Podcast

Finding Hope and Freedom in Brokenness: Pat Domangue E120
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Pat: I could tell anybody to have faith, and believe God, but here I was in this faith crisis myself. I couldn’t see anything but the physical circumstances. And she said to me, “Pat, you have got to get your eyes off of what is happening in the physical and get your eyes back on the word.”
Pat: Wow. What does God’s word say? You call forth those things that aren’t as though they are. , It was like that wake up call,
Pat: And I really realize now that if anyone , would just stay in the Word, even when they go, “I don’t get it, I’m not understanding it, it doesn’t make sense, there is a powerful work that will happen if you will stick with it.
Pat: You start hearing from the Lord , and that will change everything.
Welcome to the Unshakable Hope podcast, where real life intersects redeeming love. I’m Kelly Hall, and this is where we wrestle through faith [00:01:00] questions, such as how do I trust God’s heart when His ways and delays are breaking mine? We’ll hear from people just like you and me who have experienced God’s faithfulness when life didn’t unfold as they expected.
My prayer is that God would renew our hope in His Word and His love through these conversations.
Hey, friends. We’re covering a lot of ground today because my guest has a story and a heart for the Lord that will make you want to believe God for more.
But I do want to mention that there are some things she will bring up that are not appropriate for young ears to hear.
Here are just a few questions that we’re gonna hear addressed in her story. Can God truly break addictions? Can He redeem the harm, the sins committed against us? How can we find hope during suffering? And how do we fight for a child who’s in danger? We’re gonna hear how God miraculously [00:02:00] intervened in her daughter’s life, and at the end, you’ll hear about the beautiful message in her latest Bible study, and it’s really encouraging. So I hope you’ll stick around to the end. My guest is Pat Domangue. I met this dear woman of God at a conference on the East Coast. We connected immediately. She’s from Louisiana, so you’ll hear her lovely Southern accent, and she is one of the contributing authors in the Held in the Wilderness devo that’s available for free on my website. That devo includes stories from 31 writers across the country about how God met them in wilderness seasons.
Just go to kellyhall.org, and you can download yours for free. Pat Domangue is an author, speaker, podcast host, and the founder of On Fire Ministries. She has a lot of resources, so check out the show notes for links. For over 20 years, she’s served in women’s ministry. She’s written multiple Bible studies, and leads women in understanding scripture in a [00:03:00] way that brings real life change.
Her latest study, My Maker and Me, which is just beautiful, helps women learn to trust God in the midst of life’s trials by understanding God’s intimate hands-on work as their potter, shaping them with purpose even in the hardest seasons.
Pat, I’m so glad you’re here.
Welcome
Pat: thank you so much, Kelly. I’m excited to be here.
Kelly: Oh, me too. We’ve had to cancel several times, but finally the Lord allowed-
Pat: That’s right persistence pays off.
Kelly: Well, Pat, you have a powerful story, and I know our listeners are gonna be very blessed. So would you mind just diving in? Anywhere you want to start.
Pat: Well, I would love to. We had just talked about maybe even the very beginning of my story.
Pat: One of the things , I think’s kinda interesting about my story is I didn’t come to know the Lord until 30, but I was raised in church. I, I always say my Christian background and upbringing was so entrenched that I think Mom [00:04:00] and Dad probably stopped by the church on the way home from the hospital when I was born to show me where I would spend half my life, because I did.
Pat: We really were at church all the time. But I I was rebellious, and I just had a bent toward rebellion, I had great parents. I had, they loved me, they supported me. Of course, like all of us,
Pat: they were imperfect, but they showed me love and, and gave me a really good life. So I had every reason to walk with the Lord, but I didn’t. So, the biggest shift, and this is kind of, this is starting out hardcore in the podcast, but the biggest shift happened when I was 13, and at 13 years old, I was sexually assaulted.
Pat: Mm. And when that happened, from that moment on, I identified myself as very bad and I just immediately [00:05:00] had this guilt, this shame, this condemnation, and everything that I did from that moment on was filtered through that experience. And not just through the experience of the trauma of that happening, but the experience of my identity.
Pat: Because my identity in that moment was just slam dunk changed. I can remember it’s just having that moment, I mean this is- 40-something years later, you know, but I still have that vivid memory of my feet stepping on the ground again for the first time after it. And I remember inside of me going, “You will never be the same.”
