I Have Hope

There's a verse in 1 Peter that talks about being grieved by various trials. It 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, 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 or insensitive. And so we're 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 past it.

And there's all sorts of things you learn in that, but then you want to give that to others as well. This is Family Life Today. Our hosts are Dave and Ann Wilson. I'm Bob Lapine.

You can find us online at familylifetoday.com. No one wants to go through trials. Nobody likes pain.

But the Bible says there's a purpose in our suffering. We'll hear more about that today from Jeff and Sarah Walton. Stay with us. And welcome to Family Life Today.

Thanks for joining us. Dave, you've been around weight rooms for a few years, right? You're saying that because I'm so big?

Can't you tell because he looks so good? Because my biceps are popping out of my— I know that years ago you used to actually lift the weights yourself. Oh, years ago. That's funny.

That's funny. How many do I still lift weights? Oh, you. Yes, you do. Not very heavy ones, but a few. If somebody wants to develop those strong, rippling muscles— Where is he going with this one? This isn't even funny.

It does require 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, Bob. That thought came to mind in the midst of the story we're hearing this week because we've got Jeff and Sarah Walton joining us. Guys, welcome back to Family Life Today. Thank you. Great to be here. You guys have been through 16 years of weight training, maybe a 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, we're going to add a little more weight to this and just see what we can develop here. And I don't presume to know the mind of God and the providence of God and exactly what's going on or the purposes for that, and 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 due some answers here, and how did God respond to him, Jeff? He did not give him the direct answer that he wanted, and I think from that we can pull a tremendous amount of wisdom, you know, that God ultimately revealed himself to Job, and we see that in the end. So, Job wrestles 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 know, 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, the full context that Job is writing this, and it could be one of the oldest written words that's in the Bible.

So, putting that into 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 the grief and then wrestling through the loss and being separated by his wife more relationally. And so, I think at the end, really seeing him come to the fact that he demanded answers from God, but yet God did not give him the answer in a way that he wanted, but he 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 that answer, the next time a trial would come, we'd want an answer for that one, and then we'd want an answer for the next one. But unless 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 and a savior like that. And it was enough for Job, who ends the book by saying, now I have seen you, and I put my hand over my mouth, and I can rest in that, right?

Yeah, yeah. I mean, if you think about, even as we become Christians, we would say, you know, I believe God is sovereign. But when we are faced with something that doesn't seem like God is sovereign, and we have to wrestle with that, and we choose to really come to see God actually has been sovereign in this, then we know it in reality.

And that's really what's happening with Job. He believed these things about God, but after all these different losses, at the end, he was then able to say, now my eye has seen you, because I have seen these things to be true. The losses you've experienced started kind of early on in your marriage, your son was born, had a fever that spiked, that led to ongoing health challenges and continuing to have the same level of challenges and the same frequency that he had back when he was one and two years old, is that right?

Yeah, it's changed somewhat in its nature. We've found some medication has helped to some extent, so he has done well now, he's now doing well in school, which has been a gift. But it's a constant struggle for him, and what's actually neat is, on his 10th birthday, he gave his life to Christ. And what was really neat is how I shared, there was a lot of very clear spiritual battle over him, and for a year, we had him repeat a prayer upon the wall that Jeff had written, and a lot of nights, he would either scribble it out, or he'd rip it up, or he would just refuse to pray it, and so we'd pray it over him. During all this, he was just denying Christ and pushing up against all of our beliefs, and I remember just so many nights of being in tears and trying to fight back when I'm trying to talk through things maybe in his room, and to have your son tell you that he doesn't believe in Christ tore us to pieces. And so, I committed to praying with him, and sometimes it was through just me praying that, because he 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 were some other sentences onto that, of really wanting him, probably more of my crying out as well, but wanted him to see that you have nothing to lose, cry out to God, repent, and we are 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.

The breakthrough moment there, what happened in him that caused him to go, okay, I'm ready to pray that prayer? Yeah, it was very clear. I was actually, I was going through an episode with him, and part of what was very heartbreaking is he hated the struggle just as much as we did. Yeah, it sounded like he was in torment.

It is. That is pretty much the best way you can describe it. It was like something else was tormenting him, and so he would either feel like our enemy in the way he was treating us, or he would be in a heap on the floor sobbing, crying out, if there's a God, why wouldn't he change me? God won't do anything.

I've asked him so many times. And 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 whether it was verbal or physical, and then later just kind of screaming out, I don't, you 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. Oh, I would sob.

Oh, I did. Years after years, I sobbed and sobbed, and it 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 for him at the same time. Because he hates it too. Exactly. So I remember this one night. It was a long, long battle with him, and I was in his room with him for at least an hour and a 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, Ben, 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 a 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 to him about so many times. But I made it really personal for him. I was 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, and the ways he has hurt us.

And so he carries that. So I talked to him about how Christ covers that shame, and Christ has taken that on the cross, and he offers it to him. And he ended up giving his life to Christ that night, and you could just see the joy beaming on the kid's face.

