Less Than Perfect Situation

Dannah Gresh: Is your life less than perfect? Mine sure is! According to Elizabeth Mitchell, when our situation is not ideal, we need God’s grace.

Elizabeth Mitchell: I believe grace is an awareness that God doesn’t just answer us, but that He answers us with Himself.

Dannah: This is the Revive Our Hearts podcast with Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth, author of A Place of Quiet Rest, for January 17, 2024. I’m Dannah Gresh. Nancy, you and our guest today have never actually met face to face before.

Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth: That’s true, Dannah, and I will say, it’s a bit unusual. Most of the guests who join us here on Revive Our Hearts are friends, or at least acquaintances, of mine. But over the last several years, two dear friends have been saying to me, “Nancy, you’ve got to get to know Elizabeth Mitchell. You’ve got to have her on Revive Our Hearts.”

And about a year ago, within minutes of each other, I received two texts back to back from those two different women (who don’t even know each other!), once again both suggesting that we consider having Elizabeth Mitchell on Revive Our Hearts as a guest.

One of those texts said, “Elizabeth is an amazing godly woman of influence and a great teacher.” The other friend had just heard Elizabeth speak in person at a women’s Bible study in Florida. Both of my friends recommended Elizabeth’s book, Journey for the Heart. And they both suggested that I listen to an interview she had just done with Janet Parshall on Moody Radio.

So when I had these texts in stereo from two different friends, I thought, I think I’d better pay attention to this. And my friends were right. Elizabeth is a godly woman who knows how to soothe and comfort suffering, hurting people with the Word of God.

I emailed our team and said, “I’d love to have Elizabeth Mitchell on Revive Our Hearts and on Grounded” (which is our weekly video podcast).

Dannah: Yes, so Elizabeth Mitchell joined us on Grounded in August of 2023, and around that time I was able to connect with her to record the conversation we heard Monday and yesterday.

Nancy: And if you missed those programs, you’ll want to go back and listen to them. They were so rich! You’ll find them on the Revive Our Hearts app or on our website, ReviveOurHearts.com. Now today, we’re going to listen to a message Elizabeth Mitchell gave in a conference setting at a church in California.

I know it will be an encouragement to you as she talks about how we can respond and be used by God in less than perfect situations. Let’s listen now to Elizabeth Mitchell.

Elizabeth Mitchell: Today is Mother’s Day, and I think that’s quite a good day to remind each of us that God uses people in less than perfect circumstances to do His work. We don’t have to have everything coordinated and organized and well done for Him to use us.

I grew up in Jamaica, on the island, in a very large and very loving Lebanese family. From an early age I understood that God was real and that you could have a relationship with Him and that He was sufficient for all those times when life wasn’t quite perfect at all.

I learned a lot of that from stories from my Aunt Odette, who had gone through a horrific divorce. She had four children, and her husband abandoned her and she had to make it on her own. At a time in Jamaican culture—in the Lebanese culture—where divorce was frowned upon, and she was ostracized.

In all of that pain and struggle and hardship, my aunt ran to the arms of Jesus Christ and she found Him faithful and true. I grew up hearing stories of her going into her bedroom and closing the door and spreading out the bills—the school bills and the mortgage bill—on her bed, and kneeling before her Father and reminding Him that He had promised to take care of her and her four children. . .that she had no financial resources to take care of these bills, but that she was counting on Him and looking to Him, and waiting for Him to respond. And invariably, in one way or another, He did respond, He did provide.

My aunt fell so deeply in love with Jesus in a very difficult time, that it was her mission to bring the rest of her Lebanese family to fall in love with Jesus, too. And over many years my other aunt and her children, all my cousins, my brothers and sisters, my mother and my father and myself, we too bowed our knees and embraced the Savior that my aunt served.

Her life was testimony that He was sufficient, He was enough, He was good, He was gracious no matter what was unfolding around us. On a recent trip to Israel, we learned all about Mary Magdalene, and her story reinforces what my aunt had taught me, that God uses people in less than perfect circumstances to do His work. 

