Choosing Joy

Dannah Gresh: At one of the True Woman Conference, Karen Loritts took the stage. She shared about the night her family began to walk through a deep, dark valley . . . 

Karen Loritts: I have never been so broken, in such despair, so worried about our little family, as I had been that night.

Dannah: Fern Nichols, from Moms in Touch, was in the auditorium that night.

Fern Nichols: What was so sweet about Karen as she spoke to the women was that she really bared her heart—that it's not always easy to be a true woman who trusts and obeys the Word. Her family is going through a very difficult time. But she shared how she chose to make decisions in light of being a true woman. She was very real, and she touched many hearts with being so vulnerable.

Dannah: We’re about to hear that message that affected Fern Nichols and thousands of others.

This is the Revive Our Hearts podcast with Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth, author of Adorned: Living Out the Beauty of the Gospel Together, for Thursday, June 27, 2024. I'm Dannah Gresh.

Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth: Let me ask you, what is the deepest concern on your heart today? We’re about to hear a message from my friend Karen Loritts. She is really honest about struggles and pain we experience in this life.  And not only is she very real and vulnerable about the pain—she will also take you to the feet of Jesus so you can find the only genuine help right in the middle of the pain.

Dannah: So true. Well, Karen is the wife of Dr. Crawford Loritts, who served for many years as pastor of Fellowship Bible Church in Roswell, Georgia, a suburb of Atlanta.

Nancy: She's also a dear personal friend and prayer partner. She delivered this message at one of the True Woman conferences hosted by Revive Our Hearts. Here's Karen.

Karen: I got this little plaque, and it simply is stated trust, t-r-u-s-t. It’s a cute little plaque that says trust, and I placed it in my kitchen so I can see it when I'm going into the refrigerator—those days I do cook. I'm an empty nester. The days I do cook at the stove, but it really represents what I wanted for my life. I just wanted to trust God. That particular plaque has become an eye sore to me, and I'll tell you the reason why.

Last year my husband announced to our church that we are going to host a ten-day tour to the Holy Lands. And ladies, for three different tries, Crawford has tried to get me to go to the Holy Lands. I already told him. I said, “I'm going to the Holy Lands. I'm going first class, and Jesus is going to be my tour guide. (laughter)

I had no desire to go to the Holy Lands, and the only reason why I didn't want to go to the Holy Lands, let me be honest with you, I didn't like flying. If there was any other way to get over to the Holy Lands, I wanted to go, but I think I would need to take a plane to get over there, and for me, taking a flight . . . I’d try to help the pilot out. I am just not a good person to fly in a plane.

But he announces to the whole church, “We are going to the Holy Lands, and my wife is going with me.” (laughter) Every time I saw that little plaque in the kitchen that says trust, I said, “Okay, God, okay, okay. You’ve got my attention, and now I'm going to really have to step up and trust You.”

I wanted to go because God had provided a free ticket for us to go, and there was no earthly reason why I shouldn't go. God called us to go, and I wanted to be obedient, plus that little trust sign grew eyes and was shouting at me, “Trust Me, trust Me, trust Me.”

So we went to the Holy Lands in October, and, ladies, let me tell you, if you have not gotten a chance to go, if you have an opportunity to go to see the place where our Savior lived and died, you'll look at the Bible a whole lot differently.

So I went to the Holy Lands. I wasn’t squeamish on the plane. For thirteen hours, it was a good flight. I knew people were praying, and Delta did a really good job to get us there. So I trusted Him. Then my husband announced that we were going to take this trip that had been scheduled two years prior to go to the Island of Fiji.

Now, I don't know what map you have looked at, but it’s kind of hard to find Fiji on the map.

It's like the end of the sentence. I mean, there’s no font. There’s not even a six-point font or eight-point font. You can't even see it on the map.

He says, “Karen, we have been invited by the former ambassador from Fiji, he's a believer, to come over and minister with another couple to families and leaders, and we are going to go.”

I got my prayer partners praying for me again, and that was a great flight over. We even went first class. God arranged that we went first class by these people. We went over there. It was an eleven-hour flight from California. It was a great flight, great ministry, hundreds of people received the Lord Jesus Christ. But for me, it was just seeing that God says when you trust Me, God works everything out, even the flight over.

So those were two of the things that God had put me through, but, you know, God has a way in my life of serving up exams. And one of His exams was, “Karen, I want to know, would you really trust Me?” So He serves up these things I call crisis buffets. (laughter) One of them was going over to Israel. That flight, check, I passed. The other flight, it was going over to Fiji, and this next flight was coming into our life here this past February.

