Life’s Troubles

This program contains portions from the following episodes:
 

"Finding Freedom in Suffering"

"Are You in Trouble?"

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Dannah Gresh: My dear friend Colleen Chao is battling cancer, and for encouragement she turns to an unlikely source: Christian biographies. 

Colleen Chao: It helps me to have a little bit of a lighter heart and a more measured perspective on my own suffering, to reflect on these people who did count it all joy. 

Dannah: Today we’ll talk about where to find refuge in times of trouble and suffering. 

Welcome to Revive Our Hearts Weekend, I’m Dannah Gresh.

I’m sitting here in one of my red swivell chairs by the fire. I’ve got the tea brewing, and I’m thinking through my Thanksgiving week. Food to cook and family to care for and well, I realize there have been some Thanksgivings that I haven’t been thankful. In fact, there were Thanksgivings that were just plain hard—missing family I wanted to be with, recovering from life changes, those years when my marriage was in a hard place.

The timing of hard things in life is not always optimal, is it? And those hard things don’t always look the same. They could be a loss of a job, a rough patch in your marriage, struggle with a difficult child, a death, or maybe a long season of walking through what seems to be a wilderness.

Who wants to be walking through these things when it’s the holidays and everyone is happy . . . or at least they seem to be. 

Today, I want to spend some time talking through trials in our lives. I want to help you, encourage you, if you’re walking through a tough season. Or maybe help you help a friend walking through tough waters. We’ll hear from Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth and also my dear friend Collen Chao who has been walking through a long, hard season of cancer.

Have you ever stopped to consider God being your fortress? A few words that describe fortress would be: castle, stronghold, bastion. If God is our fortress, it sounds to me that He’s unmoveable, unshakable. 

A couple of years ago Nancy spent some time walking us through seeing God as our Mighty Fortress. 

Psalm 46:1: “God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble.” Nancy understands trouble from her own life, but also other’s lives. She has many people who share their hardships and struggles with her. Maybe you’re someone who has written to her or talked with her at a conference. I want you to know how deeply she care, how she treasures the letters we get here are Revive Our Hearts. We take the time to read every single word. Here’s Nancy sharing about the trouble one listener is walking through.

Nancy: I read emails that come in from our listeners. In any given week you’ll have listeners who are talking about troubles in their lives. But I think of one that came in last week from a woman whose husband is addicted to pornography. One day she came home and found out that he had taken everything, wiped out their bank accounts, and left her destitute. Around that time she had to quit her job to become a caregiver for her elderly mother who had a severe stroke. She just poured out her heart in this email. I’m thinking, how can one person bear all this? Trouble!

I think about troubles I’ve been experiencing in my own life in recent weeks. Challenges. Things I did not plan for. They blindsided me. They caught me off guard. If I could tell you what they are . . . They are small in comparison to what some in this room are going through, but they’ve left me needing a refuge, needing strength, needing help. 

Trouble. It is an inescapable, inevitable reality in a fallen world. But it is our troubles that actually point us to the other reality, apart from which we could not survive the troubles we face. And what is that other reality? It is the first word of the verse—God. Elohim.

The all-powerful God. In the beginning, God, Elohim, created the heavens and the earth. He is the one who created and controls all the forces of nature. Nothing in this world happens by chance or outside of His knowledge and His control. He is the sustainer of this world. By Him all things hold together, and that includes us. 

Elohim! God! He is the one who is our refuge, our strength in the midst of trouble. He is the starting point. He is a fixed reference point in a world of shifting circumstances. He is more real than any circumstance, than any trouble that may touch your life or mine this day, or in the days to come. 

Notice the order in which these two realities are brought up. Which one comes up first? God. The point of this psalm, I think, is to say, "Start with God." We tend to start with our troubles. Ask somebody how they are doing. Ask me how I’m doing over these last several weeks, and I’ll tell you about my troubles. That is where we tend to start—with our circumstances, with this challenge, with this pressure, with this problem. But this passage says, “Start with God.” 

"God is our refuge, our strength, a very present help in trouble." He is what we need in trouble. We often think of all the other things we need or wish we had: a solution, relief, someone to sympathize with us. But this passage says, "No, turn to Him. He is our refuge."

He is our refuge. That means right now, this moment, today, and always will be because He is the God of the eternal present. He is the God of the present, of what is; not just what was, or what will be, though He is the God of those as well. And not just the God of what we wish was the case, but the God of what is. He is our refuge in the midst of present trouble.

He is our refuge. I love that it doesn’t just say He is: a refuge, a fortress, a strength, a help. He is not impersonal or generic. He is a personal God who eagerly comes to the rescue and aid of His people in trouble. God is our refuge. A refuge is a person or a place to which one flees for shelter or defense or protection. I think of those Old Testament cities of refuge, to which people in distress could flee to find safety and protection. Not only does God provide a place of refuge for us, but He Himself is our refuge, our safe place.

