Don’t Let Your Pain be in Vain | Jentezen Franklin

Summary

Podcast Summary: “Don’t Let Your Pain Be in Vain”

Podcast: Jentezen Franklin at Free Chapel
Host: Jentezen Franklin
Date: September 28, 2025

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Overview

In this episode, Jentezen Franklin preaches a passionate, scripture-centered message based on Jeremiah 38, highlighting God’s powerful ability to transform lives marked by pain, failure, or sin. Through the story of Jeremiah’s rescue from the dungeon with “dirty rags,” Franklin encourages listeners to embrace their own brokenness as a testimony that God can use to rescue others. His central message: Don’t let your pain be in vain—God specializes in redeeming the most wounded and using them to reach those still trapped in despair.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Jeremiah’s Dungeon: The Power of Dirty Rags

• Scripture Foundation: Jeremiah 38:9-13

  • Jeremiah, though called and set apart by God, ends up in a dungeon, “sinking and dying in a pit…the muck, the mire” (03:25).
  • The king commands Jeremiah’s rescue not with royal treasures, but “old clothes and old rags” (01:24), illustrating that God often uses what the world discards.

• Spiritual Analogy:

  • “He had a place for dirty rags. He had a pile of rotten rags that had been stained, that had been marred…And yet the king said, I turn rags into royalty.” — Jentezen Franklin (05:24)
  • “The rag represents your testimony. The dirty rag represents the dungeon you were in.” — Jentezen Franklin (08:31)

• Application:

  • Dirty rags (our pain, past mistakes, and hardship) are not to be discarded but preserved and valued. They become the means by which others are rescued.

2. Everyone Is a ‘Dirty Rag’—And That’s the Point

• Biblical Reference: Isaiah 64:6

  • “All of our righteousness is as filthy rags.” — Jentezen Franklin (06:31)
  • Our best efforts and religiosity cannot save us or others—only God’s grace and redemption can.

• No Person is Useless:

  • “No one is useless to God.” — Jentezen Franklin (06:38)
  • He relates this to personal stories of soiled garments: no matter how valuable, once “stained,” the world discards them; God instead saves and treasures them (07:49).

3. Your Stain Is Your Testimony

• Pain as Purpose:

  • “Don’t let your pain be in vain because God can use…the stain of pain…your past is part of your purpose.” — Jentezen Franklin ([08:21], 13:33)
  • What the world calls a flaw, God calls a testimony (10:48).

• Reaching Others:

  • “Some people will never be reached until they see not your successes. But we reach more people through our failures and through our own struggles…” — Jentezen Franklin (09:05)
  • Testimony is more powerful than mere teaching, especially for those facing similar dungeons (12:43).

4. God Uses ‘Rotten Rags’

• Biblical Examples of Imperfect People:

  • Joseph (prideful), Moses (murderer), Gideon (fearful), Rahab (prostitute), Samaritan woman (multiple divorces), Jacob (cheater), David (adulterer), Jonah (backslider), Samson (womanizer)—all “rotten, filthy, dirty rags…God threw back into the pit to pull us up and out” (13:39).

• Our Stories Are Needed:

  • “Nobody else can reach that person like you can…because you came out of it, you are qualified to tie the rag onto the rope and deliver those who are perishing…” (14:47)

• Community’s Role:

  • Testimonies (dirty rags) tied together with others (the church) become an unbreakable lifeline for those in despair (17:38).
  • “When I tie my testimony and my dirty rag to somebody else, that’s what they started doing. That’s the power of the church.” — Jentezen Franklin (17:37)

5. Don’t Hide the Rag—Tell Your Story!

• Overcoming Fear and Shame:

  • “Many people let their past stains stop them from walking through doors of opportunity…” — Charisse Franklin (16:18)
  • Fear and shame make us hide the testimony that can save others.

