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What do you do when the bottom drops out and life breaks in ways you never imagined? Charlie and Jill LeBlanc have walked that road, and through their personal story of loss, they’ve discovered the sustaining power of God's presence. In this podcast, they offer heartfelt conversations, Scripture-based encouragement, and the kind of hope that only comes from experience. Whether you're grieving, struggling, or searching for peace in the middle of chaos, this space is for you.
Hey there. Thanks so much for joining us again today. We're Charlie and Jill and we have the Finding Hope podcast, Getting Through What You Never Asked For.
Charlie LeBlanc:Right.
Jill LeBlanc:And we've all been there at one time or another. Some of what we never asked for seems you know a little more dire for some of us than others. But regardless, we're here to talk about finding hope in those situations because we serve the God of hope and he's awesome and he loves us so much and he loves you so much. So we're just gonna have some discussions about the Holy Spirit being our comforter.
Charlie LeBlanc:Yeah. Yeah, the Bible talks a lot about the Holy Spirit. You know, the last two sessions we had episodes actually, we talked about God being the God of all comfort. Take it from 2 Corinthians 1:3, "Blessed be the God and father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the father of mercies and the God of all comfort." And so we spent two sessions just talking about God as a comforter, which is so beautiful and he is and he's helped us so much.
Jill LeBlanc:He's amazing.
Charlie LeBlanc:Yes. But today we wanted to kind of peek into the Holy Spirit as the comforter.
Jill LeBlanc:Mhmm.
Charlie LeBlanc:And that's just it's just kind of a little twist maybe on words, but really, Jesus said this, I'm gonna read this out of the amplified in John 14:15. He said, "If you really love me, you will keep my commandments and I will ask the father and he will give you another comforter, and that he may remain with you forever." And, you know, that's amazing because he goes down here in in verse 16, he goes to say, "I am telling you nothing but the truth when I say it is profitable that I go away."
Jill LeBlanc:I'm sure they were like what the heck? What do you wait a minute. No, you can't go. What do you mean?
Charlie LeBlanc:Right. Of course he was like the king, the coming king and he was like the one that was gonna save them all. They really thought this was this was it. Right. This was Jesus. He was gonna, you know, do it all there.
Jill LeBlanc:My gosh.
Charlie LeBlanc:But he knew his mission.
Jill LeBlanc:Yeah.
Charlie LeBlanc:He knew that he came to die on the cross for our sins. And and so he knew that he would be leaving them soon.
Jill LeBlanc:Mhmm.
Charlie LeBlanc:And so he said there, he said, it's expedient, advantageous, good that for you that I go away. Because if I don't go away, he said that I cannot send the comforter, which is really amazing. So when Jesus was with us, obviously he was the comforter to all the disciples. We also know obviously God is the father is our comforter. But he said, if I go away, then I will send the comforter, the Holy Spirit.
Charlie LeBlanc:And I love the way that the amplified version lays it out. He says, it says the comforter, then he goes, counselor, helper, advocate, intercessor, strengthener and standby.
Jill LeBlanc:Wow.
Charlie LeBlanc:Wow, that's a lot.
Jill LeBlanc:It's a mouthful and just to think about each one of those attributes about what he is to us, know, like advocate, someone that goes to court needs an advocate or someone that's having to battle situations.
Charlie LeBlanc:Yeah, thank God he's that to us.
Jill LeBlanc:Yes, he is because he fights for us. He's so amazing.
Charlie LeBlanc:Yeah. And counselor is a person who gives advice. I looked up some of these and some definitions. He's a counselor, someone who gives advice to us when we need it. He's a helper, one who helps in time of need, an intercessor.
Charlie LeBlanc:We may talk a little bit more about that in a minute, but, you know, he intercedes for us when we do not feel like we know how to pray, but we don't know what to do, you know, and of course, we're here to talk to you about helping you in your process of getting over the the passing of your loved one. You know, the scripture says, he comforts those who mourn and he heals broken hearts. And so that's a big part of our purpose in this podcast is to help you in that realm. But he also intercedes for us. There are times when we don't know how to pray.
