Ten Minute Bible Talks Devotional Bible Study - What Chronic Pain Taught Me About God | An Interview with Dave Cover

Episode Date: May 6, 2021

Do you or someone you love battle with chronic pain? Do you wonder where God is in the midst of it? Dave Cover knows how you feel, and shares his journey, what he’s learned, and how God is using pain for good in his life. Dave is the Co-Lead Pastor of The Crossing and the host of A Bigger Life. On his podcast, he teaches you how to pray using the Bible. Make sure https://www.thecrossingchurch.com/a-bigger-life/ (to subscribe to A Bigger Life) on your favorite podcast player. https://www.thecrossingchurch.com/a-bigger-life/ (https://www.thecrossingchurch.com/a-bigger-life/ ) Your support makes TMBT possible. Ten Minute Bible Talks is a crowd-funded project. Join the TMBTeam to reach more people with the Bible. Give now.

Welcome to 10-minute Bible Talks, where we connect the Bible to your life in the time it takes to get to work. I'm Keith Simon. And I'm Patrick Miller. Also, if you want to connect with us, follow us on Twitter at TMBT Podcast. You can also check out our hashtag, hashtag, Ask TMBT, where you can ask us anything, and we'd love to connect with you. On today's episode, I am interviewing Dave Kover. He is a co-lead pastor at the crossing. this is the church where Keith and I are both pastors. Keith and Dave actually started the church,

which means a lot to me because the crossing is the place where I became a Christian. It's really the only church I've ever attended regularly. So people ask me what I think about other churches. And I say, well, you shouldn't ask me because I don't know anything about them. And so many ways, the environment and the church culture that Dave helped create has helped made me the person that I am walking with Jesus. And so he's had a big influence on my life. And I'm excited to have him on the podcast today. Thanks for coming on, Dave. I'm excited to be here. Dave, what I'd love to talk to you about today is your own battle with pain.

I know this isn't something that you've spoken a lot about publicly, and so it will probably surprise some people to hear it, but I know that this has been a battle that you've been going through for, gosh, how long now? I think it's about seven years. It started in 2012, so it's more than that, right? I'm losing my numbers. It's about nine years. Yeah, you know, it's one of those things I don't talk about,

partly because it's not a flattering kind of pain. It's a urinary track pain. So if I had something like bat, why don't you want to talk about that? Yeah. If I have an old football injury in my leg, I'd talk about it more. But this is not one you want to talk about for lots of reasons. But just imagine if you've ever had a bladder infection or a UTI infection. And think of the worst one you've ever had and now times it by two. And that's what I experience randomly. Not all the time. So like right now, I'm fine. But there's times where a flare-up will come and I don't get to choose when they happen and it becomes debilitating and it's excruciating sometimes. It's a weird thing because pain is one of those things where the more you think about it, the worse it gets. And so I don't talk about it for lots of

reasons. One big reason I don't talk about it is I'm just literally trying to get my brain off of it and to focus on other things. And that seems to help. We can talk about that if you want at some point in the podcast, but I do think it's helpful. And there's some things to say about that. Yeah, I would love to hear about that. And I'm really grateful that you're taking a risk in a sense, even by sharing with us and letting us step into that journey. So maybe just walk us through this starts nine years ago. How do you get from there to today? I was about 52 years old. And I thought, you know what? 52 is awesome. I am wise enough to be able to avoid a lot of pitfalls in my life. I felt physically great. I was golfing with friends, traveling with friends. My wife and I were

enjoying a good social life and a personal life. And we had just built a screened-dim porch and we're really enjoying sitting outside and life was good. And then something happened where all of a sudden I'd have these episodes. It happened a lot when I was active. So when I was golfing, if I would walk around a lot and I walked when I golfed, somehow the walking car, caused, it exacerbated the pain, and I thought, what's going on? So I started going to a doctor. I went to a urologist and make a long story short. I've been to all kinds of doctors, and nobody really knows what it is. They don't know what's causing it. They don't know what's, they don't know anything about it. Part of what makes it so frustrating is that nobody knows what it is. I've developed a few things

to help treat it, but my journey is, is that it got really bad there. I would say four years ago was at the peak of the badness. And it was really hard to do my job. It was hard to be a husband, to be a father, to be a grandfather, to be a friend. And I just sort of went through, you know, when you just sort of get punched in the face, you have to sort of recalibrate your stance and figure out where you are, and that's what this was for me. I figured it out a little bit to where I can manage it, and it has gotten significantly better. I'm not 100% sure why I have theories. But it is a journey. I think the hardest thing about it is we talk about FOMO, the fear of missing out. When you have a chronic pain situation, you really start to miss out. You miss out on all the other things that you were doing.

