I Have Hope

There's reversing in first Peter the talks about being grieved by various trials goes on to say that those trials allow for the tested genuineness of your faith more precious than gold that perishes, though it is tested by fire may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ.

Jeff and Sarah Walton know something about having your faith tested by trials.

Pain is pain and it can look a lot of different ways that we have grown so much in having the eyes to see other people who are hurting on and to know what has hurt us. When people have said unkind comments are insensitive and so were much more careful in how we say things in mind to give people the space to be able to grieve as well and not want to move them past it and all sorts of things you learn in that and you want to give that to others.

This is family life today hosts are Dave and Ann Wilson on Bob pain. You can find us online and family life today.com no one wants to go through trials. Nobody likes pain. The Bible says there's a purpose in our suffering will hear more about that today from Jeff and Sarah will stay with us and welcome to family life today. Thanks for joining us. Dave you been around weight rooms for a few years right you say Nick is a Isis or pop it out. I know that years ago you used actually lift the weight yourself using honey to isolate you, yet you did very heavy ones.

If somebody wants to develop those strong rippling muscles and fun. It is required that at some point in your weight training you have to add more weight, more resistance for the muscles to get stronger, don't you, yes you do about that thought came to mind is in the midst of the story were hearing this week as we got Jeff and Sarah Walton joining us guys, welcome back to family life today that you can clear that you guys have been through 16 years of weight training dozen years where it's been pretty intense for you guys, and it's been spiritual weight training and every time your muscles get a little stronger. The coach comes along and says Randall more weight to this end, just see what we can develop here and at night. I don't presume to know the mind of God in the providence of God and exactly what's going on are the purposes for that we can drive ourselves crazy. In fact your book, which is together through the storms is a book that takes the book of Job in the Old Testament and takes your circumstances and your marriage, and says there are some parallels here. Job went to God at the end of the book and said so I think I'm do some answers here and I got responded Jeff, he did not give them of the direct answer that he wanted and I think from that we can pull a tremendous amount of of wisdom. You know that God ultimately revealed himself to Job and we see that in the end. So Job rustles throughout the whole book and really who is God, and leaning back on his promises. I think one of the biggest things that is so easy you as I've read the book of Job. Prior to this, it fits right in the middle of the Bible, but yet I did not realize again that the full context that Job is writing this I could be one of the oldest written words right that's in the Bible so putting that in the context and Job did not have the Bible to refer to the Old Testament and so looking at what he was really wrestling with going through just the blow after blow day after day of just the trials and the pain and that the grief and then wrestling through the Lawson being separated by his wife more relationally and so I think at the end really seen him come to the fact that he demanded answers from God, but yet God did not give them the answer in a way that he wanted but gave him ultimately more of himself and how true is that of ourselves when we go through trial after trial.

We want a specific answer. A reason to why we are suffering but yet if he gave us an answer. The next time a trial would come we want an answer for that one and then we want an answer for the next one. But in less he gives us just who he is. If we can strip away everything and say I want you to be dependent on me solely end of question I want you to trust me because I am God, and I am sovereign over all things that should be enough for us to find our hope in a Savior like that and it was enough for Job, who ends the book by saying that now I have seen you and I put my hand over my mouth and I can rest in that right yeah yeah and if you think about even as we become Christians, we would say in I believe God is sovereign but when we are faced with something that doesn't seem like that is sovereign and we have to wrestle with that and we choose to really come to see God actually has been sovereign in us than we know it. In reality, and that's really what's happening with Job. He believed these things about God after all these different losses at the end he was then able to say now my eye has seen you because I've seen these things to be true. The losses you've experienced. Started early on in your marriage or son was born had a fever that spiked that led to ongoing health challenges and continuing to have the same level of challenges on the same frequency that he had back in. We was one of two years old is all right yeah it's changed somewhat in its nature. We found some medication has helped to some extent, so he feet had done well now he's now doing well in school, which is been a gift but it's a constant struggle for him. And let's actually need is on his 10th birthday he gave his life to Christ and what was really neat is how I shared on there is a lot of us very clear spiritual battle over him, and for a year.