Mary was from Magdala, that city in Israel, that’s where we get her name. She was a Jewish woman who was given a front row seat to the gospel unfolding in real time! She was at the death and the burial, and the resurrection of Jesus Christ. 

She’s in all four gospels. They tell her story in Matthew 27 and John 20, Luke 8 and Mark 15 and 16. She was a wholly devoted follower of Jesus Christ. She traveled with Him, with a group of women, all across Galilee and down to Jerusalem. And from her own means, the Scriptures tell us, she paid for the living expenses of the disciples and of Jesus.

She was fearless. She was committed. We see her at the cross. Her name is usually listed first in any list of women mentioned. The gospel writers giving her credit for her influence and her love of the Lord.

When Jesus cried out, “My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?!” and the sin transfer of the world was occurring, the disciples had fled. But Mary was there. When Joseph of Arimathea took the body of the Lord and put Him in a borrowed tomb in the garden. We get no record that the other disciples were there, but Mary was. She was sitting there watching what Joseph of Arimathea was doing. 

And then on that beautiful Sunday morning, she enters the garden with other women; there are spices in their arms that she has purchased. She had taken care of Jesus when He was alive. She would continue taking care of Him after He died.

She comes, she sees the stone is rolled away, she runs and gets Peter and John. They race back. They look in, and they see that the body is no longer there. They leave, and they go back into hiding. But Mary is there, and loyal. She does not go away. She has a conversation with two angels, as if it’s an everyday occurrence. I think she’s a remarkable woman!

And then she begins talking to a man she believes is the gardener. Logical . . . they were in a garden. It was dark; she couldn’t make out the features of his face. And she demands of Him to show her where the body of her Lord is so she may go and get it and carry it back to safety. Fearless. Committed. Loyal.

Of course you know that Jesus calls her name, “Mary,” and she knows it’s Him. She calls Him, “Rabonni.” Then they have a one-on-one conversation, the first one recorded in Scripture: a woman with the risen Lord! And then He commissions her to go and tell the disciples the greatest news: that He is risen from the dead, just as He had promised.

What gave Mary this spirit of fearlessness, this spirit of courage and devotion and commitment? It was the fact that Jesus had rescued her from seven demons. She had been demon possessed, had been living in darkness, and the Savior of the world saved her! She never got over that fact.

And though her circumstances were far from perfect, and we find her weeping in the garden there when she doesn’t know what’s happening with Jesus, she’s weeping, but she is not weak. She’s distraught, but she is not paralyzed. She teaches us that when life is not turning out as we want it to, that it’s not a time to be immobilized or paralyzed or thinking that we are out of service. 

Right at those times, just as my aunt taught me, that’s when God shows up, and He uses us, even when the circumstances are not the ones we would ever choose for ourselves. It’s important for women—and I daresay, men—to recognize that their stories are valuable, that they have value. What each of us has been through is worth sharing with somebody else—in a small, knit group, from a stage, in a Bible study, across a cubicle, across the picket fence. Let people know where you’ve been, what God has taught you, how difficult it was, how He carried you through, and how He would “also carry you through,” the person that I’m sharing with.

I encourage you to tell your story! In the very same way, when we travel, we bring back souvenirs for those that we love. When we go to Israel with our church, we go to the valley of Elah—in that dry riverbed—and pick up stones.

We bring those stones back and we tell our children and our nieces and nephews, “These are stones similar to the ones that that little boy, David, used to fight and kill Goliath. Keep that stone as a souvenir, as a reminder to you that when the Spirit of Living God is in you, there is nothing impossible!”

We go to India and Nepal to teach overseas to a whole group of wonderful men and women. We bring back pashminas. We go to Kenya and Zambia and bring back wooden figurines of zebras and giraffes and lions and water buffalo to show those who didn’t get to go with us that, “This is what I saw. This is what I heard and felt and experienced and tasted over there. I need to share that with you so you can participate in what I got to see and know and learn.” 

