The Power of Christ’s Comfort, with Elizabeth Mitchell

You know that painful thing in your past? That mistake you made or the difficult season that still haunts you? It may be the very thing God uses to help you discover more of Jesus. If you’re struggling to believe God is able to bring something good out of your deepest pain, guest Elizabeth Mitchell will direct your heart to trust God’s complete sufficiency in sorrow during this classic episode of Grounded.

Original Episode: 

Finding Jesus in the Middle of Your Pain, with Elizabeth Mitchell 

YouTube:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uhiMD6uMCyo
Website: https://www.reviveourhearts.com/podcast/grounded/finding-jesus-in-the-middle-of-your-pain-with-eliz/

Connect with Elizabeth

Instagram: @elizabeth.a.k.mitchell 
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/elizabethamitchell24
Website: https://elizabethamitchell.com/

Episode Notes

• Journey for the Heart: Hope When Life’s Unfair book by Elizabeth Mitchell.
• Register for the Biblical Help for Real Life event series.
• Revive Our Hearts Podcast Family.

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Elizabeth Mitchell: This is a perfect time to throw yourself on His mercy, to trust Him, to remember all those Scriptures that you've quoted to other people when they've been having a hard time. Now they're for you. Now you have to live it and believe it, even when absolutely nothing is making sense in your life. 

Dannah Gresh: You know that painful thing in your past, or maybe that just made you think of the mistake you made, or the difficult season that still haunts you. These may be the very thing God uses to help you discover more of Jesus. I'm Dannah Gresh, and this is a special summer edition of Grounded.

We believe your pain could be the very platform God places you on to use you to build His kingdom. So often the things we say, "I'm never going to talk about that again," or "I wish I could just forget that." Well, they ended up being the very place where God wants us to find our voice. Why? So we can celebrate how we met Jesus in our suffering, and so we can lead others to Him through theirs.

If you're struggling to believe God's able to bring something good out of your deepest pain, our guest Elizabeth Mitchell will point you to hope in this reaired favorite episode of Grounded. It's one of my favorites. Anyway, let me explain why we're reairing it this month.

The Grounded team is vacationing. In fact, the morning this airs, I'll be packing my suitcase to celebrate my thirty-fifth wedding anniversary with Bob—thirty-five years, friend. Praise the Lord. Well, I'm not sure where Erin and Portia are this morning. But the plan is for each of us to invest in our families along with the rest of our team all summer long. I hope you're getting to do the same.

So this month, we decided to pick up our favorite episodes to reair, and Erin's conversation with Elizabeth Mitchell was unquestionably not only one of my favorites, but it resonated with so many of you, too. You kept DM'ing me and saying, "I felt so much hope listening to Elizabeth's story."

If you haven't heard it yet, lean in. Elizabeth's gonna share the incredible true story of her family's journey through the heartache and triumph of their son James's congenital heart disease. It ultimately included a heart transplant . . . and heartbreak. With raw honesty and vulnerability, Elizabeth will direct your heart to trust God's complete sufficiency in sorrow. She'll help you remember that Jesus is ultimately in control.

God is faithful and present in your life, no matter how difficult things might be right now. And God is able to bring good out of every situation in His perfect time. And finally, Jesus can still be found and experienced in your story. He provides courage, hope, and grace to overcome.

Now, after you hear Elizabeth's conversation with Erin, I'll be back to get us grounded in God's Word. So open your Bible to 2 Corinthians chapter 1 for the verse that set me free from the pain of my past. Let's dive in. 

7:56 - Grounded with God's People (Elizabeth Mitchell)

Erin Davis: Elizabeth Mitchell's life seemed picture perfect until she had her fourth baby. And suddenly life seems so unfair. But this woman discovered Jesus in the midst of her pain, and she says it's possible for you to do that too. Welcome to Grounded, Elizabeth.  

Elizabeth Mitchell: Thank you, Erin. I'm so happy I could be here with you.

Erin: Elizabeth, your baby boy was born with some challenges. What were those challenges, exactly?

Elizabeth: He was born with a congenital heart disease. His issue was transposition of the great vessels, which meant his two main arteries were switched. So, the oxygen in his blood kept going back to his lungs, and then the blood that had no oxygen in it was being sent out to his body. So, it was very, very dangerous. And of course, his life was hanging by a thread. 