• Call to Action:

  • “Don’t waste your pain. Don’t let your pain be in vain. Tell your story. Declare the gospel to unbelievers like never before. They will die there if you don’t start telling them what Jesus has done for you.” — Jentezen Franklin (14:26)

6. Jesus: God in the Rags

• Incarnation Imagery:
  • Jesus himself was wrapped in dirty, discarded rags at birth, linking God’s salvation with humble, broken beginnings (19:27).
  • “If you want to find Jesus, you will not find him among a bunch of religious people in their outward garments...You’ll find him wherever there are dirty rotten rags that have cling to him.” — Jentezen Franklin (22:14)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “What are dirty rags doing in the king’s treasury?” — Jentezen Franklin (05:01)
• “The king has a place for dirty rags in his kingdom, and you are the very one God will use just to show man and hell, I’m a king who believes in sinking souls and I never give up.” — Jentezen Franklin (25:48)
• “What the world calls a stain, God calls a testimony.” — Charisse Franklin (10:48)
• “You are not worthless. You are washed, and God calls you worthy. There’s nothing too dirty that God can’t make worthy by the blood of Jesus Christ.” — Jentezen Franklin (12:43)
• “Don’t let your pain be in vain. Tell your story.” — Jentezen Franklin (14:26)
• “When I tie my testimony and my dirty rag to somebody else, that’s…the power of the church.” — Jentezen Franklin (17:37)

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• 0:33 — Introduction to Jeremiah 38: Jeremiah in the pit, the king’s command to rescue him with dirty rags.
• 3:25 — Jeremiah’s prophetic destiny versus his predicament.
• 5:01 — The surprising presence and value of dirty rags in the king’s treasury.
• 6:31 — Isaiah 64, our righteousness as filthy rags.
• 8:31 — The rag as your testimony; why precious metals can’t save but rags can.
• 10:48 — The stain as a testimony; Satan uses stains, God uses testimonies.
• 13:39 — List of biblical figures used as dirty rags; God uses broken people.
• 14:26 — Don’t waste your pain, tell your story, rescue others from their pit.
• 17:37 — The power of combined testimonies in the church—the image of tying rags together.
• 19:27 — Jesus wrapped in filthy rags at birth; God’s willingness to enter brokenness.
• 22:14 — Where to find Jesus: among those who’ve been broken and redeemed.

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Conclusion: Main Takeaways

• Nothing in your past is too stained for God to redeem; pain and failure can become powerful tools for ministry.
• Telling your story may be the key to someone else’s salvation or breakthrough.
• The church is at its strongest when its members tie their testimonies together, forming a lifeline for others.
• Jesus himself identified with the broken and discarded—he is found among the “dirty rags,” not the self-righteous.

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Call to Action:
Franklin closes by urging listeners to throw their own “dirty rag” into the pit—to stop hiding their testimonies and instead use them to lift up others in despair. “Let my life tell His story…Don’t let your pain be in vain.” (25:48)

Transcript

[Jensen Franklin]

Hello, this is Jensen Franklin, and thank you so much for joining us for this week's podcast. Our goal is to provide you with biblically based teachings that will challenge, inspire, and equip you to live for Jesus. If you haven't already, I'd love for you to go ahead and subscribe today to this podcast so you can get the latest updates from us and you don't ever have to miss a new message. Let's go right into the service. Record it at Freechapel. I believe it's going to bless you today.

Jeremiah, chapter 38, verse 9. My Lord the King. These men have done evil in that they have what they have done to Jeremiah the prophet, whom they cast into a dungeon. And listen to these words. He is likely to die. He is likely to die. He's in a dungeon.

[Charisse Franklin]

I hope that while I preach, somebody.

[Jensen Franklin]

Comes to your mind. They're in a dungeon, and if something doesn't change, they're likely to die from hunger in the place where he is. For there is no more bread in the city. Then the king commanded Ebedmelech the Ethiopian saying, take from here 30 men with you and lift Jeremiah the prophet out of the dungeon before he dies. And Ebed Melech took the men with him and went into the house of the king. Listen. Under the treasury, under the treasury. And there. And they took from there old clothes and old rags. Some translations say dirty old rags. And let them down by ropes into the dungeon to Jeremiah. Then Ebed Melech the Ethiopian said to Jeremiah, please put these old clothes and rags under your arms, under the ropes. And Jeremiah did so. And they pulled Jeremiah up with the ropes and lifted him out of the dungeon, out of the muck, the mire, the pit that he will surely die in. One of the messengers said, if we don't get him out of it. I'll give you my title in just a moment. But this is an amazing story. This man Jeremiah, who was set apart by God, had a powerful destiny and.

