This is the Truth Network. Welcome to Hope in the Morning. turning tragedies and tears into testimonies of hope. One of the most common questions that people ask when it comes to suffering is, why do bad things happen to good people? Joining me today is Pastor Paul Lamey.
He's faced trials throughout his entire life, and he has had a gospel-centered perspective for us to consider when asking this question.
So, thank you for joining us today. Yeah, glad to be here. Thank you. Would you share with us a little bit about the fact you've kind of had almost like like generations of trials in your life. Can you take us back to like generation one?
Sure, yeah. And thank you for having me on. And this is an important topic, but I don't feel that Bad things have happened to me. I don't feel like there's been trials in my life personally, but it's been all around me. And it does go back to before I was born.
And really, I think about my parents. And my mother lost her father when she was 12 years old. And immediately, there was at a time where ladies were not, it was not common to find a single mom. And she had four kids and had to move to another state. And there was just enormous pressure on the family and so many other things.
And so at an early age, my mom was thrust into just a really hard situation without her father and sickness in the home and all sorts of things. Fast forward, when my parents married in 1968, soon thereafter, my dad started to develop some really difficult physical ailments, a neurological disease that just really took over his spine and some other things and just really started to shut down his body. And over the course of his adult life, that just really took over. And so from my parents, Parents' marriage early on, my father was suffering. They were able to have children.
They were able to have my older sister and myself. And we grew up in a home where suffering was normal, just to see my father daily in pain. And a few years later, after I was born, probably around I was probably four or five years of age, my grandmother, my mom's mother, came to live with us and had. Enormous health issues. And so here's my mother, and here's our context.
She is caring for my father, caring for my grandmother, and raising two small children at the time. And so that was just, that was life. That was normal for me. And I didn't know that that wasn't normal until much later. I just thought everybody had things like that going on.
And in one sense, they do. Everybody has trials and difficulties, but that was a normal life for me. And so I missed out on some of the things that so-called normal father-son kind of stuff. But I also grew in a great appreciation for how the Lord used that later on in my life. And we can talk about that as well.
Yeah, were both of your parents believers?
So it's interesting. My mother was a believer, became a Christian. As a young girl, my father was raised Roman Catholic and was not a follower of Christ and the grace of Christ alone. And yet he was a moral man, he was a religious man, and supported my mom taking us to church. And so my mom took my sister and I to a Baptist church in Mobile, Alabama.
That's where I grew up. And my father was just not able to attend, but even if he was physically able, probably wouldn't have. Was an unbeliever and a religious unbeliever, if you will. And so, until many years later, right before my wife and I got married, he heard the gospel and he believed. And the Lord saved him wonderfully.
And not too long after that, he went to be with the Lord. But I grew up in a home where he was just a good man, a religious man, and faithful in many ways, but not pointing us to Christ. And so that was a dynamic that was obviously missing, and there was a great void there. Thankfully for my mother, I heard the gospel constantly. She taught me to read, taught me to read the Bible, taught me to read all sorts of things, took us to church where we heard the gospel, and I believed.
And so that was our context there. Yeah.
So I know. Caregiving is an extremely taxing thing to do. And what was your mom's testimony before you as a believer? What do you remember of that? Before me?
Oh, yeah.
Well, before me. Yeah, just a faithful servant and a quiet warrior, and just always doing what was ever required and needed, and just quietly serving and being faithful in that. And that was such a rich testimony for me and my sister to see that because she was so selfless, just really Christ-like in her example of that. And now we have a unique opportunity. We brought her to live with us, my wife and I and our family, about six months ago.
And now we're caring for her. We love her. She's in great health, but we're able to return the favor in a sense. And so we're really excited to have her in our household under our roof. And it's brought another dynamic and another measure of joy to our family.
So just a lifelong selfless warrior is how I think about my mother. Just a sweet woman who loves the Lord and has pointed many people to Christ. In her suffering. That's a beautiful legacy. I think that's what every woman would strive for.
To be known as someone that just quietly suffers and serves. There's nothing more beautiful than that, especially in the sight of the Lord. There's not. We mentioned earlier how you have had generational trials.
So we've gone through the generation of your grandmother and your parents, and now we're at you and your wife. Yeah.
