Treasuring Christ, even in Suffering

John 10:10 (1/23/2023)

Amy Shaw

https://youtu.be/2HrL76aACB8?si=-ynEo--wx08LCgzB

Good morning! That’s my favorite greeting. I like to tell people that at the end of the day. I love saying good morning—it makes me so happy.

I had a moment in 1990 when I was a freshman sitting back there. The Lord put it in my heart to dream of one day coming back as a chapel speaker. My problem was back then that I didn’t have a story. Everyone who made an impact on me as a student came in with an amazing story. It really just enchanted me. I left here thinking, Lord, I really want this. I want to be able to come back and speak, but I don’t have a story. Will you do something in my life?

My friends who know me and my story are probably think why you pray that. But the Lord in the last 33 years since I really had this dream has done incredible things in my life. I realized as I was preparing for this that I’m not going to tell you. I actually deleted my whole story out of my speech because you don’t need another story, no matter how radical it is. What you need to hear is how the Lord has met me in my story. The details are there and they’re real. What I long for you is to catch the hunger of life with the Holy Spirit. If you hear me say Holy spirit, it’s because He’s become so personal to me.

The Promise of Abundant Life

The Lord has shown himself so much more abundantly than I had ever known. I had walked with Christ for 35 years. I was 15; I’m 50. I will save you the math. Jesus said that He came to give us life. I want to read John 10:10 in the Amplified version for you. Jesus says this: the thief comes only in order to steal, kill, and destroy. I come that they may have and enjoy life. It has two verbs: have and enjoy life. And have it in abundance, to the full, till it overflows.

Life is full of unexpected hard things. Two days ago, my uncle died. Last month, my father died. And 21 months ago, my husband died. Before that, we buried our son. And there’s a whole bunch of other really cool stories in there, but life is hard. And yet Jesus promises us to give it to us abundantly. So how do we make sense of that?

Anyone else feel that tension. We’re broken people -- we’re grieving, we’re offended, we’re hurt, we’re angry, and we don’t know how to fix it. And then there’s this promise in the scripture that says He’s come to give us abundant life. A friend asked me that if Bible tells me that I have the power of the Resurrection, but why is my life so powerless? Can you relate to that?

21 months ago, like literally yesterday because my husband died on the 22nd, I was a brand new widow with 11 children. And yes, you heard me right, 11. I lost the other half of mine. You spend all this time building your marriage, and then they’re gone. Half of me is bleeding out and I was left to do life alone. I very much remember falling on my face in the carpet, gasping and praying, Lord, do You even see me? How could this be true? You’ve taken my husband, but You’ve promised in Your word to be my husband. So how are You going to help me keep up with meals, laundry, homework, sports, house maintenance, car maintenance? And how do I handle their grief on top of mine? It was impossible. But I came to Him with those same promises and said, You’ve promised to be my husband, so You better show up.

Daily Guidance Through the Holy Spirit

It was through my anguish because I couldn’t solve my problems on my own that I began to come to Him with every problem. I know this is weird, but I felt Jesus was on my side and I could lean on. I don’t know if I was really doing a head tilt or not, but I would ask, Lord, what do I do? I had a son melting down, so awful. He did this regularly. And Lord, what do I do?

Sometimes He would give me a word or phrase in my mind. And this time was a picture of an elliptical machine. Is that weird to anybody else? Let’s solve this grief problem, here’s an elliptical machine. But I offered my son to ride on the elliptical. That’s like off limits. And that worked that time. And when I needed to sit with my kids and hold them and they would cry and I would cry, I would ask for it. I don’t know what to do. I don’t know what to say. He always, always gave me words to say. Sometimes they didn’t even pass through my mind. They just came out my mouth. And they were always words of truth. And they always pointed to eternity.

All of my answers were like manna. They were expiring quickly. They didn’t work another time. I couldn’t offer my child the elliptical again because he doesn’t want that anymore. I had to keep coming back to ask. That was such a gift to me. I became this awestruck participant as the Lord cared for my fatherless children through me as a vessel. I began to lean on Him more and more for His solutions and less and less on my own understanding.

And you know this led me to pray more. I wanted more of the Lord giving me His ideas when I was at a loss. And it turns out He’s not only good at parenting. He’s also good at house maintenance. He inspires creative solutions that are on no YouTubes, like none. Here’s the story.

One Sunday morning, we had house guests. And we, there were a total of 16 of us in the house. It was a Sunday morning. I woke up to, “Amy, I’m really sorry to wake you like this, but you don’t have any water.” I didn’t panic because the Lord had been doing this for me for months where He would give me the answer. So I asked Holy Spirit, okay, what am I gonna do? I saw a picture of a person in my mind. I called him. I told him the situation. He on this one phone call unlocked this whole secret that I had no idea. 15 years before this story took place, a man who had a plumbing business had bought a part for a water pump. He had never sold it. Meanwhile, that pump and the part are not made anymore. This guy retires. At the call, he said he has the part that we need. He has that part on a shelf and know exactly where it is. He was able to bring that part to us. In three hours on a Sunday in a blizzard—I know it sounds like I’m making that up just to add to the story, but it seriously was a blizzard because God is so good—that part was installed. We were back to flushing and washing. Do you realize what would be like to have a house with no water with 16 people? There’s no flushing of the toilets. There’s no washing of your hands after using the toilet. There’s no showers. There’s no laundry. What’s really, really cool about this story is that we didn’t even live in northwest Ohio when that man bought that part. God is always going ahead of us. He’s got every problem already fixed. Do you ask Him for it or do you use your own understanding?

