From Grief to the Rock: Paul S. Waugh on the Journey to Lighthouse and the Body of Christ

There are things I can say about my “journey” that would sound inspiring if I polished them into a tidy testimony. But that would not do justice to the soul stretching epic struggle that this journey has been. What brought me here, to our work at Lighthouse, and deeper into the Body of Christ, did not begin as a motivational story. There is very good, painful reason as to why I have dedicated nearly all of my life to this work.

It began as grief.

Not the kind of grief that passes after a bad week. Not even the kind that comes with a single loss. I mean a grief that builds… decade after decade: watching humanity, watching myself, and feeling the long, slow horror of what we are capable of becoming, when we move away from God.

I want to share this as someone who has reluctantly by the grace of God left the broad road and is navigating the long, winding and narrowing road in Christ. This is not mere theory for me, it is raw and it is real, and the grief at times has been torturous..

The self-help mirage

At a very young age, I was introduced to God’s Holy Living Word. It shaped how I saw the world, how I felt about myself and other people and the inevitable collapse of this world. I was terrified and horrified for people. I wanted to do everything I could to warn them. I had the privilege and honour of speaking to an entire congregation about Matthew 24, the prophetic foretelling by Jesus Christ of the signs of the end times, at the age of seven. I had such a love for God’s Word and felt such desperation to warn others about these perilous times, that when I would try to share Christ’s saving grace with other students in the school playground, I was viciously attacked. Not only by my peers, but by teachers and parents too. It baffled and hurt me deeply to see them all not just reject the love of God, but reject reality and the truth! It broke my heart in ways I have never recovered from.

Years later I would discover the “self-help” industry and the premise that one could totally transform oneself through positive thinking, affirmations etc. I sadly and mournfully discovered as the years went by, that the self-help industry was a lie. While some change is possible in a person’s life, I have not once seen anyone, including myself, truly transform in profound and life-changing ways, without the Spirit of God.

Whether from the Bible or from the personal development industry, there seemed to be such a rich ocean of wisdom and insight for us humans to truly realise our God-given potential. Yet it was mortifyingly dark, debased, inept and… inhuman.

The grief that became unliveable

At first it was anger. Outrage. Then sadness… but it became something much heavier than sadness, much darker than sadness, much more disturbing than sadness. Sadness can coexist with hope.

It was something I would come to know that once I knew it, it would never leave me. It was grief.

But grief, real grief, starts when you become more aware of what God designed us to be, and you see the gap between that and what we actually are. You begin to sense, in your bones, how far we have fallen from Eden thousands of years ago.

How inhuman and anti-human we have become, from being made in God’s perfect constructively loving image.

And the more you see it, the more sickening and disturbing that gap becomes. There was a point where it stopped being merely distressing and became unliveable.

It came down to something stark: either I came to Christ, or I would not survive.

Not “come to Christ” as a lifestyle upgrade. Come to Christ as do-or-die.

Rock bottom was not a metaphor

People sometimes speak about “hitting rock bottom” as a figure of speech. For me, it was not abstract, it was brutal.

You must know that this was not a quick journey. I had spent decades of my life pouring over all the multitudes of ways that I could optimise my life. I could not stand the suffering I saw in this world from a young boy. It pained me to see it in a child, in an animal, in adults, but I could never escape it, it was everywhere. All I had ever wanted to do was alleviate the suffering by optimising my life. To be the man who could say yes I can, yes I will, yes I am, yes we will…but instead I kept falling short, kept falling off. While I did very well by most people’s standards I still couldn’t achieve what I wanted and needed to. The people around me couldn’t either. The whole idea of success that this world purports was revealing itself for the hollow lie it is; trying to fill a vortex that could never be filled with material and financial resources.

Coming to Jesus Christ was all I had left. If not Him, then I could not bear remaining here. What would be the point?

When I finally stopped falling, it felt like plummeting to a rock at 100mph. The strange thing is that the rock saved me. But it also hurt. Like nothing ever before had hurt.

Everything I had built. Everything I had strived for. Everything I had put my hopes in. Came smack face to face with the creator of the universe, Jesus Christ.

Landing on Christ stopped the free descent into hell, but stopping the fall was always going to be painful. It meant facing truth quickly, and facing myself honestly. It meant accepting that recovery would not be fast and that healing would not be clean.

I spent years not “climbing,” but lying there. Broken. Reading. Researching. Looking at my notes. Looking at the past. Looking at the present. Looking at the future.

Looking at more notes.

Reading more.

Researching more.

Praying. A lot. And slowly, almost imperceptibly at times, beginning to become able-bodied again.

Looking at others showed me what was in me

One of the harder truths I have had to keep accepting over the last two decades is this: the darkness I see in the world is not merely “out there.”

I studied human beings. I studied imperfection. I studied fallibility. I looked into the abyss of dysfunction and degradation. I watched what happens when sin goes unchecked.

And then I had to turn inward and ask the question that most people avoid: Is that in me? If I have not already seen it manifested, is there capacity for it? Is there space for it? What would it take for me to become the kind of person I claim to despise? That is not a comfortable question. But it is a necessary one. Because if I refuse to see what sin could become in me, I will never take Christ seriously as my Saviour. I will treat Him as an accessory, not as my Rescuer.

And I did not and do not need an accessory. I need to be saved.