You just can't do either with your friends. It's unpredictable whether or not you're going to have a flare up. And so it changes your ability to plan things. It changes your ability to be out for me somewhere where I can't deal with the pain if it happens. And so it becomes one of those things where it does in ways that you don't think about if you don't have chronic pain, it significantly changes your life beyond just the pain itself. Yeah. How do you think the pain challenged your relationship with other people, your relationship with God? It's one of those things where when I have a pain flare up, I don't tell the person I'm talking to, oh, I'm just having a pain flare up. pardon me while I ignore everything you're saying. You can't quite do that. So I had to learn to have

conversations with people, or I'm still listening to what they're saying, and I still have an intelligible response, and yet I'm having a serious pain flare-up. So there's like two things going on at once, and it's all in my head, and I can't talk about it. And it's kind of that same way, even sometimes when I would preach, I would have these terrible flare-ups in the middle of a sermon, and yet I'd still have to continue to talk as if nothing was happening and everything's fine, nothing to see here. So it's one of those things where it takes bandwidth. And so if you have to devote bandwidth to dealing with pain, you can't devote as much bandwidth to conversations. And you can't devote as much bandwidth to thinking through relationally the presence of people

that when you're in their presence, a lot of relationship is presence. You're thinking about them, you're thinking about their facial expressions, you're thinking about what they're saying, and there's a sense of presence, and you don't quite have the same bandwidth if you have chronic pain for that kind of conversation and that kind of relationship. Yeah, I can't imagine having to do those two things at once. I can't imagine having to preach sermons, prepare sermons in the midst of pain and the amount of focus that it requires. Yeah, it's weird because I'm not 100% sure why this happens, but the more I get intense about something, sometimes the pain comes on. It's almost like the more my mind starts to really focus in and get excited about something else. The pain says, don't forget about me.

And so it's almost like, darn it, the more I'm really enjoying preparing for this sermon, all of a sudden I'm having a pain bout and I can't quite focus as much. Again, that was four years ago more than it is now. Now I've sort of learned how to deal with it. I've learned it's weird, but I don't want to sound too much like some Buddhists to show here now all of a sudden. But there's about 50% of Buddhism that's really helpful. The other 50% is absolutely devastating and untruthful and will mess you up. But the parts that are helpful are the parts that get you to think through thinking about your body and thinking about what's causing stress

and thinking about how does my lack of physical awareness increase tension in my body without me knowing it. So I read a few books that were written by Buddhist authors, and the points that were the most helpful were points about just speaking to yourself and speaking to your body in ways where you're becoming present with every part of your body and how your body feels.

And it's a mind-body kind of thing where you're not just using your body to do other things, but you're really becoming part of your body. And in a weird way, the parts of Buddhism that are true are the parts that agree with the scriptures. We are a body, soul, mind being. You see a lot of body language in the Psalms when it comes to worshiping God. You see a lot of body descriptions of Jesus' prayer life. It must have made an impression on the apostles because they talk about what he's doing when he's praying. He's looking up to heaven. He's on his knees. He's falling with his face to the

ground. These are all things that were very bodily. And I just think that one of the things that has helped me is to be more aware of my body and to actually speak to my body as if it's part of, it's who I am and my brain can control how my body feels. And it really is true. I'm not saying to a hundred percent degree, but one of the things I've learned over the last four years is how much I really control my body with my brain. Yeah, this is something that you've definitely opened me up to. There's something that's happened in Christianity where we've split up the mind and the body. The dualism. Yeah, it's a dualism. We think that the mind is the good part and that the body is the bad part that we need to get rid of. We need to be saved from it. Escape the body,