We had him repeat a prayer on the wall that Jeff had written a lot of nights he would either scribble out or redirect up or he would just refuse the plants we pray over him during all this, he was just denying Christ and pushing up against all of our beliefs and just the I remember just so many nights of being in tears and trying to fight back when I'm trying to talk through things may be in his room and have your son tell you that he doesn't believe in Christ Taurus to pieces and so I committed to praying with him and sometimes it was through. Just me, praying that concede did not want anything to do with it but other times he would grit his teeth and he would say God if you are real and I don't believe in you God.

But if you are real. Will you come save me, and there are some other sentences onto that of really wanting him probably more of my crying out as well wanted him to see that you have nothing to lose. Cry out to God. Repent and we have a Savior that is ready to comfort and bring peace and bring light to where it is so dark in our house and by God's grace we saw that clearly and we've seen the fruit come from that that the breakthrough moment there. What happened in him that caused him to go. Okay, I'm ready to pray the prayer yeah I was very clear. I was actually going through an episode with him and part of it was very heartbreaking. Is he hated the struggle just as much as we did that sound like he was like in torment and debts. That is pretty much the best they can describe it.

It was like, and something else was tormenting him and so he would either feel like our enemy. No way he was treating us or he would be in a heap on the floor, sobbing, crying out, I don't if there's a God by when he changed me.

God won't do anything. I've asked him so many times there were so many days where he had that conflicting spirit in him you know where he would do something that was really really hard and maybe weather was verbal or physical and then later just kinda screaming out. I don't know I don't want to be this way. Help me Lord, help me not be this way and it's heartbreaking as a parent I did some years after years I sobbed and sobbed and it was this created this tension in us as parents of feeling. I hate this behavior and it's so hurtful and it would exhaust us and yet we felt heartbroken form at the same time as he hates it to exactly so. I remember this one night I it was a long, long battle with him and I was in his room with him for at least an hour and half, two hours and at that point, you're just physically and emotionally depleted because it's like a full out war and he just fell down. I think he ended up yelling out.

I want to stop but I just can't which was a frequent phrase of his, and I said then I know you do. That is why the only thing I can offer you is the Savior because I can't make you stop either, but I know he's powerful enough to meet you here and he is greater than this and I had said that before, but there was something different about that night and he just fell into heap on the floor and he started crying and he said I want that I want that.

I just don't know how and I talked him through just what Christ has done for us which we had talked about so many times but I mean it really personal for him as like you know, I know you feel deep down he feels such shame for what he has done and what he does do and how he comes across in ways he is hurt us and so he carries that.

So I talked about how Christ covers that shame. In Christ, is how it has taken that on the cross and he offers it to him and he ended up giving his life to Christ that night and he could just see the joy beaming on the kids face any neighbors just it is like he'd just been given the best gift he could ever have any what's been really neat for us. That is been a gift from the Lord because he still struggles neurologically and so there were times when, like how do I believe that that he's really been changed because I still see this awful things coming out, but he never once mentioned Satan again and he after that has truly desired to grow in the Lord.

He wants to do Bible study with my dad. He is wants to serve, and Alana is a little one a leader on anyone. He is in those good moments. He just thrives and then he comes how many struggles and an incredibly intense way and so there's that constant battle it still going on that we cry out for freedom for him because there many days, he just doesn't want to go on in it anymore, but we now have this hope that we can keep pointing into.

There is a date where this is going and what I hope to have because I can't guarantee that's going away in his lifetime.

I love your honesty or authenticity in your rawness in your book, and even You.