Pat: And I just really lived that till I was 30, and that’s when I met Jesus. And, , before that experience, I had had the go to church camp and sit around the [00:06:00] bonfire and say yes to Jesus and all of that. I had been baptized. And I always say, , I had an experience with the Lord, and I think that’s where my real journey did begin, but I don’t believe that it was my true salvation experience because I did not really understand that Jesus was God.
Pat: He was this good man God sent to die for me. But until we connect that God himself died for us, there’s something missing, by the time I’m 30, I had been married and divorced twice. I had gotten married at 16 gotten pregnant, gotten married because I was pregnant, and in less than six months I’m divorced.
Pat: So by the time I’m 17 I’m already divorced. So, the failure, the shame, the junk is just piling up. And all of that to say, I have these good, godly parents. So [00:07:00] I just, how much that had to have just been agonizing for them,
Kelly: Pat, I think so much of your story can bring hope to parents and grandparents- of children who are wandering from the faith.
Pat: Yeah.
Kelly: Because, what you shared is there were things going on in your heart that couldn’t be seen on the outside.
Pat: Yeah, yeah.
Kelly: First of all, you never really believed and understood that God’s love was for you. Mm-hmm. And, and then when that assault happened, you so easily slipped into the lies that you didn’t deserve that love anyway, right. And not worthy of this love.
Kelly: And so what I think is so, so, so important for us who are parents, grandparents, people who we, as followers of Jesus, and we wanna bring the love of Jesus to all those in the world. But what you shared is so instructive that when we meet people or when we are raising people there are-
Pat: Right
Kelly: things going on in their [00:08:00] heart that we’re not aware of, and it’s so, important to pray that God would open our hearts to see-
Pat: Yes …
Kelly: what’s beneath the surface.
Pat: Absolutely. And one of the things I tell people too is how I’ve heard people say “Oh, there’s no way she could be saved.”
Pat: Because I lived a very public, lost life. And public meaning I just didn’t hide it. I just lived it. I thought I was bad. I believed I was bad, so I lived it. I lived bad. And then I did it. It’s just what it was, so I did it. And so because of that, people that knew me thought, “There’s no way she could ever be changed.”
Pat: And- I was changed, you know? Yes. So I’ll never think anybody’s beyond hope or help, because God, the powerful Holy Spirit, has the ability to [00:09:00] transform the most broken, messed up people in the most broken, messed up situations.
Kelly: Absolutely.
Pat: That’s my story. Yeah.
Kelly: That is so powerful and so true. There have been times when I have thought that about someone, and they came to know Jesus later.
Kelly: Yeah. And I was so heavily convicted, like, who am I to think that- Yeah … God’s power is big enough-
Kelly: To change that person’s life and open their eyes to the intensity and beauty of His love. Mm-hmm. And another thing that happened in your life as well is, and I think it’s important to just note that when we live with this, these lies, there is shame happening in our heart, again, something that other people cannot see.
Kelly: Yeah. And so we do things to numb the shame and hide the shame, and I think that was part of your story
Pat: absolutely. Oh, my goodness. So by the time I came to the Lord, I was a alcoholic. That was one of my, I guess, numbing mechanisms, [00:10:00] was just to drink every day. And, I always would not say that drinking itself is wrong.
Pat: For me, it is now. I’ve been completely, radically delivered and transformed from that. So I, the next time I will have a glass of wine will be at the marriage supper of the Lamb, and the Lord Jesus will be giving it to me, you know? So that’s just my story. But, Jesus and I had a battle. I was saved.
Pat: I, I had accepted Jesus as my savior, but I’m talking, I had… I say I have a Rolodex of testimonies, but you’ve gotta be a certain age to have a clue of what a Rolodex is, right? You’re right. But Rolodex is just a whole bunch, you know? I had a whole bunch of past life stuff that had to be transformed out of me.
Pat: So when the Lord got me, he was just dealing with one thing after another. It was like he would deal with one thing, get that kinda cleaned out of me, and move to the next thing. But the [00:11:00] last thing that was left of my past life was the alcohol, and it was the thing I was clinging to. It was the thing that I wanted to hold on to.