This year both Crawford and I turned sixty. He is older than me. He turned sixty first in February, and I decided . . . our sons had put together this golf trip. He loves golf, and so they flew Dad down to Florida. The boys had a great three-day celebration with their dad and took him on this golf trip.

I wanted to do something on a small scale because he did not want anything big. When you turn sixty, you’re supposed to do something, but he just wanted some friends. So several couples, we got together and took him out to his favorite Italian restaurant, and there in the restaurant we had a great, great time.

Crawford was a little slow coming in from parking into the celebration, and when he came in, we just picked up and had dinner. We were there about two and a half hours, and things were going just fine. After dinner Crawford and I got back in the car, and on the way home he turned to me, and these are the words that he said.

He says, “Honey, something awful has happened to our family.” I just looked at him and he started articulating that our family that very evening had come under spiritual attack. You see, our family was violated by someone we had loved and known for over twenty years, and it had split our family, our four children, just right in the heart.

Ladies, let me tell you, I have never been so broken and in such despair, so worried about our little family, as I had been that night. I was so anxious. I looked over at Crawford and I said, “This is not happening. How could this be? How could somebody do this to our family that has divided our children?” We have no idea how this has come about, how this person that we had loved had come into our lives . . . we loved that person . . . and they violated us.

As I'm looking at Crawford, I'm saying, “This is a horror movie.” I'm not really hearing what he's saying. I kept listening to him and looking at him, and he says, “Yes, honey, this is true.”

Ladies, let me just tell you what happened. The next several days, I really wish I could say I wanted to spank somebody, but I wanted to take my fist and punch somebody. I wanted to hurt somebody for hurting my husband and my four children. They had violated us.

It was not the Christian thing to do. I wasn't going to be lovey-dovey. I wanted to hit somebody and hurt somebody real, real bad because my children were crying, and I was tired of crying. The next several days I went from room to room to room crying out to God, “God, help me! Help us.”

I talked about the blood of Jesus. I did defensive prayers. I was battling for the very soul of our family. This wasn't right. This wasn't right, and I was tired of being sick and tired of crying. I don't know, probably buckets of tears I cried. And then you know what? There was that stinking little trust sign. That stinking trust sign stared me in the face. I felt like picking it up and (laughter) yeah, you've got it. But I felt as though if I had touched it, I would have leprosy, because God was trying to teach me something, and I dared not do it.

Ladies, hear me. God is a smart God. So, of course, when I read my Scriptures, this is what He gave me. Proverbs 28:26. I don't know if it's in your Bible, but it popped into my Bible, and Proverbs 28:26 says, “He who trusts in his own heart is a fool.” Yeah, I was a fool because I was ready to do some damage. I wasn't going to be Christian about it. I was going to hurt somebody and then pray for forgiveness later. (laughter)

Can I be honest with you? That was bad. That was bad news. But here’s the other part of the verse: “He who trusts in his own heart is a fool, but he who walks wisely will be delivered.”

“He who walks wisely will be delivered.” Ladies, I want to talk about my deliverance. All of us know that God will deliver us. He can deliver us from any situation. He'll deliver us in the situation. We are seven months into this horrible, horrible, horrible family crisis, and I have no idea how He's going to deliver us, but He'll deliver us through it.

Let me just share just a few things, some of my ramblings on how God is working on Karen Loritts, because I want to trust God. God is a true God. God is a good God, and His Word is true. He says, “Walk wisely, and He will deliver,” and "God, I need deliverance. I don't know what's going to happen to our family."

He says a true woman, a true biblical woman who wants deliverance, just not the same old stuff, but who takes a stand for God, God's going to take it to God's school. I've been always good at obeying God, but God says, “Karen, I need for you to trust Me in this situation because you are in the midst of this crisis.”

A wise woman, a true biblical woman trusts in the peace of Christ.

Secondly, she trusts in the power of the Holy Spirit.

And thirdly, she trusts in the presence of God.

If you have a Bible, turn with me to Colossians 3. She trusts in the peace of Christ. Let me read the verses in Colossians 3:14–17. It says,

Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts to which indeed you were called to one body; and be thankful. Let the word of Christ richly dwell within you, with all wisdom teaching and admonishing one another with psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing with thanksgiving in your hearts to God. And whatever you do, whether in word or deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks through to God the Father through him (NKJV).