And just in between those was childhood and my teenage years, which were, I just had lack direction, not having a father who was right there in my life, just aimless is how I've often explained it. But my best friend growing up got brain cancer and had a brain tumor and died when we were 16. And that was a turning point for me of sorts. That was a sobering moment where the Lord, I believe I was a Christian before that, but the Lord really just woke me up in a sense. And it wasn't a crisis of faith, but it was a crisis of trust.
Am I going to trust this God? Am I going to trust him with my life? And so many starts and stumbles along the way. But in junior high, I met what would one day be my wife. And we met when I was in seventh grade.
And we didn't get secretly married at that time. But later on, after college, after I finished college, about the year after I finished college, we got married and moved to California for me to go to seminary. I went to the master's seminary and had a wonderful time there. We spent our first four years of marriage there and then came back to Huntsville, Alabama, where I pasted her in 2002 and started having children. And our children have been and still are a wonderful blessing to us.
And so had our first child in 2002 and they just kept coming. We had four total and they came every couple of years. And in 2009, our last daughter was born. She's almost 16 now. And not quite a year later, My wife was going for some routine exams and found out that she had colon cancer.
And when they did the To look at it more closely, they said it was stage 3C. And what that meant at that time was that her cancer was in millimeters really of being outside the colon wall and being stage four. And stage four is an even harsher way to go and sentence in some respects. And many people call it a death sentence. And so that was immediately just a punch in the stomach.
Our children at the time were one, three, five, and seven. And so here I am, a young father. I'm in my 30s. We're both in our 30s at the time. And small children, one to seven.
And not really understanding what's going on with mom. And she immediately starts going through chemotherapy and radiation and multiple surgeries and is in and out of all sorts of treatments and things for more than a year, really, about a couple of years, where things were really intense. And God was good to us in that. And not just because my wife is in remission and she is to this day, but he was good in what we saw, him really sustaining us and establishing us in his word and with his people. Our love for the church and the local church just grew immensely.
Here I am. I'm a pastor. You should love the church. And I do. And I thought I knew what the church was about until something like that came.
came on. And we just saw the church step up in such a significant way. And like my mother just selflessly serving and ministering to us in ways that we couldn't have possibly gotten along without. And so just so grateful for how God has put together his people and his church to minister in that way. And so we continue to learn so much through that.
Can you tell me a couple of the ways specifically that they served you? Like what are some ways that other people can serve a young father or a young mother whose spouse is ill? It was. As if overnight, you know, I'm. As a pastor, you're a public person, but you also have private aspects of your life.
And I was always more of a, you know, I want to keep my family kind of close. And when we're home together, we're home together, kind of things. And then all of a sudden, that just got wiped off. The doors are open. There's a team of ladies constantly in our house.
They're washing clothes. I have no secrets at that point. You know, they see everything, they see every nook and cranny of your house. They're cleaning. They're washing clothes.
They're taking my wife Julie to appointments where I couldn't be there. They're taking our kids when I couldn't take them to the next appointment or whatever it may be. It was just an army of people constantly ministering in our home. And also the things that you always hear about of just meals and all of that and just.
Sometimes it was just coming to sit with us and coming to sit with my wife. She would sit for long hours in a chair and receive chemotherapy and various infusions. And that's just hours on end. And you can only read so many books and those sorts of things. And some people would just come and sit with her.
She might say, I'm not able to talk, but would you just come and sit? And that was just such a blessing.
So even people that wonder what they can do, you don't always have to say the right thing or have some verse armed and ready, but just come and sit with that person. And just that presence there can be a great encouragement to them. You know, I would assume that it might be a little intimidating to some people to serve the pastor, you know, because you might be thinking, like, oh, I want to do this right. I want to make sure that I'm saying all the right Bible verses. And what a beautiful testimony to say that there's something powerful in just sitting there, just being present.
Um Did you find that going through that season with your wife Changed you as a pastor and the way you serve other people? Yeah.
Only eternity will be able to show me the ways that I change through that. But Um All the things that any believer hopes. You hope before something like that. You're in the Word. You're abiding in Christ, you're walking with the Lord, you love his church, you love his people, you're seeking to be humble, you wanna honor the Lord with your word, with your money, with all of your family, with everything that you do, and then something like that happens, and it puts a light on even those things.