Pat: It was the thing I thought I couldn’t be free of. I did not… I can remember one night, my husband and I we had stopped going to nightclubs or bars or anything like that. We were in church. , We had driven past this bar that we had used to go to before Jesus. , Even , after Jesus, because this was a, a long process. I’m about five years in before I really get free of the alcohol. Okay? I remember this one particular night when my husband drove past it, and I said to him, ” I don’t think it is possible for me to not ever want to go in a place like that and live that life again.” I was that struggling with wanting.
Pat: I still had that pull. And I mean, when he set me free, he set me free. [00:12:00] I have… It’s 25 years later, and, you, there’s not a ounce of that desire, you know? But it had to be a, a work of the Holy Spirit. It wasn’t something that was doable on my own. But the Lord’s faithful, and he’ll do it,
Kelly: , That speaks to so many of our situations. I was just talking to a friend today that we all have situations that only- Yeah … the Holy Spirit can-
Kelly: set us free from.
Pat: Yes.
Kelly: I’m getting a little emotional because- Mm … because the Lord has just worked so miraculously in one of my
Kelly: And one of my sweet daughters that I’ve mentioned on the podcast before-
Pat: Yeah …
Kelly: who just still suffers so much from illness and is in bed 70% of the time. Mm-hmm. But one of the symptoms that’s been in her life for probably, a neurological issue, for most of her life, maybe all of her life, she may have even been born with this neurological [00:13:00] misfiring, God just healed her of it two days ago.
Pat: Mm. Oh, praise the Lord.
Kelly: And it’s one of those things that only God can do.
Pat: Oh.
Kelly: And I just, I share that because your story is something we need to remember- Uh-huh … that there are impossible things in our life. We can truly, truly believe that- Yes … God is the God who loves to unleash His possible across our impossible.
Pat: Absolutely. And so how long, for how long has she had that?
Kelly: She’s 33, so-
Pat: Okay …
Kelly: I mean, I’ve known about it for, 15 years,
Pat: Yeah …
Kelly: she says she’s probably had it all of her life, ’cause she can remember as a child-
Pat: Yeah …
Kelly: having these weird neurological things. So God is always at work, and he gave- Yeah
Kelly: me a promise that he would heal her probably 15 years ago.
Pat: Yeah.
Kelly: And I had just gone back to that promise the [00:14:00] day before, and then this, she came to me and told me this healing had happened and-
Pat: Wow. I love that.
Kelly: Yeah.
Pat: I think that’s so incredible, , I was alcoholic for many years before Jesus, but it was still, once Jesus stepped into my life, it was still about five years.
Pat: And so that was why I was asking, because I, I think that’s one of the things that my whole story is, is it’s been a process. It has been a faith journey of just keeping on believing the Lord, believe the Lord. He, you know, a- and you can’t give up. You just, because our physical circumstances keep showing us one thing, we have to keep going back to, but what does God say?
Pat: What does he, what has he spoken to you, uh, in your heart? You know, what has he spoken to me in my heart? Uh, what does his word say? So all of that just, we have to cling to that e- [00:15:00] even when, it looks impossible, because there’s nothing too hard for God. He can do anything. Right.
Kelly: Right, and that’s one of the things that you brought up in your story, that you began to go back to reading the Bible.
Kelly: And- Yeah … even though there were, it seemed like it was doing nothing, it wasn’t doing anything, but that’s where God was transforming your heart. And it’s such a powerful reminder that God’s word has the power to transform our lives, and I want you to tell more about that, but it just reminds me of Hebrews 4:12, that the word of God is living- Mm
Kelly: and active.
Pat: Yes.
Kelly: Can you talk to us about that part of your journey?
Pat: Absolutely. So when I got saved, when Jesus came into my life, the, the one thing that the Holy Spirit gave to me was this knowing. This is the only way I know how to explain it. I had this knowing, this sense on the inside of me that if I would be free of my past, it would come through Jesus.
Pat: My [00:16:00] hope was in Jesus. It was like those words, “My hope is in Jesus,” were instilled in me. Okay? So I did two things. Uh, because they talked about Jesus at church, I went to church. Because the Bible talked about Jesus, I read my Bible. Because I’m, I really want- I wanna be healed. I wanna be fixed. I’m a broken mess and I know it, and I really don’t want to live my whole life…
Pat: I’m a mother of two at the time when I first got saved, and I didn’t want them to have the life that… I didn’t want them to live the life that I had lived. And so I was desperately trying to figure out how to give them a, a good life as well. So I didn’t read my Bible every day at that time.
