Looking Forward with Hope

Dannah Gresh: Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth says how we live today affects our outlook on the future. 

Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth: As we look forward to the future, we can do it with hope. But let me remind you that it’s our choices today that enable us to look to the future with hope.

Dannah: This is the Revive Our Hearts podcast with Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth, author of Brokenness: The Heart God Revives, for August 21, 2024. I’m Dannah Gresh.

When you think of “the future,” do you feel eager or apprehensive? In Proverbs 31, we are told that a woman of noble character doesn’t fear the future. So even if we are tempted to fear, we can learn to be excited to see what God will do. Nancy will show us how to do that as she continues in a series on Proverbs 31 called “To Be Praised: The Woman Who Fears the Lord.”

Nancy: I think one of the things women most fear today is the future. "What's going to happen?" "Is the world going to spin out of control?"

We see terrorism and world events being so tense, strained, and difficult. S many of us as women, especially those of you who are mothers, are concerned about what kind of world your children are going to grow up in.

There's a tendency to just live with fear—fear about the future, fear about your husband dying, fear about losing a child. One of the things we see in Proverbs 31, and we're encouraging you to join us in reading through Proverbs 31 every day as we look at this portrait of a woman of virtue. But as we have come to verse 25, we see that this is a woman who is clothed with strength and with honor, with dignity, and she's a woman who is not overcome with fear.

The Scripture says in the second part of this verse, "She shall rejoice in time to come." One translation says, "She's cheerful about the future."

She looks to the future, not with fear, but with hope. And the reason she can do that, we said in the last session, is because her hope is in God and her fear is in the Lord. Because she reverences God, she has confidence in God; she knows He is in control. She knows she can't control her circumstances anyway.

So isn't it amazing how we try to control things that we really can't control? So she relinquishes control; she surrenders control to the God of the universe, as if to say, "Lord, I know that You can handle this."

You know, isn't it foolish for us to lie awake at night worrying about things, some of which haven't happened, some of which may never happen, and to be doing that when the Scriptures says that the God who is the Creator of heaven and earth never sleeps.

He's up. He's thinking about it. He's dealing with all that concerns us, and His word promises in Psalm 138, "The Lord will perfect that which concerns me" (v. 8).

So here's a woman who is not afraid of what's to come. She can look to the future with confidence, with peace, and with calm in her heart.

I think one of the things that many women have been programmed to fear today about the future is this whole thing of aging because our culture is so bent on youth being what is beautiful and on preserving youth.

You look at the advertisements for women's products, and I hope you don't spend too much time reading those magazines and looking at those advertisements because they make you really feel inadequate, inferior. You'll notice, for example, today if you go into a room with a group of women you'll rarely see many women with gray hair today.

Now, you'll notice that I have gray hair. There was a period of time in my twenties when I colored because I did start graying in my early twenties. But there came a point when I said, "You know, it's okay for me to have this gray hair. I'm old enough for gray hair. I have worked for these gray hairs. I think I will keep them."

I remember going to a conference where they were giving out doorprizes. One of them was for someone who colored your hair just before you came to this conference. Do you know how many women in that room of about one thousand women raised their hands that they had just colored their hair before they got to that conference!?

I'm not saying there is anything sinful about coloring your hair. But I think it is symptomatic, it's indicative of a push in our culture that you have to stay forever young.

One of my goals in life has always been, and some you have heard me say this before, since I was a little girl I have wanted to be a godly old lady. I have this kind of mental picture about what this kind of woman looks like, and she has gray hair.

I think by keeping this gray hair, I am moving a little forward to that goal. I will say that the old part comes easier than the godly part. How did I get off on all that?

Here's where I was headed. I was asked to endorse a book that a godly older man has written on the subject of aging. I don't know why they asked me to endorse this book, but I was glad they did actually because I was glad to be able to review this book, written by a man who really is going to finish well.

It's a book about how to finish well, and how to age in a gracious way. I want to be reading that kind of thing now, not to wait until I am older and not finishing well. I want to read it now so that I can learn what it takes to finish well.