go to heaven, which is obviously not the Bible at all. No, it's very far from it. That's more, that's more the bad part of Buddhism. That's the part we're trying to get rid of. Yes, exactly right. And I remember, and it might have actually been after you and I had a conversation, you said something, and it keyed me in. I was like, okay, I'm going to try this paying attention to my body thing. And I started to notice that when I felt anxiety, I would feel it in my kidneys. I know that sounds really weird. No, it doesn't sound weird to me at all. Well, maybe it sounds weird to the person my love language now, brother. And so I would feel it in my kidneys, and it would just sit there. Even after the anxiety, and it would make it hard for me to sleep, I would wake up feeling my kidneys. And I was reading Psalm 16, which I know happens to be one of your favorite songs.

I was reading it in the Hebrew, and there's a verse in there where it talks about God, I can't remember the exact phrase. The verse in English talks about his heart, God grabbing his heart, but it's actually his kidneys. In Hebrew, it talks about this, I'm feeling it in my kidneys. And it was this big wake-up call from her. I thought, oh, my gosh, David talked about feeling things in his kidneys too, and that God was present grabbing him in the kidney. And so, again, if you're listening to me, what in the heck are they talking about?

But it's really real. And even in the Greek New Testament where it's translubesely. in English, moved with, Jesus moved with compassion, what it's literally saying, he was moved in his kidneys. So,

I mean, that translated into Greek thought as well. And I think it's very experiential. I think they're talking about how they felt. And I do think that it's a different mindset

than what we have. We do have this dualistic where we think the body is sort of a necessary evil, a kind of prison, and our brain, our mind, our spirit. That's where the action is.

And that's a heresy. Like I said, it is the bad part of Buddhism, but the biblical view of the body and the brain and the mind, it's all a one thing. And that really is what the Bible's talking about when it talks about our soul, even, the real us, the whole us, the entire us. In fact, we'll have an episode. It might come out right before this or right after this where I'm talking about one of my favorite verses, which is the first use of the word soul in the Bible, and it's in Genesis 121, and it's talking about fish. It talks about all the living souls, all the living nefesh's.

And it's making, I think, the same point that we're making here. You don't have a soul. You are a soul. You are a whole body, mind thing that's all wrapped up in one that you can't divide apart. And you have to deal with the whole thing if you're going to be with God. Most people hearing you say that aren't going to see how that relates to chronic pain, but it really does. At least that's one of the things I've learned is our soulishness, our whole, the entirety of who we are, body, mind, brain, spirit is all one. thing, and that really does relate to some forms, probably my form, because it seems to help of chronic pain. So we've been talking about a lot of ideas that I have to imagine are new for people.

So if you could just give them a takeaway, what you've learned about the mind, the body, the soul, pain. What is that? Well, again, I'm learning, so I don't want to act like I'm on top the mountain. Come up here, I'll follow me to freedom. I'm still climbing. But it's one of those things where I think that what the Bible has been saying for thousands of years turns out to be truer than we thought. The idea of renewing your mind

based upon what you think, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is good, let your mind dwell on these things. Philippians 4-8, all these kinds of things. What we say, what we think, are wiring our brain. And our brain is what is controlling, interacting with our nerves, our body, it's all one thing. And so one of the things, at least for me, is when I can put myself in a mindset of thinking a certain way, saying things a certain way, it affects my body, just to get close to home, it affects my pain. And so this is going to sound strange, but there's been times, I would say 40% of the time when I get some sort of pain flare up, and I will say out, outlawful, This is a false signal. This is a false message. I'm relaxed. I'm calm. I'm in a good place. I'm joyful right now. I'm looking forward to my day. That I will literally feel that pain within right then say, oh, my bad. And just sort of go back down. And it's a weird thing. And maybe it's not for everybody. But I've developed these sort of

biblical mantras, so to speak, where I think of Psalm 118, this is the day the Lord has made. I will rejoice and be glad in it. And I'll say that out loud. Literally, I'll say it every morning. I'll get up and I'll say out loud, this is the day the Lord has made. And I will rejoice and I'll be glad in it. And I'm thinking about what I'm saying. It's not just words to say. I'm really trying to get my mind to focus on the words that I'm saying and to feel it. I think. it puts my body in a better place. And I'll say other things. I will say also every day that I will walk. I'm thinking of Ephesians 210. I will walk today in the good works that God has prepared beforehand for me to walk into. And I'll walk into these good works with strength, with joy, with gladness, with confidence.