[Charisse Franklin]

Call on his life.

[Jensen Franklin]

Before he was ever born, before he was in his mother's womb. The text said in Jeremiah 1 that he was called and ordained to be a prophet to nations. And yet he finds himself sinking and dying in a pit, a dungeon, the muck. It gives descriptions in the book of Jeremiah of this pit that it was sinking, mud and filth, and he's dying, he's starving to death there.

[Charisse Franklin]

He may have never made it out.

[Jensen Franklin]

Of the pit if there had not been for dirty rags that rescued him and pulled him out of the pit. He would have died. He's going to die. The messenger said to the king, if we don't do something to get him out of the pit. Culture change is not easy. Recovery is not easy, friend. Change is not easy. Habits that are hard to break is not easy. And people can want it, but the ropes.

[Charisse Franklin]

Are not offered. And if they're not offered, and if.

[Jensen Franklin]

Somebody doesn't help someone in this condition.

[Charisse Franklin]

Then they will die.

[Jensen Franklin]

They will die in that filth. They'll die in that dungeon.

[Charisse Franklin]

But the king heard the story, and the king said, I want him out. I'm going to use unusual means to get him out. I want you to go to my treasury. Now, this is the part of the story that I don't understand. Unless you see it through spiritual eyes. This is a beautiful picture. He said, go to my treasury. And the question that has to be answered is, what are dirty rags doing in the king's treasury?

[Jensen Franklin]

In his palace?

[Charisse Franklin]

In his palace, he would have had treasury. He would have had his gold, he would have had his silver. He would have had it guarded and vaulted. He would have had rubies and diamonds and. And worth beyond measure.

[Jensen Franklin]

But in the king's dungeon, he had.

[Charisse Franklin]

A place for dirty rags. He had a place.

[Jensen Franklin]

He had a. He had a pile of rotten rags that had been stained, that had been marred, that had been forever. They would be stained with where they came from. And yet the king said, I turn rags into royalty.

[Charisse Franklin]

I am a king who has a place for dirty rags. And before you think this is.

[Jensen Franklin]

Yeah, some people.

[Charisse Franklin]

I'm really thinking of some people.

[Jensen Franklin]

You need to think of yourself.

[Charisse Franklin]

Because Isaiah 64 said this, that we are all as an unclean thing, and all of our righteousness, all of our religiosity, all of our efforts to. That we get to a place where we think, I don't do this and I don't do that.

[Jensen Franklin]

Therefore I am just one.

[Charisse Franklin]

All of your righteousness is as filthy rags.

[Jensen Franklin]

And no one is useless to God.

[Charisse Franklin]

God doesn't.

[Jensen Franklin]

You know, if you ever get a.

[Charisse Franklin]

Stain, I don't care how beautiful and.

[Jensen Franklin]

How expensive that tie is, if you.

[Charisse Franklin]

Ever get a stain on that tie.

[Jensen Franklin]

Like a bad stain, which I have a tendency to do, every time I wear a tie, my wife now makes me take my tie off and put it in her purse if I wear a tie, because she says, if it can be. If it can be stained, you'll find a way to do it. There will be some tomato paste. There'll be a piece of okra on it.

[Charisse Franklin]

There'll be grease. You know those grease.

[Jensen Franklin]

It's not just you can flake it all grease stain.

[Charisse Franklin]

And I don't care how beautiful that.

[Jensen Franklin]

Tie is, if you've got a big stain on it or that dress or that whatever it is you're wearing. Let me tell you something. You get a stain on it and everybody's eyes goes to that and they think you're a sloppy person. So all these rags in the king's treasure.