But one of the things I realized, while I was reviewing this book is that the person who walks with God and fears the Lord, man or woman, can look forward to aging without fear.

Now I have a number of close friends who are now elderly, in their late eighties, into their nineties, and the most godly of them will tell you that there are some things about being old that are harder than being young.

Some of my close friends are really struggling with some major health issues and there are things that are hard, but I'm seeing some beautiful things in the characters, in the hearts, in the marriages, in the lives of those people that makes me realize that it really is possible to face even aging with joy, with peace, with confidence in the Lord, knowing that even in those seasons of life, when we don't have the strength that maybe at one time we did physically, that there can be a spiritual strength.

You see Paul talks in 2 Corinthians chapter 3 about how our outward person is decaying. He starts talking about going "over the hill." And I know when I hit forty that I started experiencing things in my body that I didn't experience in my thirties.

I could jog in my thirties. I am hard pressed to do that today and try to keep up with walking. There are changes taking place. Our bodies are deteriorating. And there's no way a person who's eighty can look like a person who's thirty in their body.

Paul tells us in 2 Corinthians chapter 4, "though our outer bodies are deteriorating, yet our inner man is being strengthened. It is being renewed day by day (v. 16 paraphrase). We believe we have that to look forward to if we fear the Lord.

There's an eighty-nine-year-old grandmother—great-grandmother probably—who's with us today, and I know a little bit about her and know that she's still growing spiritually. She's still seeking the Lord, and in His Word and developing spiritually.

She's not too old for that. That's aging with grace. So as we look forward to the future we can do it with hope, but let me remind you that it's our choices today that enable us to look to the future with hope. Virtuous character and a virtuous heart in a woman in her forties is what prepares her to be an eighty-nine-year-old woman with grace.

You see, I realized a number of years ago, that I wasn't just going to wake up at eighty years of age and be this gracious, sweet, kind, loving, godly woman that I've always wanted to be. I realized it was a process, and I'm in that process right now.

And that the choices I make right now, my willingness to surrender to the Word and the ways of God today, is determining the kind of older woman that I will be.

I've known some older women who are crotchety. They are bitter, they're angry, they're negative, and they're irritable. I have known some older people like that, and I don't want to be that kind of woman.

But I know if I let myself be an irritable woman today and don't check those impulses of my flesh and don't learn how to walk in the Spirit today while I have physical strength that, when I am eighty and I have some things to gripe about, I'm going to be a whiner. I'm going to be a complainer, if I haven't been developing these qualities of virtue as a younger woman.

And so the woman who fears the Lord, who trusts in the Lord, who is walking as a woman of virtue clothed with strength and honor, that woman can rejoice about the time to come. She can look forward to the future with hope. And she can look forward to being a woman who is then a nurturer of younger women who are still in that process, so much to look forward to.

Now let me just remind us that we need to make the kinds of choices today that will enable us in the future to look back without regret. Some of us are making choices in ways that we react to circumstances, in the ways we talk to people who annoy and irritate us, in the choices we make about our job, our work, the way we spend money, what we do with our time.

Listen, if you are wasting time today on things that do not have eternal significance, then you will find yourself in the future looking back with regret. I want to live in such a way today that in ten years, fifteen, twenty, thirty, forty—however many more years God will give me, years later, I can look back without regret.

Some of you are struggling in a difficult marriage. I don't know the details. I don't know the circumstance. But I know that some of you are ready to walk out on your marriage.

I got an email yesterday from a woman who's in a horribly difficult situation who said, "Should I just take my kids and walk out of this situation." Now my heart goes out to this woman. I can't imagine facing what she's facing. I can't imagine facing what some of you are facing.

But as you make those choices, make sure you are not making choices that some years from now you will look back and you will say, "I wish I had done it differently. I wish I had been faithful. I wish I had hung in there. I wish I had trusted God to intervene in my circumstances rather than taking matters into my own hands and trying to fix things myself."

The virtuous woman makes choices today that will keep her future free from regret.