Pat: When I first got saved, I probably was reading my Bible, I don’t know, three days a week, maybe four days a week, but I was just picking it up and reading it. And I can [00:17:00] remember for probably a good, two and a half, three years reading it and not feeling like I really understood it. Like, I wasn’t having that experience that God was speaking to me through it.
Pat: But I was still trying to learn it, still trying to understand it because I had that knowing So one of the things I know now is, like Isaiah 55:11 says that His Word goes forth and it does what He sent it forth to do. And so what did He send it forth to do? He sent it, His Word also tells me that His will for me is His sanctification in me.
Pat: So His Word is sent forth to sanctify me. So even when I’m not understanding it, I, my life was being changed. I don’t realize that’s what’s happening. I do now. You know, so much of the time we can look back on life and see see [00:18:00] what God was doing, where we can’t see it when we’re right in the middle of it.
Kelly: Right.
Pat: And I really realize now that if, if anyone would, would just stay in the Word, even when they go, “I don’t get it, I’m not understanding it, it doesn’t make sense, it’s a old book, it was meant for then,” it, it was, you know, whatever your argument would be about reading the Bible, there is a powerful work that will happen if you will stick with it.
Pat: And then there’s a day that comes that you start hearing from the Lord in it, and that will change everything. Yeah. ‘Cause it’s so exciting when you realize, God just spoke to me. You know? And it’s personal, and it’s about what you need in that moment. So I, that’s just such a big deal. And then from then on, you can’t get enough.
Pat: That’s been my story. I’ve, m- once He ever spoke to me in His Word, I was like, “Oh, this is good,” you [00:19:00] know? So.
Kelly: I love that so much. He is alive and He speaks personally and powerfully. Mm-hmm. But even when you don’t feel Him speak-
Pat: Yeah …
Kelly: His Word is working. Yeah. He is working to transform you and rescue you.
Kelly: One of the other things you mentioned is that you really believed the lie that you were bad, that you really weren’t worthy of God’s love, of His sacrifice. And I wonder if you could speak specifically to that lie and how God helped you believe His love was for you, and that you weren’t that person you believed you were.
Pat: Well, I would say that that was a long process. I even just recently was telling my husband, we were kind of talking about that, and I’ve been now with the Lord for 30 years. And It was probably five years ago when I really came to that place. So i- it’s been a process, okay? Not just like I didn’t have this moment five years ago that I, I got it, but it’s when ar- [00:20:00] around the five-year ago mark I started really zeroing in on who He says I am.
Pat: , I started being able to take that old belief of who the enemy had told me I was, who my circumstances had told me I was, and I started really believing that God’s word tells me I’m redeemed, I’m in the beloved, I’m accepted, I am a child of God, I am forgiven. So all of the things that I had believed in the past.
Pat: Because, when you’ve got a bad past like mine, it, forgiveness of yourself is hard. Yeah. It’s hard to, you know, accept that. But when you realize God has truly forgiven me, I am forgiven of every awful memory of anything that I ever have done. I’m forgiven. And so that’s my identity [00:21:00] now. I’m forgiven.
Pat: The Devil cannot come against me and tell me, “This is who you were,” or anything, because I’m gonna go, “Yeah, you’re right. It’s who I was. I am now a new creation in Christ Jesus. I am now being made into the righteousness of God in Christ Jesus, and there’s no condemnation in Christ Jesus, so you can go stick your ugly head in a pile of dirt.”
Pat: I just have gotten so… That has made such a difference for me, and I, I just feel like kind of instilled a little fight in me towards the, the enemy as well,
Kelly: right. I remember someone I love was having nightmares about her past.
Kelly: Mm-hmm. And one day she just woke up and said, “God, I know your word says that I’m free from that, and this is not- Yeah … how I wanna live anymore.” Yeah. “And never again.” I mean, she just rose up- That’s awesome … believe in God’s word. Yeah. And those nightmares were never again repeated
Pat: Yeah, god called me to ministry in 2002, so I’ve been serving the Lord in [00:22:00] ministry for all of these years, still battling with some level of that identity trying to pull me, back into, that mindset that I’m bad in some way. But, for the first, mm, decade it really messed me up because so much of the time I was like, “Oh, I can’t do that.”