In just that way, God sends each of us on journeys in our life. And when we have gone through, or when we are going through, He says to us, “Why don’t you share what you’re learning about Me in the darkness? Why don’t you encourage somebody else that they can make it through? Why don’t you tell them that life is messy—yes, life is hard, life is most definitely unfair, but that I [Jesus] am enough and I will carry them through, no matter what.” That’s what He wants us to do when we go through journeys.

So very often in our lives, we take journeys that we would never, ever, ever want to be on. We’d never want anybody else to be on either. Our family did have to take a journey like that. Our son, our fourth child, James, was born with congenital heart disease, transposition of the great vessels.

His two main arteries were switched, which means the blood in his body that had no oxygen was being routed through his body, and the blood with oxygen in it was being sent back to his lungs. 

He had open heart surgery at three days old, a pacemaker implanted when he was ten days old, and periodically after that always a procedure, always another open heart surgery. When he was four-and-a-half, they repaired his mitral valve, and in doing that he had a stroke, and was on a left ventricle assist device.

And when they brought him back to our room, our four-year-old looked like he’d fallen on a landmine. God carried us through all of that. And then right before he turned five, his left ventricle (that’s the workhorse of the heart, that’s the one that’s doing all of this work for our bodies) should go like this . . . and James’s was moving like this . . . 

They said, “Now, you only have one option, and that’s a heart transplant.” I wanted to throw myself on the ground and have a temper tantrum! I couldn’t believe God was asking us to do this now, after all we’d been through with James.

But our God is gracious and gave us—Bill and myself—an ability to accept that this was now what we needed to do. We were airlifted to Gainesville at the University of Florida, and James received a new heart five days after we got there.

I want to read you a small portion of our story from the book called Journey for the Heart, just to give you a little piece of our story. 

Every few weeks after the transplant, we returned to Gainesville for those dreaded biopsies, but we never tired of hearing a zero report. James experienced as small as possible levels of rejection; his new heart was behaving like a perfect match!

On March 23, I woke to the wonderful reality of celebrating his fifth birthday. He was alive! Our son was doing well! In His mercy and graciousness, God had given James a brand-new life. In the afternoon, with trembling hands, I dialed the mom who had donated her daughter’s heart for James. 

“How’s he doing?” the gentle voice asked.

“James is well; his heart is doing incredibly well! The doctors are all thrilled with his progress! We are getting great results, and he’s hardly had any rejection whatsoever.”

“I’m so glad!” Donna said. Her voice held sadness in every word. 

“I need to thank you,” I continued, “I must let you know how grateful our family is for what you did for us. We really want to thank you. You were incredibly brave to make such a difficult decision.”

“I really wish there could have been some other way,” Donna said, “just some other way.” 

I swallowed hard and swallowed again. “Donna, I wish there could have been some other way, too.” 

We exchanged addresses, and I sent her pictures of James, and we kept in touch. I wanted to meet this courageous woman in person. And finally, the beginning of May, we connected.

I invited her to our home. I turned to write the date on the calendar and realized that Sunday she was coming would be Mother’s Day—I Mother’s Day, when Donna’s heart would be empty and aching. The Kerides rang the doorbell, stepped timidly into our home—strangers intricately intertwined into our lives. We hugged and introduced the children to each other.

She was warm, easy to talk with and loving. When we played games, James ended up on her team. She had been on his side since January 20. After we had dessert, Bill corralled all the kids and headed to the basketball hoop outside, and the silence gave the two of us permission to share details of her daughter’s death and how they were coping with their grief.

We stood after a very long while; we were not strangers anymore. The children filtered back into the house slowly, and James came into the kitchen. I picked him up and plopped him on the counter. Without contemplating the thought for too long, I said, “Donna, would you like to listen to his heart?” 

She nodded, bent her head towards his chest and pressed her ear against it. She lingered there for quite a long time, and the children stood in a hushed silence; no one could speak. It was as if they understood with us that we were all on holy ground. James sat perfectly still and time stopped. 