and I'll say those things out loud, and it puts my body in that frame of mind. I don't know how, I don't want to sound too weird, and I know that for a lot of people here, they think it's the power of positive thinking. I don't know if it's just that. I think it's more that it's getting rid of the power of negative thinking in the sense that I just think that we put our body in these adrenaline, fight or flight, I'm in danger, anxiety kind of places. And it affects our nerves. It affects our muscles. It affects muscle spasms. It affects just our brain interpreting signals from our body. Pain specialists say that pain is in the

brain, that your brain is literally interpreting those signals and deciding whether or not it's pain or not. And I think that how we talk, what we say, what we say to other people, what we say to ourselves, it has a bigger impact on our body than I at least four years ago thought that it did. Why do you think it's important to say those things out loud? I think that out loud is a thing that your brain, neurologists say at least books I've read, these are secular books, or not Christian books, although one of them was a Christian book that was good, but that neurologists say that our brain wires more, it wires quicker, it wires more substantively what we say.

the words that we say wire our brain. Things that we see, wire our brain experiences that we have, wire our brain. Our brain is constantly rewiring itself. It's not as if, like we used to think, that the brain sort of has its wiring and we're just stuck living with it. The brain is constantly wiring itself and rewiring itself according to what we say and according to what we see and according to what we do. So muscle memory is a real term. It's a brain wiring kind of thing. And there's a muscle memory that is spiritual. There's a muscle memory that is attitudinal, and we're wiring that according to what we say. And I just think, again, it just confirms and affirms the things that the Bible has always been teaching us about the power of our words, and our words

affect our lives more than we thought. As you're speaking, I'm thinking about Paul's command to Timothy, where he says, you need to commit yourself to the public reading of the scriptures. Now, obviously, he's in a culture where there's fewer people who are literate. And so for some people, the only way they read the Bible was hearing the Bible read to them. And yet it's a pattern that goes throughout all of Scripture that there's these points and communities where transformation is happening and they're marked by the public reading of Scripture. I know you're a fan of the Chosen. And it's one of my favorite things and they have those Chabat meals and still happens in some Jewish

households today where they will actually read the scripture together. And now I'm just thinking, wow, it probably really does rewire your sense of self, your sense of community, your sense of your body to have those things read. I think so. And I think that is part of what I want to do in my podcast. And maybe I'm the one benefiting from my podcast more than anybody because I'm actually the one talking. But what I'm trying to get people to do, try this at home kind of thing, is to actually read out loud the Psalms and to pray out loud what you're praying from the Psalms, the phrases. And to pray those out loud, I think has an effect on us more than just thinking them inside our thoughts. Yeah, and that's the opposite practice of most people. It wasn't Jesus's practice.

In the ancient world, the idea of praying inside of your head was probably a little bit straight. They'd say, what are you doing over there? And I think it explains what I didn't get before, like one of these passages in the Bible where it says that Jesus arose early in the morning when it was still dark, left the house, and went and found a lonely place to pray. And I always thought, why didn't you just stay there in his bed? I would have stayed there in my bed. Why make a big scene, leave the house, just pray in your bed. But at least it shows me that to Jesus, prayer was talking out loud, and he didn't want to talk out loud with everybody else still sleeping. He wanted to get to a lonely place and have a conversation with God out loud. I'm curious. Pain does a lot of things to different

people. How has pain brought you closer to God? Well, so implied in that question is that it has brought me closer to God. And I will say that there have been times when it hasn't, there's been times in my life where my pain has made it hard in my relationship with God because I don't know why, but sometimes when I want to pray, the pain is worse and it sometimes is easier to do something else. But I've had to work through it. For me, exercise is something I've had to work through in spite of the pain. And then the payoff is later is that it's easier to do later after you've done it for a while. it's easier to do without pain. And I think that prayer and meditation on the scriptures is the same kind of way, at least for me. It was hard at first, and it was easier not to, but then I decided I'm

going to work my way through it, and it's gotten easier. And I always think about that verse in 2 Corinthians, 12, where Paul is talking about in verse 7, where he says, I was given a thorn in my flesh. and I think most Bible scholars think that this is some sort of a pain, a physical pain. I was given a thorn in my flesh. I mean, that's a great way to describe pain. A messenger of Satan to torment me. Now, I don't know if Paul is saying there that is necessarily demonic or just that this is just a real, you know, this thing's from hell kind of thing to torment me.