And I feel like it humbled me. It gave me a greater sense of compassion for people that are hurting and going through trials. And I had seen so many trials in my own life and around our family, but also in our church. But to have it happen to the person that I am closest to on this planet is a whole nother level of experience. And it would have been the same if it were one of my children.
And so that's even helped us moving forward with some of the trials in our own children and now daughter-in-law's life. And so, just thinking through those things, yes, it absolutely changed me. That there were a lot of things that we thought might have been important were all of a sudden not that important. And, you know, it's, I hate to bring it up, but it's like when COVID happened and everything shut down.
So all of a sudden, a lot of things that we thought were important we had to go and do weren't. And here we are sitting at home with the things that are most important. And so there was a lot of that in that as well. Just really grateful for that. Yeah.
When we come back, we're going to talk about. This new generation of trials that he's going through now with his daughter.
So, join us in just a moment with Hope in the Morning. As a grief counselor with years of experience, I can testify that Hope in the Morning is one of the best resources out there. Out of all the grief books I've purchased and that others gave me, this is the book that has helped me the most. These stories don't showcase the individuals as heroes who battled and conquered the worst. The stories of Hope in the Morning provide a marvelous perspective, allowing the listener to focus on Christ rather than self.
These stories remind me of who my Savior is and that there is truly hope in the morning. To learn more, visit us at hopeinthemorning.org. What do you say when a loved one faces deep loss? How do you recover joy when you find yourself in the valley of despair? Learn from honest testimonies of trials and tears, and be encouraged that in Jesus there is hope.
Oh, in the morning. Visit hopeinthemorning.org for grief resources or to make a donation in your loved one's honor. Have you ever struggled to comfort a grieving friend? John 11:35 says, Jesus wept. When Jesus was told by Mary and Martha that their brother Lazarus had died, Jesus wept.
Today on Hope in the Morning, we invite you to learn what it looks like to weep with those who weep. Learn what it means to sit in the ashes and be encouraged that even in our morning, there's hope. His name is Jesus. Visit hopeinthemorning.org to learn more. O soul, are you weighed down with sorrow?
Does grief seem your nearest of kin? Are you anxiously viewing tomorrow with a heart that is aching within? O soul, do you feel the weight of this world as it moans under sin's dreaded curse? Do you long for the day when he'll make all things new, exchanging beauty for all that now hurts? There is a day coming where all things will be beautiful, glorious, bright.
Where to eyes now darkened, and filling with tears, He will unveil his unfathomable light. O dear precious soul, remember the truth, that will not waver nor wane. That the Lord is your God, He will redeem all your days, and what is lost here on earth will be heaven to gain.
So yea, though you walk through the shadowy valley, and your heart will be tempted to fear, Remember, a shadow can only be cast When the sun is drawing near. Take courage, O soul, and cling to the sun, when it seems only darkness surrounds And hold fast to his promises, finding them true, And you'll find it's his grace that abounds.
So talking through your next generation. Yeah, I think we we have a few questions about the prior generation and then we'd like to talk a little bit about your daughter and what you're facing now too. Yeah, some years ago we just started noticing things with our daughter and just how she was responding with meals and pain and different things. And she's almost she'll be 16 next week but this really goes back to her childhood really as an infant. We started to notice more and more and it was really in two seemingly unrelated areas.
One was her eyes and she has an eye disease that causes the muscles to be detached and actually causes great strain and then all that goes with that headaches and pain and those kinds of things. And so we're watching our child suffer with that and she has gone through so far five major surgeries just on her eyes. And they're still unable to fix that and get those things straight and where she's not seen double and all of that. And so here's a young teenage girl coming into her 16th birthday, still with that struggle. And on top of that, she has had for her entire life just enormous GI issues.
That have just caused her considerable pain. And we're just trying to understand those kinds of things. And so she's been through, it seems like every test under the sun has been poked and prodded and tested in so many different ways. And we're just trying to zero in on those kinds of things. But with our history, both with my wife and just other things and our exposure to people suffering in the church and our own life, we've been able and have sought to walk with her through that and just keep pointing her to Christ.
And we're so grateful. Just even her attitude in that has been sweet and that she is one of the happiest. Children, I've ever been around, and just has a wonderful sense of humor. And most people, if it was me in that, in her condition and with some of the things that she has, I would not be as happy and carefree as she seems to be. But she's just been so sweet and so wonderful in that.
