The release of Fear No Evil is about a month away now. Here is an excerpt from Chapter 7, where I describe how New Life took a huge step toward the healing we are now experiencing as a fellowship. The proceeds from my first book will help us open the Dream Centers here in Colorado Springs. You can pre-order the book or download it to your Kindle by clicking here.

ISAIAH 61:2-3 OFFERS a series of promises to those who had mourned in Zion—and to you and me when we grieve today. Speaking prophetically of Jesus Christ, it says that a major reason the Messiah would come in human flesh to planet Earth was to “comfort all who mourn.” He would “bestow on them a crown of beauty instead of ashes,” verse three picks up, “the oil of gladness instead of mourning, and a garment of praise instead of a spirit of despair.”

I can’t pinpoint the exact date or time when the shift occurred, but somewhere along the way—during the eighteen months that it took to move from the lion exhibit to the giraffes—beauty really did spring up from ashes. Gladness really did take mourning’s place. And the despair I had come to believe would never depart somehow morphed into heartfelt praise. I woke up one day in June 2009 and realized I was available for God’s use once more.

Let me explain what I mean.

Scores of people I know have suffered great loss in life and are emotionally shut down as a result. They never learned to properly mourn and grieve, and so the pain gets stuffed further down. The day finally dawns when they can’t engage in any aspect of life, because their enthusiasm and passion are gone. They can’t engage with their spouse. They can’t engage with their kids. They can’t engage with their role at work. They can’t engage with the vision for their local church. The emotional toll they’ve been carrying prohibits them from engaging in any aspect of life. And as a result, they are unavailable to God and others to be salt and light in the world.

I saw this play out firsthand at New Life. A couple that has faithfully served our body for many years approached me one weekend and said, “Brady, we love what God is doing among this church and how you are leading us into a brighter future, but for some reason, we just stay stuck. We haven’t been able to get involved like we used to be involved. We haven’t been able to worship like we used to worship. We aren’t serving like we used to serve.”

Without intending to, this couple had allowed themselves to become unavailable to God. They had neglected to adequately mourn the losses they had suffered, and spiritually and physically they couldn’t find their way back to full engagement.

As you and I learn to grieve properly—and fully—we see God show up with comfort for our weary souls. The two move back and forth in waves: we grieve, God comforts, we grieve, God comforts even more. He exchanges our ashes for beauty and gives gladness where mourning once was. Our growth, a “planting of the Lord” as the prophet Isaiah puts it, displays God’s splendor.³² “This is why I equip you to eventually move on from pain,” God essentially says, “so that my glory can be gathered through you.”

Months after the shooting, we as a church broke ground, laid soil, and planted two tall, beautiful blue spruce trees of remembrance on the parking spot where Stephanie and Rachel Works had been shot. And on that crisp weekday morning, that promise was on our minds. What Satan meant for death would bring forth undeniable life. Where a spirit of despair had once clouded our sight, pure praise would be on our lips. Collectively we declared that we were ready to move forward, to pursue whatever kingdom dreams God had on his mind. Our time with the lions was over; a new exhibit was calling our name.

For the past several weeks, I’ve been sharing some excerpts from my first book, Fear No Evil, which releases in about a month. To be honest, Chapter Five, entitled, Disney Doesn’t Do Christianity, is my favorite. I talk about the realities of suffering and what we’ve learned from our season of pain at New Life.

By the way, all the proceeds from this book will support the Dream Centers we are opening here in Colorado Springs. If you want to pre-order, Fear No Evil, click on the title.

Here is a short excerpt from chapter five. I would love to hear your thoughts.

As human beings, you and I both have to learn to confront our pain—to acknowledge it and to grieve. Whether we’re talking about the loss of a loved one or the loss of a career, a bank account, or a dream, it is absolutely critical to stop, to weep, to groan. I think of families who have experienced the sudden loss of a house, either to fire or to a flood. Sure, it was just sheetrock and two-by-fours, but their most precious memories were made inside. It was their first “real” purchase. It was the place where their children were raised. It was their family’s haven, the spot where they would rest and relate and know peace.

