Podcast

Finding Treasures of Hope in Darkness: Lori Armstrong E114
Lori: [00:00:00] in the middle of a dark night, these words were comfort to my soul.
Lori: “Neither this man nor his parents sinned,” said Jesus, “but this happened so that the work of God might be displayed in his life.”
Lori: Brad was only four months old , battling one cancer after another. But at that young age, it began the miracle of Brad’s life, where indeed God’s work has been displayed over and over and over again.
Kelly: Welcome to the Unshakable Hope podcast, where real life intersects redeeming love. I’m Kelly Hall, and this is where we wrestle through faith questions such as, “How do I trust God’s heart when His ways and delays are breaking mine?” We’ll hear from people just like you and me who have experienced God’s faithfulness when life didn’t unfold as they expected.
Kelly: My prayer is that God would renew our hope in His Word and His love through these [00:01:00] conversations. Well, hey friends. I am so glad you’re here for the conversation we’re gonna have today with Laurie Armstrong. But I want you to consider a question before we start. What are the most challenging places for you to trust God? The toughest tests of my faith have been when my heart was broken by situations the Lord allowed in my life, but the greater challenges have been those seasons when it felt like a dump truck emptied an additional pile of hardships on my loved one’s lives.
Kelly: It was really a wrestling time for me. So how do we hold on to hope? And how do we stand firmly on God’s word and trust His heart of love when our hardships don’t resolve the way we want?
Kelly: Well, my new friend Laurie knows something about this. She has a remarkable story of God’s miraculous care and faithfulness . Her four-month-old baby received a serious [00:02:00] cancer diagnosis. You’ll hear the promises God gave her. You’ll hear of His miraculous care.
Kelly: And then at one point, how it seemed those promises wouldn’t be fulfilled after she lost her husband, also due to a cancer diagnosis. But I just want to encourage you to listen all the way to the end because you’ll hear beautiful redemptive scriptures God spoke over Lori and how he continues to realign her heart with the hope that is only found in Jesus.
Kelly: I was connected with my guest, Lori Armstrong, through Donna Jones, who was on my podcast previously. She said to me, “You’ll love Laurie. She’s the most godly woman I know.” And I have to say that just her emails have encouraged my heart so much, and so has this conversation that you’re about to hear.
Kelly: Laurie is a Jesus-loving wife, mom, grammy, and friend who has delighted in reading and sharing God’s word since she was a young teen, as she [00:03:00] highlighted her paperback Bible. After graduating from college, she sold computer systems to IBM, but found that her greatest joy was discipling women to know and find their fulfillment in Christ.
Kelly: She became the women’s ministry director for her church. And although today she’s retired from church staff, she never gets tired of leading Bible studies with her girlfriends and pouring spiritually into her growing family of adult children and 12 grandchildren. They have her heart. But God has also given her a heart for his most impoverished children in Africa, and it’s her privilege to share God’s love by providing life-changing clean water through a non-profit she co-founded called Well Loved.
Kelly: Laurie, thank you so much for joining me.
Lori: Thank you, Kelly. I am so humbled and very privileged to be with you today. I enjoy your podcast and truly you [00:04:00] bring the hope of Christ to all your listeners and to your friends. I’m really grateful to be here with you today because it’s just a privilege for me to meet you personally, and it’s always a joy to talk about Jesus.
Kelly: Amen.
Kelly: Well, Lori, we all have dreams and visions of what we think our lives will look like. And that’s why it’s all the more disheartening when we encounter those unexpected hardships and disabilities, the loss, the brokenness.
Kelly: So I’d love for you to share with us your unexpected journey. As you do, I want you to just answer a question that I’ve wrestled with: Where is God in all of this hardship?
Lori: Such a good question, Kelly. I’m gonna back up to give you just a little of my backstory, because I know that I was so, so blessed to grow up in a Christian home where my parents were just loving people who modeled a real and contagious faith from the time we were young.
Lori: So I was [00:05:00] blessed to come to know Jesus as a young girl at age six. I grew up in a small, really loving church where we were there every time the doors were open, Sunday morning, Sunday night, Wednesday night prayer meeting, Thursday night youth group. And in looking back, I see that God used those early years to cultivate in me a real love for him and a love for his people, a love for the church, and a love for God’s word that has been so foundational in my growth as a Christian and really the stability of my Christian walk.
