About our guests this week:
Sarah is a blogger and the author of Hope When It Hurts. Jeff works in healthcare technology sales. Sarah and Jeff are members of The Orchard Church in Chicago, and have four young children.
Encouragement from this episode:
Jeff and Sarah shared about—
- How to keep your marriage strong through times of suffering
- Keeping your eyes on Christ in the midst of trials
- Having an eternal perspective that shapes the way you respond to difficulty
- Honoring God and remaining faithful through seasons of waiting
Jeff and Sarah’s book:
Quotes from this episode:
“It’s about being able to pray, ‘Lord, whatever it takes, let you be my greatest delight, and keep me dependent on you. Whatever it takes, let my heart be abandoned to you.’”
“Ultimately, through our trials God is bringing us more of Christ. It’s not because he wants us to suffer just so that he can sit back and feel nothing. He grieves with us.”
“Rather than look at our circumstances not in light of what we’re losing, let’s take them to Christ, and see that there might be something greater in this loss.”
Devotional transcript:
In the middle of the book of Job, he replies to his friends, “For I know that my Redeemer lives, and at the last he will stand upon the earth. And after my skin has been thus destroyed, yet in my flesh I shall see God, whom I shall see for myself, and my eyes shall behold, and not another.” (Job 19:25-27 ESV)
Our hope in all situations – married or single, grieving or rejoicing, in every trial and every kind suffering – is that we belong “body and soul, both in life and death to our faithful Saviour Jesus Christ.” You might already know that this is from the first answer to the first question in the Heidelberg Catechism. Of course, Scripture memory is a great, comforting tool to use and this little paragraph also may be something you’d like to commit to memory, because it sums up so much of God’s promises for us in his word.
I love how it goes on to say that, “He has fully paid for all my sins with his precious blood, and has set me free from the tyranny of the devil. He also watches over me in such a way that not a hair can fall from my head without the will of my Father in heaven; in fact, all things must work together for my salvation. Because I belong to him, Christ, by his Holy Spirit, assures me of eternal life and makes me wholeheartedly willing and ready from now on to live for him.”
Our prayer for you, friend, is that as you face your own particular storms, you will be reassured and ever confident in God’s presence with you and his faithfulness to work all things for your good and his glory.