And then he says in verse 8, three times I pleaded with the Lord to take it away from me. I don't know that Paul's saying he only asked three times. My first question, only three? Well, maybe you stick with it, brother. But I think what he's doing there is going back to the Garden of Gistemite, and Jesus prayed the same thing three times. Lord, take this away from me, take this cup from me, take this cup from me, but not what I will, but your will be done.

I think that's what Paul's talking about here. It's like Christ, God didn't take it away from him, and he hasn't taken this away from me either. But he said to me, my grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness. therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weakness so that Christ's power may rest on me. And so he says, the key thing he says is that this was given to me to keep me from being conceded. Other translations say, keep me from exalting myself.

And I will say that chronic pain is a great humbler. It takes away this sense of, I've got this, I'm in control of my life. It takes away the cockiness. and it makes me a person of need. It makes me a person of, we'll see, and we'll see if God does this or not kind of thing. And for me, I've obviously prayed that God would take it away. And obviously, that's not been something that he's chosen to do. But I will say that the sense of weakness has been good for me.

I wouldn't have chosen it. But the sense of I need God, I'm counting on God, God strengthen me physically, strengthen me physically, spiritually, emotionally, relationally, mentally, and just this neediness, this dependence upon God, because I don't have this otherwise. Over the years has been good for me. It's had fruit in my life that I'm starting to see more

and more. It kind of accumulates on itself. So I would say in a sense that it has helped me spiritually because it's made me more aware of my weakness. It's made me more aware of, the need for God in my life to strengthen me. And it's one of these things where it goes back to what I was saying before about speaking out loud, I will often say, like I said before about this is the day the Lord has made all that. I will walk into good works he's prepared. Another thing I say is that God is my

strength, God is my confidence, God is my comfort. And saying those things out loud, it has a, it's pregnant with meaning because it's also physically, but it has been helpful for me, empowering for me. Dave, thanks so much for coming on the podcast and sharing about your pain. I know it's not easy to do, but I think there are a lot of people who are in similar circumstances or have people they love in similar circumstances who will benefit a lot from this. Yeah, I'm glad I got to talk about it.

You know, it's not something I would choose to do. But I do think that it's the kind of thing where I, the stuff we've talked about here really can help. And I do think that if we could say the scripture passages that speak conference, and strength and focus on God and restoration on God and joy in today and a sense of God is my joy. I can rejoice today and put my mind in a place that way. If this has motivated people to want to pursue that more, that's what I do in a bigger life in a very real way.

The stuff that I'm going through biblically and the stuff that I'm praying in that podcast is the stuff that works for me. in my chronic pain. It's not just something I think would be good just to do. It's something that's very autobiographical for me. So Dave has his own podcast. It's called A Bigger Life. Can you share a little bit about what you do on there? Yeah, you know, I started off doing interviews sometimes like you guys do here. And about five episodes, six episodes in, I kind of lost my support staff. She was an intern. Her year was up. And so I am not great at doing all the details. So I stopped doing the interviews and sort of let the podcast die for a year. And then actually you came to me.

When COVID happened and everything's locking down and people are home, trapped in their homes, you rightly were trying to find ways for us to have interaction with people in their homes and a way for them to continue in community and to grow spiritually. And so you were the one that suggested, what if we turn the podcast into a devotional prayer kind of podcast, which I thought, that sounds like a pretty good idea. I'm not sure it's a podcast. I mean, I've never heard a podcast where people pray. I never listened to one at least.