A few years ago, my nephew Jacob could not wait to open one of his Christmas gifts. He begged my brother relentlessly, and finally he acquiesced. Jacob dove under the Christmas tree, grabbed out the prettiest package he could find with his name on it, tore off the paper, looked at my brother and said, “This . . . is . . . exactly what I always never wanted!” True story.

When that was told to me, I said, “The boy’s onto something!” That’s what we say, “God, what You’ve given me is exactly what I always never wanted!” If we had time to hear all your stories, I think you would share one with me that falls into that category.

But right there, where we are, where we never want to be, God says to us, “I am enough. I am sufficient. I will carry you through.” From those places He does give us gifts, right where we are, where we don’t really want to be. I think I discovered that He gave our family the gift of grace. 

He gave me Psalm 20, that I want to read for you, and it will also be on the screen. The definition of grace is God supplying everything we need to make it through the challenging seasons and moments and events of our lives. Psalm 20, for me, He gave me at a particularly difficult time on our journey. Read it along with me: 

May the Lord answer you in the day of trouble!
   May the name of the God of Jacob protect you!
May he send you help from [his] sanctuary
   and give you support from Zion!
May he remember all your offerings
   and regard with favor your burnt sacrifices!

May he grant you your heart's desire
   and fulfill all your plans!
May we shout for joy over your salvation,
   and in the name of our God set up our banners!
May the Lord fulfill all your petitions!”

Now I know that the Lord saves his anointed;
   he will answer him from his holy heaven
   with the saving might of his right hand.
Some trust in chariots and some in horses,
   but we trust in the name of the Lord our God.
They collapse and fall,
   but we rise and stand upright.

O Lord, save the king!
   May he answer us when we call. 

A gift of grace. Right in that first line, “May the Lord answer you.” He’s the God who answers “in the day,” right when it’s taking place. He doesn’t wait a couple months to respond. “. . . in the day of trouble . . .” It’s a reminder that all through Scripture, men and women have faced trouble. You and I are not the first ones to have to do it. 

Jehoshophat faced trouble and David faced trouble and Ruth faced trouble and Hannah faced trouble and Abigail faced trouble, and Mary Magdalene also had her share. That’s when He reaches us.

He says, “Look, these are personal promises. This is not something I’m just declaring for the masses.” This psalm is a reminder of grace, that He answers you, that He protects you. Put your name every time you see that pronoun. He sends you help and gives you support He remembers what you have offered to Him. He grants your heart’s desire. He fulfills your plans. He fulfills your petitions. What a personal, loving, tender Father, that He would give this as a reminder to us that, “I give you grace for exactly where I’m allowing you to be!”

I believe that grace is an awareness that God doesn’t just answer us, but that He answers us with Himself. I know you’re familiar with the story of the children of Israel when they’re in the wilderness, and God sends to them a pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night.

That was His answer for them, to protect them from the heat of the day, the cool temperatures of night, and the wild animals at night as well. Exodus 13, verses 21 and 22 say, 

And the Lord went before them in a pillar of cloud to lead them along the way, and by night in a pillar of fire to give them light, that they might travel by day and by night. The pillar of cloud by day and the pillar of fire by night did not depart from before the people.

I always thought how kind God was to send them this gift, a cloud by day, fire by night. I only recently realized He didn’t just send them a gift. He was—the Scripture tells us—in the pillar of cloud. He was in the pillar of fire. It was His presence that was the gift. Yes, He was protecting them, but it was Him. He was there with them, and He is with us.

It’s His presence that is the greatest gift of grace that we discover when we are in difficult places. He also gives us the gift of strength, 2 Corinthians 12:9. It’s a familiar verse. We often see it on calendars and screensavers and on plaques in Hobby Lobby. 

But they leave out the first five words that I think are so important, “But he said to me . . .” That is the God of the universe speaking directly to you, to you! And He’s saying to you and to me, “My grace is sufficient for you . . . my [strength] is made perfect in weakness” (2 Cor. 12:9). 