Lord, in every season of life, we want to be women who bring You glory. I just thank You that because You're God, because You're in charge, because You're in control, because You're good, that we can look forward to the future with hope—that we can be cheerful as we face the future, that we can be women of joy.

May our lives be so full of Your spirit that others look at us and they say, "Being a woman is a joyful thing, being a godly woman is a reason for rejoicing." And they will want that because of what they see in us. I pray in Jesus' name, amen.

Dannah: Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth has been showing us how to face the future with joy and anticipation. That teaching is part of a series on Proverbs 31 called, “To Be Praised: The Woman Who Fears the Lord.”

When I think of facing the future with joy, my mind goes to a friend of this ministry named Colleen Chao. In fact, our team made a video with Colleen called “She Laughs at the Time to Come.” That title is based on Proverbs 31:25. When you watch the video, you really see Colleen literally laughing over and over, despite her stage-four cancer diagnosis.

You can watch that video by visiting ReviveOurHearts.com. I also had the opportunity to talk with Colleen about her book In the Hands of a Fiercely Tender God. She told me about the moment the doctors told her there is no cure.

Colleen Chao: It’s always hard to put that day into words because it’s those other worldly moments that we all have when something comes crashing in. Bad news, shocking news that upends our life. And so I struggle to make sense of it still with words. But it was almost like God put us in a bubble of grace to help us navigate the first hours of that. There was just a lot of the Spirit in those first moments.

I remember I was at my appointment alone, through a variety of circumstances, which we just shake our heads now, when I heard the news. The doctor gave a timeline and said, “This isn’t curable.” I just sat there. There was a poise that doesn’t make sense. In that moment just by myself, kind of just feeling the wave crash hard, there was a composure that was obviously the Spirit just holding me together.

When I walked out to my car, I called my husband. But before or after that, I forget which. I think it was even before I called my husband, I just sensed the Spirit pressing on my heart that there was still work to do and that He wanted me to write because it was one of the reasons He was entrusting this diagnosis to me.

I got in my car and I Marco Polo-ed my best friend, who had been praying, after I talked to my husband. I got together with my husband whom I met in a grocery store parking lot. We held on to each other, and then we headed home where my parents had my son. We walked in, and God just gave so much grace in those moments just to share with my then nine-year old this crazy news. We wept hard, and then we kept weeping for days and weeks.

Those were the first moments.

Dannah: Tell me a little bit about how your son responded that first day. Like, what did he turn to for comfort?

Colleen: Well, the way I’ve shared it in those moments . . . Like, how do you share that kind of thing? But I sat with him, and I just said, “There is some hard news. God has given me some more time with you, but it’s on a timeline.”

We’ve always been upfront and honest with him, so I didn’t hold back. My husband and I decided to just share with him so that he could see God walk us through it. As soon as he kind of absorbed the first news of it, he walked out of the room and crawled into his bed. My parents were there, and my husband and I just slipped away. My parents were absorbing this.

This is hard news for everyone that it touches. But I slipped away, and I just crawled into bed with my son and held him. We just wept and wept and wept, just unspeakable weeping, you know?

And then we just started talking. I said, “You tell us everything, anything. You can say anything. You can ask anything. Nothing is off limits. We want to walk through this together.”

And so we just started talking about really hard things in the following days and weeks. But as we talked about those hard things, we talked about God’s with-ness. It was sacred parenting, if that makes sense.

No parent knows how to do this. There’s no class on this. There’s no preparation for this. But the Spirit holds our hands. Jesus holds our hands. Like Psalm 73 says, “He holds my hand and guides me with His counsel.” And that’s what He was doing, and He was giving sacred parenting moments with my son to point him to what lasts.

Dannah: In your book you talk about how your son, Jeremy, said, “Can we read the story of the fiery furnace?” It’s just like a child in the middle of our suffering to run to the Lord. 

Colleen: Yes.

Dannah: Tell us about that.