Erin: Did they discover this at birth?

Elizabeth: About twelve hours after he was born. They diagnosed it and called us in and gave us all this horrible news. There were three other defects as well, simultaneously.

Erin: You know, that's every mama's nightmare. We want healthy, flourishing children. We don't want children who are sick and require medical intervention. We certainly don't want to hear that our baby's life is in the balance. So, take us back to that moment. The hard was happening. You're hearing this devastating news about your baby boy's heart. How did God meet you in those painful moments specifically? 

Elizabeth: I remember wanting to turn the doctor off, like you would a terrible TV show. And when I went back to my maternity suite, they were preparing James for an air ambulance flight to Boston Children's Hospital. There was nothing I could do for him. I curled up in that bed. I knew my only lifeline, the only way I would be able to survive was if I could hear Scripture. I asked my sisters that were in the room with me to begin reading in the Psalms. They started in Psalm 27. I'll never forget it. You know, “The Lord is my light and my salvation, whom shall I fear?” “The Lord is the stronghold of my life.” They washed me with Scripture, and it washed into my mind. I clung to it through that first terrible day and all the very challenging days that we would face together, my husband, Bill and I.

Erin: Beautiful, Elizabeth. It reminds me of when my mom got diagnosed with Alzheimer's a few years ago. I texted a group of Christian friends and said, ”When I cannot see the truth for myself, I need you to force feed it to me in the years to come.” And they've been really faithful to do that. I can't imagine making it without that. 

Did you ever struggle?” You're being honest to believe that God was going to bring something good out of the pain you and your family were experiencing.

Elizabeth: Oh, of course, of course, the darkness that descends the cloudiness, so you can't taste and everything in your mouth is bitter. That Scripture in Psalm 34, taste and see that the Lord is good, well, when something that horrific is happening, the bitterness is a taste. It's very cloudy and dense and dark to see. And truly, this is when other people's faith carries you through other people reminding you just like you said that He is good no matter what. That this makes no sense, and you don't have to understand it, and it's okay. That you feel in anguish. But this is a perfect time to throw yourself on His mercy. To trust Him to remember all those Scriptures that you've quoted to other people when they've been having a hard time. Now they're for you. Now you have to live it and believe it even when absolutely nothing is making sense in your life.

Erin: So beautiful, Elizabeth. I think a lot of times we tell our stories like this, like my son was born sick. In fact, this is a story of my family. My son Eli was born sick. And God has provided him a healthy life despite all predictions to the contrary. But your story in a human sense doesn't end with that kind of bow on it. What happened to James?

Elizabeth: James had many open-heart surgeries, many procedures, pacemakers, and then when he was four, he needed a new heart. There was nothing they could do to repair his original heart, and they told us he needed a heart transplant. And that came with its own large big bucket of consequences and follow through and biopsies. 

But he did get the new heart, and he soared and lived well and strong and played basketball. He always had a smile on his face, was always hugging his cousins and his friends and had great energy. He loved Jesus, he loved people, he loved God's Word. He was thirteen and playing basketball with his cousins began throwing up. He had had a heart attack. And because of the transplant, they don't feel like the symptoms of a regular heart attack patient. We brought him home and took him to the doctor. 

And then in our bed in our bedroom, he had a second heart attack, and that one was fatal. The Lord chose to take him home when he was thirteen. I believed that absolutely nothing good could come from that level of pain. And the weeks and the month sand the years that followed, I said it out loud, You can't possibly do anything good to this much sadness. 

But our God is so faithful, and He proves me wrong all the time. He has brought great good from James's life, almost like sweetness from an orchard that nobody can see anymore. He's still nourishing people and reminding them that God is good. He came to tell us, He sent James to tell us of His goodness, His faithfulness, His provision, no matter what we have to face.

Erin: I'm convinced that only a mother that is rooted and grounded in Jesus Christ could look upon the death of her son and describe it as a fruitful and fragrant orchard. It really is remarkable. You can explain the details of this part of your story with a lot of details as you can remember them. 

My question is how do we remember or think about things that have happened that are painful and avoid the temptation to just stuff them or deny them and not get stuck there? I think there could be things in all of our paths where we just feel kind of stuck with an inability to get over them. How do you remember and honor what happened to James and not stay in that place of sorrow?