Pat: Remember who you were You know, that’s the voice- Yeah … of the enemy. Who would ever want you to do that? Who would ever recognize you as someone that would honor the Lord? And I just had to battle it and keep going back to the Word.
Pat: So the Word has really been my freedom.
Kelly: Yeah. You even went through seminary, right?
Pat: Yes, I did. I have a bachelor’s degree in Christian Ministries with an advanced certification in women’s ministry, and then I went back and got my master’s degree in Biblical Studies.
Pat: And I wouldn’t have done that probably, but I had a professor that was just a [00:23:00] beloved professor, and he was like, “I want you to go back and get your master’s degree, and I do not want you to wait.” So when I graduated, he was like, in my ear, “You go back and you do it now.” He said, “If you wait, you’re not gonna do it, and I d- I don’t want you to not do it.”
Pat: So I, I did go because of his encouragement.
Kelly: That is such a blessing. When you were going through that education process and applying that for a decade at least, that was a long- Yeah, it was a long time.
Pat: Yes …
Kelly: while
Pat: you worked as a
Kelly: mom.
Kelly: And so I’m wondering if what you learned during that time, helped also get rid of the lies in your head that you were disqualified from ministry.
Pat: Well, I think I did that for credentials, because, I did it because I had no clue what I was doing. I had gone to talk to my pastor.
Pat: I said, “You’re gonna think I’m crazy, but I think that God is calling me into ministry.” And he said, “Well, Pat, I do too.” “Has anybody called you?”
Pat: And I’m like, “What do you mean?” He said, “Well, [00:24:00] somebody’s supposed to be calling you.” And I said, “What are they calling me about?” He said, “Well, Pat,” this was on Wednesday, he said, “yesterday in our meeting, we met and we decided that we were gonna call you and ask you if you would lead the women’s ministry.” And I said, “What’s women’s ministry?”
Pat: I mean, I’m just clueless. So I went to seminary for that, but I also went based on that nobody was ever gonna believe. You know? I ha- if there was a lot of I had to prove myself. I had to prove that… I worked hard. I mean, I was, like, hardcore about it. I had the good friend that we would travel to, several of us would travel to seminary, ‘
Pat: There wasn’t a seminary where I lived. And we would travel to the, the extension center, and I can remember him saying, “D is for diploma.” And I was like, “Dude, if I don’t get a A, I am gonna be just stinking mad.” And I don’t know if that was about [00:25:00] the credentials as much as it was just something I wanted to do, g- you know, Jesus had changed me.
Pat: Because- Yeah … like in school I really didn’t care. He just changes so much. He doesn’t just change you a little bit. He changes everything about you if you walk with him for any length of time.
Kelly: Wow. Well, I, one thing that I picked up in your story is that you weren’t doing it to prove your worth. I think what God had planted in you was a huge desire and hunger for His Word, and you did not want to mislead women, and you wanted to- Yeah, I didn’t … know His Word-
Pat: Yeah …
Kelly: so deeply. Yeah. And you wanted other women to know His Word so deeply.
Kelly: So I don’t believe you were driven with a desire to prove your worth. I just think it was all from the Lord.
Pat: Yeah. And I always have kinda had this thing of since, really going all in with the Lord of excellence. I wanna, I wanna give Him the best I have, because I wanna get to the end- Yeah
Pat: [00:26:00] and hear, “Well done.” Yeah. You know? Yeah. I, I wanna hear that. Yeah. So I’m doing everything the best that I can because I wanna offer the best that I have to offer. And it’s not, about working to get my salvation. I’m saved. You know, it’s not that. It’s just I wanna give Him the best. He gave the best for me, and I was a mess.
Pat: So why not? Why would I not wanna give Him everything I have and the best that I have to offer?
Kelly: Yeah. Beautiful. I wanna switch gears a little bit. Okay. One of the things I mentioned was a question about what happens when the trials and troubles come into your life, and you might have a thought that God is punishing you for your past.
Kelly: And we know that’s not true. From the Word of God, He never uses the word punish for His children, because there is no condemnation in Christ- Yeah … which you mentioned earlier. But you walked through suffering in your life, and I’m just wondering what verses… I don’t know if you [00:27:00] wanna tell us about any of that suffering, but I really wanna get to the, the hope that anchored you in God’s truth.