Lori: As I look back, I realize that I was blessed beyond measure to know the truth of God’s character, to already have trusted him. Yeah. I knew that he was faithful and that he was loving even before the storms of life hit. Mm-hmm. And that gave me a strong [00:06:00] foundation to hold on and to cling to Jesus and to his word.
Kelly: I am so grateful for that too. I have told the Lord so many times, thank you for giving me a foundation, even an understanding of how he uses suffering and how I can trust him in our suffering, before the hardships came.
Kelly: and even for those listening who didn’t have that strong foundation of faith, if you look back on your life, you can see, and pray, that God would just show you where His hand was at work. I’ve talked to so many people who didn’t know the Lord until after their hardships came, and yet when they prayed that God would show them how He prepared their heart for those places, they begin to see these little moments where God just allowed a thought or something from the radio or some word that somebody else spoke to them that gave them some hope and started to focus their mind on the God who is hope.
Kelly: That is so true.
Lori: Most definitely. [00:07:00] But you are right. We all have these visions as to how our life is gonna turn out. I went to a good college, secured a great job, married the man of my dreams. But I think all of us come to an intersection in life where we are met with the unexpected, with pain and with heartache, and it just collides with what we think are our good plans.
Lori: And for my husband and I, that was early on in our marriage. We had a two-year-old little boy and a newborn little boy that was just four months old that our pediatrician recommended that we send to a specialist. And so I gathered up my little boys in my arms and went off to the specialist office.
Lori: And I will tell you, that specialist had the worst bedside manner that I have ever encountered, even to date. He looked into my four-month’s little eyes and bluntly [00:08:00] declared that he had tumors in both eyes, and that both eyes would be removed by the end of the week. Oh. And then he muttered something under his breath about it being genetic, picked my 2-year-old, 2-year-old up, put him on the table, looked in his eyes and said, “He’s fine.”
Lori: He ushered me quickly out of the office with crying babies in my arms and a business card in my hand that had written retinoblastoma on one side. On the other side was an appointment with an oncologist that I was to meet with the next day.
Kelly: Oh, Lori. Oh, my goodness.
Lori: Yeah. Wow. As, as you can imagine, I was just almost frozen with fear.
Lori: I was so naive about medical things at that point. I remember thinking, “Tumors, is that cancer? Is an oncologist a cancer doctor?” I didn’t know, but as I rushed to the car with crying babies in both arms, I was just [00:09:00] praying, “Lord Jesus, please help them to sleep. I just need to hold it together till I can get on the phone and call my husband,” who was out of town on business.
Lori: And the Lord, who cares about every little detail of our lives, had those sweet little babies fall asleep, and I was able to tuck them into bed, to call my husband, who immediately jumped on a plane, and call my parents, who also jumped on a plane the very next day to come to be with us.
Kelly: How sweet. Wow
Lori: It was just what we needed.
Lori: But you know, as you asked the question about where God was in all of that, that night, as you can imagine, I could not sleep. I was literally sick to my stomach. I was horrified at the idea of removing our baby’s eyes. I’d never heard of such a thing. And I just crept out of bed and grabbed my Bible, the comfort that I knew I needed, and [00:10:00] I sat down and opened my Bible.
Lori: And wouldn’t you know, this is so like our good God, my Bible opened to John 9:1-3. And I have heard you share on your podcast that this is a passage of scripture that’s meaningful to you as well.
Kelly: Yes.
Lori: But there that night, in the middle of a dark night, as I was contemplating what it would be like to raise a blind child, these words were like comfort and balm to my soul.
Lori: The rabbi, Jesus’ disciples asked him, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” “Neither this man nor his parents sinned,” said Jesus, “but this happened so that the work of God might be displayed in his life.”
Kelly: Mm.
Lori: Who knew exactly what I needed.
Lori: Our God doesn’t always give us a purpose for our suffering and pain. Sometimes not right at the beginning, sometimes we never know. We can [00:11:00] find purpose in it. But for God to sit there that evening and tell me, “Lori, this is happening so that my work will be displayed
Kelly: mm.
Lori: And right next to these scriptures, I have written our Brad in the margin of my Bible, and I just h- clung to that throughout Brad’s treatments.
Lori: You know, Brad was only four months old when this journey began, and it ended up being a five-year journey, just battling one cancer after another. We found out early on that he was born with a fluke birth defect, which not only caused the cancer, but also meant that he would be disabled in life. And so we were navigating how to raise a disabled child as well.
