Welcome to Hope in the Morning. turning tragedies and tears into testimonies of hope. The path to peace starts with despair. That might seem like an odd statement, but hang with me. If you are in the depths of anxiety and despair, today's episode is for you.
If you are longing for the peace of God, you must know that it is only derived from peace with God. My guest today is a pastor and the author of a powerful book on anxiety and the peace that surpasses all understanding. Pastor Artovanis, thank you for joining us today on Hope in the Morning. Thanks so much for having me. Grateful to be here.
You know, I finished reading your book this past week, and I have to tell you, it is probably one of my new favorite books. I think that it's just been it's one of those books that I find myself telling people about over and over because You know, yes, it's geared toward anxiety, but it's really for anybody. Because all of us as Christians at times struggle with anxious thoughts. That's part of being in the flesh. What inspired you to write this book, Consider It the Lilies?
You know, I would say initially, well, first of all, thanks for your encouragement. I was grateful for the opportunity to write. As far as the inspiration and the heart behind it, you know, I was. Kind of I I would say it has multiple tiers. Initially when I went into ministry I worked at a camping ministry in c uh central California called Hume Lake and I was around You know, a couple thousand students a week on average.
And I was running 26 weeks or so of camp a year.
So I was just kind of always around students, their counselors, and their pastors. And one of the themes that became very apparent, as I mentioned this in the book, from my exposure to teens, was just that they were anxious. You know, one of the things that we have to do in a camp setting is distribute the meds at the end of the evenings. And I just found that even in my time there, it became much more prominent. And, you know, people often say, hey, this is a growing pandemic amongst maybe young people today.
But it wasn't just the students. It was their counselors. It was their pastors. And if someone wasn't anxious, they were at least ministering to someone who was. And so I just realized the prevalence of the problem.
A lot of people are anxious. And I went from there to a Christian university in Southern California. And you would think that maybe in this more staunch theological environment where students are attending Bible classes, going to Bible preaching chapels and going to Bible preaching churches. That they would be less anxious, but you found it very real even there. You know, one-third, I think, of young adults in the last couple years have considered the question: should I take my life?
And that's not just out in the world, that's in the church. And then I went from there, and now I'm a pastor, as you mentioned, of Stonebridge Bible Church in Franklin, Tennessee. And we're a very multi-generational church. We have a lot of kids, we have some senior saints, and this is a struggle that. Affects the people of God of all ages.
And I think the heart behind it initially was to minister to them, encourage them, encourage my own heart. We're all prone to be anxious. And I felt like at the time there was maybe A theme that, and we can get into this, a specific theme or specific vein by which I wanted to encourage and potentially even challenge, as Jesus does at times, the anxious, despairing, and the fearful, with, I would say, the reoccurring theme in the scripture of how God responds to those who are anxious. Yeah, you know, I actually thought that that was a great point in your book that you do talk about how God responds to anxiety. How does God respond to anxiety?
Yeah, no, it's a great question because it's really the only question that matters. You know, I think, first of all, I used to do this seminar at Hume Lake when I would say, hey, at three o'clock today in the afternoon during your free time, we're going to do an optional seminar entitled, I think I called it, What Does Jesus Say About My Anxiety? or What does the Bible Say About My Anxiety? And sometimes we're just assuming that, okay, the Bible must say something. But first of all, if the Bible does speak to this issue, then it means that God knows about it and God has an answer, you know, for our anxiety, which alone is encouraging.
But how I trace the book, I first want to make the argument, or at least would want to ground people in the understanding that many godly men and women in the scripture deeply struggle with anxiety. You could start just from the beginning. Moses is probably, you would say, R.C. Sproul used to say, the most influential man in the Old Testament. He's the giver of the law.
And God commissions Moses to go to Egypt and to tell Pharaoh, let my people go. And in that moment, Moses says, send someone else. And then he says, I can't. Talk good, and he's very anxious. There's other moments throughout his ministry where he's deeply anxious.
You would have to go from Moses to, if he's the giver of the law, the law's most faithful communicator and guardian would have been Elijah. Elijah has this great moment in 1 Kings 18 where he declares that Yahweh is the only true God. He calls down fire to, you know, from heaven. He prays, and it doesn't rain a single drop for three and a half years. And then he defeats 851 false prophets of Baal.
In the following chapter, He's so despairing, so depressed, so despondent because he's running from Jezebel. That he begs God to take his life. And that's in just two chapters. You'd go to David. You know, there are 42 kings in the Old Testament.
Only one of them is referred to as a man after God's own heart. That man's name is David. David is a I use the term he's a bad man. I mean, that guy is a warrior. He's strong.
Whatever your idea is of a man's man. It's David, of whom it is sung, he's slain his 10,000s. And yet David is the author of half of the Psalms, and 33% of the Psalms are Psalms of lament, where people are pouring out their heart to God. David says at one point in the Psalms, every single night I make my bed swim with my own tears. Where are you, God?
David is depressed. You know, we talk about David being anointed king at a young age, but for 10 years of his life, he's fleeing on the run from his father-in-law, Saul. He's hiding in caves and in the woods. And then even after that, he is abandoned and betrayed by his own son, by his own people. And there's a lot of moments where he's despairing.
And then, just the last example I would say is. You know, there are 15 times the Hebrew word Tom is used in the Old Testament. It means blameless. Only one of those times does it refer to a man, and that man's name is Job. And if you know anything about the story of Job, in the first chapter of the book that bears his name, it says that Sabaeans, Chaldeans, wind, and fire consume everything.