Jill LeBlanc:That's for sure.
Charlie LeBlanc:A lot of times.
Jill LeBlanc:Mhmm.
Charlie LeBlanc:And especially when your heart is shattered, when you've just been broken by the loss of your loved one. I know Jill for you, you didn't wanna pray.
Jill LeBlanc:Are you kidding me?
Charlie LeBlanc:You said I'm done. You were upset.
Jill LeBlanc:I was I was so crushed.
Charlie LeBlanc:Yeah.
Jill LeBlanc:And I felt like I've I've put it all out on the line trusting God and then our son passed away. And I thought I'm not praying anymore. He doesn't I mean I don't apparently I don't know how to pray and I was trusting him to pray through us and show us and all this and none of that came to pass and so it was a long time before I felt like I could pray again. And I mean I say a long time for me it was a long time. It was a few weeks.
Charlie LeBlanc:You always prayed every day all day.
Jill LeBlanc:I mean yeah, I just lived in fellowship with the Lord, but it was after a few weeks the Lord began to touch my heart in special ways just to let me know that He was still there. But He wasn't pulling on me. He just wanted me to know that that he still loved me even though I couldn't figure that part out but nonetheless he he would send comfort even when I didn't ask for it. He's just awesome.
Charlie LeBlanc:Yeah, I know we both were affected a little bit different way.
Jill LeBlanc:Mhmm.
Charlie LeBlanc:I know that I hate to talk much about this but I know that at the point that Beau died at that moment when we were trying to pray, we were praying that he would rise from the dead, that we're trying to raise him from the dead. It was a traumatic time, people.
Charlie LeBlanc:You can imagine. Some of you understand this very clearly. But it was just the worst of the worst of the worst of the worst of the worst of the worst moment of our life.
Jill LeBlanc:Yeah.
Charlie LeBlanc:And we were praying for him to be raised from the dead and the moment that I had to make the decision to just, you know, he's in heaven and we can't bring him back and we just need to let him go, let him stay there. That's when that's when all of the pain of the reality of Beau passing really hit.
Jill LeBlanc:Yeah it was really five hours after he stopped breathing you know after he actually passed away. We prayed and so, yeah.
Charlie LeBlanc:We were expecting a miracle. And when I pulled the plug in a sense and said, you know, we just gotta let him go. The wailing and the tears and the screams, I can still hear them of our daughters especially. They were just saying, no, no. No, Beau. You can't go. You can't. You've gotta you've gotta come back. No.
Charlie LeBlanc:You know, it was horrifying. And but interestingly, I'm there holding I'm on the floor with Beau. He's he had been on the floor for a while and we were just praying for him. Of course, tried to give him CPR and everything at the beginning, but then we prayed for him for like Jill said five hours. But but at that moment, I'm still holding him and I'm thinking we have a let him go and I'm thinking what do I do now?
Charlie LeBlanc:And I could hear my daughter screaming and I looked over to Jill and she was just stone faced and angry.
Jill LeBlanc:Yeah.
Charlie LeBlanc:And I get that. I mean I was angry too but I was like in a moment where I as the father as the as the man of the house whatever. I was just also trying to figure out what do I do here?
Charlie LeBlanc:How do I, how do I fix this? How do I at least make it somewhat better? But I couldn't do anything. I couldn't do anything but just sit there and hold him and and weep with the rest of us. But you know, the God is a God of comfort and he was there with us.
Charlie LeBlanc:We didn't feel him. We didn't sense him at the moment. It was almost like, where are you Lord? You know, but but he was with us and this one scripture we said or this one definition is that intercessor and I really believe that even in our pain even in our agony even in our crying and wailing that he was the Holy Spirit never leaves you. And I know that he was crying out to God inside of us for our benefit, to help us, comforting us, helping us through this painful experience.
Charlie LeBlanc:And Romans 8:26 says that, "The spirit helps us in our weakness for we do not know what we should pray for as we ought, but the spirit himself makes intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered." And that I believe was probably happening not only in that moment, but for several months after, as you and I were just walking around just hurting, groaning, not really knowing how to pray, not really knowing what to pray.
