Pastor Davey Blackburn revealed that the "Lord had been preparing" him and his pregnant wife Amanda "to walk through a season of pain" and that he had feared losing their baby days before her wife and their pre-born child were brutally assaulted and fatally shot inside their home in Indianapolis, Indiana on Nov. 10 last year.
Blackburn once again recalled the tragic event that put his family's faith in focus during a recent meeting with fellow Pastor Perry Noble, Charisma News reports.
"Long before anybody took Amanda's life, she laid it down," Blackburn told Noble. Before Blackburn planted his own Resonate Church in Indianapolis, Indiana, he was a staff member of Noble's NewSpring Church in Anderson, South Carolina.
Blackburn said his wife was actually the one who built Resonate Church. "Amanda, she was the backbone of this. She provided encouragement for me during times in which I felt like throwing down the towel," he said.
"...She would just speak life into me and say, 'I believe in you, and Jesus is going to make this happen and build His church.'"
But as they were building the church, tragedy struck.
"It was supposed to be a pretty normal Tuesday," Blackburn recalled.
He said he had just returned home from the gym when his "worst nightmare" became real. "I found Amanda face down on the floor of our living room in a pool of blood," he said.
He said a combination of shock and adrenaline gripped his mind and body at the sight and that "honestly, I didn't know what had happened and I think that was kind of the grace of God in that moment."
At first, he said he didn't realise that his wife was shot. And then he realised that what had just happened was already in his mind long before it happened.
"I had no idea she'd been shot, had no idea. Some things looked out of place, but she was three months pregnant, and I think the Lord had been preparing me, honestly, I can't describe why this is, but the Lord had been preparing me and us that we were about to walk through a season of pain, and I had this fear we were going to lose the baby. I just did," Blackburn said.
He said Amanda was still breathing when he found her but that he didn't know she had gunshot wounds. Amanda eventually died from her wounds at the bed in the hospital where Blackburn took her.
"The thing I would never forget is that in the 24 hours we were waiting—all of her family, all of my family—we gathered around her hospital bed, and we didn't know what else to do but to worship," he said.
All he could pray, he said, was the one he and his wife had been saying together throughout their marriage: "Lord, whatever you have planned, we surrender to you."
