NRB Chronicles - Survive Alive Thrive

If you've got a radio show called Kingdom Pursuits, how does God take your passion and use it to build the kingdom, you're like, you know, there's poster children everywhere you look, and that God has given them a vision of communication in some way, shape or form. And now they've got a platform and we get a chance to, I like that when they said it in the Wizard of Oz, we get the hobnob with our fellow wizards. Well, there we are. It's a great privilege, isn't it? It is. So I have with us actually Mark and Dr. Malin.

Malin, right. And they're, I understand that they're, you guys are podcasters? We are podcasters. We own a nonprofit ministry focused on helping people who have gone through loss find a new way to navigate that journey to hope and happiness. And I've written a book that was released a couple of weeks ago and is available, Barnes and Noble, Zion & Schuster, Audible, Amazon, etc., called Survive a Live Thrive. So it's been my experience that 2 Corinthians chapter 1 just seems to always apply in this situation, that God has comforted us in the comfort of which we are now having an opportunity to comfort others.

And so I almost hesitate, except for the beautiful smile that's on both of your faces, to ask the next question. But something tells me in order to take on loss and grief, there must have been something tragic. Well, unfortunately, that's a big part of my story. And Malin has shared her story in that, and can in the same way. I'd go back as long as we're talking biblical perspective to the very oldest book in the Bible, which is Job. And we know that suffering and pain and loss is not unique or new to the human condition, right?

I mean, this has been around... Which, by the way, I'm glad you brought that up. You know what I learned yesterday? I'd love to study Hebrew. That doesn't mean I'm a scholar or anything.

It just means I like to study. And what I did not know, I was actually looking up the name Jezebel, because I really thought there would be some cool letters in there, something to get at. Like, you could just hear Baal at the end of it, and you could hear there was a Zion in there. So I was really excited about looking up Jezebel. And what I found was, guess whose name is right next to it? Job's. And do you know that Job in Hebrew, what it means?

I do not. And I never got this before, but I sure got it yesterday. Hated. Oh my gosh. And it has a really unique configuration that only Job's name and Jezebel's name have in common, where they both start with an aleph, which is the first letter in the Hebrew alphabet, your aleph base, whatever you want to call it, and then a yud. And so here is this really fascinating configuration that Job's name would be hated.

And you know what? When you think about this, I was just thinking about this conversation between God and Satan. Like, if you were Satan, you know, and it's like, have you considered this guy? Like, he's got it together compared to you, Satan.

Right? Like, have you considered my servant, Job? Not that you're really my servant, Satan.

You know what I'm saying? And so Satan's like, I hate this guy. And I'd never thought about the significance of Job's name, but you couldn't be more right, and now that I've talked the interview.

I love the perspective. And in fact, if you think about our journey, right, our journey through life is in fact full of the battles between the principalities, right? I mean, ultimately, God has promised us that He'll never leave us or forsake us and we'll be there no matter what the world throws in our path. And yet at the same time, we do experience great suffering and brokenness, you know, in this journey.

And ultimately, where is he? And what role does he play when you're going through loss, suffering and brokenness? Is very specifically what I address in the book and what Melinda and I are doing in our ministry is to give people perspective that He's there with you, no matter how high on the mountaintop, or no matter how low in the valley you may find yourself, He's there, because He's promised He'll never leave us.

He doesn't promise us we won't go through tough stuff. We've kind of taken that on ourselves if we go back to original sin and way, way back. But I mean, ultimately, we live in a world where this is, you know, part of our journey. And in fact, even the 23rd Psalm, which was the very first scripture that I memorized when I became a Christian, and it became something I recited with my little boy when he was born.

Every year or every night that I was home, I would close the evening reciting it. And it wasn't until going through great tough difficulties personally that I realized, you know, the third verse right after God is exhorting us, which the Psalmist is exhorting God, David is writing, and He restoreth my soul, and He leadeth me on the paths of righteousness for His name's sake. And the very next line, 4, is, And yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death. I mean, ultimately, the journey, walking the path of righteousness for His name's sake, directly leads through the valley of the shadow. And this is our journey. It's biblical.