You talk about learning how to lead your family. He had this honest prayer in there like Lord, how can I lead my family when I feel so weak I felt that, and I still feel that in a tremendous way both for leaving Sarah and leaving my kids and feel my inadequacies greatly, but I think through these trials and the storms that we have faced God continues to to strip layers away and by his grace. Strip away the pride that send me the self-righteous attitude that's in me and reveal more of himself to me and I think that is been one of his greatest gifts is through all of this. Now that perseverance and the endurance that he has truly and still is certainly growing in me to lead and to lay down my life in a whole fresh new way that I wasn't doing before.

There are three people we have not talked about yet and they are Eliphaz and Bildad sons of those that are not. Those are Job's three friends in the book of Job, who, at the beginning of the book are amazing friends to him and who then turn into not so great friends right I think about them because for you guys to go through what you've gone through. You have to have a network of community some amazing friends who have come alongside it. If you've tried to do this without that, I don't know how you make it winded to realize without community without people who we can lean on when I can survive this to remember is probably part of another aspect of why we felt we needed to move. We were about 25 minutes from church, which to some people is nothing but a suburban community where usually if you go to church, you live within 510 minutes of it. We were trying to be plugged into a Bible study, but it was hard. People that really want to come out to us very much and it was hard to travel on weekday nights, things like that and we had my my parents who lived in the area who were God's provision for us at that time, especially when he was on call. They were on my emergency call 24 hours a day, but it did come to the point where we realized how much we needed the support not just practically speaking, but we needed the support spiritually. Really partly just wanted to be close to church is a big part of why we moved where we moved that it than family course and that has been such a sweet gift.

Actually when we were trying to move.

We knew we couldn't die because our situation and the area were looking to rent. There were no rentals so we were actually living with my parents for a time and just praying hard. Please put us where you want us we had desired to certain area, but we knew we had to have that openhanded and we ended up finding this one rental that went on it wasn't even on the market yet. We just heard about it so we called the guy and he said we could come over when we got there, he dirtied seven people through that day alone and had even gone up yet rag were never going to get this place that's not it, with four kids don't want want to write. We are getting called back like a few days later and we were the only ones that didn't have pets and we got the house and it literally is in walking distance to our church and that has been such a gift because it's made things that otherwise would be really challenging for us it's made it really feasible and if we were to go and have challenges we dilatory back home were, however, whatever the case would be and we are now in a community where there are a lot of people in the community and go to church as well, so our kids are getting to know other kids in that community in the Lord is very graciously provided a few friends, especially who know the deepest parts of our struggle. I was going to say that for a support system like that to really work. You guys have to be vulnerable enough and honest enough to be able say this is the mess were live in him you will and to do that without being bogged down by shame that can accompany that so often a lot of people never have the support they need because they're unwilling to let people around him know the mess that there live in them. But you guys about the so yeah it's hard and messy and we don't know the answers and were fighting our way through this and in those moments people can come around inside will help right yeah yeah and it's not like that all the time even if we are being vulnerable to other friends and ones that we know and feel like we can share our story with it doesn't even always guarantee that they're ready to handle that. And so there was a small group that we were in for a while and and more just from the standpoint of needing like we needed to transition to another life group to be in. That wasn't anything to do with the first one, but I think just with our heaviness and what we were going through at the time. God placed us in in a different small group that really could encourage us and again you know in a unique way to be that support system for some we have learned through some these hardest days. Just the sweetness of the body of Christ and what they are truly there for and we we've learned so much through that and I'm thinking of second Corinthians chapter 1 that tells us that were able to comfort others with the comfort we received. You've been you been on the receiving end of this but I'm sure at the same time you have opportunities now to be able to reach another people's lives.

And so we've been through this and God will see you through yeah and you know it's been interesting is some of the areas of life that we have been moved into because of specific situations. For example, we run a special needs group that I never could imagine being in before, but that ended up being such a neat opportunity to share Christ with the minimart believers and so to be able to understand some of what they were going through and then be able to see that we could really understand. I also open up really cool opportunities to share the gospel with them in the hope that we had and on top of that, I think we've also had to learn friends can only enter in so much and that's been really important for us to learn because you can also to have expectations of others that they're going to be able to fully understand what you're going through and one of the things that's hard about the nature of our situation is our son can actually look completely normal and outside and we can go to church and you can look fine and then we can walk in the door and totally different story.