And even though she's suffering most days, and so, but it's, but our experience has allowed us to have some prior knowledge of here, this is going to be a difficult road. We don't necessarily have answers. We're not sure how this is going to end. We're not sure if it's going to end until, as you just read, until Christ makes all things right and perfect in the new heavens and the new earth. And so until then, we abide in Christ.
We look to him. We depend on him. And whether it's been cancer or my mom or my daughter or anything else, it has just driven us to prayer. It's driven us to cry out to the Lord, to go to his word, to cry with our. Mm.
Children, with our daughter, and just present our needs before God. And so it's been a sweet opportunity in that just to keep pointing this young soul to Christ. And now we're seeing her even those fruits come about in her life, and she's just in her own testimony is pointing others to Christ through that. Hmm. Uh And so Uh as a cancer survivor myself and several of similar situations uh as well as being a pastor.
So you know you have all those different things that you can connect with. I didn't realize the real meaning of the word patient until I became one. Especially if you're a cancer patient, or as your daughter's, or even your father, right? Each of those things, you're waiting on the next test. And even as you describe, your wife's still in remission, right?
Anybody that's been through that realizes that that Throughout the scripture, especially somebody, and there's where the question goes: you know, how cool is it that God had you at the master's college and Soaking in his word for many, many years. And so I know our listeners could glean something wonderful for like your and in my own opinion, one of the things that were more difficult was my wife was my caregiver, and I've often thought she had it a lot worse than me because I'd rather have been the one. You know, in the bed suffering and watching somebody suffer, right? Or going through all that stuff.
So, you know, you've been the caregiver in the midst of that. And so, as you do that, where. That specifically. Like... There's many passages I'm sure you know.
And where do you go with that? Yeah, and it's God's providence. It's God's providential care in my life and soul and my family that had prepared me for that moment. It was March 25th of 2010 when we found out the news that she had cancer. And uh, and it was just a shock to the system, but there was this repository of truth that had been poured into me by godly men and women, and people in our life, and professors, and pastors before us.
And I look back at that and just think God had been preparing me. And then, even in my own pastoral ministry, we had only been there-that was 2010, we had been there for about uh eight years at that point. The first book I ever preached through at my church was the book of James, and had no idea. You know, here I am, a young pastor, upstart, with not a whole lot of experience or much of anything else to offer, and yet God was preparing me because here I am soaking in the Word of God week after week, and that's just being drilled into my soul in such a way that. To borrow the language of the psalmist, I've hidden your word in my heart that I might not sin against you.
Or in this case, I've hidden your word in my heart that I might be able to care for others, or that I might be able to serve you, or minister to those in my context. Yeah, I love in James. James 1 and 2 actually were the passages that my children and I were memorizing leading up to the loss of my son and my dad. And I love the fact that it says, Consider it all joy when you face trials of any kind, knowing that the testing of your faith produces endurance. It's not hoping it produces endurance.
It might produce endurance. If you're a true follower of the Lord, it will produce endurance in you. You know, going back to our initial question that we brought up about how people say, well, why do good why do bad things happen to good people? But you're a walking testimony of the fact that the Lord uses bad things not to harm you, but to remove the dross, you know, to make us reflect Him more and to see the truth of His scripture.
So, as a pastor, as someone that studied the Word, and even Robbie, for you as a pastor that also studies the Word and had to live this out through the loss of your dad and through your cancer journey. Did you find that preaching became a richer thing to you guys when you had lived it.
Well, I love one time I heard that David Jeremiah. you know, he went through a horrible cancer experience and and he had to have a bone marrow transplant and all this stuff. And while he was going through that, of course he just had him playing sermons that he'd played before. You know, they were reruns. And he started to get all these letters and emails saying, Man, your sermons are so richer since you're going through all this stuff.
And he's like, same sermon, same stuff. But people see it differently because your testimony is, as Paul has pointed out throughout this, is that. You know, you're as you as you said before you, as people are watching the whole thing and and they hear you preaching uh or talking about what God's done in your life, when they when they see the pain and the struggle and that kind of thing, it It Becomes God's platform. I'll put it that way. I've often thought that all that suffering ended up being a way that God showed people that, man.
He's right there, and he will show you love that will blow your mind. Amen. Yeah.