Lori: But at that young age, when he was four months old, it began the miracle of Brad’s life, where indeed God’s work has [00:12:00] been displayed over and over and over again.
Kelly: Lori, I can’t even imagine as a young mom hearing those words from such an, abrupt,
Kelly: unkind doctor. But then having the Lord’s kindness come right behind in such a stark contrast and just say, “This is not your fault. I saw this. This wasn’t an accident. I’m gonna work in and through this. I’m gonna bring glory to my name. Your family’s gonna be blessed. You’re gonna see my hand up close and personal.”
Kelly: And that’s a comfort, but still you had to endure your little four-month-old baby losing both his eyes. Is that right?
Lori: Well, you know, that was just the beginning of the miracles. He did not lose his eyes. He was not blind.
Kelly: Wow …
Lori: God began right away unveiling the miracles. First of all, Brad was able to keep both of his eyes.
Lori: They treated it with radiation, and he sees very well out of one eye today. That is just a miracle. And then- Wow … the second miracle [00:13:00] right off the bat is that God saved his life. His life is a miracle. No medical professional expected him to live even a year off treatments. And so, you know, we’ve dealt with a lot of ongoing medical issues and Brad’s disability but he walks, he talks.
Lori: God has given him just the most darling sense of humor. Um, today he’s 38 years old, which is just hard to believe.
Kelly: All those miracles, I cannot believe that. And you had another daughter that came along later, right? Yeah. And so you were, you had another little baby, but you’re still going through all these treatments with your son, Brad, correct?
Lori: Yes. I wanted to just share with you and the listeners that our God answered so many prayers along the way. I feel like just the theme of my life has been God’s faithfulness. And I know you can relate to the fact that in these [00:14:00] difficult and , just terrible suffering, especially when we’re watching our children suffering, I mean, five years of, of treatment, of chemo and just you feel like your child is a living pin cushion.
Lori: It is just hard to watch. And yet- Being able to pray consistently for every little detail and pray over Brad’s life, and for our other two children who, as you know, when you go through medical things with one child, it involves the entire family as well.
Kelly: Right. Right.
Lori: But we were blessed to just have God, to see God at work in miraculous ways.
Lori: I remember specific prayers that we prayed for Brad. Some of the chemo drugs had some very harsh side effects. We were warned upfront that his hearing would be at risk, that some of the drugs that he had to take, there was a risk of him losing hearing. And I just cried out to the Lord, “Jesus, sweet little Brad [00:15:00] already doesn’t see well.
Lori: His life is gonna be full of disability. Can you please protect his hearing? Will you just put a hedge of protection around all of his other senses and protect his little body?” And you know, I laugh today because not only did God protect his hearing, he has such an acute sense of hearing. He can be in the other room and I can whisper something, he’ll go, “I hear you.”
Lori: And I just laugh. It’s a reminder of how our God answers prayers. But I think the most important prayers that I prayed for Brad were for his spiritual life. I remember learning that he would be intellectually challenged. And Brad, although he’s 38 and he speaks well, that’s just his vocabulary and his ability to communicate is such a gift.
Lori: Um, but he probably intellectually is about the age of a five or a six-year-old. But I prayed when he was young [00:16:00] that God would give him an understanding of who God is, that he would understand enough about God that he’d be able to have a personal relationship with the Lord. Mm-hmm. Because I knew that if Brad could know Jesus, that all the rest of his life would fall into place.
Lori: Everything else would be okay. And do you know God has answered that prayer in spades. It brings me to tears, Brad’s spiritual understandings. I mean, people mention it all the time. He has a relationship with God that I marvel over. It is so pure and so sweet and simple. He, when we go to church, he listens to every word the pastor shares, and answers every question out loud because Brad is so literal.
Lori: So any question- … the pastor asks, Brad answers out loud. And people laugh, they get a chuckle out of it, but he listens so, so carefully. [00:17:00] He prays at the drop of a pin. I will walk in his room sometimes and he will be kneeling at his bed praying. The other morning I was talking to him about something, he tends to get stuck on things, we call it.
Lori: And I was talking to him about how we trust God and we don’t worry about things. And I walked back in and he was, had not completely dressed because he was waiting for me to finish helping him getting dressed. He was kneeling at his bed, partially clothed, asking God to help him to not get stuck. And, you know, no inhibitions, just this pure heart asking God for help.
Lori: When I tucked him in bed last night, he said, his first the way he started his prayer was, “It’s me again, God.” “How beautiful is that?” That we would know God so intimately that every time we sit down to pray or to talk to God, we’re like, “God, it’s me again.”