As with Job, right? Because here's a guy that was walking rightly, and the next thing you know, he's hated, and oh my goodness, there you go. And he stands by, you know, he shakes his fist, and he asks God why, and he's like any of us, it's okay, but he never crosses the line that his antagonists, you know, cross readily and say, well, God doesn't love you anymore, you ought to walk away from Him.

He's like, no, that's not it, you know, but I do want answers, I need to know. And I mean, that's the journey that we're on together. And so, what was the tragedy? So, in my case, I've got kind of a hit list of experiences in my life, and I want to say, first of all, I'm living a joy-filled life. I'm sitting here today with my wife we just celebrated, our one year anniversary. Dearly blessed and grateful, but my journey includes raising a son who was diagnosed with learning disabilities at three years old, and trying to go through the challenge that I'm sure your listeners understand if you struggle with kids that are not in the typical paradigm. Well, I teach special needs at our church, adults with special needs, so, you know, from 15 to 66, some of them older than me. But very fun, because those people, you know, as you know, they're very, very, very loving, no filter. But with learning disabilities like autism, or Down syndrome, or those kind of things, socially awkward at times, and all sorts of different challenges, right? And so you, yeah.

Well, it comes in so many flavors that you just kind of referred to, right? Our son was dyslexic, and had another disability called dyspraxia, which is effectively reading and writing, and a smart kid in many ways, which is like many folks on the autistic spectrum, right? That, however, couldn't do or communicate in ways that the quote unquote typical kids did, and he was smart enough to know it, and it was tough. So that's part of the journey of my story is reshaping your expectations for your kids. Second bit was I got a phone call just before a big board meeting that I was having, and it was from a paramedic in the back of an ambulance, and my wife had been, my wife Victoria at the time, had been in a high-speed car accident, and they were racing her an ambulance, and they weren't sure she was going to make it, and said you need to get to the hospital right away. And boy, nothing prepares you for that phone call. And then my past kidney stones and doctors didn't like it, took some tests and called me in and sat me down and said no easy way to say this. You have cancer.

We don't know if it'll kill you, but we need to get after it right away. Another one of those moments, and ultimately the accident that my wife had been in had left her with some significant neurological and other painful experiences that plunged her into depression and eventually needing doctor's care. So I caretook for her and her mom going through emotional depression and mental health issues, and eventually Victoria succumbed to those challenges, went off of her medications, ill-advisedly, and took her life in 2016, where my 18-year-old and I returned home to find that his mom and my wife of 20-plus years had committed suicide. So I've been on my knees in ultimate brokenness, and I've been on the top of the mountain, having been gifted and healed of cancer by God.

So what do you do with this stuff, right? Well, in my case, I committed myself to serving him in leading grief groups and counseling others and encouraging others who've been through tough stuff, and leaning on him and trusting him when it didn't seem like that was possible. Yeah, it's an interesting thing.

As a cancer survivor myself, we have a lot in common. For Job, I actually got saved through the book of Job, so I have a fondness for it. I came into that book. I was actually in the Church of Scientology. You talk about weird.

Well, that's out there. And my wife was a Christian, and she was like, yeah, you've got to stop. And I got talked into reading the Bible, and I'm so grateful. I got to Job, and to a Scientologist, you pretty much are God. You're working your way up, but you're getting there.

Good luck with that. That works out really well for you. So as I read the Bible, I just kept getting madder and madder and madder at God, like, who are you? Why are you doing this?

You're supposed to be a loving guy, and why are we stoning these people? So when I get to Job, and you're doing this all to this guy, and so I'm right with Job all the way until when you get to the end, God doesn't answer any of Job's questions. He's got questions for Job, right? He had questions for Robbie. Okay, Robbie, since you're so smart, make it hail. I would love to watch. Bring in the tide just one time. You're God.

Hey. And when you really think about it, what happened was Job knew about God, but he didn't know God until the end of the book. In other words, through the crisis, what he got, he didn't get answers to the questions he thought he had.

He got answers to the real questions, is who is God? And oh, I can actually know God, and I can actually learn and talk to him. And so through your experiences, I'm guessing, and the pain, you got to look. Well, you know, it actually predated, yes, I was getting an upfront and close and personal introduction into that relationship, and there's a paradoxical dynamic when people are particularly struggling. And you tend to reach out and embrace, and your tether, your connection with God becomes so intensely personal and real that there's only so much of that pain experience that you can endure.