Elizabeth: Yes, it's very easy to feel sorry for ourselves—very easy. Couple of things, I would encourage anybody listening: Write down part of their story to get it out of that heavy heart and heavy mind. Somehow get it on paper. Even if it's clumsy and awkward and you're not a good writer, it's okay. This is a part of healing. 

I would encourage you to, to tell other people your story. Your story has great value. Even if it doesn't have a happy ending, maybe most particularly because it doesn't. So share with others and let them into your pain and into your mess and text them and call them. Let them know when you need them to pray for you because you're sinking under the weight of it all.

I would encourage you to read Scripture and to believe it and to go there even if it doesn't make a drop of sense to you. His Word is oxygen, and it is life and it is breath. He will nurture and feed us. It's not automatic. It takes time. Keep going. Keep seeking. Keep asking for Him to give you the mercy and the grace you need to endure whatever it is that you have faced in the past or that you're looking at in the future.

Erin: So good, so practical. All things that God's Word encourages us to do. I want to ask you about anger Elizabeth. There are some things in my past that I look back at the way somebody has harmed me, and I feel really angry about it—angry at the person but beneath that, angry at the Lord. Was their anger as you look back and consider your son dying in your bedroom. Does anger rise up? And what do you do with that anger?

Elizabeth: It's a very natural response. And if we're honest, we'll admit that yes, we faced that with a transplant. When they told me he needed a transplant, I remember being very angry. How dare God ask everything else with his death. I knew the five stages that I had to go through. I can't tell you what they are now but it's everywhere and anger as well.

Erin: Well, one them is anger and another is denial. 

Elizabeth: I remember asking him specifically, Erin, to spare me from the anger because I'd seen it in other people when they'd known loss, and I didn't want to go there. I knew I would hurt. I knew the agony would be there. I was willing to go through that pain. I knew I couldn't get around it or go over it or under that. The pain was something I would have to endure, we would have to endure as a family. 

And I told Him I was willing to do all the stages but please spare me anger. That's my story. It's natural to feel anger at some great injustice and some great disappointment. And the beautiful thing is, God can handle our anger and our honesty. We don't need to pretend, and we don't need to be fake and act spiritual. You don't have to act spiritual for anybody. You go towards your Father, and you choose to be honest with Him and let Him know that you're aching, and you need more of Him—more grace, more mercy, more peace. You beg Him to help you, and then look and be open to the ways that He will, but it's okay to be angry. He can handle it. 

Erin: He absolutely can. In fact, Jesus Himself was angry. We see that in Scripture. But what a beautiful way to pray, “Lord, spare me the anger step.” He certainly is able to do that.

You know, something we say or think is that when something hard comes, our goal is to get over it. I can't imagine you ever get over the loss of your boy. So, you are a woman of the Word. You've pointed to the Psalms, but what does God's Word say specifically about those wounds that are not going to go away this side of heaven?

Elizabeth: His economy is totally opposite to ours. He says, “Tithe, give me 10%, and I'll bless the other 90% more than the ten.” He says, “Be generous and sacrifice, worship Me when you don't feel like it.” So, none of that makes sense. So how to cling to Him when nothing is making sense, it's an act of obedience. It's trusting that He is going to keep His Word. He says, “Without faith it's impossible to please Me.” So, He's gonna give us opportunities where we have to practice faith in Him and what He's asking of us. I don't know, am I answering your question? Or is there something else that?

Erin: You're doing perfect. You are reminding us that He keeps His promises. And here in a minute after Dannah teaches, we're gonna give you an opportunity to pray for the women who are at the epicenter. There are some women that are right there in the thick of the hard news, the thick of the hurt, the thick of the anger. I know you're gonna pray for them just beautifully. So, we'll give you a chance to do that in a minute. 

Elizabeth, you've written a book, Journey for the Heart: Hope When Life Seems Unfair. What prompted you to want to share this painful part of your story with the Church?

Elizabeth: I wrote the book before James died, when I thought it had a such a happy ending after the transplant and then I couldn't get it published. And then when Jesus took him home, He gave me the grace, months later to finish the book, and write the last three or four chapters.