Dannah: Oh, thank you Nancy for those words. What a great reminder. Friend, if you are walking through trouble right now, take hope in the fact that He is your refuge. He is your safe place. He is your help.

“God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble” You might need to read Psalm 46:1 often, put it to memory, write this verse on a sticky note and put it on your bathroom mirror.

A friend of ours at Revive Our Hearts, Colleen Chao, has been walking through trouble for a while now. For the last couple of years, Colleen has been battling cancer. She is someone who is taking Psalm 46, verse 1 to heart. God is her refuge and strength. I want you to hear Colleen’s journey because it’s so inspiring. Here’s Colleen. 

Colleen: I’ve talked often about the crushing of Colleen, because man, at eighteen years old I had the world on a string. I was going to change the world. I was either going to be a missionary or a pastor’s wife. I was so ambitious and driven, and it was for good stuff. It was stuff God had put on my heart, but it was so full of me still that in my twenties I began a journey—probably even from eighteen years old on. I began a journey of being humbled and (I’ve said over and over again) being crushed. 

God has not let up, I would say, for probably twenty-five years of sending me circumstances and situations that would sift me out of things and make sure that His dreams were my dreams, and not my dreams taking the shape of me and what I thought it would look like to minister to people or what ministry meant. He was rewriting those things and redefining what it meant to walk with Him and serve people and love people. He’s done that through hardship.

You know what has shaped me, besides Scripture and an intimate relationship with Christ and experiencing His presence, has been the stories of past saints, past believers who grew up in a context where they suffered far beyond anything I’ve ever suffered. I always go back to their stories, especially in times of acute suffering, and it puts things in perspective for me. It helps me to have a little bit of a lighter heart and a more measured perspective on my own suffering, to reflect on these people who did count it all joy. 

I mean, you go back to Paul, who was happy. He considered it a privilege to suffer for Christ’s name. We don’t do that. That is not in our natural response: “Oh, I’m so grateful God has counted me worthy of suffering for Him.” That is not my inclination.

But when I study the lives of these believers who went before me and suffered in such incredible ways . . . The life of John Paton, you read about all the losses in his life and all the health issues and the near-death experiences and the relationships, the missionaries that would leave the field, and he was alone. It was just one loss after another grief after another loss. I’ll read a biography like that and I’m strengthened.

I can go into another day with a lighter heart and be able to laugh and be able to remember who I am. God’s created me to suffer and to enter into the fellowship of His sufferings. That’s why I’m here. It’s not to have a comfortable life; it’s not to have ease; it’s not to be successful or be an influencer. He’s called to enter in—like C.S. Lewis said, “Further up and further in.” So that’s joy. To be in Christ’s presence is joy, and Christ’s presence is often, for me, mostly keenly felt in suffering. There is a unique joy and purpose and mission when I am walking closely with Him in suffering.

I think through suffering, the joy has increased instead of decreasing or fading. God’s been gracious. I think it’s the result of surrounding myself with the stories of those past believers who model for me what it means to suffer in joy.

Suffering has been freeing. When left to my own devices, the bent is toward that pride and that selfishness and short-sightedness. But when suffering comes—and it’s come in different forms over the years—it forces me into Christ. It doesn’t give me an option. It’s, “Where else can I go, Lord? You have the words of life.”

Those words of life are alive when life is hard, and I don’t feel them as keenly when life is good and easy. So the suffering forces me into Christ. It’s like what Spurgeon said, “I have learned to kiss the wave that dashes me against the Rock of Ages.” God has used sufferings to force me into Himself, and that is freedom. Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.

For me, it’s taken hardship to force me into Him, to force me to experience Him and His love like I could never have experienced had life been easy. This suffering has been fashioned by God to take away the Colleen stuff that doesn’t need to be there, so that then I can live out of the heart that He has given me, that I can truly be the Colleen He’s been growing me more and more to be, like Him, and not have those small dreams. Like C.S. Lewis says, it’s like a child being content to play in a slum, in a mud puddle in a slum, instead of a vacation. I think in the early years I was content with the mud slum of my dreams, instead of understanding that God’s dreams are so much greater and so much more beautiful. They last into eternity.

So the crushing has had to happen so that I could live into His eternal realities and dreams for me.

Song: “Thank You for the Thorns” by Forever Be Sure

Thank You, loving Father, ever wise
For the ways that You faithfully refine.
Through the rain, You have made all Your goodness to shine;
Through pain, Your loving hand has reached this heart of mine.

Thank You for the thorns that never leave,
For the thorns that have pushed me to my knees,
For the thorns that will cleave to the worn and the weak,
These thorns to teach me that Your grace is all I need.