My paraphrase is, God says to us, “My power is at its very best when you are at your very weakest.” We get strength from trusting Him, from remembering He really is the only One we can hold onto. The psalmist in Psalm 91 reminds us of this truth.

"Because [she or] he holds fast to me in love, I will deliver him;
   I will protect him, because he knows my name.
When he calls to me, I will answer him;
   I will be with him in trouble,
   I will rescue him and honor him.
With long life I will satisfy him
   and show him my salvation." (Psalm 91:14–16)

That’s the God we serve. He gives us grace. He gives us strength. He says, “Lean on Me. You get strength from trusting Me, and you get strength from waiting on me.” As a young believer, I didn’t understand what “waiting on Him” meant. 

I thought you sat there and you folded your arms and you waited for God to show up. I think many of us still think that. Ruth in the Old Testament, in that beautiful four chapter book (if you haven’t read that in a while, I encourage you to do it) . . . Ruth shows us what waiting on Him looks like, when you’re in a difficult place as she was.

She was widowed, childless, poor, and a refugee in a foreign land. She didn’t fold her arms and feel sorry for herself and wait for sunshine to come out over the clouds. She did the next thing. Elisabeth Elliot would use that phrase, “You do the next thing.”

She worked diligently. She nurtured and tucked under her wing a very broken and very bitter mother-in-law who had lost a husband and two sons. Really, sometimes Naomi gets a bad rap. When I think how she even put one foot in front of the other to make her way from Moab to Bethlehem, it was a miracle! She’d lost three men in her life.

Ruth nurtured her and put up with her, with her complaining and her bitterness, and all the while she’s doing everything in her power to do what she could possibly do until God showed up and did what only He can do! That’s what waiting looks like.

He gives us the gift of grace. He gives us the gift of strength. I believe one of the most remarkable gifts that the Lord bestows on us in a difficult place is, He teaches us to worship Him, and to worship Him in the dark, to worship when there is nothing to be thankful for. 

But I will choose to keep my eyes fixed on Him. I will not put my back to Him or shake my fist in His face and demand that He fix my circumstances to my liking. 

I will worship Him for who He is and what He’s already done, and what He will do in the future, though I don’t have a clue what that might be. I will worship Him for being good and gracious and faithful and loving and forgiving and kind.

I will worship Him when it’s dark. God doesn’t need our worship—He doesn’t need anything. But He says to us, “When you worship Me, I can give you so much of Myself!” It’s a gift that He gives to us when He teaches us.

Psalm 34, verse 1 says, “I will bless the Lord at all times; his praise shall continually be in my mouth.” “All times” means sad times and happy times and difficult times and unpredictable times and fearful times. God says, “Go ahead. Worship Me then, and see what I can do in your circumstances!”

When I have nothing to bring to Him, that’s what He says: “Go ahead, bring me that. I’ll take care of the rest.” It was hardly surprising how much we hated the fact that this beautiful enormous black olive tree that took up our entire front yard was one day hit by a lightning bolt, and it severed all life from this formidable giant.

We watched the leaves fall, and at first we thought, Oh, it’s just doing what it always does: makes a mess of our front yard. But this time it was different. Eventually, our tree looked like a horror movie prop—bare branches reaching to the sky, moonlight peeping between the branches. Soon mushrooms began sucking the last drops of life from our friend.

This was the tree that had welcomed us into our new home when we were house hunting. It was like a one person—or one tree—welcoming committee. This was the tree that stood there when we returned from Gainesville with James’s brand-new heart, and all our neighbors and family had lined the road with bunches of red balloons. 

For weeks and weeks after, as James recuperated, as we kept coming back from different doctor appointments, a bunch of those bright red heart-shaped balloons had been caught in the top branches of that tree and peeked out at us every time we came in and out of the house.