I wanted to get it into people's hands, to show them the Scriptures that He had given me in them in the dark, in the sad part and not after, not when everything was going, okay.

I knew there were lots of other people with great aches and pains. And somehow, He had taken us to a land and given us souvenirs of Himself. I wanted to come back and share those souvenirs with other women or men who would be greatly disappointed in life. I wanted to give them hope, because God had given us hope. I wanted to tell them, “Yes, life is unfair, but our God is good and you can trust Him.” That's why I wrote it. 

Erin: Elizabeth, I love that picture of God taking us into a land and giving us souvenirs of Himself. I've often said it this way, I've been to the valley of the shadow of death, and there's gold embedded in the walls. You're sharing that same story so beautifully. That book is only available on Elizabeth's website ElizabethAMitchell.com. We're gonna drop the link to make it easy for you to find. I don't want to say goodbye to you yet, Elizabeth, because you're gonna stay and pray. But I do invite our friend Dannah to hop on and help us get grounded in God's Word. 

22:12 - Grounded in God's Word (with Dannah)

Dannah Gresh: What a precious conversation. I had the privilege of visiting with Elizabeth last week. I just thought her voice and her words are like a comforting blanket to a hurting heart. It reminded me of a time in my life when I was hurting deeply. I found a verse that gave me great comfort, and I want to share it with you today. It's in the book of 2 Corinthians. 

You know, our pain comes in a lot of shapes and sizes. It can come in the light as grief, as you just heard. Elizabeth shared grief from the loss of a loved one or a relationship. It can come from deep loneliness, loneliness from a life of singleness or from not experiencing purpose or feeling like you don’t belong in your church. It can come from shame. Pain can come from shame, shame from sin, that we just can't overcome sin that's in our past, and we haven't found all of the healing that God means for us to know yet. But if you can meet Jesus in that pain, whatever form of pain it is, this is a promise I can give you from the hot pavement of life. God will use that. He will use that pain in your life. He will use you in spite of that thing in your life because of the pain you face. 

Let me read to you 2 Corinthians 1:3–4, two of my favorite verses in Scripture, 

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies, and God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction, with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God.

Oh, these two verses promise that when we meet Jesus in our pain, not only do we receive comfort, but we become conduits of His comfort. The meaning of this entire paragraph hinges on the word “comfort.” In fact, all major modern translations that I checked use the English word “comfort” here. But let's slow down a little. The Greek word here for comfort is paraclete. I want to zoom in on it for a moment to learn something important. 

You see, the word “comfort” is not how this verb usually gets translated, when we see it in other parts of the New Testament. Most often, this extremely common verb gets translated one of three other ways: encourage, exhort (which means to strongly encourage to do something), or urge (which means to give impulse to do something). 

So, let's think about this. Is it possible that the apostle Paul is communicating not only that we can be soothed by Christ's presence in our pain, but also that we'll be strengthened to do something with that soothing? 

Now, if you're in the middle of pain, and you're like me, you might not feel like even getting out of bed or brushing your teeth. That's what happens when the pain overwhelms us. You don't want to get out of bed, let alone do something good. 

But when you invite Jesus into the pain, when you experience Him there for the first time, or in a new way, He'll not only comfort you and soothe you, but He'll strengthen you to do something. 

In fact, let me go ahead. I know 2 Corinthians 1:3–4 by heart, I want to just give you the Dannah Gresh version. All right, let's just say it this way: Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of all mercies, and the God of all encouragement, who strengthens us in the midst of all our affliction, so that we may be able to strengthen those who face any affliction with the encouragement with which we ourselves are strengthened by God. 

Think about it. My friend, whatever pain you're in—the loss of a son, marriage trauma, being separated from your family, struggling through singleness even though you want so much to be married, problems at work, even sin and pain from your past—God wants to soothe you. And then He wants to pass on the soothing through you. He will strengthen you. 

I know what I'm talking about. I first discovered this first when I was in my twenties. I was working through some deep pain. It was the kind that comes from sin. I was so ashamed of my past. I was aware that my teen sexual sin had done great damage to my marriage. I was working through the process of fully healing, fully receiving the soothing of God. 

