inviting Him into the painful places in our lives. As a result, we both are happier, healthier, stronger, forever transformed. This experience transformed our marriage, how we parent our children, how we understand God, every book I write, how we read every page of the Bible.
The takeaway?
Roadblocks can be scary, bewildering, discouraging. But God wants to use everything in our lives—including those roadblocks—for good.
If we let Him.
Open the door, and let Him do the good He wants to do in your life.
Dwight
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