Lori: Just this beautiful, simple faith he has.
Kelly: I love that so [00:18:00] much. He’s answered prayers in ways you never could have imagined, and that is so encouraging for us, no matter what we’re going through- to know that God is a God who does the impossible. He is able to do exceeding abundantly beyond all we can ask, think, or imagine.
Kelly: That story challenges me, and probably most of our listeners, to even ask the question, “God, what are the ways in my life where I’m believing you for the least you can do rather than the best you can do?” That is such a beautiful example of the ways that God wants us to pray. It’s so challenging to me.
Lori: That’s so true about, not being afraid to ask for those big things, Kelly. And I would just encourage all of our listeners to pray about- Everything pray for our spiritual life and to pray for our loved one’s spiritual life. God cares about every detail of our lives.
Lori: He cares about, our senses and our hearing and our sight, and He cares about our health, those types of [00:19:00] prayers. But God wants us to come and ask for prayers for our spiritual health, for our spiritual growth. Those are the prayers He loves to answer, that our loved ones that we’re so concerned about, that they’ll experience God, that they’ll grow to know Him more and more.
Lori: Those are just the kind of prayers that are a joy to watch God answer and that bring Him great glory.
Kelly: Oh, amen. Yes. Well, as you and Brad and your family continued to grow, you went through some additional grief and tragedy. Do you wanna tell us about losing your husband, what you and your husband had to go through, and your whole family?
Kelly: And I wanna hear how God just met you in that place. I know He encouraged your heart. I know He brought hope. But I just feel myself wanting to say I’m so sorry that y’all had to go through that. It’s just so hurtful.
Lori: Thank you, Kelly.
Lori: The pain of losing someone you love [00:20:00] in this life, of course, we know we’ll see him again in heaven, but in this life is a deep pain I never could have imagined. Feel like God gave us the gift of so many good years together raising our children. After Brad was well and our daughter was healthy, we had a seemingly normal life even though we were dealing with still medical issues and disability.
Lori: But just God blessed our home with so much joy as our kids were growing up, and I was the women’s director at our church, my husband sang on the worship team. Our kids were involved in every aspect of ministry and, you know, busy, busy kids . My husband and my older son coached all of Brad’s sports for children that have challenges.
Lori: It was just a very healthy, fun life in our home. And being so involved in ministry, I always said we got to have a front row seat to watching God do miraculous [00:21:00] things.
Lori: But, you know, the pain is that cancer again came to our home later on just seven years ago, and this time it came to my husband who was healthy, and athletic, and vibrant, and so full of life, just a wonderful godly husband and father.
Lori: And it was really compounded by the loss of my parents who had been such a big part of our lives, just godly parents who .. prayed for my children and all of their grandchildren. They were just such a big part of our lives, and they passed away within three months of each other. Oh. We were blessed to have them well into their 80s, but it was just hard to usher them into heaven.
Lori: But the biggest jolt followed while the grief was still fresh when my wonderful husband of 36 years also went home to heaven less than a year later.
Kelly: Wow.
Lori: , I [00:22:00] honestly had never known a pain like that. I never understood that people described, grief being heartbreak, that there was really a physical pain, that it- Yeah
Lori: felt like your heart was just so shattered and broken. But if, if you had asked me in those early days of grief how I was doing, I would have told you that although my heart was absolutely broken, that I was numbly walking through those dark days of grief, that spiritually I was doing okay. Because as much as I’d always been grateful for the gift of my family, I became even more acutely aware of the blessing of my relationship with God, of how grateful I was that I already fully trusted him.
Lori: He had done so much in our lives already. You know, as I [00:23:00] mentioned to you, I just felt like the hallmark of my life was the faithfulness of God. And through the deep pain and the suffering, he was with me every step of the way, just processing that, that just deep sense of pain and grief. I do remember one day early on my daughter and her precious daughter, my granddaughter, Hallie, were over at the house, and my daughter Becca pointed to a picture that was on the end table.
Lori: It was one of my favorite pictures of my husband and my parents. We had gone out to celebrate our anniversaries together. It was just such a happy memory. And Becca looked at that picture and said, “Mom, you’re the only one left in that picture. Everyone else is in heaven.”
Lori: And it just hit me so hard.