Colleen: Yes. So that was my first cancer diagnosis. That was November 20, 2017. At that point he was six. And again, we were just upfront. “So this is really hard news. This was not good news. But God is going to do something in this. He’s going to be good to us in this.”

And at six years old you could see his brain working and processing. And he asked, “Can we read . . .?” It just seemed so random, but so of God, that he would say, “Can we read the story of the fiery furnace?”

My husband opened the Bible and read the story. And most of those listening right now will be super familiar with that story, just how King Nebuchadnezzar looks into that furnace where he’s thrown three God-followers, God-worshipers, and he sees four. And he says, “Who’s the fourth? It looks like the Son of the gods,” or something like that. (I’m paraphrasing right now.)

Dannah: Well, I have it here. Let me read it. It’s Daniel 3:24–25, 

Then King Nebuchadnezzar jumped up in alarm. He said to his advisors, “Didn’t we throw three men bound into the fire?”

“Yes, of course, Your Majesty,” they replied to the king.

He exclaimed, “Look! I see four men, not tied, walking around in the fire, unharmed; and the fourth looks like a son of the gods.” (CSB)

I get chills every time I read that.

Colleen: Yes, yes, yes. It brings me joy to hear that again and again. Eddie closed the Bible. And Jeremy . . . there was this pause, like a pregnant pause. Then he said, “There are four of us in this family.”

And the fact that God would care for my son in those moments where I didn’t even know what to do. You’re doing the best you can by God’s grace to walk your kid through the unspeakable, but God was there with us. He was taking Jeremy by the hand and walking him through something that was turning his life upside down. And He was telling Jeremy, “I’m going to be with you. I am with you in this furnace.”

That’s just gorgeous goodness.

Dannah: He is with us in those times of acute suffering in a way, a nearness that we don’t know at other times. And you say that you’ve discovered a tenderness in that. Tell me about that.

Colleen: I really have. It’s just like God to do things that are upside down and inside out to us. Right? His kingdom works backwards. (I’m paraphrasing.) That’s a way that C.S. Lewis put it, but the idea that the first will be last, the last will be first.

It’s opposite. The greatest will be the least, the least will be the greatest. You lose your life to gain it. All these upside down, backwards things to our finite minds.

It’s crazy that the harshest, hardest, most grievous moments have always, in my life, have always shown me the love and tenderness of God. That doesn’t make sense.

And it’s not that He spares me or us from feeling the full weight of those moments. It’s not that He alleviates the suffering. It’s not that He takes away the pain. But in walking with Him through those moments, we find what our hearts are really craving. It’s His love.

I first started experiencing that in singleness, where it just didn’t make sense to experience the love of God, really. For the first time in my life I was experiencing His love . . . and in a palpable way.

And He’s since then, in a couple few decades since then, I just marvel that He reveals His tender love to us in the circumstances that should harden us, that should be off-putting. And sometimes they do. Right? We respond to suffering in different ways at different times. It can harden us. It can make us resentful toward God at times. But He’s so faithful to keep walking with us and softening our heart and revealing His love.

I want to share this quote I just love. It’s fresh on my heart. It’s by Samuel Rutherford from the 1600s. He says, “Put Christ’s love to the trial and put upon it burdens, and then it will appear love indeed.” I just love that. It’s when it’s put to the test that we actually experience it.

Dannah: That’s so true.

Were there moments for you, have there been moments for you where your heart could have gotten hard? Where you could have gotten angry? Or maybe you did?

Colleen: Yes.

Dannah: Briefly? Momentarily?

Colleen: Yes. Absolutely.

Dannah: Tell us about that.

Colleen: I think that’s why I love the psalms so much. I have lived so much in the psalms because my experience is put into words by David and Asaph and all the people who wrote the psalms. You can come to the Lord and say, “I’m bitter. I’m angry. My heart is hard right now, and I know it. I don’t like it, but this is where I’m at.”

This is part of the human experience, to have these negative emotions. Sometimes we are not self-aware enough to see it even happening. That’s where the Word is so powerful, because it reflects to us what’s going on in our hearts. It exposes what’s in our hearts.

