LOUISVILLE, Ky. – Davey Blackburn knows a little about heartache and tragedy.
But he also knows something of God’s grace that he believes can turn any tragedy into triumph, and he shared that with a nearly full ballroom gathered for the annual RVI Leadership Prayer Breakfast this morning at the Crowne Plaza Hotel.
On Nov. 10, 2015, Blackburn, a pastor at a startup church in Indianapolis, returned from a workout at the gym to find his wife, Amanda, dead in a pool of blood.
There had been a break-in and she had been murdered.
The couple’s toddler son was fine, but Blackburn was left with questions and hurt that even caused him to question his lifelong faith.
He said he knew God promises believers that they will go through trials in life, but nothing really prepared him for the loss of his wife.
“You will have difficulty, but the question is, what are you going to do with it?” he said. “Are you going to worry or worship?”
Blackburn told the crowd he found comfort and strength in Psalm 23, where the psalmist talks about both being led on righteous paths and going through the valley of the shadow of death.
“Sometimes paths of righteousness go through trials in the valley of the shadow of death,” he said. “Faith cannot grow unless you are under duress.”
But Blackburn encouraged the crowd that God does not leave his followers in that valley, and Blackburn feels he has come through the valley in a sense.
He recently became engaged to be married in an unusual way. He said he had prayed that if God would have him marry again, that it would be a woman who loved God, loved Blackburn and his son and also loved his late wife.
He met a woman who had been attending the church who had been drawn by the church’s ministry to help inner-city teens avoid becoming trapped by gang and criminal life.
It turns out, her father is pastor of an inner-city church with a prison ministry and has regular contacts with the men who killed Blackburn’s wife.
Blackburn said he would like to someday be able to minister to the men who killed his wife.
“Through hope, grace and forgiveness, we can defeat the enemy,” he said.