Healing and a Transformed Perspective

Last summer, amazing things began to take place in my life. God continued to help me in my daily life. But then He got personal. He said, Amy, I want to heal your past. I had locked my childhood behind a solid door. I didn’t want to go there. He did. Honestly, I was experiencing Him so much and loving it that I didn’t want to miss out. So I gingerly, reticently went with the Lord as He took me there. I’ll tell you what He did. Something I would never have guessed. You won’t guess this either. God healed my hearing loss. That was part of the story that I cut out. After I left college here, I went to the mission field. I got malaria a couple times. I lost my hearing. I depended on hearing aids to live life.

So last June or July, the Lord healed my hearing loss. I’ve never put those hearing aids back in. Is that amazing? Yes, Jesus taught me more and more how delightful it was to be with Him, not His gifts, but Him. I had not known Him like this before. Then He had gifts for me. I seriously promised you I was like, Jesus, I don’t want Your gifts and I just want You. I meant that, believing that was the right thing to do because He’s already given me my hearing back. How could I possibly ask Him for more? I was like, no, share Your gifts with other people. He said, no, Amy, you have written a narrative of suffering in your life that I can only teach you through suffering. That’s not true.

I really argued because that was how I explained my life to myself. Could God really give me good gifts without suffering? I just don’t know. Someone proposed to me that the disciples didn’t have hardship. They were changed by being with Jesus in those three years. I couldn’t refute it. He went on and healed my hip flexor. He healed my shoulder. Are you ready for this? The week before Christmas, like last month, He healed my eyes of hereditary diseases. You would say that’s so amazing that you have this healing in your body. But I’m telling you that there was more than just my body that was healed. My heart was healed.

You know what the biggest healing was? To realize that Jesus was so much more than I had ever, ever dreamed. I had my little box of my doctrine. Every morning, I was so good and so faithful. I brewed my coffee. I met with the Lord. I journaled. It was like I used to be a car. I would go to the gas station in the morning and fill up. Then I would go and drive and do my day. But now what He was showing me—and He showed me this through my hardship and through my grief and through parenting all my children—was that I needed a lot more than just going to the gas station in the morning. He gave me the image of a trolley car. I’m now a trolley car. I’m hooked in to the power source non-stop. Guess what? I don’t go where I want to go. I only go where that track is. Isn’t that cool? That’s so cool.

I want to testify to you from having been sad, full of grief, full of fear, lonely, to now being satisfied with the Lord. Have you ever been satisfied? I don’t want for anything. I don’t need anything. I have Him. I have this bubbling up joy. Doesn’t make sense. People look at my life. I’m like, what? Guys, He thrills me. He literally thrills me. He empowers me to do all kinds of crazy things like I come here and talk to you.

A Dream of Seeking More

Two weeks ago, I had a dream. I didn’t know if this dream was just for me, but I think it is for you too. I was taking my youngest daughter, who has arthrogryposis, on a cruise. Now I personally have never been on a cruise, but in the dream we were going. The trip and the dream repeated four times. The first trip, I spent all of my energy getting her needs met. Getting her buckled in. Make sure we had snacks and all the things that go along with helping her needs. We went on the airplane. We went on the boat. We came back. That was it. We went on a cruise.

Well, the second time the dream repeated, all of that was still true. But when I was on the cruise ship, I saw a whale out in the ocean. It had breached. I was like, what? I didn’t see that the first time. Then the third time I went on this trip with my daughter, I was looking for whales. Even when we were on the airplane, I was looking for whales. I was looking out the window. I saw whales from the sky.

There wasn’t just one whale. When we were on the ship, the whole thing was full of whales. It was just amazing. Now the fourth time I went on this trip, I’m telling you I could barely keep my excitement in. I could not wait. What were we gonna see in the ocean? We did. We saw new things. Not just whales. We saw all these other things. There’s always more. So I can confidently tell you there’s more than what you know for life with Jesus. I don’t want to interpret the dream for you, but maybe, maybe there’s more.

When you want to see more and you seek more, you get more. Because here’s what Jesus says. The Lord says in Jeremiah 29. You will seek Me and find Me when you seek Me with all your heart. Now it takes a lot for a person who’s not in a grieving place to seek the Lord with their heart. So really truly suffering is a real gift because we come to the end of ourselves. The last part of that verse says, I will be found by you, declares the Lord. I am now living very differently. My eyes are focused on Christ as I live in the world and as I take care of all the needs that I have. I’m now awake. I wouldn’t go back. Do you hear what I’m saying? What I have now, I would not wish to be back with my husband and our intact family.