Pat: Well, I would say as far as suffering, my most agonizing suffering has happened through, one, through ministry, and then, two as a parent. , I had hoped that my children would all be able to escape everything that I had gone through, but one of them did not. But in ministry, , I had a lot of, hardships and difficulties in it.
Pat: I think that was partly the enemy knew that, you know, it was a struggle for me of believing that I was really worthy, and so that was a big deal. But I have known without a shadow of a doubt that L- the Lord called me. And so, Galatians 6:9 is that passage that says, it that if we do not grow weary while doing good, we will reap and [00:28:00] receive that that reward.
Pat: So, that is one of them, Oh, goodness. It’s Psalm 23, maybe it’s 27:13. I’m not sure exactly which one, but
Kelly: 27:13, I bet.
Pat: Is it? Yeah, okay. That I, I would see the goodness of the Lord- Yeah … in the land of the living, yes. If I did not lose heart, you would see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living.
Pat: So those have been things, you know, 20- oh, this is 2026, so I’ve been doing ministry for 24 years, and I’ve spent a lot of time on my face in ministry saying, “Lord, remove this call from my life because it’s too agonizing.” Right. “It hurts too much. I don’t wanna do it. I can’t do it.” You know, all these things.
Pat: And every time He gets me back up off my face and says, “No, you keep going.” And so I have, and it’s those passages. I- you know, when you get to that place of just I, I don’t, I don’t think I’ve got it [00:29:00] anymore, I don’t think I have the ability to go on anymore, and it’s like He would put those two passages in front of me everywhere you turn.
Pat: So that was kind of where I, where I am now is I think those passages have been the two primary ones over and over again throughout this journey that He’s used.
Kelly: Yeah, Galatians 6:9 and Psalm 27:13 and 14.
Pat: Yeah. Yeah.
Kelly: Beautiful. Beautiful.
Kelly: One of the things that I learned along the way that really anchored me in my suffering and my hard times, it gave me so much hope, was Romans 3:5.
Kelly: I- I’m sorry, Romans 5:3-5, which talks about the fact that we can rejoice in our sufferings. Mm-hmm. And you know, that’s so counterintuitive. It is. How, how do you even do that? But then it goes on to show us how we can find joy because we know, I love that you keep saying that word, we know that we know that we know that- Yeah
Kelly: suffering produces endurance, endurance produces character, and character produces [00:30:00] hope, and hope doesn’t put us to shame because God’s love has already been poured out into our hearts through His Holy Spirit. And what we discover is that through suffering, that’s where hope is born, true hope. Right. This is where hopes are purified, in all those places where we put our hope.
Kelly: All those places where we thought this would satisfy us suddenly becomes meaningless, which is part of your story as well, and our hopes are set purely and solely more and more and more on Jesus as He- Yeah … forms us.
Pat: Yeah. I had mentioned that one of the other way that I had really suffered
Pat: And this was a good bit later with my daughter that had walked away yeah, she really had just gotten in with a bad person, and that ended up taking her through just this awful, drugs, everything. I thought she was, was on the verge of [00:31:00] probably going to die, at some point.
Pat: And I can remember the Holy Spirit waking my husband and I up in the middle of the night and saying, “Pray.” Wow. And we would get up and get on our face before the Lord, just lay out in the floor. And you know, I’m not a, i- in my morning time hanging out with Jesus, just talking to Jesus, I just sit in my rocking chair or on my swing outside.
Pat: You know, and hanging out and talk to him. Yeah. But there’s sometimes that you just go through something that’s so gut-wrenching and so agonizing that just on your face is the place to be. Yeah. And so we did that, and we would just, oh Lord, call out, to deliver or save her. And we wouldn’t even know what she was facing because we were, had very little contact with her for a season.
Pat: And you wanna talk about somebody in an impossible situation. We were in a impossible situation. [00:32:00] Praise the Lord that God had given me this faith-filled mother-in-law. And you know, that’s another story in itself. Just you hear different mother-in-law stories and all of that. Oh, goodness, if you’re a mother-in-law, be the mother-in-law that loves Jesus, and gives from that bucket.
Pat: One day I was telling her all the things that I was seeing on social media. That was happening with my daughter. And I’m a Bible study author, teacher. I’m teaching Bible studies all the time, you know, all of that. But when your heart and emotions are so tied to this awful thing, and we’re so, so emotionally intertwined, it’s really difficult.