And so be very lonely because most people don't actually we could get by with people not happening. So we have to reach out to people for sharply also have to realize they can only understand so much so we need to be open to letting them enter.

Inasmuch as they can because generally people want to even if they don't know how on and they will given the way they know they can give and to be able to extend the grace to that that is what the Lord allowed them or at the capacity they can at that point and so starting to make sure where looking to Christ. First and foremost for that comfort enemies allowed a lot of neat opportunities with other families that have been in similar situations are completely different situations and no pain is pain that can look a lot of different ways but we have grown so much in having the eyes to see other people who are hurting and to know what has hurt us. When people have said unkind comments are insensitive and so were much more careful in how we say things and wanting to give people the space to be able to grieve as well and not just want to move them tested and that all sorts of things you learn and not that, then you want to give that to others as well. So as you look forward. I sense hope the parties like cannot be real low storms that you guys have lived through, but you're still in storms. How do you find hope, because hope is. I mean it's visceral you can lay in bed without hope, and you don't want to get up and if you have hope it can drive you, motivate you to have hope and if you do were to come from.

Yeah, I think the biggest thing for me is that hope is not something that I can just find on one day and allow that to carry me through this life and so for me and I know for Sarah's well. The biggest thing that we can do is start her day in the word and not let it just be that a one time morning and then close the book, but really what is it look like of trying to carry that out through her day in and being more intentional and or our prayer life and not that we are certainly perfect on on any of those fronts.

But wanting God's word to be what is central to our life in our marriage and it is a daily being brought back to his truths and remembering and then reflecting in her own marriage, remembering his faithfulness and also we do face next storm recalling in and to her mind how he brought us through the last one and we don't have all the answers but yet we know he is faithful and he is good and through that if we can walk with that endurance and that persevering spirit and it's only by his grace that we are here today and and still someone in liking each other and actually you know what you just said in the Bible it said in Romans five is looking to pull up on my that's one of the pimp nickel verses that have been for me that through him we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand and we rejoice in the hope of the glory of God. Not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God's love has been poured into our hearts to the Holy Spirit who has been given to us and that's really been. I think a very clear picture of what the path is looked like is it has been one storm after another, but we can see how God has grown our endurance through each one. How we respond differently to each one. They come, but it's the hope comes from the endurance and then we see the character of Christ growing in us and that is what feels that hope is that we see he is active and alive in us, which means he's doing something through this we don't have to know the end of the story. How was your marriage better today than it was five years ago totally different.

I would say we were we got along with each other but we had to be surface because of his almost all we could handle the Lord took us through quite a tornado. I don't know maybe a couple years ago or little less than that, where he allowed all those feelings to surface and things to come to the surface that we have been having to push to the side for too long and that was probably the lowest point in our marriage that we didn't know if we could go from go on from that but what I remember very clearly is there is this had a strong desire just for Jeff to be able to know and understand what I had been going through and I just kept trying to explain it to him in so many different ways and it never got anywhere and the Lord finally brought me to the point we have a chapter in the book that says you can't change your spouse's heart and that I think to me has been the most pinnacle realization in our marriage that as soon as we start looking to each other to think the other person is the solution to our problem. We always go nowhere good as soon as we tries to Christ and his word, which is what we started doing realize we are not going anywhere good by trying to change each other or convince each other to see our position here and I started going to the word and praying. Honestly, Lord. I feel like I need Jeff to see these things to me it seems like it would help if he could understand and enter into this but I have to trust that you know what he needs to see more than I need to and I need to fix mass on you more than you need to fix them on him and he started doing the same thing else in our conversations became slower and more fruitful. They were easy. We had to go through really hard conversations and deal with some really really challenging things but we started to grow, trust in our relationship.