His kids are dead. His livestock are dead or stolen. And he's sitting in a pile of dirt. Scraping his boils with a shard of pottery as his wife tells him to curse God and die. And you know the initial response is, hey, naked I have come from my mother's womb, naked I will return, blessed be the name of the Lord.
But by the middle of the book, Job is saying that his whole life has been tuned to the sound of your word, mourning. He says he's a companion of jackals, and he's asking God, where are you? He's anxious, he's fearful, he's depressed.
Now, you have to ask the question. How does God respond to these individuals? How does he respond to Moses, Elijah, David, and Job? Heroes of the faith.
Well, in each of those circumstances, God does not respond by saying, let me tell you why this is happening. He responds by saying, let me tell you who Who I am. He responds by proclaiming his character. When Moses is anxious, God responds and says, Moses, who made man's mouth? Is it not I, the Lord?
And then he goes on to proclaim his character. With David, he proclaims his character. With Elijah, he proclaims his character. And then with Job, if you know anything about the book of Job, the last four chapters are God's magnum opus on his own power and sovereignty and mercy. He says, Job, gird your loins.
And then he asks Job the questions about who he is as a sovereign king, as a loving and caring provider. And so that's the main theme of my book. It's really on the attributes of God, seven of the attributes of God that give us peace and comfort. Because if God says, hey, let me tell you who I am in the Old Testament, you'd have to ask the question, well, how does Jesus respond in the New Testament?
Well, Because our God never changes, neither does the prescription that he provides to those who are anxious. In the New Testament, Jesus is addressing people who are anxious, and we say, Well, they weren't dealing with what I'm dealing with.
Well, they were under the regime of Rome in Matthew 6. Rome was known for crucifying men, women, and children for 40 miles leading up into a city. They had just chopped off the head of John the Baptist, the greatest man they had. the first prophet in 400 years. They had chopped off his head.
So living under the regime of Rome wasn't nothing. It was fearful. They were getting taxed. They were oppressed. And they had anxieties and worries regarding their family, their finances, and their future.
And Jesus looks at all of them and says, Be anxious for nothing. but grateful he doesn't stop there. He continues to remind them of who their God is, who their father is. And he says, Hey, look at the birds of the air and consider the lilies, hence the title of my book. And he says, If God cares for, provides for those lilies, how much more does he care, provide for those who are made in his image?
And so. God in the Old Testament, God in the New Testament, and God to this day is always responding to encourage those who are anxious and fearful with the proclamation of his character.
So we can only have peace that's as deep as our understanding is the character of God. And that's the main. I think the focus of the scripture of Philippians 4, Paul says, be anxious for nothing. And then he continues to say, But by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving, let your request be made known to God. But he says that only after acknowledging that God is near and he's faithful and he's with us.
And so sometimes we just take these statements like, hey, stop being anxious. But the Bible's never just. Whack-a-mole the anxious, if that's fair. It's telling us all the reasons why we don't need to be in light of the character of God. Yeah.
Well, when we come back, we're going to talk about the other part of Philippians. It talks about what we should dwell on and Dive into the fact that you talk a lot in your book also about the fact that there is a battle of the mind that happens, and that really is where this battle is won. And before we go to break, real quick, too, I want to mention one of my favorite things that you say that just stuck in my mind is that men are not made of steel. You know, you talk about David being this man's man, but we're not made of steel, and God knows that we are made of dust, we are frail and feeble, and God knows that. And yet, He does not make Himself removed from us.
He comes down and He bends down to listen when we pray.
So, when we come back, we're going to talk about how we can battle for our peace with the Lord in our mind. Join us in a moment on Hope in the Morning. Do you have a heart to comfort the hurting? Do you want to show the world that through Jesus Christ we can have hope in all circumstances?
Well, then we welcome you to visit hopeinthemorning.org and see how you can join us in these ministry endeavors. May you be encouraged by who our God is as you continue this episode of Hope in the Morning. To learn more, visit us at hopeinthemorning.org. Hope in the Morning allows you to lean into the suffering of others and helps equip you to purposefully mourn with and meaningfully minister to those suffering in your midst. May these testimonies cause you to see our God with fresh and thankful eyes.
And may you seek to be His hands and feet to every weary heart. Visit hopeinthemorning.org to learn how you can partner with us in ministry. Have you ever struggled to comfort a grieving friend? John 11:35 says, Jesus wept. When Jesus was told by Mary and Martha that their brother Lazarus had died, Jesus wept.
Today on Hope in the Morning, we invite you to learn what it looks like to weep with those who weep. Learn what it means to sit in the ashes and be encouraged that even in our morning, there's hope. His name is Jesus. Visit hopeinthemorning.org to learn more. Welcome back to Hope in the Morning.
I wrote a poem a couple months ago, actually, after listening to my pastor preach about anxiety. And he said something that always will stick with me. It says, A right view of God transforms anxious thoughts from what if. To worshipful thoughts of even if.
So, this poem was born out of that, and it's called Even If. Weary mind filled with fret over things that haven't happened yet. Anxious thoughts swirl and sway, robbing me of joy and praise. What if my loved one is too ill? What if my broken heart won't heal?
What if the baby in the womb Is ushered swiftly to the tomb? What if my sickness has no cure? What if I must endless pain endure? What if my marriage can't be mended? All of these fearful thoughts attended a faith that was lacking in trust.
A faith that forgot who my Jesus is, that he is compassionate and I am His. He has not left anything to chance. Both my joys and my sorrows are in His hands. He is mighty though I am weak, and He rescues me in waters deep.