Lori: But the scripture that came to mind then, and has so often over and over again, is from Isaiah 45:3. And it says, “I will give [00:24:00] you the treasure of darkness, riches stored in secret places so that you may know that I am the Lord your God who summons you by name.”
Kelly: Hmm.
Lori: It is just so beautiful and such a comfort because God promises that he has treasure and riches for us in the dark and painful places in our lives- Yeah … so that we will know and- Yeah … experience that He is God. Yeah. And the precious part of that verse is that He summons us by name.
Lori: Is that incredible? I feel like there are listeners today that need to know that our God knows us intimately. He knows us by name. He is not surprised by the dark and the difficult places that we may find ourselves in life, and He promises that there is treasure to be mined in those dark places that tell [00:25:00] us of our God’s love, of His goodness, and His faithfulness.
Kelly: Oh, that is so beautiful. I know I’ve read that scripture before, but I never thought about the treasures being mined out of the dark places, out of the heartbreak. Very powerful. As you’ve described all of these losses, I’m just wondering if there were ever any thoughts of self-pity, even moments where you just kind of looked at the piles of additional heartache.
Kelly: I can just remember times in my own life when I saw the pain my girls experienced, and I kind of felt like, “God, couldn’t you have waited till they were okay before you allowed them to suffer more?” You know, they’ve suffered enough already. But one thing I learned from the story of Job that actually did comfort me, because it helped align my expectations correctly, you see the story of Job and you see that his suffering right in the beginning did not exempt him from future suffering.
Kelly: Because then his body [00:26:00] failed, and then he got sick, and then he had friends who were cruel, and so the suffering continued. And that really helped me kind of normalize additional suffering. This is life. We live in a hard place. But God says, “Take heart because I’ve overcome the world.”
Kelly: And that just reminded me that suffering is never evidence of God’s absence. It’s never evidence of God’s lack of care. And it surely is evidence of His- immense love that he has for us in this suffering. He draws near, and like you said, he calls us by name. And he wrestles, and though … But I did notice that one of the advantages of suffering was it drove me to my knees to wrestle out lies that I had about God, misunderstandings I had about suffering.
Kelly: And I was able to mine, like you said, just some rich treasures of who God is and how present he is in our suffering. And I could say that at the end of all [00:27:00] of it, I had fallen more in love with God, and that, that was a rich treasure.
Lori: And that’s a beautiful, beautiful testimony, Kelly. And you are so right.
Lori: We do need to be sure that we’re mining that treasure from God’s word, and that that’s where our minds and our hearts are fixed. Because, as you mentioned, it would be so easy to fall into a pit or into a pity party.
Lori: And I so often said during those days, you know, in my 12 years as being the women’s director of our church, I counseled with so many women.
Lori: And I love God’s word. The truth that in, that i- we find in God’s word, it stands the test. You know, God- Sure … is faithful to equip us with the truth of his word. But I just laugh, because counseling women from God’s word absolutely provides comfort and truth, but I wasn’t really counseling out of any personal experience of grief.
Lori: But during those [00:28:00] years, I said, “Every word I ever spoke came right back at me.” I just remembered- Yes … you know, the things I would share with women. I’m like, “Okay, Lord, I’m just eating every one of those words,” in the sweetest of ways, because-
Kelly: Right …
Lori: as we’ve already mentioned, God had already so fully equipped me.
Lori: I will tell you that I was very intentional about being in God’s word. Starting each day in the Bible. I get out of bed early in the morning, make my tea, creep on downstairs into my coziest chair to spend time with the Lord every single morning. That has always been the rhythm of my day. But during those years of grief, oh, it became an absolute necessity.
Lori: I absolutely found that I was determined to cling to God’s word as my lifeline, because I didn’t want to have a pity party. I really wanted God to use every [00:29:00] circumstance of my life for his glory. And I think we need to be very careful when we’re in the midst of suffering. People will say nice things to make us feel better.
Lori: But not all those nice things are true things, and we really need to balance that against the plumb line of what is the truth of God’s word because that’s what we need to cling to. When we are in God’s word, it helps us to think rightly about our circumstances. Mm-hmm. It helps us to think rightly about who God is and gives us hope of what God can do through the most difficult times.
Lori: I feel like I wanna share with you, like, a big thing that God did, um, show me in His word and then lots of truths along the way. Yeah. Where do you kinda wanna start?
Kelly: Yeah, tell us the biggest thing. What was the biggest experience you had with the Lord in His word [00:30:00] that really helped anchor you to His heart during the suffering?