Pat: You need people speaking to you, so because I could tell anybody to have faith, and believe God, and to keep going, and all of the stuff, but here I was in this faith crisis [00:33:00] myself. Yeah. And I couldn’t see anything but the physical circumstances. And she said to me, “Pat, you have got to get your eyes off of what is happening in the physical and get your eyes back on the word.”
Pat: Wow. What does God’s word say? You call forth those things that aren’t as though they are. Yeah. And it was a smack in the face, not in a ugly way. Yeah. I, it was like that wake you up call, and I’m like, ” Ugh, that is what I would tell anybody. Why are you not doing that yourself?”
Pat: You know? Right. And so that next morning, I just got down on the, my knees and I said, “Lord, I am so sorry. I have really gotten off in this situation, and I just need you to bring me back.”
Pat: So I just started praying God’s word over my daughter, and I started praying that he would shine his light into the dark places [00:34:00] of her heart and illuminate that.
Pat: That he would God’s word says that he’s not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance. And his word tells us that if we pray according to his will, we can have whatever we ask. So if, if I’m praying according to his will, because it says that he’s not willing that any should perish, if I’m praying that he shines the light of his glorious gospel into the blind places of her heart and mind, if I’m praying all of this and it lines up with God’s word, well, then I can be confident that I can have what he says.
Pat: So I just started, I started praying like that. And quit, this was the other thing, and this just might be for somebody that may be a parent going through something like that. The Lord told me s- just in that situation from my mother-in-law and all that, stop looking at her social media. Stop looking at the things that are feeding , the things that are poisoning your faith,
Pat: yeah. [00:35:00] And just, because what I had to do was change my focus and get it back on, what did God say? Yeah. And then the other thing was incredible experience with the Lord this one particular day in church. I’m a worshiper girl. I love just singing my guts out to Jesus. I, it’s a joyful noise, but I love singing to the Lord.
Pat: So I’m singing praises in church for this one particular morning, and I heard the Lord say to me, “Remember Jehoshaphat.” And I remember the lesson that I had taught about Jehosaphat being surrounded by the enemy, and when, what his response was, “Lord, we don’t know what to do, but our eyes are upon you.”
Pat: Yes, yes. And what he did was he set the praisers out in front of the battle, of them going into battle, and the Lord wiped out the enemy. So I started in that moment, and from [00:36:00] that day on, I started singing worship songs to the Lord and inserting my daughter’s name in. ‘Cause, a lot of the worship songs are, “Lord, thank you for saving me.”
Pat: Okay, thank you for saving my daughter, and I started saying her name and singing her name to the Lord. And, God just started… It was not instant, but he started shifting it, and he, praise the Lord, she’s years down the road of being delivered, and we’ve seen amazing miracles. And I tell her, “You are my miracle.”
Pat: She was a miracle, so, , don’t quit believing. Nobody’s hopeless.
Kelly: Amen. Thank you so much for that. Wow. Praising God with you. There is something so powerful when we shift to praising God-
Pat: Yeah …
Kelly: in our stories, when we take our eyes off the circumstances and place them on the spiritual and the eternal things that are happening.
Kelly: I say this a lot, but if God would just pull back [00:37:00] the veil between heaven and Earth- Mm … and we could see- Oh … all of his angels that are fighting on our behalf and all of his power being unleashed in ways we couldn’t imagine, and all the good things that he has placed in our path and the paths of our loved ones just up ahead.
Pat: Yeah.
Kelly: We, we would just be full of praises for him.
Pat: Yes. Oh, I love that. I just read, I think it was yesterday I read the psalm that said that, “No good thing will the Lord withhold from those who walk uprightly and walk with him.” So he’s not holding out. With a lot of times we struggle too with the time.
Pat: Oh, my goodness. Yes. It just takes so long sometimes. But we’ve just got to be persistent and keep, keep believing.
Kelly: Right. Amen. Because he hasn’t changed. He is still at work in ways that are very good. He is pursuing us with his love and mercy, as Psalm-
Pat: Yes …
Kelly: 3 says.
Pat: Yes, and our children. Y-
Kelly: yes.
Pat: Mm-hmm.