The tree had to be cut down, and what was left was just a mound of chips in its place. This tree had been the place where all five of our children had grown up. One of James’s uncles had bolted heavy metal chains and put a swing under that tree. The children seemed to grow up underneath the protective arms of our black olive friend.

The day in August 2006 when I pulled away from the driveway, I was a passenger in an ambulance. I was sitting in the passenger seat, and James was sequestered in the back, and two paramedics were working on him.

I turned around and I waved at our daughter who was sitting on the swing. Anna was six at the tim, and my sister Kathy was standing beside her. We pulled away from that house. James would never come back to our home, and we would never be the same. He had had a double heart attack.

Apparently, when the Lord gives us gifts, we foolishly presume that they are ours forever. Not true. Each season comes framed with His unique and undeserved treasures for us to relish and enjoy. He orchestrates earth shattering events—ordinary trees and darling little boys—to give us life and joy and remind us of His goodness and His love, in spite of the lightning bolts that tend to come and splinter our lives.

Even now, we still draw strength from the faithfulness and graciousness of our God. He sustains and empowers us to endure and overcome—in seasons of plenty and seasons of want. My prayer for each of you, and for myself, is that we will continue to draw strength and rest and grace from our Lord, wherever He asks us to go; that we will learn to share our stories, the hard parts of our stories, the difficult parts, the parts where we failed and we fell over and God picked us up. 

May God use your stories to teach and encourage other people that He is good, that He is worth trusting, that He can be leaned on, that He is enough—no matter what life is throwing at us.

And maybe more than anything else, I pray that you know this Jesus of Nazareth, who is good, who lived a perfect life, who died for us, was buried, and was risen from the grave and conquered sin and death. He says to us, “I want to give you life everlasting, life abundantly.” I pray that you would know Him that way!

And if you already know Him, that you would share that with somebody else who hasn’t yet heard that incredible story!

Loving Father, how gracious You are to carry us through, to equip us, to give us grace and mercy and strength and hope—no matter where we find ourselves. Thank You that You are enough. You are always more than enough! 

I pray for the women in this room—for the mothers in this room—that each one would know as they’ve never known before how vast is Your love for them, how tender, how willing You are to carry them through wherever they find themselves. Thank You, Father. We honor You and praise You in Jesus’ name, amen.

Nancy: Amen! We’ve been listening to Elizabeth Mitchell. The prayer she just prayed is my prayer for you as well, wherever you may find yourself today—in a situation that may be painful, impossible to understand, difficult to figure out how you’re going to walk through it.

I don’t know what that circumstance may be for you, but God knows. As Elizabeth shared out of her own experience, I know that you too can draw strength from the faithfulness and graciousness of our God and that He will sustain and empower you to endure—and not just to endure, but even to overcome in seasons both of plenty and seasons of want.

And I also believe that in time, God wants to use your story to help and encourage others that need the reminder that He is good, that He can be trusted and leaned on, no matter what! If you need help getting there, I’d love to recommend Elizabeth’s book. It’s called Journey for the Heart: Hope When Life’s Unfair.

She shares so many lessons that she’s learned in her own difficult journey. And also, there’s a six-week study that goes along with that book. It’s all available to order at a link that we’ll put in the transcript of today’s program at ReviveOurHearts.com. 

Dannah: And also, be sure to check out the many free resources available from Revive Our Hearts. We’re able to provide them thanks to the support of friends like you! Your giving helps us bring the message of freedom, fullness, and fruitfulness to women all around the world. We’d love to hear from you. To make a donation, just visit ReviveOurHearts.com, or call us at 1-800-569-5959.

Tomorrow we’ll hear about one of the biggest moments in the life of a woman named Martha.

Martha Schaale: As I heard the news, I could not believe that I was pregnant! I was shocked! And all of a sudden I started listening to these lies from the enemy: “No one can find out!”

Dannah: We’ll hear Martha Schaale’s story, and how God can make beauty from ashes! Please be back for Revive Our Hearts.

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

All Scripture is taken from the ESV.

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