So with a mind now steadied with his peace, He gives new eyes for me to see That even if My loved one is too ill, even if my broken heart won't heal. Even if the baby in the womb Is ushered swiftly to the tomb, Even if my sickness has no cure, Even if I must endless pain endure, Even if my marriage can't be mended, In my sorrow I am never unattended. He is faithful and righteous and filled with grace.
So I will repent of all my anxious thoughts and set my mind on worship and praise. Joining me today is pastor and author Johnny Ardovanis, and he has written what has now become one of my favorite books, which is called Consider the Lilies. And it talks to us about how we have the antidote to anxiety, and it is rooted in reminding our minds and our hearts of the character of God. Johnny, thank you again for joining us today. I'm grateful to be here.
No, thank you.
So, you talk about in your book about how our minds are a battleground. Can you expound on that a little bit? Yeah, you know, you'd have to just look from a thematic perspective throughout the scripture. What is the Christian life? John Stott once said that the Christian life, the sum and substance of it, is what you do with your mind.
Proverbs 23 says, as a man thinks within himself, so he is. It says, we are to love the Lord our God with all of our heart, soul, mind, and strength. Romans 12, 2 says, do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Your mind determines your affections, your fears. And in the scripture, when God is talking to the anxious, so much of it has to do with the way that they're thinking.
And he wants to ground their thinking in what Paul says in Philippians 4, 6, you know, whatever is true and noble and excellent and lovely, of good repute, dwell on these things, because we don't just snap out of anxiety. Jesus doesn't ever go up and down a line and say, all right, tell me what you're anxious about.
Okay, that's illegitimate or that's legitimate. He's calling everyone who's anxious, regardless of what it may be. And he's going to ground our... thinking in the promises and in the character of God. But there's much uh you know, there's a reality there in regards to our mind.
You know, I think a lot of people wonder why they're anxious. But I think part of it is they may pray, God, take away my anxiety. But that's a lot different than saying, God, would you help me to meditate upon your character throughout the day? Would you help, would you guard my eyes? The average person spends seven hours a day looking at a screen and then they wonder why they're anxious, but they're processing tragedy after tragedy on their phone.
You know, we used to wake up and read the newspaper and we could only try process tragedy one day at a time. But now we live in a world where people are crippled by anxiety and they wonder why, but it's often because of what they're feeding their mind. And so, yeah, we have to be careful of what we let in. That's 2 Corinthians 10:5. We're to take every thought captive.
And so much of. Our growth in any arena, right? Because if we're gonna wanna, if it's sexual purity or anxiety and worry in an ungodly sense, Which we can talk about more. When does a good concern become an ungodly worry? And that should be delineated.
But whatever it may be, That's always rooted in our mind, and we see that throughout the scripture. That's why when Jesus is teaching on the subject of anxiety, he's wanting them to think. And he says, Hey, and he uses visuals like we would do with children, but he's the best teacher there ever was. And he says, Hey, look at those birds. Do the birds elect captains of food acquisition?
It says in Matthew 11 that two of those birds are sold for a single penny. And then Jesus is saying, hey, think with me. If God provides for them, How much more is he going to provide for you? And then he takes us again to the lilies and says, Hey, look at the lilies of the field. They don't sow nor reap.
And yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all of his glory was clothed like one of these. He's wanting us to begin to reason with him. And that's the way that God operates in his word because often we're thinking about maybe our troubles, our worries, and we're failing to focus and fix our gaze on who God is and what he said. And it really has to do with what the nature of faith is.
Sometimes people say, hey, I've placed my faith in God. But faith is not a once-upon-a-time reality. It's an everyday need. We're to walk by faith. And what does walking by faith even mean?
Well, Oswald Chambers. Used to say that to live by faith is to live in such a way where you're fixing your gaze actively and consistently on God, which has to do with your mind. You can't say, I'm placing, I'm placing my faith in God today without exercising your mind. And so those things go together. We're the sum and substance of what we feed our life and feed our mind.
And so we see that just as a reoccurring reality in the New Testament and in the old. Yeah, you know, I think a lot of times when we don't take those thoughts captive or when we're not dwelling on the character of God or when our prayers are just simply, Lord, take this thorn out of my flesh per se, you know, take this anxiety away from me. Anxiety actually can pretty quickly lead to depression if not dealt with in the mind. And I think a lot of times, too, when we ruminate on our anxiety and we think, oh, man, I can't come to the throne because, man, God's not going to want to see all these anxious thoughts. And I could never confess this to the church because what if people think I'm not a believer if I'm stirring up all this?
Anxiety, then that quickly does lead to depression, and depression can lead to despair. And that is not where the Lord wants us to be. And, you know, playing off of that, what would you say is like, why is it so important for us to not only not isolate the spiritual from the physical, but why is it important that we Not take it as a lump sum, but instead deal with the individual with these issues. When you say lump sum, are you talking about within the church or within our own life? Yeah, I would say within the church, like not treating like a one-size-fits-all, but really knowing the individual and addressing the individual as well.
You had said that it's important to treat people as individuals when we address anxiety and despair. Yeah, well I think, you know, there's a few different I think if you're looking at it from like a a The family of God perspective within the church. You know, as a pastor, I'm not just an author writing from like a highbrow tower of like I've arrived. You know, I'm working with people who have anxiety and worry within my own heart. There's a couple things that I'd want to maybe just establish with someone that I was talking to at coffee that's anxious.
I would say, first of all, remember the people that I mentioned to you, David and Abraham, and Moses and Job and Elijah. You know, godly people struggle with this, right?