Bob and I were working through the baggage that it caused in our relationship. During that time there was this great lie that kept surfacing. It was this: God can never use me. And me, a woman who at the age of eight was called to serve the Lord, a woman who at the age of eight had a desire to teach the Word. 

I was sitting in the back row. I thought maybe what I could do for God was, I don't know, clean up after a service or bake cookies for Bible school. Not that those things aren't great things to do. but they're not the right thing to do when God has called you to do something different. I scoured the Scriptures looking for comfort, “God, am I unusable? Can You never use me? Did my sin disqualify me? Does this grief and this hurt and this pain cripple me in a way that can never be repaired?” 

And I found my comfort right here, in 2 Corinthians 1:3–4. 

I have been so comforted by Jesus, comforted by Him for that shame over the sin of my past, comforted through marriage troubles, comforted through NICU grandbabies that have no reason to be here, except that God is good and loves us, comforted through distance and hurt in relationships, comforted in every way possible. 

And every time I am comforted by Him, I become strengthened and urged and exhorted by the Holy Spirit to comfort others in the same way that Jesus has comforted me. 

Now, if you come to me, and you're someone who struggled with, I don't know, body image issues and an eating disorder, I'm going to love you. I'm going to pray over you. I'm going to encourage you. But I won't have the same magnificent way of doing that because I haven't known that pain in my life. 

But come to me with your marriage troubles, come to me with shame from your past sin, come to me with fear that your grandbaby in the NICU isn't gonna make it, and I know that comfort and soothing of Jesus Christ, and He has strengthened me for purpose in your life in a way that's very unique and special in a way that only He can do. 

I believe that Elizabeth has known the power of 2 Corinthians 1:3–4. She has known the comfort in the soothing of Jesus. She is sitting here with this soothing voice and these soothing words, like a blanket of the Holy Spirit covering our hearts. And so, Elizabeth, would you just come back today? Would you pray comfort over the hearts of women who can't imagine that they're going to want to get out of bed, that they're going to want to brush their teeth, that they're going to do basic things? They really can't imagine that one day Jesus is going to use this pain as a soothing blanket that they lay on the hearts of others. Would you lift them up today, Elizabeth?

Elizabeth: Oh, I'd love to do that. 

Loving heavenly Father, we come into Your holy presence so very aware that You are the one fully and completely in charge. We don't need to be, and we will never be able to be. Thank You for Your power and Your strength and Your courage and Your wisdom and Your comfort. You are the God of all comfort. I come before You. We come before You today asking for all those women who are listening, whose hearts are broken and who feel paralyzed by fear and anxiety and depression, who don't know how to get one foot in front of their other. Thank You that You know everything about them. 

Thank You that You care about them intimately and deeply. Thank You that you have a plan for each of them and for their families and for their ministry and for their careers, for their marriages. Father in heaven, would you pour out Your divine comfort on each of these women? Would You bring to their minds a Scripture that they heard long ago? And would You fill their minds with that and with Your presence? May they be so aware that You are beside them, helping them take that next step? 

Bless them Father in more ways than we could even imagine. Strengthen and encourage and pour out your comforting Holy Spirit on each one. We pray this in the name of Jesus Christ, amen.

Dannah: Amen. Thank you so much for being with us today on Grounded, Elizabeth.

Elizabeth: Thank you, Dannah. Thank you for having me. Second Corinthians is my most favorite book.

Dannah: I love it.  

Well, friend, thanks for joining us for this special summer edition of Grounded. I hope you were encouraged. If you need more encouragement this summer and truth straight from the Bible, please check out our entire family of podcasts at ReviveOurHearts.com/podcast You're going to find a rich collection of digital content focused on calling you to freedom, fullness, and fruitfulness in Christ. Podcasts like: Revive Our Hearts with Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth, True Girl for tween girls with me and Staci Rudolph, The Deep Well with my friend Erin Davis, Revive Our Hearts Weekend, and even a podcast based on our Revive Our Hearts Bible studies. Check those out until next week. Then we'll explore Portia's favorite episode on Grounded on the topic of serving in ministry with courage and clarity.

Let's wake up with hope together next time on Grounded.

Erin: Grounded audio is powered by Skype. Grounded d is a production of Revive Our Hearts calling women to freedom, fullness, and fruitfulness in Christ.

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