I mean, it was like he'd just been given the best gift he could ever have. And I think what's been really neat for us that has been a gift from the Lord, because he still struggles neurologically. And so there were times where I'm like, how do I believe that he's really been changed, because I still see these 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 wants to serve in Awana as a little Awana leader. And when he is in those good moments, he just thrives. And then he comes home, and he struggles in an incredibly intense way. And so there's that constant battle that's still going on that we cry out for freedom for him, because there are many days he just doesn't want to go on in it anymore. But we now have this hope that we can keep pointing him to, there is a day where this is going to end.

And what a hope to have, because I can't guarantee that's going away in his lifetime. I love your honesty, your authenticity, and your rawness in your book. And even, Jeff, you talk about learning how to lead your family, and you have this honest prayer in there like, Lord, how can I lead my family when I feel so weak? Yeah, and I felt that, and I still feel that in a tremendous way, both for leading Sarah and leading my kids, and feel my inadequacies greatly. But I think through these trials and these storms that we have faced, God continues to strip layers away, and by His grace, strip away the pride that's in me, the self-righteous attitude that's in me.

And reveal more of Himself to me, and I think that has 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 and Zophar. Oh, those three. You mean my neighbors? Those aren't the other three friends. 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'm thinking about them because for you guys to go through what you've gone through, you have to have a network, a community, some amazing friends who have come alongside.

If you've tried to do this without that, I don't know how you make it. When did you realize without community, without people who we can lean on, we're not going to survive this? Do you remember? That was 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 in a suburban community where usually if you go to church, you live within five, 10 minutes of it. We were trying to be plugged into a Bible study, but it was hard. People didn't really want to come out to us very much, and it was harder to travel on weekday nights, things like that. And we had 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 and family, of course.

And that has been such a sweet gift. Actually, when we were trying to move, we knew we couldn't buy because of our situation, and the area we were looking to rent, there were no rentals. So we were actually living with my parents for a time and just praying, Lord, please put us where you want us. We had desired this certain area, but we knew we had to have that open-handed. And we ended up finding this one rental that went on that wasn't even on the market yet. We just heard about it. So we called the guy, and he said we could come over.

Well, when we got there, he had already had seven people through that day alone and hadn't even gone up yet. We're like, we're never going to get this place. We have four kids.

No one's going to want to rent four kids. We ended up getting called back 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'd be able to go right back home or however, whatever the case would be. And we are now in a community where there are a lot of people in that community that go to church as well.

So our kids are getting to know other kids in that community. And the Lord has 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 to say this is the mess we're living in. 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 them know the mess that they're living in. But you guys have had to say, yeah, it's hard and messy, and we don't know the answers, and we're fighting our way through this. And in those moments, people can come around and say, we'll help, right?

Yeah, yeah. And it's not like that all the time. I mean, 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 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 a different small group that really could encourage us and, again, in a unique way, kind of be that support system for us. And we have learned through some of these hardest days just the sweetness of the body of Christ and what they are truly there for, and we've learned so much through that. And I'm thinking of 2 Corinthians 1 that tells us that we're able to comfort others with the comfort we've received. You've been on the receiving end of this, but I'm sure at the same time you've had opportunities now to be able to reach into other people's lives and say, we've been through this and God will see you through it. Yeah, and you know what's been interesting is some of the areas of life that we have been moved into because of specific situations. For example, we were in a special needs group that I never could have imagined being in before, but that ended up being such a neat opportunity to share Christ with them.

Many of them weren't believers, and so to be able to understand some of what they were going through and them being able to see that we could really understand, it also opened up really cool opportunities to share the gospel with them and 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 have too high of 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 on the outside.

And we can go to church and he can look fine, and then we can walk in the door and totally different story. And so it can be very lonely because most people don't actually, we could get by with people not knowing what's happening. So we have to reach out to people for sure, but we also have to realize they can only understand so much.

So we need to be open to letting them enter in as much as they can because generally people want to, even if they don't know how. And they will give in the way they know they can give and to be able to extend the grace to that that is what the Lord has allowed them or at the capacity they can at that point. And so starting to make sure we're looking to Christ first and foremost for that comfort. And then he's allowed a lot of neat opportunities with other families that have been in similar situations or completely different situations. You know, pain is pain, and it 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 or insensitive. And so we're 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 past it.

And there's all sorts of things you learn in that that then you want to give that to others as well. So as you look forward, I sense hope, but part of me is like, can that be real? You know, 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. Do you have hope?

And if you do, where does it 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 as well, the biggest thing that we can do is start our day in the Word and not let it just be then a one time morning and then close the book. But really, what does that look like of trying to carry that out through our day and being more intentional in our prayer life? And not that we are certainly perfect on any of those fronts, but wanting God's Word to be what is central to our life and our marriage. And it is a daily being brought back to His truths and remembering and then reflecting in our own marriage, remembering His faithfulness. You know, so when we do face the next storm, recalling to our 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 still somewhat in liking each other, right?

