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Win Today: Your Roadmap to Wholeness

466: When Pain Gets Wasted. Shawn Johnson on Stewarding the Middle Season of Life, How Bitterness Erodes Trust, and Why We Settle for Temporary Rest Instead of True Peace

Win Today: Your Roadmap to Wholeness

Christopher Cook

Mental Health, Christianity, Religion & Spirituality, Health & Fitness

4.9 • 528 Ratings

🗓️ 26 November 2025

⏱️ 67 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

There's a way to live that squanders pain while your heart hardens and your trust thins. Things like numbing, retelling the wound, and calling it wisdom. This week on Win Today, Shawn Johnson, lead pastor of Red Rocks Church and author of Attacking Anxiety, joins me to explore how people waste pain and how to steward the middle seasons when nothing seems to be moving, but everything inside you is being formed. We draw the line between rest and peace, why bitterness and distrust grow in the same soil, and how to turn waiting into worship without pretending the ache away. If you're stuck in the middle, angry at the delay, or exhausted from managing outcomes, this conversation will help you regain your presence and cultivate a hard-won hope that lasts.

Guest Bio

Shawn Johnson is the lead pastor and co-founder of Red Rocks Church (Denver, multi-site), and the author of Attacking Anxiety, where he chronicles his own fight with anxiety and depression and the practices that helped him rebuild. His ministry blends candor about suffering with a relentless call to faith and formation. Today isn't about his résumé; it's about your next faithful step in the middle.

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Episode Links

Transcript

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0:00.0

The Art of Leadership Network.

0:03.2

I felt so helpless all the sudden.

0:07.0

Sad, mad, scared.

0:11.3

You know, you have all these, the thoughts that were running through my head

0:14.5

where things like, this doesn't make sense.

0:16.5

This isn't fair.

0:18.1

Why would God let this happen to me?

0:22.6

Helping you design your roadmap to wholeness from the inside out. This is Win Today.

0:30.8

And now, here's your host, Christopher Cook.

0:35.0

Hey, friends, welcome to the podcast. Happy Thanksgiving week. I'm really glad you've joined me.

0:40.5

Buckle up for a really important conversation. It's easily one of the most transparent

0:45.2

conversations we've had in a while. I don't shy away from raw emotion. I don't shy away from

0:52.2

hard conversations. You know that. We're talking about wasting pain

0:56.9

today because you can waste your pain by numbing it or using it to justify your distance from the

1:04.1

Lord. I've been there. I've been there recently, if I'm being honest with you. It's easy to

1:10.2

create these insulated lives

1:12.5

where we have these mattresses, if you will,

1:16.4

that shield us from adversity, loss, risk.

1:20.8

And yet the Lord's the only one who really knows

1:22.9

the thoughts and intents of our heart.

1:26.2

And he's the only one that can get to the root of the issue to heal us, to cause us to look up

1:30.4

because he is our help, he's everlasting, he's there.

...

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