So it's not something that. There's no shame in the sense of like, hey, this is an unthinkable thing to mention. You know, the godliest characters, the heroes of the faith, this is a. A struggle that is as old as scripture itself. And I'd want to remind them of that.
Secondly, I would want to hear what they're walking through. And I think there's also a place when you're walking and dealing with someone that's anxious to be able to just sit with them and hear them. You know, Job's friends were great until they opened their mouths. And I think sometimes if they're going through a trial, that's a little bit different than, you know, maybe something that, you know, hey, I know it's silly, but this, that's a little bit different than someone's pacing the hospital corridor as they kind of await to hear news on the health of their loved one or their child. You know, I would just want to sit with those people.
And you don't start with James 1 in the middle of their trial. You don't say, hey, well, find joy in the middle of this. You know, so I think that's why you see as, you know, with Jesus, he's the great physician. And as a physician, he gives different remedies for different diseases. And he does that with people.
There is that uniform response in regards to the proclamation of his character. But even God's character, let's just use the example of Lazarus in John 11. Jesus is sovereign. He knows he's about to raise Lazarus from the grave, but then he weeps with people who are suffering. Why does he weep when he knows he's about to raise Lazarus?
Well, because he's a sympathetic high priest. He feels what we feel. He knows what we're going through. He's not a stranger to suffering. And so I think sometimes people want to come across as, you know, they want to speak truth to the anxious.
And at times they just need to sit there, you know, with them and love on them. And you mentioned that we're body, soul, and mind. You know, that's also a reality with Elijah. You know, God not only provides. Proclaims his character.
He gives him a nap and a snack. And those things are tethered together. Martin Lloyd-Jones talks a lot about that in spiritual depression: that we can't demarcate the physical from the spiritual. And so there are some components there where you may need to walk with someone and they might have maybe different symptoms, you know, or root causes than someone else may have.
Sometimes it's sin-related.
Sometimes people say they're anxious, and I ask them, Hey, is there anything in your life that's unconfessed? That's a little bit different than someone who's anxious over what's happening with their child, right?
So I think that's where walking with people within the body of Christ, loving one another and serving one another come into play. Because there's a number of different things, you know, David says when he kept silent about his sin, he felt as if he was being drained away by the fever heat of summer and he was depressed because he was. Not confessing his sin with Bathsheba. And so that would require a totally different conversation than someone who has just been abandoned by their husband and anxious about. The financial provision of the future.
Yeah.
I think that's a great reminder to all of us in the church that it's important to know one another. It's important to not feel like you have a deep relationship with someone because you follow them on Instagram. You know, we need to be able to actually sit down face to face with each other and be in each other's lives because we are instructed to do things like encourage one another, admonish one another, speak life into each other's worlds. And sometimes when you are facing things, like you had mentioned, like the health of a loved one or the death of a loved one.
Sometimes speaking truth to our own hearts is difficult, and we need one another to come alongside and say, hey, brother or sister. Can I remind you of this truth? And I think you even said that in your book: Can I remind you of this truth that you may already know? Or perhaps something that is new to you to learn about our God? But that is what scripture says anchors our soul.
When we know who God is and the fact that God is unchanging, that is what anchors our soul. And for those of you that are listening on the radio today, unfortunately, we're almost out of time, but we are going to continue this conversation with Pastor Artavanis. And so, if you go to our YouTube channel at Hope in the Morning Backstage, or you can listen to us on a podcast wherever you like to listen to podcasts at Hope in the Morning. And we're going to continue this conversation. But before we go, Johnny, where can they find you?
And for those that are watching on YouTube, I'm going to show your book here. And again, I would say I highly, highly recommend this book. Either to read it or, as I do, as a mom of four kids in utter chaos all the time, I listened to it and it was great.
So, where can they find you? You can find the book. Thanks, Emily. Wherever books are sold, Amazon or Barnes and Noble. You can find out more about just the ministry, the resources that we do at dialinministries.org.
And then I preach almost every Sunday. Those sermons are available at Stonebridge Bible Church on YouTube. But dialinministries.org is the way to kind of access the book or different forms of content, sermons. It's all there. But no, thanks for your encouragement.
I was grateful for the opportunity. And the process itself was sharpening and encouraging for my own heart as I got to study God's character.
Well, when we come back and we do our YouTube stuff, you guys are going to learn a little bit about the trials that the Lord took Johnny through, which he actually used the preparation for this book to prepare Johnny.
So our last words, I'm just going to say that your every worry is an invitation to draw closer to God. It weans us from this world and binds us tightly to the Lord and to the promises of heaven.
So diving in, Johnny. One of the things that I thought was so powerful because this actually happened to me with Hope in the Morning, too. You know, with Hope in the Morning, I compiled all of that. That was kind of born out of another company I had called Gifts of Hope, where we would give gifts to grieving people. And Out of that, I said, you know, these stories need to be told.
People need to see the juxtaposition of how a believer grieves versus how the world grieves, but also the hope that we can have in encouraging one another that you might feel like you are just. Ready to drown. But if you can see the testimonies of other believers and see, oh my goodness, the Lord was faithful, He will be faithful to me, too. But I remember last year making my bed one morning and thinking, you know, if the Lord called me to something really hard. I have all of these people, all of these authors that I have become friends with that I could lean on for comfort.
And I had no idea that the Lord was going to call us to my dad being diagnosed with cancer, and he got pancreatic cancer, and we were pregnant with a little boy. And we that little boy made it to thirteen weeks, and then we went to an appointment and he had no heartbeat. And it was a perfectly normal pregnancy. But eighteen days later, my dad died. Two days later, my grandfather had a massive stroke.