I remember you telling me. You're like, so what are people doing? I mean, are they imagining my eyes shut right now? Are they getting weirded out because they're listening to this guy, pray over them? What's happening? It's never been done as far as I know, and it was a little awkward for me. I remember just sort of just, well, I'm just going to do it and see what happens. And actually, the first episode, I really liked it.

I liked the idea of connecting with people in a way that I never really get a chance to do as a pastor. I have to preach sermons. And I do enjoy sometimes in a sermon if I get a chance to, and you actually mentioned this when you were saying, hey, here's an idea. Every now and then I've preached a sermon where I do something on the Lord's Prayer and I'll pray the last part of the sermon as sort of an example and a way for us to pray. And you said, that might be an idea for a podcast. And so when I did the podcast and I would talk about a certain passage of scripture and then pray through it. It actually, in my mind, it actually worked. And I got a lot of really positive feedback from people that this

was something that was helping them. Remember those first days of COVID, we didn't know what was ahead of us. All we knew was massive amounts of people were dying in Italy, in hospitals in New York City. And so I think people were more looking for something to direct them to God. And I think that the podcast met that need. But then I think for me, something I learned 40 years ago when I was a college student was how to use the Bible to pray. And it really changed my life. I mean, it significantly changed my prayer life. It significantly changed my spiritual growth. And so I've been doing it for 40 years and I decided, you know, I'm just going to do this live in a podcast. I'm going to read a psalm, perhaps, talk about it and pray it. And,

We're in our 100-something episode, and it's been working. One reason why I wanted you to do this is I've always battled with prayer, not just in the sense of finding time to pray and prioritizing it well, but no one would ever be impressed by a prayer that they heard me pray. In fact, on my podcast, I keep my prayers very short so that people don't know my weaknesses. It's like the Wizard of Oz, the man behind the curtain. Pay no attention. Yeah, please don't ask me to pray.

Pay no attention to my prayers behind the curtain. But why I wanted you to do it was because you've helped me in my own prayer life, And I think this is a podcast that has not only helped me, but helped a lot of other people learn how to turn the Bible into prayers that they can do for the rest of their life, just like you've done. I don't know what it is. For me, maybe it's not, maybe not everybody's wired where this excites them. But I don't know. For me, when there are phrases in the Bible that increase my vocabulary of what I, my soul is trying to say to God and the things that I'm wanting to cling to. And when I find that vocabulary in the Bible and King David was somebody, I think, who was an extreme kind of person. He lived an extreme life and he had an extreme emotional life. And you see that come out in his poetry and the words that he uses, the pictures, the word pictures that he uses.

When you really latch onto them and let your imagination start to run with them, it brings out something in your soul that you're not used to bringing out. It's almost like that book, 1984, the totalitarian government, the way they controlled people was by limiting their vocabulary so that they couldn't think thoughts beyond a very surface level. And that's how they controlled people. And I think for whatever reason, that's happened in our prayer life. We haven't developed a prayer vocabulary. We sort of pray the same things over and over. And it's a very simple language. It's a language of an eight-year-old.

And because we just haven't developed this rich vocabulary. and what the Psalms do for me in particular, like the Psalms of David especially, they just all of a sudden give me this vocabulary that's explosive with language, imaginative language, and it takes me to a place spiritually that I otherwise wouldn't go. And I've developed a prayer life around that kind of vocabulary. And that's what I'm trying to do, help people do in the podcast. So if you want your prayer vocabulary to expand, I would encourage you to stop listening to this right now, go and subscribe to a bigger life. I think it's going to help you in your prayer life. I think like

Dave said, maybe you feel like an eight-year-old in your prayer life. And he's like, gosh, I'd like to be an adult in all of my life, especially in prayer. Well, this is a great place to start. If you want to download Dave's podcast, you can download it on any major podcast player. I'd encourage you to subscribe. I think you're going to get a lot out of it. So don't miss out on what he's doing. Thanks, Patrick. Thanks for listening. If you've enjoyed this content, please subscribe and give us a rating. That helps other people find this podcast more easily. Also, ask yourself, who could you share this podcast with? Texting an episode to a friend or a family member is a great way to help them grow spiritually. If you want to go deeper, check out our show notes for book recommendations.