Yeah, it changed my preaching. I mean, my commitment to the text and the authority of scripture and my love for scripture, those didn't wane at all. If anything, it just deepened my love for what God was doing and how God speaks to us through His Word. And we have the sufficiency of Scripture. He's given us everything we need for life and godliness.
He is equipping us for everything that we will ever encounter, any type of suffering that we could imagine. His word is enough. And God says this is enough. And He'll walk us through that. And so, as far as preaching, I don't know because I don't listen to my preaching, but I would like to think that, as I was saying earlier, I became more compassionate.
My connection with our people, even if it didn't come across in the pulpit, that's not everything. Just even my ministry, my pastoral ministry outside of the pulpit with them, I hope took on a different dimension and a greater dimension of just compassion and love and patience with them and all of that. Yeah.
You know, one of the things I can say, as the only person here that's not a pastor, is that. It's so helpful for those of us that sit in the congregation to see our pastors suffer well because. You look to them as an example in our faith. What does this look like to live out? God's Word day to day.
And I think it's important to do just as you're doing today and come on as a pastor and give a vulnerable testimony and say, you know, we're real people too. And we suffer, we cry, we lament. And so that the people of God can look to you guys as sources of Real comfort, like they live a real life just like we do. You know, you're not untouched by suffering just because you're a pastor. And I remember as a young child when I really was struggling with assurance of salvation, thinking, Man, I wish I could be a man and be a pastor because there's no way they ever struggle with that.
I grew up to learn that's not true, you know. But having people, having men be courageous and say, These are the things I've struggled with, and here's how the Lord has walked me through that, is such a beautiful testimony of who God is and how He takes the ordinary people and does extraordinary things through their testimonies.
So what would you say are a couple verses to leave our listeners with to cling to? throughout whatever trials God may have for them. Oh, wow. There's a number of things. I was reading recently in Genesis and reading through the Joseph story and just.
The trials and the suffering that this man endured, and some of his own making at times, and others, a lot of it at the hands of his brothers, and all of those things, and being sent out. And the things that he says there, and he talks about in Genesis 45: God sent me, but he says this to his brothers who enslaved him and/or slavery. God sent me before you to preserve for you a remnant in the earth and to keep you alive by a great deliverance.
Now, therefore, it was not you who sent me, but God. And so he can look at even the sinful suffering.
Sometimes we suffer because of the sinful acts of other people. Even in that, God is at work. And that's amazing. And then you fast-forward to the end of the story there in Genesis, and he said, You meant it for evil, but God meant it for good. And so, just even to see the larger purposes, that's one text.
In a nutshell, it is Genesis. Another would be Philemon, which is not a place that a lot of people would go to, but where Paul is writing to his friend and he's pleading for a slave. And this is a hard, hard situation. And he's pleading with him to take him back now, not just as a former slave who's run away or whatever the circumstance was, but now as a brother in Christ. And he says something amazing here.
And I just want to read this very, very quickly here. He says Paul kind of sits back in his chair, I imagine. That's just That's my own little memory here. But he says: for perhaps he was for this reason separated from you for a while. that you would have him back forever.
Paul says something there. Paul the Apostle, who sees great things and knows great things from the Lord, he says, There's things I don't know, perhaps. Perhaps this has happened for this reason. But he can see that even for whatever has happened, the salvation of the slave has happened, the restoration and forgiveness of this relationship is happening. And so we don't know what God is doing in that.
And so perhaps we might ask: what is God accomplishing in the midst of this? And I can go through a lot of things, and I can think of all the situations where my wife had an opportunity to sit in a chair and talk to a nurse, sit in a chair or at a bed and talk to a doctor, or others who are going through the same thing, or those who are coming behind us now in the church who are experiencing their own trials and suffering. And we're able to bring the scripture and not just our experience, but the warm truths of scripture to help them encourage them. Yeah, you know, the Lord wastes nothing. And I so appreciate you sharing your testimony of how the Lord has refined you through all of these sufferings.
Thank you. Hope in the Morning is a non-profit ministry that seeks to encourage the hurting. Equip those who walk beside them, and evangelize the lost with the hope of Jesus Christ. To partner with our ministry or to make a donation in your loved one's honor, please visit hopeinthemorning.org. Your donation helps keep these stories of hope on the air.
and helps tangibly meet the needs of the herding.
