Hope in God

Series: When He Doesn't Believe

Leslie Basham: Today on Revive Our Hearts:

Nancy Kennedy: The apostle Paul wrote that famous verse: “I have learned in all things to be content.” (Philippians 4:11). Well, he was in prison.

Nancy Leigh DeMoss: Talk about a circumstance.

Nancy Kennedy: Talk about a circumstance. A lot of women say, “Well, I’m not behind bars, but in my marriage I feel like I’m a prisoner. How can I find contentment?” Well, we find our contentment in Christ.

Leslie Basham: This is Revive Our Hearts with Nancy Leigh DeMoss. It’s Friday, February 24th.

Do you feel like you’ve lost hope? Are your circumstances so overwhelming that you feel like giving up? We believe that it’s not an accident that you’re listening right now. Why don’t you consider the next quarter hour a divine appointment? Here’s our host, Nancy Leigh DeMoss, with more.

Nancy Leigh DeMoss: I believe the Lord has a very special message today for women who are listening to this program who have lost hope, particularly as it relates to your marriage. I know as you think back to your wedding day, and it may have been under a variety of circumstances, but at that point there was hope in your heart for your future. And yet for many of our listeners, what started out as having stars in your eyes, for some, those have been cruelly dashed on the rocks of the reality of life.

Our guest on Revive Our Hearts today knows what it is to put her faith and hope in God rather than in her husband, her family, or anything or anyone else. Nancy Kennedy is a prolific author, and she’s written a book that we’ve been talking about this week that I recommend not only for women who are married to unbelieving husbands, but for any woman who’s married or thinking about getting married because it’s so full of helpful encouragement and counsel from God’s Word. But this is true particularly for women who feel alone in their faith.

The book is called When He Doesn’t Believe. Nancy, thank you for joining us on Revive Our Hearts. I love the fact that you closed this book with a chapter on hope. You told me as we were talking earlier that your own faith was tested in some of the ways that God used to give you this message that I think is so encouraging for women.

You talk about some of the gifts that God gives us in our marriage relationship with Him that provide us hope for living life in this very messy world. What are some of those gifts, and how do they give us hope?

Nancy Kennedy: The Bible is rich with promises. I want to qualify this by saying that we can’t just open the Bible and pull out a promise and cling to it and claim it and trust in it. We need to take the whole counsel of Scripture in order to know the things that God has promised us.

There are some very definite things that no matter what your circumstance is in your marriage, in your family; if you’ve lost hope, there are some things that God has promised us. For example, He has promised us contentment, that we can find contentment no matter what our circumstance.

The apostle Paul wrote that famous verse: “I have learned in all things to be content” (Philippians 4:11). Well, he was in prison.

Nancy Leigh DeMoss: Talk about a circumstance.

Nancy Kennedy: Talk about a circumstance. You know, a lot of women say, “Well, I’m not behind bars, but in my marriage I feel like I’m a prisoner. How can I find contentment?” Well, we find our contentment in Christ. As long as you have a condition attached to your contentment, you’ll never be content.

We’ve been talking about women, Christian women, who are married to unbelievers. A woman will say, “Just make him a Christian.” She might not finish that sentence, but the end of it is: “. . . and then I’ll be happy; then I’ll be content.” But as long as there’s a condition attached, you will not find contentment.

Nancy Leigh DeMoss: I love that quote that you have in this chapter from Stormie Omartian where she says, “If God wants you in the place you are right now, then there are no greener pastures.” Where God has you right now is the best place for you to be.

Nancy Kennedy: That’s right. He hasn’t forsaken you. He gives us every gift, every grace, everything we need to be content right where we are. He also promises us comfort. He quiets our hearts, and He just lets us know that whatever we’re going through, whatever looks black and bleak, it’s not—because He’s there with us and He will never leave us.

Nancy Leigh DeMoss: The Scripture is just filled with accounts of how time and time and time again God took circumstances that were hopeless and brought something beautiful, life, out of it. I mean, you think of how God takes an elderly couple, Abraham and Sarah. . . . You talk about this in your book. When they’re both past the child-giving and childbearing years, God says, “You’re going to have a son,” to Abraham and Sarah. When there is no hope, God sends a son through whom will ultimately come the Messiah.

When we think we can’t go on, when God says to a woman, “Respect and reverence and honor and love your husband,” for some of our listeners that is as impossible a task, an assignment, as it was for Abraham and Sarah to have a child at 100 and 90 years of age. And yet God says, “Your hope is not in your ability to solve this situation. Your hope has to be in God.”

Nancy Kennedy: One of the things that God brings into our life is laughter and joy. Oswald Chambers in My Utmost for His Highest says, “The saint is hilarious when crushed with difficulties because the thing is so ludicrously impossible to anyone but God.”