Kelly: Right? I mean, that’s-
Pat: Yeah
Kelly: such hope. I [00:38:00] know that along the way you had written your last Bible study, My Maker and Me. Mm-hmm. You wrote it and taught it for decades, and you kept trying to get it published, and it was very discouraging. But then something- Yeah … wonderful happened. Tell us about that. Yeah.
Kelly: And then give us the encouragement that God placed on your heart about persevering in ministry.
Pat: Yeah. Well, that’s just another one of those stories. I wrote the Bible study. God had put me in a place that I got to see the, a potter do a pottery demonstration, and he actually shared his testimony of what God had taught him through that art of pottery.
Pat: And I was so moved, and I, I knew him. We were friends. We actually were serving in the youth ministry together. And I called him, the next day and said, “Look, I wanna come to your class.” He was,, the head of the art department at our local university, and pottery was his thing.
Pat: So I said, “I wanna come to your class because I think I, I [00:39:00] really need to write a Bible study about this.” And it really wasn’t in that, yes, I thought I was writing a Bible study about it, but I really personally wanted to know- the Lord like that, the ways that he had shared. , I realize through that how the hands of the potter, of the Lord on that clay shaping and molding, how intimate it was, and how throughout all the process of the potter, , making and shaping that, that pottery, the potter’s attention’s always on it.
Pat: So I saw that the Lord’s attention was on me in every situation. He didn’t take his eyes off. And so 20 years later, , God starts putting it in my heart to go to this writer’s conference and, Long story short, I just, I don’t know why, I just decided I would take that Bible study and, and pitch it, and see.
Pat: And, [00:40:00] the, , acquisitions editor that I met with was like, ” Oh my goodness, we have got to get you published. I cannot believe that you’ve had this Bible study for 20 years, and you’re still teaching it and all that kind of stuff, but you haven’t had it published.” And so that that happened. Once again, there’s that Psalm 27:13 and that Galatians 6:9, not to give up.
Pat: And, uh, persistence has been a part of my journey in all of it because He’s… We are in process. We are not… that’s the name of the Bible study, is My Maker in Me, a six-week Bible study of becoming God’s beautiful vessel. We are becoming. , We get saved, and we are not there, and we’re, a lot of us are, really got a long way to go.
Pat: He starts that work and that transformation, that sanctification process, and that’s what sanctification is. It is our salvation in process. It’s just happening as we go, and we’re [00:41:00] going to a point our destination is glorification, where we stand face to face with the Lord and we’re perfected in that moment, but until then, we’re not.
Pat: We’re just in process, and we’re becoming more and more like Him. Well, that was just a big part of my journey, was beginning to understand the Lord as that potter that was working and shaping. And even the times that, in ministry I felt like God just sitting me on a shelf somewhere and forgetting me.
Pat: And I remember being in the potter’s studio and seeing these beautiful vessels that were sitting lined up on a shelf, and they were waiting. They weren’t ready yet. And I’m like, “Well, what are they waiting on?” Well, they’re waiting to get dried out enough that they’re ready to go into the fire, and then when they go into the fire, well, then they would have to be glazed and, and prepared, and then into the fire.
Pat: So all these different steps and phases, but in every single one of them, the [00:42:00] potter had full knowledge, full awareness, full attention, and full affection. That was another thing. I found watching my friend the potter, he had an affection for every single piece he made. They all were beautiful to him. They all mattered to him.
Pat: It’s just such a, there’s so many beautiful things. In the fire, I can remember him standing outside the kiln putting something in the fire to be brought to the stage of ready to be used, and he’s watching it, and he’s telling me, “I’m waiting to see when it looks this certain way, and when it looks this certain way, I can know that this is the point that I wanna take it out of.
Pat: I don’t want it to get beyond that. I want it to get to this certain spot, because that means it’s gonna be perfect, strong, and ready to be the vessel that I created [00:43:00] it to be.” Ugh, so many things. Wow.
Kelly: Powerful. Well, we have journeyed a long way in
Kelly: this conversation. We have. This has been so much fun. I just pray, and I know you do, too, that there are people listening who can take away some of these nuggets of hope and treasure- Yeah … from God’s word that God will use to transform their lives as well.
Pat: Yes.
Kelly: Pat, thank you so much for being with me today.
Pat: Thank you so much for having me. I loved it. It was a blessing. I knew it would be,
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