Thank You for a love so high, so great,
For a love that does not withhold the pain,
Faithful love of a Father in patient pursuit,
This love, this love, this love relentless to redeem, restore, renew.¹

Colleen: I find that what helps me stay grounded in the storms is multifaceted. It’s not one thing, it’s a bunch of things. I think over the years God’s kind of put different handles together for me. One of them is staying connected with my people. I can fly off the handle pretty quickly. I can go dark pretty quickly. I can withdraw and become private. I’m naturally a private person. But my people help me. My best friends and family help me to remember who I am and God’s faithfulness and what’s true. So, staying in joyful relationships with people who just take the pressure off. It’s low expectations. They’re not high maintenance; they’re just forgiving and gracious. They’re amazing people. I don’t deserve them, but they’re the people who walk with me through this.

Another thing is gratitude, and staying in the Word whether I feel like it or not. It’s not staying in the Word to have more head knowledge about the Bible, but to engage with God in season and out of season, if I can say it that way. No matter how I feel, that I’d be in the Word every day, that’s soul food. In Deuteronomy it says, “These are not idle words; this is your life.” It’s the very life in me, so I can’t do without that, the Word.

There are times through this grieving process where I don’t want to pick up my Bible. I’d rather check out and do something that doesn’t require any effort, but to stay engaged with Jesus in His Word is everything. That keeps me grounded.

Making a happy moment or dancing with my son or laughing with my husband or going for a walk and looking for beauty, and then trying to amplify that in my heart—making much ado about beauty, instead of letting my thoughts stay on the darkness and the hardness.

The song “Be Still, My Soul” has ministered so deeply to me. I mean, the hymns are so rich in their lyrics. It’s the idea that thorny ways lead to a joyful end—that is everything. 

When I began to experience thorny ways in my twenties, I was shocked. I thought, What’s happening? This is not what I signed up for! This isn’t what I dreamed of! God, You have a different plan than this, right? But to walk through so many different thorny ways over maybe the past twenty-five years and come to deeply long for and value the fact that heaven works backwards. That’s been a theme. C.S. Lewis talks about that in his book The Great Divorce. (I’m getting a little off-track from the song, but I’ll bring it around.) When we’re in heaven, we’re going to look back and see that the agonies were glories all along, and that the reality of heaven was there all along, we just couldn’t see it. 

So I think songs like “Be Still, My Soul” bring that heavenly reality into song. I can be still in my soul because God is good, and He’s with me. He’s designing these things for pure joy. Psalm 16 talks about that, “eternal pleasures at Your right hand.”

Dannah: I just love Colleen Chao. What a beautiful soul.

If you are walking through troubles this holiday season, take heart. He is with you, and as Colleen just shared with us, He walks us through it. It’s not always easy, but He’s there.

Maybe you aren’t walking through a trial right now, maybe it’s a friend of yours. If so, why not share this episode with them. It might calm their heart to hear from Nancy and Colleen.

I don’t know about you, but when I’m walking through trouble I want to ask “why?” Why God? In the dark it’s easy to lose sight of God’s strength and the way that He holds on to you. 

Have you thought about thanking Him for the health crisis, or the prodigal child, or the storm . . . that’s a hard one isn’t it? I can’t believe those words just came out of my mouth. But it’s in this place that you might be feeling Him closer than you ever did before . . . or you can, if you talk to Him.

Being thankful for our circumstances is hard, especially during trials. Revive Our Hearts wants to help you grow the muscle of gratitude. We’ve created a Gratitude That Sticks Bundle. It includes Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth’s book Choosing Gratitude, and some fun sticky notes that say "I Choose Gratitude." We hope you'll write things you're grateful for and stick them somewhere to remind yourself. The Gratitude That Sticks bundle is yours for a donation of any amount to support the ministry of Revive Our Hearts. It's our way of saying "thank you." To make a donation call 1-800-569-5959, or go to ReviveOurHearts.com/weekend and click where you see "Donate." 

You know, today we’ve heard alot about pain and hardships, but let me remind you of something: there can be moments of joy and laughter, even, in the midst of those hard times. I have a feeling that there will be lot’s of laughter around Colleen Chao’s Thanksgiving table. There will be praise and worship of our King, and there will be joy.

In fact, as you think about food and table decor for this Thursday, here’s a Thanksgiving tip from one of our new friends that joined us at True Woman. 

Woman: So to find that balance, I think about how joyful it is for people to celebrate that family and to have traditions and those food histories. Focus on that. Focus on that gratitude. Point to mindful eating.

Thanks for listening today. Thanks to our team: Phil, Blake, Rebekah, Justin, Michelle, Micayla, and for Revive Our Hearts Weekend, I’m Dannah Gresh

Revive Our Hearts is calling women to freedom, fullness, and fruitfulness in Christ.

¹“Thank You for the Thorns,” Forever Be Sure, Bountiful. ℗ 2017 Forever Be Sure.

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