And yet, the loving embrace and presence of God in your life is something that is truly supernaturally amazing and wonderful. But interestingly, when I was diagnosed with prostate cancer in 2015, I was given a number of choices. The results were double checked with Johns Hopkins. I was living in Connecticut at the time, and I went through and had a significant Gleason and presence of cancer issue, and they were concerned it might be metastasizing and had given me the chemo or radiation or surgery options. And a week later, the day before I was supposed to give the doctor my decision, I was woken up at four in the morning, and as I opened my eyes in the early April morning of Connecticut, a voice said to me, you will be healed, and then I will reveal your commission. So that's not something that happens every day, and I thought, okay, the stress is getting to me. I kind of sat up in bed and kicked my legs over the side and give myself one of those rub my eyes things like, okay, maybe it's a dream. And then again, a voice said to me, you will be healed, and then I will reveal your commission.

So I bolt upright, check the alarms, make sure windows aren't open to someone talking to me in the house, and splash water on my face. And ultimately, I came to believe that this was a direct communication from God in some way that I can't explain. And he was telling me that if I commit my life to following him and trusting him, which he revealed a little later in Acts 20, verse 23 through Paul's story, that my life means nothing, and the only thing that matters is to commit myself to testifying to the grace of God through Christ. So at the point where you're facing a cancer circumstance, for me, I was like, yeah, it's a deal, right? I mean, you're going to heal me, and I give my life to testifying no matter what. And it's like, yeah, so off I went to work, and come two o'clock in the afternoon, the doctor calls, and I say, I'm not going to take any treatment. God is going to heal me. And that didn't go over great with the doctor, to be honest with you.

He's like, okay, I know you're under a lot of stress. But seven months later, after refusing treatment, they called me in to sign a waiver to release the hospital in the practice of responsibility. And at which point in time, I agreed to a second comprehensive biopsy process. And a couple days later, he called and said, are you seeing another doctor?

What are you doing? The bottom line was, there was no cancer, and he couldn't explain it. And of course, I felt I could, and it was a moment for great celebration. So again, I've been on the mountain where God has shown me his sovereignty and his love when I could least expect it. And I've been on my knees, broken in ways that you can't imagine, where he was all I had to lean on. So that is the experience, or some of the core experiences that have taken us to write this book and launch this ministry. And I've spent the last... So I guess that's the reveal his commission part?

Yes, sir. It sounds like it was great. Well, you know, as they say, I interviewed a guy, I've interviewed a couple hundred people over the last four years who have gone through their own loss of brokenness. And one of them, a guy named Paul, who had lost a high school son to an opioid overdose. And he and I were getting together to talk about our initiatives. He was talking to high schoolers about the serious nature of the opioid and fentanyl crisis.

And I was now leading grief groups and leading people through their loss experiences and trying to better understand the journey. And Paul said, effectively, you know, we have platforms, they're reluctant platforms, but we have platforms. And I thought, what a true way to characterize that. If I could have written this pathway, as many of us, if we were able to write our journey exactly the way I want, this would clearly not have been my script.

Right. And here it is, and here we are. So now, Billy Graham has a great quote that says, and it was written in one of his devotionals called Under the Hills, and he said, the sufferer becomes the comforter in the service of the Lord. And that was profound to me in the context that here we have a God in Christ who has suffered for us and modeled this for us. And when we experience brokenness, we now go to him for comfort, right? So for those of us that have been through this, why don't we reach out and follow that model and try to provide comfort for people who are going through their stuff?

And that's what this is all about. That's beautiful. Absolutely wonderful. And your podcast is called Survive a Live Thrive is All as well? The podcast is, well, the best way to do it is to go to survivealivethrive.org, which is our website, the nonprofit. And there we have podcasts that are about living a joy-filled life, about understanding loss, and about navigating the journey through the three stages of grief, Survive a Live Thrive. So go to the website, nonprofit, buy our book, Survive a Live Thrive, or, you know, whatever you're inspired to do.

But it's free access on the nonprofit website for tools, insights, materials, and podcasts. Love to, you know, get your feedback. Invite everybody to please stop by and share your story. That's the idea. There you go. Survive a Live Thrive with Mark Negley. Thanks, guys. Thanks, Robbie. God bless you.