Jill LeBlanc:Yeah.
Charlie LeBlanc:I know for me, I think I told you this before that I seem to be able to pray in the spirit and that was the only way that I could communicate with God. I couldn't pray perfectly in English, but I pray in the spirit and the Lord would, I believe, heard my cry and heard my prayer and and heard my groanings and heard my interceded for me in in that moment.
Jill LeBlanc:Mhmm.
Charlie LeBlanc:And I know for you, similar, even if you couldn't speak.
Jill LeBlanc:Yeah.
Charlie LeBlanc:I know your heart, the pain of your heart. That's the beautiful thing about the Holy Spirit, I think is that He's in us and He understands our pain. And He's touched as we said before in Hebrews, He's touched with the feelings of our infirmities. He is moved with compassion for us.
Jill LeBlanc:Yeah.
Charlie LeBlanc:And so I believe He was inside of us by the power of the Holy Spirit interceding for us and helping us and praying through us to Father to help us get through this painful time. And we have other friends who have lost their loved ones and had very similar traumatic painful experiences.
Charlie LeBlanc:And you know, sometimes I believe just when we're weeping, when we're crying, when we don't know what to say, I believe at the same time, those are messages from our heart to God. And He's hearing them and He is ministering to us by the Holy Spirit and helping us get better and better in those moments.
Jill LeBlanc:Yeah.
Charlie LeBlanc:So thank God for that. Thank God for the Holy Spirit as being an intercessor, and like you said, an advocate.
Charlie LeBlanc:And then we read in the Amplified, a strengthener and someone to make you strong and a standby. So he's just hanging in there waiting.
Jill LeBlanc:He's always there with us.
Charlie LeBlanc:Yeah, waiting to help us in every situation. So, you know, yeah, it's an interesting thing just to be aware that the Holy Spirit is a comforter. And he is the one who comforts us in every situation. And we can lean on him. We can talk to him.
Jill LeBlanc:Yeah.
Charlie LeBlanc:We can say, holy spirit, help me right now.
Jill LeBlanc:Yeah.
Charlie LeBlanc:I need your help. I'll be honest. Even this morning, as I took my little walk, I was praying, God, you gotta help me. Holy Spirit, you gotta help me. Because I was having a difficult morning. Lots of things were coming against me in preparation. And we are in such a busy season right now. We're getting so many emails, so many texts from so many different places. We're going overseas soon and doing ministry there. We're forming bands over there too. And so many details, flights and, and I was a bit overwhelmed. And as I took my walk, I said, Holy Spirit, help me. You are the helper. I'm gonna teach on that today. Holy Spirit, you are the helper. Help me right now. And so thank God he does.
Jill LeBlanc:He does. He's amazing.
Charlie LeBlanc:Yeah. So, you know, I remember that that, you know, not only is the Holy Spirit the helper, but guess what? God has made us to be comforters and helpers as well. And I wanna talk a little bit about that today as well that, you know, we said that God is the the the God of all comfort. We said the Holy Spirit is the comforter.
Charlie LeBlanc:But there's also a place where we become comforters. It says in in the in 2 Corinthians that scripture that we read 1:3, it says, "Who comforts us in all of our tribulation so that we can comfort others with the same comfort that we have received from the Lord." And of course, that's been your your my mandate now in this season. And we were worship leaders, just singing and write songs and ministry and music. And then our son passed and all of a sudden we're like, Oh God, what do we do now? And yet we have continued in our music ministry but the whole time this thing inside of us kept growing to comfort others.
Jill LeBlanc:Yeah and it wasn't like we were trying to.
Charlie LeBlanc:No.
Jill LeBlanc:It's just these situations that would come to us of another friend that lost someone and then another one.
Charlie LeBlanc:Yeah.
Jill LeBlanc:And we would just share with them things that the Lord had shown us.
Charlie LeBlanc:Right.