And then about a month later, we had another miscarriage. And you know. To see how the Lord strengthened my faith. Through Through the way that he allowed me to do the research for hope in the morning, man, you look on that and you're like, what a mercy! From the Lord, because I had no idea, but I saw that in your book, and I realized that the Lord did that for you as well when you were traveling through your journey with your precious daughter.
Can you tell us about that? Yeah, you know, first of all, just so sorry to hear about, you know, the difficulty of what you walk through. I think there's. An element where the believer clings to the hope we have in regards to God's sovereignty and His plan. That he's working everything towards Romans 8:28, Ephesians 1:11.
It doesn't make those things not difficult. You know, my wife and I have, we've had. A miscarriage and we've lost loved ones and It is, you know, sometimes, you know, people take what Paul says in 1 Corinthians 15, oh, death wears your sting, out of context, because there's definitely a real sting. In this life, but not in a final sense, because we have hope. But yeah, just regarding my life, you know, I think I find comfort in.
Elizabeth Elliott's words in suffering is not for nothing. She just said, suffering is anything you don't want. that you have or anything you have that you don't want. Because Elizabeth Elliott was someone that everybody was going up to her saying, Hey, if you know her story, she suffered the loss of not one, but two husbands. Her first husband, Jim Elliott, was A martyr.
Her second husband died of cancer. And people would go up to her and say, like, hey, I've suffered, but not on your level. And so they come with all these qualifiers of going, like, I don't really even deserve to say I'm struggling. And she just said, Hey, listen, Uh, yeah, again, suffering is anything you have that you don't want or anything you don't want that you have. And that way we can stop comparing your suffering to my suffering.
Right. And she kind of helped in that regard. Um, you know, with me, you know, I know people that, and I say that because I know people that have suffered and walked through trial and trouble on a far deeper level than my own. And Jerry Bridges asked the question in Trusting God. He said, I question whether or not I am qualified from a suffering perspective to speak to other sufferers.
And then he just said, I find comfort in the reality that my Qualification, so to speak, is not because I've suffered greater than anybody else, but because I'm just referring them. To the timeless truths already found within God's word. I'm not trying to come up with anything novel. I'm trying to ground ourselves in what is old, as you've already said, like what Peter says. I'm trying to stir people up by way of reminder.
And so, in my own story, you know, we had. A daughter. We have a daughter, still healthy. today we're monitoring or at the time we had a daughter that um Of a unique story. We noticed a thing next to her eye when she was born.
We thought it was a big birthmark. That's what they told us. Then, you know, we went back in.
Someone on actually on Instagram wrote my wife and said, Hey, that's not a birthmark. That's a hemangioma. And, you know, people have hemangiomas. My sister had one. They're no big deal.
But because of the position next to her eye, someone said, hey, you should go get that checked out. Because we went to the doctor. Then they said, hey, she's going to go blind in that eye because it's going to crowd out her vision, you know, and just neurologically it turns off.
So then we go to another hospital and they say, hey, that's not a hemangioma. That's actually a syndrome where when you look up the syndrome, You know, the first thing that prepopulates is how long does a child live with This syndrome, you know, and it says, Hey, by the time they're 18 months, they're going to have a stroke and a seizure and then they'll die. Wow. And so we were kind of told that, and you're just kind of walking in a little bit of an unknown. Going, okay, they told us that she has this rare syndrome, that she's gonna have a stroke or a seizure.
Within the next 18 months, and that'll be it. We're going to just soak up our time with her. And, you know, it was a few months later. Um she Eyes roll back, you know, to her head, stops breathing. Um, Not responsive for like a long period of time, take her to the ER.
And in our mind, we're going, hey, this is it, this is what they told us. And we were in the hospital with her for a week, which, you know, if you've been in the hospital with your kid and they're running all these different tests on her, it's. It's a tough it you know, it's just a tough environment, you know, and you're going, Man, I We were singing to her. You're praying, God protect our baby. Um And throughout the week they were kind of doing all these things neurologically on her 'cause she had had this spasm and this seizure and They were thinking as a a manifestation of this deeper syndrome that she had with holes in her heart and her lungs and brain.
Anyways, they ended up after a week kind of ruling that out, necessarily that she had this syndrome, but that she might have something else. And she just will have these things and you got to go monitor. And to cut to the chase, sh she's alive. She's a sweet girl. She'll turn two in two weeks.
But we're not out of the woods. You know, so it's like one of those things where. We said, hey, what happens if this happens again? They said, take a video of it with your phone and come to the ER.
So it's kind of one of those things where. That was a long period of time, you know, that was over about a year and a half. of kind of really walking through it. She's on a medication now. Um And we're trying to Trust the Lord.
It's kind of, you know, we go for these neurological things to... Get her tested and evaluated. And that, you know, it all kind of happens at once. You mentioned even with your own family. We were on, I think it was like maybe the week after this.
My wife hit a deer, totaled our car, broke her arm. Couldn't hold her.
So we have this baby that we think is dying. You know, so I, and my wife can't even really move because she hit this deer. She's in the hospital herself. And, you know, I mention these things and I also, you know, I just acknowledge: hey, listen, even this week in my own church. people are going through Things that are more difficult than what we've walked through.
Tomorrow we'll do a funeral.
Someone that passed. Passed away out of nowhere. And so. Yeah, I would say that the Lord teaches us in the school of suffering. That's just the reality.