Lori: Okay. Well, I- there’s lots of scriptures that have so much meaning, but I’m gonna start with, as you mentioned, the big thing where God really showed up through His word. Many years ago, in fact I have it written in my Bible, it was in 2016, God gave me a word that I really have clung to and prayed over my children.
Lori: And you know, we have to be careful about the things that we mine out of God’s word. They’re not all promises that we can claim. In this case, in the Book of Isaiah, this was a promise that God gave to the Israelites, to the children of Israel. And yet, as I read this on, I’ll tell you exactly the- the day, April 14th, 2016, I just felt God speak to my heart, “This is a word I’m giving you for your family.
Lori: I want you to pray this over your children and your [00:31:00] children’s children.” And this is what it says. In Isaiah 44 verses, I’m gonna start with, uh, verse four Or about mid three. “I’m gonna pour out my spirit on your offspring and my blessing on your descendants. They will spring up like grass in a meadow, like poplar trees by flowing streams.
Lori: One will say, ‘I belong to the Lord.’ Another will call himself by the name of Jacob, and still another will write on his hand, ‘The Lord’s.'”
Kelly: Mm.
Lori: Now, this is just such a beautiful image of the covenant of love God had with the Israelite children, and it’s what I’ve prayed for my children and my grandchildren and my descendants, that they would have such a deep love and relationship with the Lord, that it would be as though the Lord’s name was on, engraved in the palm of their hands as well.
Kelly: Mm. And
Lori: so I’ve prayed that over my children. Well, when my husband passed away, I just [00:32:00] felt so many dreams had been broken, and it was the end of so many dreams, was my thought. Even this verse, I felt like, Lord, this is how we were gonna raise our children together. This is what I have prayed over my children, and I just am not sure I see the future of that.
Lori: It was just a heartbreak for me. Well, one of the things that was important to my husband and I is that we take the kids away on vacation every summer. You know the saying, if you pay, they will come. So you paid, they come. But there’s nothing like being able to gather together for a week just in the beauty of God’s w- God’s world, his creation, and have uninterrupted just quality time together.
Lori: And after my husband went to heaven, I knew I needed to continue that, that that would be really important. But boy, was that difficult. And so that first summer- I [00:33:00] booked a trip for us in Hailey, Idaho, in a home that I just felt like was the VRBO that God had for us. I’d seen the pictures. I thought, “This will just be a beau- beautiful, quiet place for us to slip away.”
Lori: We all met there, and it was beautiful, just as the pictures had promised. But I’ll tell you, there was just this gnawing heartache I had of, “Lord, this just isn’t the way it was supposed to be.” And that night, it was so hard for me to go to sleep in the master bedroom by myself.
Lori: The kids and their families and the grandkids were all tucked in around the house, but I crept up to the master by myself, and it was just so sad.
Lori: I often would read Psalms at night because the Psalms just remind us of God’s love. They give us just such great hope in the character of who our God is. And I fell asleep that night reading Psalms, and the morning I woke up early. There was this beautiful deck off the back of the room I was sleeping in, and I [00:34:00] took my Bible, and I thought, “I’m, I’m just gonna turn to that promise that You give me, Lord, that word for my family, and I’m gonna pray it over them again this morning.”
Lori: Well, the sun was coming out, and I was looking out over this beautiful property we were staying, with this little river that was trickling down, kind of like a stream, where the kids were gonna fish the next day, and big, tall trees and, uh, just a field and a meadow full of grass. And I opened up my Bible to s- to Isaiah 44, and I started a little bit earlier than usual.
Lori: I don’t know why I never saw or really took to heart the first few verses of this passage, but in verse two it says, “This is what the Lord says: ‘ He who made you, who formed you in the womb…'” And Kelly, so often I personalize scripture, and I’ll put my own name in, so where it says “Jacob,” I filled in my own name.
Lori: ” This is what the Lord says: He who made you, He who [00:35:00] formed you in the womb, and He who will help you. Do not be afraid, Lori, my servant, whom I have chosen. For I will pour water on the thirsty land, and streams on the dry ground.” And there in front of me, where I felt like my heart was just so dry and parched, I was looking out over this beautiful stream, as if the Lord was saying, “I’m going to pour a stream and water in those dry places of your life and your heart, and I will pour out my Spirit on your offspring and my blessing on your descendants.