The terror and the tenderness of reaching back

Somewhere along the way, as I lay on that rock, I began to realise something else. When you stop falling, you see others still falling past you. And you cannot unsee it.

Family. Friends. Colleagues. Business Partners.

Tens of them. Hundreds. Thousands. Millions. You start reaching for them. But reaching for them hurts because most of them fall right past you. It feels like your fingers breaking, your nails tearing, almost slipping over the edge yourself. You are trying to pull someone toward Christ while your own wounds are still fresh.

But they don’t stop.

They are free-falling to their demise but are totally self deluded, they think they’re flying.

They believe they’re flying high, while in reality they’re falling into a pit.

And yet you keep reaching, because you know what happens if they keep falling. This is part of what has shaped my work at Lighthouse. Not a desire to win arguments. Not a desire to build a brand.

A desire to help people stop the descent. To help people hit the rock now, rather than later. Because the suffering is real either way. But one suffering stops the fall. The other does not.

The three-step path that carried me here

If I had to summarise the path God has had me walk, it comes in three steps.

Three stages of awakening.

1. Looking out: “What is wrong with the world?”

From young, I was wide-eyed, trying to make sense of what I saw. People losing their humanity. People becoming cruel. People rejecting what is wholesome. And when you refuse to be pulled into the same vortex of darkness, you become an outsider. You get bullied. You get persecuted. You get treated like something is wrong with you. Eventually, you get called a cult leader by media companies that protect paedophiles.

But the question remains: What is wrong with the world?

2. Looking in: “Is the same fall in me?”

Then comes the deeper stage: seeing that the same fallen impulse exists in the heart.

Part of me wanted to join the others, just to not be alone. Just to not be singled out. Just to not be attacked.

But God would not let me make peace with that. And in His mercy, He kept bringing me back to the reality of my own brokenness and my own need.

3. Reaching back: warning, inviting, shepherding

Finally, I began to realise that most people want the “rewards” of life. They want graces. They want ease. They want comfort. They want admiration. But they are not willing to do the work of growth and restoration. They are not interested in self-awareness. They are not interested in their own spirit. In fact, they often hate it when they encounter it in others.

They have been targeted by Satan in their own life and would target anyone else who dared try to interfere with their free-fall into hell.

Oh they will say they want to grow and transform. They will say they want to do the hard work.

But the moment they start, most recoil with abject terror.

And so the calling became clearer: To tell the truth. No matter how inconvenient. To show people the amazing, glorious righteousness of Jesus Christ in contrast to the dark, deceptive, demonic world we live in.. To shepherd people into reality out of the darkness and hell holes they came from. To help those who are willing to begin the long, honest work of regeneration.

Why Lighthouse exists in my heart

I do not see Lighthouse as a club for the strong. I see it as a place where the broken can stop falling. A place where people can be supported as they land on the rock, because it hurts. A place where truth is regarded as sacred, not philosophical. A place where suffering is not romanticised, but cherished. And a place where the Body of Christ and conscientious citizens can learn to be a family, not a warring set of factions hating on each other because of petty denominational differences.

To the ones who are barely hanging on

If you are reading this and you feel like you are “barely clinging to the edge,” if you feel like you have a target on your back from anyone in the kingdom of darkness, I want to speak to you as gently as I can.

You are not crazy for wanting to grow. You are not wrong for wanting to become well. You are not strange for wanting to become more human. The world will often treat genuine self-awareness like a threat. It will mock it. It will call it rare. It will call it “unicorn” behaviour.

But the hunger for truth, the willingness to suffer for healing, the desire to become whole in Christ, is not a defect.

It is a sign of life. True life. Not automation.

The invitation

I cannot promise you that landing on the rock will not hurt. It will. Every time.

But I can tell you this: the rock stops the fall. And only once the fall is stopped, can healing begin. If you are tired of the descent. If you are tired of the pretending.

If you are tired of getting sucked into the vortex of darkness every night. If you are tired of trying to fit in with the demonic, the depraved and the degrading.. Then hear me clearly: Come to Christ. Not as an “option.” As life.

And if you are already in Him, and you feel battered and bloodied and exhausted, then stay on the rock.

Let the healing take the time it takes. You are not alone. We are learning, slowly, how to climb. But first, we stop falling.

But you, beloved, must remember the words that were spoken beforehand by the apostles of our Lord Jesus Christ, that they were saying to you, “In the last time there will be mockers, following after their own ungodly lusts.” These are the ones who cause divisions, worldly-minded, not having the Spirit. But you, beloved, building yourselves up on your most holy faith, praying in the Holy Spirit, keep yourselves in the love of God, waiting for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ to eternal life. And on some, who are doubting, have mercy; and for others, save, snatching them out of the fire; and on others have mercy with fear, hating even the tunic polluted by the flesh. Now to Him who is able to keep you from stumbling, and to make you stand in the presence of His glory blameless with great joy, to the only God our Saviour, through Jesus Christ our Lord, be glory, majesty, might, and authority, before all time and now and forever. Amen.

Jude 1:17-25

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The Strategic Wind-Up: Understanding Value, Control, and the Kingdom of God, 22nd Nov 2025 Humanity’s Problem with Problems by Paul S. Waugh Problem 2: The Disease of Sin: When Missing the Mark Becomes a Medicine The Kingdom of Darkness: How We Teach Our Children to Worship Man Instead of God by Paul S. Waugh