Standing Strong in the Storm: Cultivating Resilience In Times Of Trouble

0:00 Everyone has to handle challenging things in life, but few have ever had to handle as many hopeless challenges as my guest today on The Strang Report. Hello everyone, I'm Stephen Strang. When I met my guest, Greg Davis, and was given his book, Standing Strong in the Storm, I saw how God had helped him to respond to the nightmares in his life, receive a word from God to stand on, and to grow strong, overcoming adversity. For example, his first child was born with five heart birth defects, and he almost died. His wife also almost died from an autoimmune disease.

0:44 Then the couple adopted a baby from China. Within a month, they found that the baby had brain cancer that almost killed her. This was followed by years of surgeries. Then Pastor Greg himself had a massive heart attack, followed by two brain aneurysms, and also almost died. But even with all these health problems that almost killed each member of his family, God brought them through every storm with a miraculous victory, and today everyone is healthy. But in the process, he learned lessons that will encourage you on how God can bring you through too. Today we'll hear the incredible testimony of Pastor Greg Davis of Memphis, Tennessee, and we will learn how each of us can have even greater impact on the other side of whatever storms we're going through. Stay tuned.

1:53 Greg Davis, I appreciate you being on my podcast. You have an amazing story, and I think that you've learned some lessons that can apply to any of us. So why don't we start right at the top, the most important things that people can get. What did you learn from all this adversity that you went through? What can people who are watching learn? And then we'll kind of drill down and get into more details, but what is God showing you that you can share with my audience today? Okay, sure. I would love to be an encouragement. You know, as my family has faced over a dozen life-threatening health issues, and one of the main things you were asking about a lesson, one of the things that we learned was that when crisis hits and you're at death's door with a family member, which I have been over and over and over again, but God brought every one of us through it miraculously victory and gave us great health. He's a miraculous God. So anyway, but what he did show me, one of the lessons was instead of focusing all the way in only on the crisis of the moment, he showed me when my daughter was diagnosed with brain cancer, that I had to zoom back out and look at the big picture of what was still in the reality of my life. And when I did that, instead of just focusing on my daughter's, you know, diagnosis for brain cancer, which I couldn't believe because we had just adopted her 30 days before that from China.

3:25 And so when I looked at the big picture, instead of just worrying about her, I saw how that God brought my son incredibly through three open heart surgeries by the time he was eight years old, because he had a lot of heart defects. He wasn't supposed to live. God brought my wife through an autoimmune disease that almost killed her and her doctors told her she wasn't going to live. And so when I looked at the big picture, instead of only focusing on the crisis of the moment, I saw the healing of God, the blessing of God, the provision of God, how God brought us through all other situations through that at that point. And it built my faith up to remember that if God brought us through all that, he can absolutely bring us through this. And he did because my daughter also was incredibly healed and brought through her situation. So you have learned how to walk this through. How can somebody who's watching learn from your experience on how they can embrace and grow through the adversity that they're experiencing, whether it's health adversity like you did, whether it's a marital problem, whether it's financial situation. What do you say? Because I know you minister in churches all over the country. What do you tell people that really helps them in their own walk? Well, again, what we it's kind of related to what I just said, our focus tends to be on the crisis or the adversity. But if you look at the story, and that's actually a part of very

5:00 much in my book is drill down into this story where Jesus came walking on the water on the stormy seas to his disciples in the middle of their storm. And when when that God used that passage of scripture to teach me so many lessons of how to navigate the storms of life. And so one of the main things to that God showed me is that, for instance, when Jesus walked out on the stormy seas, and, and they thought he was a ghost and everything. And they said, No, I'm not, you know, he said, I am. And so he, so he said, I, you know, he said, It is me, don't worry. And Peter said, Well, if it is you, can I step out and come towards you? And Jesus said, Come. So when Peter stepped out of the boat, he began to walk towards Jesus. And I believe that he was walking, obviously, he was walking on the water. But I also believe that he was walking on the word that Jesus said, that Jesus gave to him because Jesus gave him, he gave him permission to step out in faith. And he basically said, Yes, come. And so Peter was walking on the water, but he was also walking on the word that Christ gave him. And through all of our storms, we have always sought, Lord, what is your word that we have to walk on in this crisis. And so when Peter was keeping his focus on Christ,

6:30 Jesus was giving him supernatural traction. You can't describe walking on water in any other way. It was supernatural traction that the Lord was giving to Peter. But when Peter got distracted, and looked at the storms around him, when he took his eyes and his focus off of Christ, when he fell to distraction, he lost his traction. And that's exactly what the devil wants to try to get every one of us to do. He wants us to take our eyes off of Christ and only focus on our storm. And if we do that, we can lose the supernatural traction that the Lord will give us to navigate through the storms of life. And so I've always encouraged people since this happened, don't take your eyes off of Christ. If you fall to distraction, you will lose your traction.