Paul prayed three times that his thorn would be removed, and he would have never learned to say, God's grace is sufficient for me and his power is perfected in weakness, unless God had said no. And so God's timing and those trials and those troubles that you mentioned it do wean us from this world. They create dependence on God. And in your own life, as you're navigating that, you know, right after that, we had a miscarriage. Um You do, if you were to ask the question, hey, when did your prayer life develop?
You know, it's definitely not when you're just. You know, Bolin 300s. You know, it's in the difficulty and the storms of life. And so that's a little bit of what we were navigating and continue to navigate. living kinda just Trusting the Lord with our second kid.
We've now had a third daughter.
So, this is our second daughter that we have this particular health issue with. Um we're grateful for what God has taught us. In the process and continues to teach us. It also teaches us that this life is a gift. Our children are gifts.
I remember I wrote in my journal: God loves my baby more than I do. And At the time, it it feels unimaginable. That someone else could love your baby more than you, but the Lord does. And so you're encouraged by all those things you find in scripture. That's why, even in the book, it's all of these different attributes of God.
It's not one, it's not just his sovereignty because you can never divorce his sovereignty from his love or his care or his presence or his omniscience. God is all of his attributes all of the time in full measure. And I think sometimes when you're suffering or you're walking through something, people will be like, Hey, I remember I used the example, and you may know him of my friend Micah. When his mom died, you know, people just come up and slap him on the back and say, Hey, God's sovereign. You know, his mom died of breast cancer out of, you know, pretty quickly.
We were on a trip, we flew home, Mike and I together. We were in Australia, flew home, sang her a hymn in the hospital, and she died. And, you know, I just remember at the memorial service, people saying, Hey, you know, God's sovereign. It'll all make sense in the long run. He'll work everything out for your good.
And you're going, Hey, that's true, but. Not timely.
Well, it's not timely, number one, and two. When you discommunicate God's sovereignty at the expense of his love and his care and his wisdom, it presents this God who's capriciously pulling strings up in glory. But it's not that. You can never separate the sovereignty of God from the tears of God, right? When he weeps with those who weep, that's why we are too as Christians.
I think I've learned that as well. Like, you can't just pull out your favorite. You know, people say, hey, what's your favorite Bible verse for people that are anxious? I would say, hey, listen, no, it's the story of scripture. Yeah.
Right? Because. When Hagar is weeping and wondering if her son's going to live, God comes to her and she calls him Elroi, which means you see me, you get me, you know me. You're not just a sovereign king, you're a loving father. And sometimes people view God only as a sovereign king and they lose that element of his fatherly affection and provision.
Sometimes people view God as their father without viewing him as a king.
So it's all sentimentality and no power and authority. And either way, you're limited in your trust. And so that's what I've learned through this process. And the book is really a reflection of that. um of what God was doing in my own life.
Yeah, I think that it's important for believers to know. And again, one of the reasons why Hope in the Morning was written was because sometimes believers can struggle with thinking that to Trust God and to love God means that we don't show any outward grief. I mean, people will say, Oh, we don't grieve as those, or we don't, yeah, we don't grieve as those who have no hope. And I can't tell you how many times I've had to remind people: it doesn't say we don't grieve because we have hope, it says we don't grieve as those who have no hope. Grief is a natural outpouring of the fact that it's an acknowledgement that this world is not as it was meant to be.
This world, like when we get sick, when our loved ones die, that's a result of the curse, that's a result of the fallenness of that which separated us from God. And so, to mourn over that is a godly response. And for us to come to the Lord and lay it at his feet and say, just like you, you were mentioning with the term El Roy, sometimes the only prayer you have is, God, I know you see. I know you see what I'm going through because our hearts are so... heavy and overwhelmed with the sorrow we're going through, but Boy, there's so much peace when you can just rest there, when you can say, Lord, I don't even have the words right now, but I know that you see.
I know that you bend down and listen. And So I'm going to place it. In your hands, and I'm going to rest there. We don't need to. Strive in our own workings to figure out what the diagnosis is or to figure out why someone died.
You know, with us, when my dad got diagnosed with the pancreatic cancer, we in our finite minds were thinking, oh, well, the Lord gave us this baby because we're going to be able to have this baby to hold and to love, and he's going to be a namesake for my dad. Like we found out he was a boy. We were so excited about that.
So when we went, when it was, it was my mom and my daughter, and my husband wasn't even there. When we went for the routine ultrasound and There was no heartbeat. You know, you think Oh, I thought I knew the plan. You know, and but in reality, there is so much comfort in being able to say. Lord, I don't know the plan, but I trust that you do.
And just like you mentioned in your book, which I thought. What a powerful reminder for all of us to remember that. God is all of his characteristics at all times. And so we have to be so careful not to divide them up. and say in this moment God is sovereign, in this moment God is love.
We need we praise him in both, and even in the story of Job that you talked about. I really loved the fact when we were going through all of our, you know, I felt like it was a joke moment, one thing after the other, after the other. But I love the part in the story of Job where it says he ripped his garments and he fell down. And you would think he fell down and, you know. Threw a tantrum or he fell down and wept, but instead it says he fell down and worshipped.
And what what a lesson. For our hearts, that we can worship.
Sometimes worship looks like tears, but it looks like bringing those before the throne of God.
So, with that, you talked too about how You said that oftentimes people want to claim his goodness or claim his love, but they haven't yet come to, like as amazing grace says, they say amazing grace, but they've yet to acknowledge. It's for a wretch like me. And we have to have that reconciliation with Christ before we can understand the peace of Christ. Yeah, you know, being at peace with God is a prerequisite to experiencing the peace of God and What that means is, J.A. Packer talks about this in knowing God.