There are several things from this verse. A wise woman who trusts in the peace of Christ, first of all, she has the peace of Christ. It talks about letting Him call the shots; let Him rule. God was not asleep when our crisis hit the family. One of the things I’m praying for God is, “God, I need for You to continually call the shots in our situation. I need for You who knows, the sovereign God, who knows everything. You were not blindsided; You were not asleep. You brought this into our lives so that we can trust You, but Lord, we know that You want us to experience Your peace.”

 

The second thing it says, the Word of Christ, God's Word is true. How many times, year after year after year have I sat and had devotions and cried and read and asked God and applied the Word of God. Now God says, “Karen, now it's time to go through the exam.” The Word of Christ.

I love what Psalm 28:7 says, “The Lord is my strength and my shield; my heart trusts in Him, and I am helped; therefore my heart exults, and with my song I shall thank Him” (NASB).

He says He's our strength, and He's our shield. The Word of Christ dwells in our hearts. It's soothing. It's comforting.

And lastly, from the Colossian’s passage, a true woman who trusts in the peace of God, she cultivates thankfulness. “Thankful, God? No, I'm not thankful. That day I could not truly say that I was thankful for the slice of crisis buffet that You served me.” I was angry. I was hurt. I was fearful. I had no idea how our family would ever be . . . In fact, one of our children said, “This is a defining moment in our family. We will never be the same.”

But I have to be thankful because God is not playing games with our lives. You are just not a pawn on a chess board. God loves you. God loves us. He has the best intentions for us, but He has to take you from one point to another to get you to be all that you said you want to be. And God, I want to be a woman that is true to the Word of God. How can I stand before people, how can I pray for my grandchildren if I haven't seen God do some deep work in my life?

Cultivate thankfulness. Proverbs 17:22 says, “A joyful heart is good medicine.” My heart was broken. I had no joy. I was a complete mess, but Scripture says, “A joyful heart.” I choose joy, God. In the midst of a mess, I choose joy because You are a good Father and have a thankful heart. So I'm going to be thankful in the midst of it. Why? Because I'm going to trust in the peace of Christ on who He is, and what He says.

Secondly, a wise woman, a true woman, a truly biblical woman trusts in the power of the Holy Spirit. If I didn't have the Holy Spirit, I would have just melted away that day in February. My heart was breaking. My heart was literally breaking in so many pieces that there wasn't enough trash bags for me to pick up the pieces of my heart. It was like I was having a heart attack. But the Holy Spirit . . . God left the Holy Spirit, and the Holy Spirit does a great job. He does a great job.

For all of us that are believers, at the moment of salvation, He comes and indwells us. But on a moment by moment decision of our will to Him, we surrender the power to control us.

Take whatever stuff you’re going through and lay it on the altar. For me, what I needed to do, I needed to take our crisis and lay it on the altar and tie that baby down because I kept going to the altar and taking it back off the altar.

He says, “Commit your way to God.” This is the hard thing for me; it could be a hard thing for you to take whatever stuff you are going through and lay it on the altar.

For me, what I needed to do was I needed to take our crisis and lay it on the altar and then tie that baby down because I kept going to the altar and taking it back off the altar. (laughter)

The presence of God says, “Commit your way to God and lay it on the altar and walk away.”

“But, God, You need my little help!”

“No, Karen, I don't need your help.”

“But, God, if You did it this way, or, God, if You just hurt that person just a little bit (laughter) . . . don't kill him . . . just a little bit.” Commit it to God. 

Dannah: That was Karen Loritts sharing how she learned to trust God during a challenging time for her family. Can you identify with Karen’s honesty in how she felt broken, in despair, and worried about her family? There’s a growing number of families who find themselves heartbroken over a loved one who is far from the Lord. 

Here at Revive Our Hearts, we wanted to help you proclaim the power of God’s Word and the power of your prayers as you pray for a prodigal.That’s why we’ve created our newest resource, While You Wait for Your Prodigal: A 30 Day Prayer Challenge. As you walk through four Scripture passages, you’ll spend time each day in God’s Word and in prayer, while “Make It Personal” questions help you take the message to heart. 

The print version of the challenge is available this month when you make a donation of any amount. Just request it when you visit ReviveOurHearts.com, or call us at 1-800-569-5959.

Tomorrow Karen Lorritts will talk about trusting God even in the midst of a crisis. 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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