7:29 And so that's what happened to Peter. That's good preaching. But, you know, I could make the point that there are a lot of preachers that could have said what you just said, who never experienced what you experienced. Also, your story, one of the things that attracted me when I first came across this book, Standing Strong in the Storm, was how you came through all these things, you know, that we've already kind of outlined. Things that most, a very, very, very tiny percentage of the population will ever have that many bad things happen. But you also came through Victorious, which is also kind of unusual, because a lot of people that are dealing with these things, their child has brain cancer and the child dies, or they have some kind of disease and their loved one dies. And how do they stand strong in that? And also, I want to find out how you, Greg Davis, learned to stand strong, because this was not just one crisis. This spanned several decades. Yes.

8:41 And you had to pastor during that whole time and on and on and on. How did you learn, and it was more than just sort of figuring out the word picture, having to do attraction, walking on the water, as beautiful as that is, how did your story, how does it relate to people who are watching? Well, actually, it, you know, I use the example of Peter walking on the water. But what he what, what I learned was, and what we had to do was keep our focus on the Lord, and not let our emotions distract us on the crisis. And so that's a very practical thing of what we did, we kept our focus on the Lord, saying, Lord, I know that you are able to bring us through this. And I know that you know more than we know about why this is happening. But but so that was one of the main things. The reason why I mentioned that was because keeping your focus on the Lord is is very, very important to navigate, you know, through times of incredible adversity in life. So and then, you know, and just basically trusting Him and saying, Lord, I don't understand it. I don't understand it, but I trust you. We're looking at it with 2020 hindsight, but I know that there had to be attacks of your emotions, your mind. Yes, you had to be uncertain. How did you deal with those things as you were going through it? Well, there was, you know, it's kind of like there were ups and downs, I mean, because we're talking about a 30 year season of storms, you know, with with over a dozen life threatening health

10:15 issues. And so there were times when, you know, when I was struggling really bad. But there were, you know, there were other times when when I was very, you know, very focused. But basically, just my own just reading the Word and studying the Word and personal devotions and trying to stay healthy spiritually is a major important practical thing that you have to do. Because if you know, if you get unhealthy spirit, if you get spiritually unhealthy, then that can really mess up your ability to navigate through, you know, the storms of life. And so one of my biggest passions is, just digging treasure out of the Word of God. There is so much treasure in the scriptures that that most people just kind of skim over and don't really see. And, you know, and I am a Hebrew and Greek geek. You know, I want to try to look underneath the English and see what the actual original meanings of certain words were. And so but God, we always one of the things about this word that I said, Peter had, you know, as he walked on the word, when we would be beginning with the first storm, which was the day my son was born, we began to ask, Lord, what are you saying?

11:33 What is your word for us to walk on this storm? And this was way back before iPads, or smartphones, or screens everywhere. And so when the Lord would give us a scripture that we felt like he was giving us to walk through a particular storm, we would write it down on sticky notes, and stick it on the mirror in the bathroom, and put it on the refrigerator, and put it on the dash of the car, so that wherever we looked, we would be reminded of the scripture that the Lord told us was going to empower us to navigate the storm. And every time it did, every single time it did. And so people need to stay focused on their relationship with the Lord. And don't just skim the word every once in a while, be a passionate student of the Word of God, and it will transform everything in your life, including your ability to navigate storms that no one else thought you would make it through. Was there a turning point, or were there several turning points during this 30-year period? Because I know at some point, it seemed probably like things were getting worse, worse, and worse. But when did things start turning around for you? And also before the podcast is over, I want you to give us the good testimony, because there's good news that comes out of this, of victory, because I think that will encourage people. Yes, absolutely. It is encouraging to see incredible victories that you know are supernatural. But well, actually, there wasn't,

13:06 again, what I mentioned was there was a turning point. Probably one of the main turning points was actually when my daughter was diagnosed with brain cancer. And then that's when we learned to stop focusing only on the crisis and to look at the big picture. But that was a turning point in that. We'd been doing the walking through the word thing. But just that was a major lesson. That's one reason why I share it so much, because it was a major lesson for us. But that was actually in we adopted her at the end of March in 2001, two weeks after her first birthday. She was an orphan in China. And then on April the 26th, she was diagnosed with brain cancer. And then on April 27, she had a 12 hour emergency brain surgery and almost died that day. But that was kind of the turning point of helping us learn how to always be grateful and to essentially look at every day, make a list of gratitude. What do I have to be grateful for? What has God done in my life that I should be grateful for? And if you start making those lists, I also encourage everybody to be a journaler. I've been keeping the devotional journals since 1988. It was really helpful when you write things down, it helps you remember them. But doing that and that basically cultivating an

14:36 attitude of gratitude really is a very practical help when you're in wonderful times or when you're navigating a storm. And then where is your daughter now and also your son? Because I know that things turned out well. Yes. Yeah, his first heart surgery was when he was seven days old. At six open heart surgeries by the time he was 17 years old, in about another month, they didn't think he was going to live in the ambulance to get him to the children's hospital on his birthday. They didn't know if he's going to live at all. He's about to turn 32 years old. And he's, you know, he's, he lives, he still lives in South Haven. And he's, most of his life, other than a few little, you know, other than the spots where there's something going wrong, most of his life, God has blessed him with such incredible health that he's been able to play sports.