Or what about people who have experienced the sudden loss of a marriage? A husband thought the union would last forever, but then one day, divorce papers were served. “But she was my high-school sweetheart,” he laments. “She was everything in my life.” Regardless who is at fault in a split like that, division always hurts.

What do you do when sudden loss occurs? I believe Jesus would say, “You mourn.”

As I said, I’ve been part of a local church since my boyhood years, and yet I can count on one hand the number of sermons I’ve heard on how to grieve well. We talk a lot about the good news but neglect to mention that life sometimes turns bad. For instance, how many times have you been directed to the words of Ecclesiastes 7:3? “Sorrow is better than laughter,” it says, “because a sad face is good for the heart.” In our comfort-seeking society, most people would read those words and come away saying, “Huh? How can sorrow possibly be better than laughter?”

What Solomon, the writer of Ecclesiastes, knew that you and I would do well to remember is that the reason a sad face is good for the heart is because it is in our sadness that pain gets confronted, once and for all. Having pain confront us and choosing to confront that pain ourselves are two very different things. Confronting our pain means saying, “I know that I’ve just taken a hit here, a hit that really hurt.”

“Something terrible did happen.”

“I am hurting as a result.”

“We are hurting as a result.”

“This is hard, but it is real.”

Admitting truths such as these forces the internal protesting to cease. It invites Jesus into the situation so that the process of restoration can begin. “The heart of the wise is in the house of mourning,” Solomon said in Ecclesiastes 7:4. It’s when we stop to truly grieve a loss that God can intervene.

The alternative of course is denial, in which we utterly resist what is real. We talk ourselves out of believing that something bad has just unfolded and that we were wounded as a result. The approach does nothing for our personal wholeness and keeps God’s healing ways at bay.

For the next few weeks, I am going to share some excerpts from my first book, Fear No Evil, which releases in April. If you want to pre-order the book and support the Dream Centers we are opening in our city, go to www.Amazon.com

This is from Chapter One and I had just arrived home after the horrible shooting on our campus earlier that day.

Around nine-thirty, I pulled into the garage of our home in northern Colorado Springs and exhaled the weight I had been carrying since just after one that afternoon. It occurred to me that I hadn’t had time or space to let my emotions catch up to all that I had experienced, but no sooner had the thought crossed my mind than Pam came out from the house to the garage. She must have heard me pull in, and at the sight of her—my gorgeous, faithful, perfectly safe wife—I came undone. As tears flowed, we were silent. But in our silence we were thinking the same thing. We were so grateful no one in our family had been hurt, and at the same time we were devastated that the Workses had lost two daughters. We were grieving the other injuries and the loss of innocence for our church. So many emotions, wrapped up in soundless tears.

Several minutes passed in that garage—ten, maybe—before both of us realized that we’d be much warmer inside. We headed into the house, where I saw Pastor Jeff and his wife, Jenny. Faithful to the core, they had stayed put at Pam’s side all day long. What a gift to have friends like that.

The ten of us gathered in the living room—Jeff and Jenny and their four kids, Pam, our kids, and me—where I conveyed the most recent information I had been given from New Life security, New Life staff members, hospital personnel, family members of people hurt in the shooting, and so forth. The more I talked, the more drained I became. The day was finally wearing on me, from the inside out.

To neither Pam’s nor my surprise, Abram and Callie understood exactly what had unfolded at their church that afternoon. Even at ages nine and seven they grasped that someone had come to our campus to do very bad things, and that another person had been forced to stop him before the bad guy could hurt more people than he already had. Callie asked, “Dad, did he come on the campus to shoot you?”

Feeling too weary to do anything but tell the plain truth, I said, “Callie, he came on the campus to shoot all of us. We all were victims today.”

Satisfied with the facts, as kids so often are, she and her brother hugged me tightly and then headed off to bed. In their little world, as long as Dad was home, safe and sound, all was well once more. Plus, they had been spared the gruesome sights and sounds of the tragedy and had no awful memories needing to be worked through. They were miles away from the church by the time destruction rained down. For that, I’ll always be grateful.