Jill LeBlanc:And it evolved into and someone would say wow that's powerful and you know just it just evolved into a way to help more people and you know bereaved people we would talk to say no one else is saying this. And we thought well maybe we need to be the one saying it may you know and then the Lord made it very clear to us that we need to go public if you will.
Charlie LeBlanc:Right exactly.
Jill LeBlanc:You know...
Charlie LeBlanc:Exactly it's kind of an interesting pathway for us because you know this message of of grieving and mourning and you know suffering in your grief and your pain that we went through. We had no choice. We had to go through it.
Jill LeBlanc:Mhmm.
Charlie LeBlanc:It's it's something that you you just have no choice when you your heart is broken. You've got to just you've got to go through it. You've got to pray. You've got to you gotta cry out for help, and you just gotta go through it. But we didn't we were a little embarrassed about how we were feeling until we started getting in the word and seeing how great men of God grieved, great men of God prayed and cried out to God. David's mighty men wept until they could weep no more.
Jill LeBlanc:Yeah.
Charlie LeBlanc:Many instances of Godly men says this at Stephen's funeral, Godly men mourned greatly for him and he goes on and on and on. I've got a whole teaching on on this aspect of great men of God that wept and cried, David and Jacob and it goes on and on Isaac and Joseph and his brothers, you know, Joseph saw his brothers for the first time and he ran into the other room and hid so he could weep, you know, and then he came back out and he embraced them and wept on their on their shoulders. And that was just a form of grief as well. Just, you know, they haven't seen each other in so long.
Charlie LeBlanc:It was a painful situation. But yeah, we didn't know that we would be brought into this particular season of our life. But you know, the Lord supernaturally has brought us into this and you know, as a result, we wrote a book.
Jill LeBlanc:Yeah.
Charlie LeBlanc:Hallelujah. And if you haven't heard us talk about it yet, it's called When Loss Comes Close to Home. And you know, we have got so many testimonies of people's lives that have been helped and transformed as they've read this book. I mean, it's it's blown us away. The emails, the texts that we receive, people telling us, like you said earlier, nobody has said this. And you know, I don't know-
Jill LeBlanc:Not in our circles.
Charlie LeBlanc:Yeah, God just gave us strength to just tell it like it is, might wanna say. To be honest about our pain, to be honest about the journey. So we would encourage you to get that book. Go to our website. It's on our website.
Charlie LeBlanc:It's also on Amazon and Barnes & Noble and all the different platforms. And I believe it'll really it'll really help you. But he called us to comfort others And he's called all of us in whatever we've been through to try to be a help to somebody else. And you know, I remember reading a scripture in Job that just jumped out of the page to me. And many of you know the story of Job, you know, here he was just lost everything and and all of a sudden his friends see him and they come and they the Bible says they they came and they they sat down, they came to console him and to comfort him.
Charlie LeBlanc:And it said when they saw Job from a distance, they scarcely recognized him. Wailing loudly, they tore their robes and threw dust into the air over their heads to show their grief. So here are his friends coming, they see how much pain he's in. And they say, this is crazy. They said, he's in a locked and we don't even know what to say. We better not say anything. And sometimes that's the smartest thing.
Jill LeBlanc:That's smart. Very smart.
Charlie LeBlanc:Rather than say something foolish and unhealthy. Sometimes it's better-
Jill LeBlanc:And damaging.
Charlie LeBlanc:Yes. Sometimes it's better just not to say anything to be a good comforter. And so no one said a word to Job for they saw that his suffering was too great for words, but then jump over to the end of Job. And it said, Job said, Lord, I've only heard of you before, but now I have seen you with my eyes and I take back everything I said. Job even said, sit and dust and acid to show my repentance.
Charlie LeBlanc:But then he said, after Lord had finished speaking to Job, he said to Eliphaz, the Temanite, he said, I am angry with you and your two friends, for you have not spoken accurately about me as my servant Job has. And then this statement that just jumped out of the page to me in Job 16, Job said, I have heard all of this before. He's listening to his friends now trying to tell him how to get better, how not to grieve, how don't blame God, you know, maybe there's something wrong that you did, Job. Maybe there's some hidden sin in your life. That's why it happened.