He just says, hey, the world is a mad, strange, and confusing place. When you don't know God, like everybody in life, it's not just Christians that experience the loss of fathers and the loss of babies, it's everybody. You mentioned it. We live as broken people in a broken world. We're fallen creatures in a fallen world.
But It would be very difficult to experience any sort of peace unless you knew God. And in order to have the peace of God, we have to be made at peace with Him through Jesus Christ. And so even when I was writing, I was like, hey, is it. is does a chapter on the gospel make sense here? And I ended up saying it does because Jesus says, hey, consider the character of your heavenly father.
And people grow up praying that in America, in the West, you know, people say, hey, God's our father. Jesus teaches us to pray that way.
Well, God's not everyone's father, He's the Father of creation. But naturally speaking, we're not friends with God. We're alienated from God. We're hostile towards God. We're children of wrath, it says in Ephesians 2.
And so we need to understand, first of all, the. The lengths that Jesus Christ went to to secure our salvation, you know, his love is not just a declared reality in scripture, it's a demonstrated reality in scripture. And so, Paul is going to talk about this in Romans 8. He's just going to say, Hey, if God didn't spare His own Son. What's he going to do for us in the final grand scheme of things?
And then he says, For I'm convinced that neither death nor life nor angels nor principalities, nor things present or come, can separate us from the love of God.
Well, how do I know God loves me? Because. That's definitely something that you have to, all of this with the anxiety to go. It's one thing to say God's in control, it's another thing to say that the God who loves me is in control.
Well, then, how do I know he loves me? This doesn't feel like love.
Well, first of all, he's demonstrated his love at Calvary, and he pours out that love through the power of his Holy Spirit to those who believe in him, Romans 5. And then we experience that love. Psalm 34: Taste and see that the Lord is good, not believe and affirm. And so, you mentioned even the experience of these realities. Like the truth of God's character is not to be reserved for the ether of doctrinal dissertations, it's for the everyday Christian.
Sometimes people say, you know, I'm a Christian, but I don't get stuck in all the deep stuff.
Well, listen, in order to have deep peace, you have to have a deep understanding of who God is. If you're to love God, we love God because He first what?
Well, He first loved us.
So you're. The degree of love you have for God is a derivative of understanding His love for you, which you can only understand when you also understand His holiness and His justice. And if you understand His justice, then you understand what Jesus absorbed at the cross. And so all of these things. Are tethered together.
If you want to understand God's sovereignty, well, I can't believe in a God that would, in His sovereignty, allow this to pass.
Well, in God's sovereignty, He slew His one and only Son. And so you see at the cross the perfect confluence of God's justice, his goodness, his wisdom, his sovereignty, and his love. And it's helpful to ground our thinking there. And then I was just: you can't experience this peace in a way that's divorced from the power and presence of the Holy Spirit. It's one thing to say God is...
in control. It's another thing to have that subjectively. People are weary, I think in the conservative Christian world of that word even experience. You know, like, hey, let's just believe you know, like, we're just truth tellers. But the Bible is full of people.
Truth is not the end, it's the means to the end. And the end is believing it, right? That's why God is our refuge and our strength. It's one thing to say, yes, that's true. It's another thing to say, oh, he's an ever-present help in times of trouble.
Therefore, I don't fear because I believe that. And so, even you mentioned with Job, and I won't filibuster any longer, but Job says at the end of those four chapters where God is proclaiming his character, he said, My ears have always heard, but now my eyes see. And in order to have deep an abiding peace regardless of the storm you're walking through, you need to be able to say and pray. I've heard of these truths. But now I see, I get it.
Yeah.
You know, that's, I mean, that's largely what this program, Hope in the Morning, is, is because we have people come on here time and time again that say exactly what you just said, Johnny, where they say, I've heard of these, I've read these truths, and now I'm here to proclaim that this is reality. This is true. God is faithful, God is good, God is loving, God is all-wise. And some of these people have been through. things that we don't even want to imagine.
And yet, God was good. I mean, you go back to Elizabeth Elliott, who lost her husband in a very terrible way, her first husband. And here she was with this little baby. And she said, I'm going to do the next thing and I'm going to trust the Lord. And you go to Corey 10, boom, here she got sent to concentration camps for doing a good thing.
You know, she got, she lost her family in those, and yet she praised the Lord because she saw his goodness in those hard times. And, um, Going back to something that we talked about a little bit ago, you had talked about when anxiety becomes sin. And in your book, you talk about how oftentimes worry or anxiety may start out as a legitimate concern and even a good concern at times. At what point? Does that become sin?
Yeah, you know, in the scripture, in the New Testament, the same compound Greek word is used to and translated both as concern and as anxiety. And that word is mere-na'o. It comes from a compound word, merizo, which means to tear or divide, and nuos, which is the mind. And Paul says in Philippians, he says, hey, I'm going to send Timothy to you because there's no one else who is concerned for your welfare. That concerned is meremnao.
And therefore, in that case, he said, I'm sending Timothy because he's concerned about you. This is a good and godly thing. But then in Philippians 4, 6, he says, be meremnao for nothing, be anxious for nothing.
So you have to ask the question, hey, when does meremnao become illegitimate? When does it become illiterate? Wrong. And I just make the argument in the book that when you put Cool. You know, pool your anxieties and your cares rather than channeling them to God, you become sinfully anxious in the sense that you're not casting 1 Peter 5:7, all of your troubles, all of your cares, all of your anxieties on God.