When your husband is cold and cruel and when you know that all hope is gone, you can just laugh—not that it’s funny, but that it’s so ludicrously impossible for anyone but God. Then when God steps in and when He gives you the comfort that He promises, He also brings laughter to your soul.

Nancy Leigh DeMoss: You use a beautiful word picture, Nancy, as you close the book, in relation to the diamond.

Nancy Kennedy: Well, when I started writing this chapter, I had an idea in my head that I wanted to write about how a diamond is formed. A diamond is formed from carbon, and carbon is one of the most common elements in the universe. There are three layers of the earth: the core, the mantle and the crust. A diamond is formed in the mantle of the earth. It’s with intense heat and extreme pressure a molecule of carbon is turned into a diamond. The only way a diamond gets to the surface of the earth is through an explosion, like a volcano.

So my thought was that God can take a marriage, a common, maybe even a crummy marriage, and turn it into a diamond. And yes, He can. But the more I thought about it and the more I prayed about it, I realized that’s not a correct illustration in this instance because God never promises that our marriages will be diamonds.

But we are promised that we will shine like diamonds as we hold out the Word of life to an unbelieving generation, that we are God’s jewels, that we are His precious stones. You know a diamond is the most durable and the most precious gem in the universe. It’s tough, and its toughness is because of the intense heat and pressure of how it was formed.

Nancy Leigh DeMoss: So the very thing that you find most difficult and painful and challenging in your walk are what God is intending to use in your life to make you into a diamond. So the hope is not ultimately that your marriage will be all that you would want it to be or all that it might have been if you had married differently, your hope is in God and the fact that He is faithful, that He is fulfilling His purposes. That’s the basis to have hope, as the scripture says, that never disappoints.

Nancy, I’d like to just close by reading a passage of Scripture from the book of Isaiah that you have in this very last chapter where the Lord says, “Do not be afraid. You will not suffer shame. Do not fear disgrace. You will not be humiliated. You will forget the shame of your youth and remember no more the reproach of your widowhood. For your Maker,” capital m, “is your husband” (Isaiah 54:4, NIV).

"The LORD almighty is His name—the Holy One of Israel is your Redeemer. He is called the God of all the earth. The LORD will call you back as if you were a wife deserted in distress and spirit—a wife who married young only to be rejected, says your God” (verses 5-6).

Then you close with this paragraph that I thought was so beautiful. You said, “We may not know the future, but of this we can be sure: We know the One who called us is faithful. He comforts us and gives us patience, contentment, and joy. He gives us a purpose and hope. He has placed us within our marriages and has given us all we need that He might be glorified and that we might shine like the diamonds we are.”

Leslie Basham: That was Nancy Leigh DeMoss in conversation with Nancy Kennedy, author of When He Doesn’t Believe. I wanted to remind you that you can order the CD of this week’s programs from us at ReviveOurHearts.com. There’s also another CD with a previous interview with Nancy Kennedy on the same topic.

So if you feel alone in your faith, in need of some encouragement and hope, why don’t you get in touch with us and order copies of the two different interviews with Nancy Kennedy? Even if your husband is fully on board spiritually, you may have a friend who could use some encouragement.

Those CDs are available at our website, ReviveOurHearts.com, or you can call 1-800-569-5959.

Nancy, you wanted to say a word of thanks to our listeners.

Nancy Leigh DeMoss: Thanks, Leslie. Did you know it was possible to post your comments about each day’s Revive Our Hearts program at our website, ReviveOurHearts.com? Well it is, and I enjoy reading those comments and getting feedback from our listeners.

Here are a couple that caught my attention recently at our comment blog. One woman said, “I’ve always prayed to God to make me a beautiful woman. Now I know the secret: having a grateful attitude. Thanks Revive Our Hearts.”

Here’s another one. A woman says, “This message was meant for me to hear today. I’ve been through many hard trials in my marriage, and I know that a bitter root can grow up within us from the hurts and wrongs done by others. But I want to say, ‘Thank you, Lord, for keeping my mind and my spirit stayed on You during these trying times.’”

Isn’t it amazing how God knows just what we need to hear when we need to hear it? It’s so encouraging to hear how God is using these programs to minister to the hearts of people like you. Why don’t you let us know how Revive Our Hearts is helping you? And would you consider helping us by praying for us and by giving to help meet our financial needs?

We’re a listener-supported ministry, and it’s through gifts of friends like you who are being touched by this ministry that we’re able to continue broadcasting Revive Our Hearts in your area and throughout this country.

Thanks so much for your support and your prayers.

Leslie Basham: Once again, our website is ReviveOurHearts.com and our toll free telephone number is 1-800-569-5959.

Next week we’ll begin a new series studying the life of a woman in the Bible who played an important role in the history of the nation of Israel. We’ll see how God might revive our hearts as we get to know Esther. I hope you’ll join us for that. Have a great weekend.

Revive Our Hearts with Nancy Leigh DeMoss is an outreach of Life Action Ministries.

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