Charlie LeBlanc:You know, all these little weird things that we come up with to try to, you know, to try to explain why something has happened in someone's life. That's just a horrible journey. I don't like being go there. But but Job said, I have heard all this before. And he goes this statement, what miserable comforters you are. Man, what a statement.
Jill LeBlanc:Yeah.
Charlie LeBlanc:What miserable comforters you are.
Jill LeBlanc:Yeah.
Charlie LeBlanc:And that's so true. Unfortunately, most of us in the church, if we haven't had a loss of this magnitude, we really don't know how to be a good comforter. And the second half of our book is all about teaching people how to be better comforters, how to say the right things, how to do the right things, how to how to minister to someone who has has a broken heart. There's so many things you should you should say, and there's so many things you shouldn't say. So I'm going to close this broadcast with with just a little story, and then we're going get into it more on the next program. But we were about a year after Beau passed, a friend of ours lost their son.
Charlie LeBlanc:And and we, I won't go into all the details, but basically, we ended up going to their church that following Sunday to help them, to be with them. They said, you come and minister? Would you come and sing and preach? And we said, we'll do anything for you because we understood that pain of losing a son. So we're driving down South Missouri to their church and all of a sudden it dawns on me, I don't know what to say.
Charlie LeBlanc:Here I am, I'm grieving still about Beau, my heart's still broken, but I gotta say something to help, to help these guys. And as I'm praying in the spirit again, by the Holy Spirit, who is the comforter, as we said earlier in this podcast, the Holy Spirit dropped into my heart. He said, Charlie, simply say this, tell the people you do the loving and I'll do the fixing. Did you get that? He said, tell the people you do the loving and I'll do the fixing.
Charlie LeBlanc:I mean, that just exploded in my heart, that God was encouraging me to share with the people that they needed to be the ones to love our friends, to comfort them, to just be loving arms around them, administer peace to them, and let God fix them. And man, that is that's revolutionary.
Jill LeBlanc:It's so loaded because like in our circles, the people we, you know, associate with and minister with and, you know, it's like you want to fix people. You don't want people hurting.
Charlie LeBlanc:We're fixers.
Jill LeBlanc:Yeah. And so you-
Charlie LeBlanc:Someone's unhappy rejoicing. We get you gotta be happy. You gotta be happy. You gotta rejoice. You gotta rejoice.
Jill LeBlanc:Yeah.
Charlie LeBlanc:But what do we forget that scripture? Rejoice with those who rejoice, but weep with those who weep.
Jill LeBlanc:Right.
Charlie LeBlanc:We forget that.
Jill LeBlanc:Yeah. So we will continue this some more on our next episode and we hope-
Charlie LeBlanc:We'll just dive right back into this.
Jill LeBlanc:Yeah. So, we hope this one today has been helpful and you have a little bit more just something more that you can embrace about the Holy Spirit who wants to comfort your broken heart and-
Charlie LeBlanc:He can help you to be a comforter as well.
Jill LeBlanc:Yeah, that too.
Charlie LeBlanc:Okay, so we really love you and we appreciate you and we want to remind you again of our book to go to our website and get a copy. You can download it digitally. And also you can get an audio.
Jill LeBlanc:You sure can.
Charlie LeBlanc:You and I went in the studio and read this entire book. And that wasn't easy.
Jill LeBlanc:Yeah. Someone told us though that it's even more powerful just hearing us read it. I mean someone told us this and so yeah I guess that's good. So God bless. So yeah, so subscribe and please give the show a thumbs up and share it with someone that you know that might need to hear this as well.
Jill LeBlanc:And I think there'll be a slide coming up here soon. We'd love to stay connected with you on a more close level. So there's information on how to join our email list and you could go to our website and shop around. They've got a lot of great music that'll minister to your heart from the Word of God. So, until next time.
Charlie LeBlanc:Yeah. Bye bye.
Jill LeBlanc:Bye.
Charlie LeBlanc:God bless you. Love you.