Lori: And they will spring up like grass in a meadow, like poplar trees by flowing streams.” And do you know, Kelly, I opened my eyes, brought them up from God’s word, and I all of a sudden noticed, I just kind of gasped because there before me was the exact scenery that’s described in this passage [00:36:00] of Isaiah 44.
Kelly: Wow.
Lori: There was the grass, there was the stream. And do you know what poplar trees are?
Kelly: No.
Lori: I looked it up. They are the most popular, they’re the fastest-growing, and the most attractive shade trees. They have leaves that are shaped like hearts. They’re aspen trees. They can be cut- Oh … wood trees. Do you know, before me were aspen trees- Oh
Lori: all around the stream with grass that was- Wow … springing up. I just could not believe it. It was like the Lord just whispering a quiet yes to my heart. Yes, this is the word you will continue to pray for your family. Yes, this is what I have for you. And I snapped a picture of that beautiful scenery, and that Christmas I gave to each of my children a big framed picture of that scenery with this passage of Isaiah 44 printed in a beautiful calligraphy over the front, in the face of the [00:37:00] photograph.
Lori: That’s in each of my children’s home and our home to remind me of the beautiful promises that God fulfills in our life even during the very difficult times.
Kelly: That is breathtaking. Wow. God is so intimate and personal and good and loving to encourage us in the deepest heartache that we face.
Kelly: I love that in this place where you were, in many ways, drawing a line in the sand and saying, “We’re gonna move forward. We’re gonna move forward in hope. We’re not gonna be stuck back there. God has new things for us,” God did a new thing in that place, and just spoke life over the parched place in your soul.
Kelly: Beautiful.
Lori: Yes. You know, my life verse is Psalm 16:11. It says, “Thou wilt make known to me the path of life. In thy presence is fullness of joy. In thy right hand there are pleasures forevermore.” [00:38:00] And you know, that verse tells us that, that God has joy for us in His presence. Our joy is not found in the circumstance of our, circumstances of our life, not in those dry and parched places, not in the beautiful places.
Lori: Our joy is found in the presence of Christ, and we can seek out His presence. He is with us no matter where we are. In the hard places, when we’re sitting on the bench at our kids’ ballgames cheering for them, in the carpool lane, in the doctor’s office, even while we’re at home reading God’s word, that’s where our joy is.
Lori: It’s in His presence.
Kelly: Amen. Wow, life-giving hope. Earlier in that psalm, Psalm 16, I love it so much. Earlier it says, “Lord, you alone are my portion and my cup. You make my lot secure. The boundary lines have fallen for me [00:39:00] in pleasant places. Surely, I have a delightful inheritance.” And I can’t tell you multiple times how the Lord has led me to that scripture when I was feeling discontent about where we were living.
Kelly: You know, we had to move a lot with the military and sometimes we ended up in places that didn’t make sense, and we didn’t feel like we belonged, and, um, really didn’t seem like a good place for children with special needs. And the Lord would just remind me, “Kelly, I have drawn your boundary lines in pleasant places.
Kelly: I’ve got you.” And then even with our particular circumstances, there would be times when I would feel discontent and God would bring me back there and say, “I am in this place. I have you in my hands. I have drawn the boundary lines around your story. It won’t go in directions that I don’t want it to go.
Kelly: I’ve got you in this place.” And that gave me so much joy leading to that last verse in Psalm 16 that you just read to us, that our joy is found in Him, in Him alone, [00:40:00] and not in our circumstances. And He is with us. Like, we’re not just quoting that out of some blind faith. What we’re doing when we say that is God sees us more than we know.
Kelly: He’s a … He has our circumstances more than we can imagine, and He is doing more work behind the scenes. Like, if He would just lift the veil, we would be stunned, humbled, driven to our knees to- Right … see all that God was doing behind the scenes for us on our behalf.
Lori: That is so true, and I cannot believe you, you brought up those earlier verses in Psalm 16 because I love those scripture verses also.
Lori: And I also have clung to those, verses that talk about the boundary lines that have fallen for us in pleasant places. Because all of us, Kelly, regardless of where we are in life, everyone has those God-given boundary lines. Nobody has a perfect life.
Kelly: [00:41:00] Right.
Lori: Everyone has those boundaries
Lori: and yet as we walk with God and we see His goodness and we, we see the truth of who He is, we realize those boundary lines that He’s drawn for us, they’re pleasant. They create for us a life of joy that’s unique for me, it’s unique for you. Kelly our circumstances are different but God has perfectly designed unique boundary lines for everyone, and within those boundaries are His safety and security- and the joy that He brings to us.