Usually. I'm going to actually, you know, what you just said is in the Bible. It's in Romans 5.

Gee whiz, look what I pulled up on my – Is that what you pulled up? Romans 5. That's one of the pinnacle 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 through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us. And that's really been, I think, a very clear picture of what the path has looked like. It has been one storm after another, but we can see how God has grown our endurance through each one and how we respond differently to each one when they come.

But the hope comes from the endurance, and then we see the character of Christ growing in us, and that is what fuels 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 is your marriage better today than it was five years ago?

It's totally different. I would say we got along with each other, but we had to be surface because it was almost all we could handle. But the Lord took us through quite a tornado, I don't know, maybe a couple years ago or a little less than that, where He allowed all those feelings to surface and things to come to the surface that we had 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 on from that.

But what I remember very clearly is I had this 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's the solution to our problem, we always go nowhere good.

As soon as we turn our eyes to Christ and His Word, which is what we started doing, we realized we are not going anywhere good by trying to change each other or convince each other to see our position here. 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 my eyes on you more than you need to fix them on him. And he started doing the same thing, and all of a sudden our conversations became just a little more fruitful. They weren't 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 walls down, an amazingly short time for some of the things that we had been going on for a really long time.

It was really his grace. And he started to restore trust in our relationship. He 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 of our marriage.

Intimacy obviously was a hard part too, 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. He wants to grow us.

He wants us to be in the place where we are thriving in him, but we can't thrive in our marriage unless we're thriving in Christ. What you described around here, we call that going vertical. Isn't that what we call it, right?

I hope so, vertical marriage. That was, I mean, as you were saying that, yes, that is a beautiful description of what it means. I'm not going to find life from my spouse, although it's good. I can find good things, but I can only find real life from Christ. And I'm not kidding.

Sitting here, listening to you, reading your book, you model that. You're inspiring. Thank you. It should give other families and couples and even single people that are going through a storm hope. I'm wondering if one of you would pray for those that are listening that are just going through some storms right now. Yeah, sure.

I'd be happy 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, are trying to recover from their past storm, have no idea how to move forward, have so many questions of why and how. God, we ask 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. And I pray, Lord, that they would see that their sight would be fixed on you. Father, we love you, and we thank you and praise you in Jesus' name.

Amen. I've got to squeeze this in, because when you ask about hope, and you guys both went to Romans 5, I went somewhere else. I went to Lamentations 3, and I just have to read it. It says, This I call to mind, therefore I have hope. So what do you call to mind when you don't have hope? The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases. His mercies never come to an end.

They're 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've got copies of your book in our Family Life Today Resource Center. Thank you for being here and for sharing your story and bringing us in on the inside of it.

Thank you so much. And I want to bring in David Robbins, the president of Family Life, who has been listening in on our conversation this week as we've been talking about the challenges you guys have gone through. I think a lot of our listeners were probably nodding their head, thinking, We've had our own challenges.

Our marriage has been through storms, and that can be discouraging. Yeah, 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 lament well. It reminds me of another conversation we had on Family Life Today with Steve Argue when he said, In difficult life situations and circumstances can introduce doubt about God's goodness and His power. And that's not always a problem.

The problem is when we don't process those doubts and we just try to stuff them and ignore them. A third of the Psalms are Psalms of lament. Lament is expressing raw and honest prayers to our sovereign and compassionate Abba Father, and it's a form of worship that I'm grateful that Jeff and Sarah have modeled really well.

Yeah. Thank you, David. That's helpful. I hope our listeners will get a copy of Jeff and Sarah's book, Together Through the Storms. It's a book we're making available this week to Family Life 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 every time you make a donation to keep Family Life Today healthy and strong. And we appreciate those of you who have donated in the past, those of you who are regular monthly legacy partners, thank you for your support. If you can help with the donation today, request your copy of Jeff and Sarah Walton's book, Together Through the Storms. It's our thank you gift to you in return for your donation. You can donate online at familylifetoday.com, or you can call to donate. 1-800-FL-TODAY is the number, 1-800-358-6329.

That's 1-800-F as in Family, L as in Life, and then the word TODAY. Thanks in advance for your support. We appreciate you. Now, tomorrow we're going to introduce you to a couple who were deep in debt, I mean deep in debt, with no clear path out. And yet, they found a path.

They decided to take the debt issue seriously. We'll introduce you to Brian and Sherry Lowe, and they'll share their story with you tomorrow. Hope you can tune in for that. I want to thank our engineer today, Keith Lynch, along with our entire broadcast production team. On behalf of our hosts, Dave and Ann Wilson, I'm Bob Lapine. We'll see you back next time for another edition of Family Life Today. Family Life Today is a production of Family Life of Little Rock, Arkansas, a crew ministry. Help for today. Hope for tomorrow.