You begin to just think about them. That's why you mentioned Cori Temboom. Corrie Temboom used to say that worry is like racing the engine without letting in the clutch. You burn energy and you go nowhere. And so when we dwell on the problems and pressures rather than on the character and promises of God, We become sinfully anxious in the sense that we become our own sovereign.
We think that we have to have the answer to everything. Even when you mentioned Elizabeth Elliott saying, do the next thing, sometimes we become so crippled by the unknown that we don't do anything. And Elizabeth Elliott, Corey Temboom, and I believe the scripture itself makes the argument that that's actually a failure to trust God. And. You know, it's important to note, too, that the opposite of anxiety is not the absence of anxiety.
The opposite of anxiety is trusting God. And sometimes people say, Lord, help me not to be anxious. But the Lord doesn't just want to remove your anxiety. He wants to replace your anxiety with trust. And so when we kind of dwell on those things, and I give different examples in the book, like, hey, a mom who's worried about her 16-year-old kid, about her friends, is that a good concern in and of itself?
Absolutely. But when she's so paranoid about who she's hanging out with and stops trusting God and becomes so worried about it that she can't, you know, operate in life, does that become maybe sinfully worried? Yeah, yeah, I think absolutely. If she's not taking those things to the Lord and trusting the Lord and living her life with a level of an open hand. And so I make the same argument about provision.
Is my concern. I've got three baby girls. Is my concern to provide and put food on the table for my family? A good thing. Absolutely.
But when I start doubting God's provision and not wondering if you know, what am I going to do? What am I going to eat or drink? That's Matthew 6. What am I going to wear for clothing? I'm taking a good thing.
and I'm making it an ultimate thing. And that ultimate thing becomes a sinful worry. That's why Jesus uses only legitimate things regarding our relationships, our future, and our clothing in Matthew 6, because they're all things that start as good concerns, but can end up being sinful worries. When you're speaking just now, it reminded me of a phrase that you hear a lot in the world now, which is crippling anxiety. And yet we know, and I think you touched on this in your book as well, is that faith is actually an action.
It's something that we have to put our faith to action, which means we walk in obedience. We don't just sit there. You know, we walk in obedience. And that is what shows that we have a trust in the Lord, that we are willing to say, I'm not going to let this fear or this anxiousness stifle me right where I am and make it render me useless, basically. But instead, if we can bring it to the feet of Christ and let him bear our burdens, that's what causes our anxiety ultimately is when we have such.
Fear over something that we have no control over. And yet, what an immense blessing that we have access through Jesus to the throne of God to be able to bring our worries and our anxieties into the hands of someone that. has absolute control. That is something that, as believers, if we can not only try to take our thoughts captive and remind ourselves of that, but be aware of those around you. Be involved in their lives so you can be aware.
Does my brother or sister need encouragement right now? Let's offer it. Let's do that for one another. And, you know, as we conclude this, I just want to reiterate one more time that this really truly is one of the best books I have read. And actually, Johnny, I have to tell you that as I've been telling people about your book, some of the people that I've told, they were like, oh, yeah, we love that book.
Even last night, I was telling someone and she was like, Yeah, my husband just preached in Sunday school and he used that book. And I'm like, well, good. I'm glad you're all reading it. My grandmother, my grandfather just went to be in the presence of the Lord last week. And I told my grandmother and my aunt, I said, This is, you should listen to this book right now because not only does it help settle your mind and really make you focus on the goodness of God, but I think there were aspects of your book that help us.
Remember that this is not our home. And for the believer, that's actually a very exciting thing because this is not our home. We're traveling through. And yes, we are going to have. heartache and hardships, but we're just passing through.
And so if we can walk in faith and trust and look, keep our eyes fixed on Jesus, we have the hope of glory ahead of us. And so for us, the worst that can happen is death. And as Paul said, that's the best that can happen for us because then we are with the Lord. And so once again, not only do I recommend that you either purchase this book or get it through Audible, but Johnny has very graciously donated, I think we have about 20 copies of this book for those of you that donate to our ministry.
So keeping testimonies like this on air requires funds. And not only that, but we want to be able to give copies of Hope in the Morning, give care packages to people, really meet people's needs when they are in the valley of despair. And he has graciously donated copies of his book. And so those of you that donate this month in the month of December, you will receive a copy of Consider the Lilies as a thank you gift for partnering with us in our ministry. ministry.
Donnie, thank you so much for not only joining us today on Hope in the Morning, but thank you for the time that you set aside to write this wonderful resource to encourage us. Oh, thank you. No, you're kind and really kind, and it's encouraging because you. You never know if it's gonna bless anyone and and I did feel like the beneficiary of just the process, you know, like Thinking and praying and writing through the truth and God's word.
So, grateful to hear it's been a benefit to you and praying that it is to more people. But no, thank you so much. I'm grateful for the opportunity to come on your show and blessings to your ministry.
Well, thank you so much. And those that want to continue to follow Johnny, you can find him. His main primary ministry is Dial-In Ministry, correct? Yeah, Dialin Ministries, yeah, and then the church is Stonebridge Bible Church.
Okay, both are excellent resources, and I highly recommend both of them and the book.
So, thank you for joining us today on Hope in the Morning. Hope in the Morning is a non-profit ministry that seeks to encourage the hurting. equip those who walk beside them and evangelize the lost with the hope of Jesus Christ. To partner with our ministry or to make a donation in your loved ones' honor, please visit hopeinthemorning.org. Your donation helps keep these stories of hope on the air and helps tangibly meet the needs of the hurting.