I understand that this life rolls into eternity. It’s not all about this life. Like I’ve already lived 50 years of my life here. I don’t know how many I get here, but it’s all about what goes on farther than our eyes can see and our mind can even fathom. That’s where Jesus tells us to put our treasure there. Do you really believe what Jesus actually meant what He said?  When the disciples asked Jesus how should we pray, Jesus says in Matthew 6 10, hallowed be Thy name, Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.

A Vision of Unity

I have been fasting and praying for you for occasion. I consistently get a vision of a tidal wave. It’s always over this Washington Street and this Pierce Chapel. It’s huge tidal wave of His presence.

Every one of you has brokenness. I don’t have to hear your story. You don’t have to hear mine to know that we have that commonality. We are cracked and dry. We have deep losses and hurts and grudges. The Lord showed me over and over that He wants to bring this tidal wave of Himself to all of those cracks.

I want to compare and contrast this to if you had dry and cracked ground. You laid a big blanket over it. You wouldn’t see the cracks anymore, right? But you’d lift it up and they would still be there. That is not what He wants to do. He wants to bring His living water in this tidal wave and wash over not just you. He wants this to go worldwide. He wants to consume and fill in all of those cracks with His presence so you experience His love in a new way.

Then He’s going to do something pretty amazing. I’m going to read in Revelation 7:10. After I looked and behold, a great multitude that no one could number from every nation, all tribes and peoples and languages, and they were around the throne. Pandemic was hard. It was extra hard on our family because my husband had brain cancer. We didn’t want to go anywhere because we were so afraid of him getting infected. Then all this political nationalism and Christian nationalism rise. I will admit that I kind of wanted to give up on church. But do you know what kept me from doing that? Jesus’s prayer in John 17. Do you know that prayer? If you don’t know that prayer, you need to sit in that prayer because this is the last thing Jesus prayed before He went to the cross. I’m just going to read part of this verse; it is verse 21. Jesus is praying to the Father. He transitions to praying for us, for you and me and others who will come after. He says that they may be one, just as You Father are in Me and I in You, that they may also be in us. Listen to this. You ready? So that the world may believe that You have sent Me.

I never saw this until Saturday until My daughter and I were talking about this, realizing this is time sensitive. This is for post cross and pre-second coming. Guys, unity is important. I’m telling you we got a purpose, a purpose to let the world know that He’s real. That’s not how we’re living.

I wanted to remind you of that picture in Revelation that we were all around the throne and we are unified there. He wants the church unified and grounded in justice. He wants us unified so that we make an impact on the world around us. Now I want to go back to Matthew 6, your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.

A Call to Embrace God’s Presence

My body is experiencing heaven, like little echoes of heaven on the fact that I’ve been healed. However, there’s still a list of things I’m asking for because new things come up when you’re 50. Heaven is bursting at the seams to come washing into our lives. Jesus prayed your kingdom come, may your will be done on earth as it is in heaven, but we are ignoring this. That is the heart of Christ and it is what I got from Him as I prepared for meeting you. He doesn’t want us to continue on in our schisms and our divisions and fissures. He has more.

I think that that’s an alluring more because we’ve never been unified what Jesus prayed for the Father -- the Father and Him together and then us in them. We don’t know what that is. We have this glorious gorgeous bridegroom and we, the bride, are not looking at Him. Some may but just glancing. What do we do? We’re arguing and fighting. We’re divided and we’re angry and we’re hurt.

Are you grieving? I know that this campus has had cutbacks. I know that there’s losses, so much real pain. However, God has come to give us abundant life. I really think and believe this tidal wave of His presence and His love. You don’t have to do anything. That’s the really cool thing. You don’t have to leave your baggage at the door. No, you don’t, you can bring it in - you with your brokenness. It’s just a matter of humbling yourself. I think about Micah 6:8. They were all sacrificing and God says no, I don’t want your sacrifices. So what is the Lord requiring of you? Love, justice, seek mercy, walk humbly with your God. That’s all you got to do.

So when you have brokenness, what the Lord wants us to do on this campus is to wash you where you’re broken. You don’t have to wear a mask, the mask like “oh I’m a Christian, oh I’m okay, oh I’m successful.” You can take your mask off and let those cracks be filled. You don’t have to do yourself. The best thing ever is that you don’t have to figure it out. God loves you and He wants more for you. I want to encourage you to cry out for more of God. Listen to this and I’m going to repeat: you can have as much of God as you want because you wear the white, righteous robe that Christ has afforded you. The only thing keeping you back is you. Once you start getting Him, you want more and more and more, like in the ocean and seeing the whale and then wanting to see more and more. I’m telling you the depth of the love of Christ it’s like the ocean. This is like how much of the percentage of the oceans that are not even explored; so much more we don’t know.

I want to bless you with Romans 15:13 from the passion translation - now may God the inspiration and fountain of hope fill you to overflowing with uncontainable joy and perfect peace as you trust in Him, may the power of holy spirit continually surround your life with his super abundance until you radiate with hope.

(Edited by Clyde Xi with subtitles added. 7/9/2025)