[Charisse Franklin]

And everybody else, you might as well discard that old tie.

[Jensen Franklin]

It's stained.

[Charisse Franklin]

Everybody else the world would say, throw it away. But the king said, I have a.

[Jensen Franklin]

Place in my treasure for dirty rags. For rotten rags. Torn, tattered, marred, messed up, I'll redeem them.

[Charisse Franklin]

I turn rags into royalty.

[Jensen Franklin]

And yes, the stain of pain. And what I'm preaching on is don't let your pain be in vain because God can use.

[Charisse Franklin]

The rag represents your testimony. The dirty rag represents the dungeon you were in. And here's the key. If you throw a block of gold from the king's treasury down into the muck, it'll sink. Throw some silver, it'll sink. It can't rescue them. The only thing that can reach somebody in the dungeon that they're in is something that is not afraid of that.

[Jensen Franklin]

Dungeon because it used to be in it.

[Charisse Franklin]

But the king pulled them out and put them in his treasury. And some people will never be reached until they hear your dirty rag story. Some people will never be reached until they see not your successes. But we reach more people through our failures and through our own struggles and through our own tatters and torns and stains and tears in life. That's what God uses. And we don't need to let our pain be in vain. But we need to say, lord, I appreciate the gold people who don't never got in that dungeon and the silver people who never got in that. But Lord, I thank you that there's a pile of rotten rags in your treasury too. And since I went through it and since I've been stained by it, I want you to throw me right back into the dungeon that you brought me out of. That somebody else is sinking, sinking in. I want to lift them because I know God did it for me. He can do it for them. Sin and the world and Satan will throw you into a rotten rag pile of life.

[Jensen Franklin]

He'll throw you and turn you into a rotten rag with a rap sheet.

[Charisse Franklin]

Rotten rag with an addiction.

[Jensen Franklin]

Rotten rag with a broken family, rotten rag with bankruptcy. Satan thinks that's what will be the.

[Charisse Franklin]

Stain on your life for the rest of your life. But what the world calls a stain, God calls a testimony. God found you and rescued you for a purpose.

[Jensen Franklin]

And he uses these rotten rags to.

[Charisse Franklin]

Reach people that nobody else can reach, because you understand their pain and you understand how hard it is. And if somebody doesn't reach them, they're going to die in their sin and in their filth. Isaiah 64. All of us are as filthy rags. I was stained, I was dark, I was damp, I was torn. I was useless, I was worthless. But the king said, I want him, I value him. I'll protect him like he's gold, because I turn rags into royalty and I use people, whoever I want to, however I want to, in any way I want to. And I don't check with people's opinion of who I use to bring somebody else out of the pit. If you're thankful he found you in your pit and in your dungeon, give him a praise right now. The past has no power to hold you hostage. God wants to use your dirty rags to lift somebody else out of a.

[Jensen Franklin]

Pit of depression, somebody else out of.

[Charisse Franklin]

A pit of addiction.

[Jensen Franklin]

Somebody else is going to die in that pit. If you don't throw your dirty rag down there and lift them up and lift them out.

[Charisse Franklin]

You're not worthless. You are washed, and God calls you worthy. You are not worthless. You are washed, and God calls you worthy. There's nothing too dirty that God can't make worthy by the blood of Jesus Christ. Your stain is your testimony, and that's what God uses to pull people up. Your past is part of your purpose. Your dirt is part of your destiny and your testimony. Your stain is part of your story. God wants to use your story to.

[Jensen Franklin]

Pull somebody out of the pit that hell has put them in.