That’s why I love clinging to the Word and living by it, because it shows me, like Hebrews 4:12–13 says, 

The Word of God is living and effective and sharper than any double-edged sword, penetrating as far as the separation of soul and spirit, joints and marrow. It is able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart. No creature is hidden from him, but all things are naked and exposed to the eyes of him to whom we must give an account. (CSB)

I just love that when I’m wrestling with God, and my heart is hard, and I don’t think He’s fair, and I’ve even had moments where I just feel like He’s mean. Isn’t that crazy? But I can tell Him that, and He can handle it. And the Word softens my heart. It changes my heart. It changes my mind. It changes my brain.

Dannah: I am still . . . I don’t know, after thirty years of being in the Word every day with a hunger and a passion, I’m always amazed at how different I am at the end of thirty, forty, fifty or sixty minutes of time alone with God in the Word. I’m like, “Who was I before?”

I’m not much without the Word, without His presence in me, shaping me, and forming me. And that’s particularly true in those trying times.

Colleen: Yes. I love how you said that.

Dannah: You have some of the most infectious laughter of anyone I’ve ever known. You have a gorgeous smile. And it’s not different from the first day I met you a few years ago, when you were already in the battle. And here you are, still smiling.

What would you say to someone who’s in a place of suffering, and they’ve lost their smile? They’ve lost their joy? Where would they go? What’s their first step?

Colleen: Well, actually, I write about that in Fiercely Tender, because there was a season in my life where I didn’t even notice it, but I’d stopped laughing. I want to say this was about nine, ten years ago. Life was so heavy. This was even before cancer. But it doesn’t have to be cancer, right? We all face stuff that can just wear us to the end of ourselves.

At that point, it was just chronic illness for myself or my son, financial upheaval, loss of job, a flooded apartment—all the things. I had just lost my joy. So I get it. I’m not always joyful now. There’s lots of grumpiness and ugliness that comes out of me. Even last night, and I had to apologize to my husband this morning. I’m, “Thank you for being patient with me.”

Dannah: I had the same conversation with my husband this morning. (laughter) When I sat down with my time with the Lord this morning, I said, “Hello, Jesus. It’s me, your grumpy daughter.” (laughter)

Colleen: Well, we’re good company this morning. Yes. It’s real. But what I started praying for many years ago was that God would give me joy. I remember an older woman who was just so sweet in my life. She said, “How would you want me to pray for you?” 

And I said, “Pray for joy.” This was probably sixteen years ago. It was just something the Spirit put on my heart to pray for, to want, knowing what was going to come.

I would say to that person who is feeling a lack of joy, to ask God for what you don’t have. He is so happy and willing to give us the things that we don’t have. That’s where He loves to meet us.

Dannah: That’s Colleen Chao, from a series called “In the Hands of a Fiercely Tender God.” You can hear that entire series by visiting ReviveOurHearts.com.

We wanted to play you that clip because it illustrates so well Nancy’s teaching today in Proverbs 31 about facing the future with joy. None of us know what we will face in the future. At Revive Our Hearts, we’d like to help you prepare for difficulties that may be ahead.

If you appreciate this kind of teaching and discussion, friends like you are part of making it possible. This ministry relies on God’s provision through the prayers and financial support of our listeners. 

Our hope is to help women around the world thrive in Christ as they live out God’s design, and you can be a part. With your donation of any amount, you’ll receive a copy of Nancy’s booklet Biblical Portrait of Womanhood: Discovering and Living Out God’s Plan for Our Lives. This is a great resource for learning to delight in the way God made you. 

Request your booklet with your gift at ReviveOurHearts.com, or call us at 1-800-569-5959.

Do you realize how much power your tongue has? That’s right. What you say, the words that come out of your mouth can make a huge difference in someone’s life. Nancy’s going to talk about that more tomorrow as she continues this series. Please be back for Revive Our Hearts.

This program is a listener-supported production of Revive Our Hearts in Niles, Michigan, calling women to freedom, fullness, and fruitfulness in Christ.

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