Kelly: Oh, amen. So encouraging. Well, as we close, I know there’s another verse that you had mentioned, and I’d love just to get your take on this as well. John 10:10. We’re probably all familiar with this verse. The enemy comes to steal, kill, and destroy.
Kelly: But Jesus says, “I came that you might have abundant life.” And I love how you summarize this truth that we are [00:42:00] called to live out the abundance of life Christ gives us in this place of opposition. Like, we are always facing opposition. That’s what the verse tells us. But you have discovered how to have abundance even in the midst of all that.
Kelly: Can you leave us with a thought that can, help us understand this verse a little more specifically?
Lori: I can. I’ll tell you a couple of years ago I mentioned to you that I’m remarried, which was just such an absolute surprise gift because I was never even gonna date, let alone consider being married.
Kelly: I just want to say, yay, God. For this beautiful redemption of your story. I love that he offered you this gift.
Lori: Oh, our God is a redeeming God. I mean, he gives us beauty for ashes. , It doesn’t mean that we ever forget about our loved ones that are lost, but-
Lori: my husband Doug has a similar backstory to mine.
Lori: He was also never going to date, never going to remarry. He also lost his spouse to [00:43:00] cancer about the same time that my husband went to, heaven. And I know God had the biggest smile on his face when he put us in exactly the same place every Saturday morning so we just about had to trip over each other.
Lori: As I was bringing my son Brad to his horseback riding lesson where Doug volunteers to work with young disabled children in therapeutic riding. And I have so often called Doug my abundance because our God is such a redeeming God in the way he restores the brokenness and the pain in our life. I would never, ever have imagined that God would bring me such an incredible, godly man, and that together we could live out this prayer for my children’s life that’s become our prayer for all of our life.
Lori: Who would ever think that God would have them spring up like grass in this field, that we would have 12 grandchildren ? And the family is still [00:44:00] growing. But talk about abundance. Our God is so, so good. And this verse from John 10:10 was always one of my very favorite verses from the time I was growing up.
Lori: I, in fact, I remember being in college and telling people that I was a Christian because Jesus offers us an abundant life. John 10:10 says, “I have come that they might have life more abundantly.” Who doesn’t want an abundant life? I mean, the life that the world offers us is chaotic. It is one of fleeting pleasures, not abiding in eternal joy.
Lori: And I thought, who wouldn’t want an abundant life? Well, it was many, many years later, that God woke me up to the truth that that was only the last half of the verse. The first half of the verse of John 10:10 says, “The thief comes to steal and kill and destroy, [00:45:00] but I have come that you might have abundant life.”
Lori: Some versions say- life to the full. And yes, Kelly, our abundant life in Jesus is lived out in an environment of opposition. There is not a one of us that are free in this life of pain and heartbreak and opposition. But our abundant life in Jesus is lived out with the abundance of joy that He gives us in the midst of that suffering, and that’s because Jesus is our hope.
Lori: In fact, His entire life of coming to Earth to die on the cross for us, He defeated death. He brought us life eternal so that we can know abundance in this life, and so that we can live with Him forever in the next life. And that is our hope. That is the story of [00:46:00] hope that God gives to each of us. We live in a hurting world where people are desperate to know hope and to know the abundant life that comes through Jesus.
Lori: And you and I can share our stories all day long of how God has grown us and given us joy and answered our prayers, and shown us the precious, precious treasure in dark and difficult places. But He doesn’t do that just for us. He does it so that we can be a bright light for Him, and so that we can share the hope of Jesus with a world that so desperately needs to know Him.
Kelly: Oh, amen. Wow, what an encouraging time, Lori. I am so thankful you joined me today. I got totally lost in the conversation, forgot we were even recording a podcast.
Lori: Well, I feel the [00:47:00] same. It has been such a joy to talk with you. I told you in our emails I felt like we were fast friends already.
Lori: And the Lord has just knitted our hearts together in such a special place. Thank you so much for the pleasure of getting to know you, and just to be able to share together this morning.
Kelly: Thank you. And thank you, listeners, sticking with us all the way to the end.
Kelly: We pray, Lori and I both pray, that your hearts and your lives would be encouraged and transformed through the hope that only comes through Jesus Christ.
If you were encouraged in your faith today, i’d love to hear from you. You can reach out through my website, kellyhall.org, and pick up some free resources while you’re there. Thanks for listening to the Unshakable Hope podcast.