[Charisse Franklin]

You see, Joseph was prideful. Moses was a murderer. Gideon was fearful. Rahab was a prostitute. The Samaritan woman was divorced four times and living with number six when she led the entire city of Samaria to her new friend, Jesus Christ. Jacob was a cheater. David was an adulterer. Jonah was a backslider. And Samson was a womanizer. And yet all of these rotten, filthy, dirty rags is what God threw back into the pit to pull us up and out of our pit. Because God uses bruised, broken, busted, defeated people who come to him and repent of their sins. He watches you, and if there's still a stain of the past, it's because he wants to use you. Nobody else can reach that person like you can reach that person because you came out of it, you are qualified to tie the rag onto the rope and deliver those who are perishing from the pit. Tell your story. Don't waste your pain. Don't let your pain be in vain. Tell your story. Declare the gospel to unbelievers like never before. They will die there if you don't start telling them what Jesus has done for you. Tell them how you were in prison. Tell them how you were in rehab. Tell them how you were broken. Tell them how you were suicidal. Tell them how you had come to the end of your rope and lost all hope and the dream was dead. Tell. Tell them how you were lonely. Tell them how the enemy made you feel like you were nothing but a discarded filthy, dirty, rotten, good for nothing rag.

[Guest Speaker]

But he picked you and he chose you.

[Charisse Franklin]

You are a chosen generation.

[Guest Speaker]

That's why hell has come against you.

[Charisse Franklin]

So strong and the enemy resists you so heavy.

[Guest Speaker]

It's because your God is going to use the dirty rags of your life.

[Charisse Franklin]

Hallelujah. Somebody give him a praise. I'm not giving you a motivational speech.

[Guest Speaker]

I'm preaching the gospel of Jesus Christ.

[Charisse Franklin]

To you that lifts men.

[Jensen Franklin]

And don't.

[Charisse Franklin]

You let fear interfere with the open door. Many people let their past stains stop them from walking through doors of opportunity because they feel inferior and they feel intimidated. And I'm one to preach that because that is my battle. But I've been in the pit of depression, I've been in the pit of hopelessness, I've been in the pit of fear. I've been through all kinds of those pits. And the devil thought that I would give up. But the thing about this story that.

[Jensen Franklin]

Is beautiful is when you get in that pit, if somebody, if somebody. Will you guys, will you four come up here? You didn't know when you were sitting on the front row you were going to preach. Come on. We don't practice this stuff. You got to move fast though. But you know, but you know, you have to understand the imagery. One rag can reach some. But when I tie my testimony and my dirty rag to somebody else, that's.

[Charisse Franklin]

What they started doing.

[Jensen Franklin]

Those 30 men went in the king's treasury, found the dirty rags and started tying them together. That one. And that's the power of the church.

[Guest Speaker]

Church.

[Charisse Franklin]

The Bible said we're all members of the body of Christ. But this one can't say I don't need you. And that one can't say I don't need you. We need each other. And when I was sinking, there was a woman named Rachel Joiner. Who threw a little rag to me.

[Jensen Franklin]

And she wouldn't let me go.

[Charisse Franklin]

And she started in my. In my dark hours, she. And even when Charisse and I have been through things, there were people who threw T.F. tenney and Mark and Cindy and different people. And even in this church, so many, so many. Oh, my goodness. I can't start naming. Because just when we were just what they were singing. Just when I had lost me.

[Guest Speaker]

Just when. Just when I said, we can't do this anymore.

[Charisse Franklin]

Link up.

[Guest Speaker]

And the more hell pulled, the tighter we got. And the more hell fought, the tighter we got. Oh, if God be for me. And I got my brothers and my sisters. The enemy's coming against your family. But don't let it pull you apart. Let it pull you tighter together. You can't have my baby. You can't have my children. You can't have my family. You can't have my life. You can't have my destiny. He uses rotten rags. Not just perfect people.

[Jensen Franklin]

Why do I have to scream? I'm done, you little rotten rags. And I'm right where I want to be. Coming in for the closing on this message. When Jesus came into this world, his mother wrapped him in anything she could find in a stable. There were donkeys and horses, cows, sheep, chickens, filth, manure, animal slobber. Every time that the farmer would work and clean up, shovel, give help, pull a calf out. Blood stains. Get one of those old rags.

[Charisse Franklin]

Get the filth off.