Again, we started to see the other person not trying to change us, but seeing that they really honestly wanted to grow themselves, which pulls you together draws you to each other and that increased and there was some really awesome things that God did it was like he just blew balls down an amazingly short time for some of the things that we had been going on for a really long time is really his grace and he started to restore trust in our relationship started to teach us to communicate better about things that we didn't really want to have to tell each other. It affected all different parts or marriage intimacy. I say was a hard part to you and that began to grow in the trust area and so that was a really sweet clear evidence of God holding onto us, but he doesn't want us to stay just surviving.

You know he wants to grow us. He wants us to be in a place where we are thriving in him. But we can't drive in our marriage and surviving in Christ what you described round here we call it going vertical logo. I also alert you that was the is your say no yes that is a beautiful description of what it means I'm not confined life from my spouse. Although it's good thing to grasp that I can only find real life from Christ, I'm not didn't sit here listening to you reading your book, you model that hiring you to give other families and couples in even single people are going through a storm. Hope I'm wondering if one of you would pray for those that are listening, they're just going through some storms right now yeah sure adapted to father, we thank you so much for this time.

We thank you for your word.

We thank you for your son Jesus Christ who is our Savior and our Lord, and apart from you, Lord, we are nothing. We pray for those listeners right now that are hurting, that have their own storm trying to recover from their past storm have no idea how to move forward have so many questions of why and how we us that your spirit would give them strength for today would not be anxious about tomorrow but just give them your strength for today and your peace that surpasses all understanding.

Father, you are good.

I pray Lord that they would see that that there are site would be fixed on you father. We love you and we thank you, praise you in Jesus name, amen. Go squeeze us in, because when you ask about hope and you guys both with Romans five I went somewhere else.

I went to Lamentations 3 that I just have to read… This I call to mind.

Therefore, I have hope. So what you call to mind when you don't have a hope the steadfast love of the Lord never ceases, his mercies never come to an end.

There are new every morning great is your faithfulness.

The Lord is my portion, says my soul. Therefore I will hope in him and you guys are a great illustration of that your book is so helpful in that regard, we get copies of your book in our family look to the resource center. Thank you for being here, and for sure in your story and bring us in on the inside of thank you so much and I will bring in David Robbins, the personal family life, who has been listening in on our conversation this week as we been talking about the challenges you guys have gone through.

I think a lot of our listeners were probably nodding their head thinking we have our own challenges.

Our marriage has been through storms and that can be discouraging. It is a normal part of life on this side of heaven and at minimum, the challenges are an invitation from God to trust him and to know him more intimately and I've been listening to Jeff and Sarah's story and it's been surfacing for me the value of learning how to limit well. It reminds me of another conversation we had on family life today.

Would Steve argue when he said the enemy of faith is not dealt with silence and difficult life situations and circumstances can introduce doubt about God's goodness in his power and that's not always a problem.

The problem is when we don't process, those doubts and just try to stuff them and ignore them. 1/3 of the Psalms or Psalms of lament lament is expressing raw and honest prayers to our sovereign and compassionate Abba father. It's a form of worship. I'm grateful that Jeff and Sarah modeled really well. Thank you, David.

That's helpful.

I hope our listeners will get a copy of Jeff and Sirs book together through the storms.

It's a book or making available this week to family like today listeners. We think this is such a helpful book. We want to provide it for anybody who can make a donation to help with the ongoing support of this radio program and all that we do here at family life. Your donation provides the funding for syndicating and producing this program, our website, our resources all that we do you make possible.

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We appreciate you now. Tomorrow will introduce you to a couple who were deep in debt. I mean deep in debt with no clear path out and yet they found they decided to take the deposition seriously will introduce you to Brian ensuring low and will share their story with you tomorrow to infer that I got engineer today. Keith Lynch along with our entire broadcast team on behalf of the host Steve and Anna Wilson about pain will see you back next time for another edition of family life, family life today is a production of family life of Little Rock, Arkansas. A clue ministry help for today hope for tomorrow