15:30 And they thought he would never be able to do that. And he's about to turn 32 years old. And my daughter, who they said, they didn't think she was going to live. She had less than 15% chance of living and no chance really of regular life. They thought, but she is now 24 years old, finished three years of college. They thought she'd never learned how to talk or even walk. But she is so blessed and she does live, she does still live with us here right now, you know, at 24. But, but again, you know, God brought her through the situation so amazingly. It actually St. Jude, which she was a patient there for over a year. St. Jude was so amazed, even her doctors at St. Jude were literally amazed at how well she got through the situation.

16:20 How well she got through that cancer based on the supersized tumor that she had in her brain. And I literally can remember one day that we were walking in the halls at St. Jude and her doctor stopped us in the halls and leaned down and just, he was talking to her, but he was really talking to us. He said, how in the world are you doing so well? Said that to her when she was one year old and my son was nine at that point. And he answered the question. Colton said, we pray and God is supernatural. We pray and God touches her.

17:04 You know, but we literally, even the, they used her in 2006 as one of the main faces across the country of St. Jude. Marlo Thomas had my daughter at six years old and me as guests with her on Larry King Live in November of 2006 to promote the Thanksgiving campaign because they were even amazed at how she overcame all of what they thought was going to happen to her. Why did you write this book and how can people get it? Well, actually, on a vacation one day, I was outside our RV and I was reading this scripture, actually that I had mentioned earlier, that this my devotions that morning. I already knew that, you know, I mean, we'd been through a lot of adversity. This was back in 2019 and I still kind of struggled sometimes knowing, Lord, why did you allow this while we were pastoring the church all these years? And that morning I was reading second Corinthians chapter one and this verse chapter three, chapter verse three says, praise God and the father of Lord Jesus, of our Lord Jesus Christ, the father of compassion and the God of all comfort who comforts us in all of our troubles so that we can comfort those in any trouble around us with the comfort that we have received from God. And so the Lord showed me that morning the reason he allowed our family to go through all of those storms of adversity and

18:38 life-threatening health issues was to train us of how to navigate adversity so that we could encourage other people and share the same lessons and the comfort that God gave us. And that was why that morning on my vacation I went in the RV, pulled out my laptop and started writing that book. And the reason was to share not just our story, most 85% of the book is not just a memoir, it's powerful biblical lessons and principles that God taught us that helped us navigate incredible amount of storms in life. And we wanted to be used of God to bless as many people as we possibly can because that makes it make a lot more sense of what we had to go through to get trained.

19:29 And so that was the reason that we wrote the book. And we have had a lot of people talk about the fact that it really changed their perspective on all the crisis they'd gone through. I've had several people tell me that their depression went away. I've actually had a person tell me that it saved their life because they were so depressed they were planning suicide, but the message in the book changed their life and saved their life. But it's not because the message of the book, it's not just the most of it is deep drill downs into powerful scriptures that God used to help us. And so I can't I can't take credit. It's God's word. Well that's exciting and I know that you travel the country and minister in a lot of churches. If someone was interested in having you at their church or if they wanted more information about your ministry, how would they contact you? Okay, well they could they could go to my website, which is real simple. It's gregdavisonline.com. And so on the website, there's actually several devotional blogs on there. Some of them are actually award-winning and Christian writer conferences. But then also there's a place where they could buy my book on there, but it's also available on Amazon, on the websites of Barnes and Noble, Books of Million, and all that stuff. And also on my website, there is a page where that they could request to book me to speak

21:03 at their church or at a conference or something like that. And so all that's available. And there's also a little promo thing for my YouTube channel where I do some teaching of a lot of the devotions that are on my website. As we wrap up this short podcast, I want to give you the last word and then I'll be back with a closing thought about my podcast. Well, I don't know if you wanted me to share the good news. We've already talked about some of it. God brought through, brought my son through six open heart surgeries by the time he was 17 and a bunch of other heart cath procedures. And then my wife almost died from autoimmune disease and brought her through that. She's alive. My daughter almost died from brain cancer. She's alive. I had a massive heart attack in November of 2021 and almost died twice that night. And three months after that, I was diagnosed with two brain aneurysms. But every one of our doctors, including my cardiologist and my neurologist, have been stunned at how God brought us through.

22:11 The cardiologist said, we can't find any damage to your heart whatsoever. And I said, that's because the great physician protected me from having any heart damage whatsoever from a massive heart attack. And so basically, we just want to give the glory to God. I mean, I want people to know and understand, I didn't earn this. I didn't bring myself through this. I mean, it's just the glory of God is his ability when we keep our focus on him. And when we dig into his word and say, Lord, give me a word to walk on through storms of life, when we do these things, he can do beyond what anybody can ever imagine. And I can't, but he can. And so we want our lives to give the glory to God.

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