[Jensen Franklin]

Stains. Blood stains, dirty stains, filthy stains. And the Bible said, when Jesus was born, the angel said, you will know. He said this to the shepherds in Luke 2, he said, you will know the Messiah by what he's adorned in. He'll be laying in a feed trough wrapped in swaddling clothes. That means filthy rags that have been used just to clean the filth off your hands enough to go find some water. It's stained, filthy, throwaway rags. They took eight pounds of God and that's what she wrapped him in to present him to the world. God in skin. The creator of the universe walked down.

[Charisse Franklin]

A star.

[Jensen Franklin]

Stairs of heaven to a barnyard in Bethlehem, and they wrapped him in filthy rotten rags. And if you want to find Jesus, you will not find him among a bunch of religious people in their outward garments, pretending that they're so perfect and beautiful.

[Charisse Franklin]

You won't find him in a woke church. That's not preaching the gospel, but it's a social club. You won't find them. You'll find him wherever there are dirt, dirty rotten rags. That have cling to him. And he is our righteousness and all we are is the rags that he uses to drop into somebody's dungeon.

[Jensen Franklin]

And when you tell your testimony and when you share your story and when.

[Charisse Franklin]

You don't let your pain be in vain, but you say, let me tell you what the Lord has done for me. We stopped testifying when I met my father in law, Jimmy McGibony, who's gone on to be with the Lord. The thing that impressed me immediately is he loved to tell the story of how he was saved. He was always witnessing. He worked at Pitney Bowes in Atlanta for many years and he would tell his story. He was always telling his story. It hit me this week, when's the last time we told our story to somebody? We flew they will die. The, the message to the king was.

[Jensen Franklin]

If somebody doesn't reach that man in that pit, he will die there. Marriages will die there, families will die there, Sons and daughters, brothers and sisters will die there. If somebody doesn't throw the dirty rag of their testimony, say, I know what God can do. I have seen it for myself. And when you understand that, that he uses not perfect people, I love it. Because that's what our seniors do. That's what mom you do still. You know, she retired at 90. She's fixing to be 90 in two weeks or three weeks, something like that. And she retired.

[Charisse Franklin]

We finally talked her into, listen to this. We finally talked her into retiring and.

[Jensen Franklin]

Then now she's refired and now she's going back every Monday and taking her little dirty rag.

[Charisse Franklin]

And throwing it back.

[Jensen Franklin]

Into and in the rest homes. How many services? I don't know how many services a month. But they're throwing the rag.

[Charisse Franklin]

Of their.

[Jensen Franklin]

Own life in the prisons. These teams are saying if we don't reach them, some of them will die in that pit. But we can reach them. And we're throwing the rags, we're throwing the rags, the stories, your story. Somebody's in a pit of depression and some of you have struggled with depression and they need your testimony to get them out. They don't need another sermon.

[Charisse Franklin]

They don't need another preacher telling them all that's wrong with them. What they need is somebody who's been.

[Jensen Franklin]

There and understands.

[Charisse Franklin]

That your mind has to be renewed and the joy of the Lord is your strength.

[Jensen Franklin]

Addiction. They're crying out from the pit. They'll not get out unless somebody gets out and becomes that testimony of he took my rags and turned it into royalty. I want him to use me I want him to use my life. Let my life tell his story. That's what they said and that's what I felt today. That the worst situations in your life where you failed him the most, that you feel stained by discarded and the world says no. The king has a place for dirty rags in his kingdom and you are the very one God will use just to show man and hell. I'm a king who believes in sinking souls and I never give up. And I'm going to pull them up and I'm going to pull them out. Come on, guys.

I really want to say thank you for joining us this week. If you haven't already, make sure you click on the subscription button and leave us a review. It helps this podcast reach even more people when you comment, when you give us your feedback. For more messages and inspirational materials, download the Jensen Franklin app. Or you can head over to JensenFranklin.org I want to thank all of you who give generously to help us produce weekly content like this to reach the world with the message of Jesus. God bless you and we'll see you next time.