Trust Him in the Storm

Dannah Gresh: Kathy Helvey remembered a season when her family was hurting.

Kathy Helvey: I felt like everything was dark. It was unfamiliar. It was rough. I thought, God, how are you going to take me through this? And then He turned this darkness into light.

Dannah: This is the Revive Our Hearts podcast with Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth, author of You Can Trust God to Write Your Story, for September 26, 2025. I’m Dannah Gresh.

In the early days of Revive Our Hearts, Nancy recorded a series on Psalm 57 called "Storm Shelter." It was all about trusting God in difficult times and emotional storms. And this week, we’ve been revisiting it.

Here are a few highlights from what she’s already shared:

Nancy (from past programs):

It's not a matter of if we will go through storms in life, it's a matter of when.

We need to know how to walk through those storms, how to respond. Don't expect to be immune from the storms. In fact, the closer you walk to God, it may be that the more God will entrust you with some storms that He is using to fit you to fulfill His purposes.

I don't know about you, but when I'm in the midst of a storm, I have to say, sadly, that my first impulse is often not to cry out to God but to cry out to someone else. If we want to really get our need met, we're going to have to cry out to the Wonderful Counselor whose name is Jesus.

There will be an end to this. God's purpose for me in this storm will have been fulfilled, and I will look back and say, "God, You did all things well."

That husband, that child, that assignment, that impossible task, that situation at work, that physical challenge is part of God's purpose for me right now.

Yes, the waves are high. Yes, the storm is great. But God is faithful and steadfast in the midst of the turbulence.

Real peace and joy does not mean the absence of problems. It means the presence of the Lord Jesus in the midst of the pain, in the midst of the problems, and in the middle of that storm. 

Ultimately, it's not about us. It's not about me. It's not about my circumstances. It's not about whether I survive. Ultimately, it's all about Him. It's about the glory of God and His purposes being fulfilled in this world.

Is your drive in life to see God glorified or to see your circumstances made easier? Regardless of the circumstance that you may find yourself in right now, are you satisfied in Christ?

Dannah: That’s Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth from our current series, "Storm Shelter." When Nancy taught that series, Kathy Helvey was in the audience. Yesterday we heard part of her story. The Lord sustained her in a year when her parents died and her husband Bob went through open heart surgery.

Kathy Helvey: I was nervous, I was fearful, I could not sleep that night. This is my husband; this is my life. And yet it was like He said, "Kathy, if I choose to take him you know I'm going to be there. I'll be there as I've never been there before, and I will carry you."

Dannah: But Kathy was still to face more storms. Let’s go back to 2001. Kathy was in the audience when Nancy was teaching from Psalm 57. And she shared another struggle she was going through.

Kathy: We have three children and one of them has autism. Over the years, we tried numerous therapies. Sometimes she'd progress; sometimes she wouldn't. But we've come a long, long way. But during this year it was an ongoing storm in Stephanie's life because of her adolescence. The main thing autism means is, "in a world of your own."

When she was little, a lot of times, we thought she was deaf. She wasn't understanding us, very little eye contact, tactile defensive, never wanting you to touch her or hold her, just irrational fears, a lot of  social steps behind other kids, socially very inept. And when they're little you can kind of blend them in. But as they get older, the gap gets wider. When adolescence hit, it hit with a vengeance.

You know if you have children that you love them dearly. But when you have one with a disability, there is a love there and a protectiveness that is unrelenting. You're out there being their advocate all the time.

So with Stephanie, all the therapies that I had done, all the different situations that I had tried to help her with, it was like I couldn't do a thing for her during that year of her life (it was more like two years). It was getting worse and worse.

As her brain chemistry got hooked up with her hormones and the storm came, about every two months she would leave us. I began to know what it was like to have somebody in an institution where you couldn't get through to them—where they would just rock, where they would say angry things, they would become a different person. So we would go through this for about a week. And then she would come back to normal.

Well this went on every two months during the backdrop of that horrible year. And I remember finally at the end of the year, because of what I had learned about God's sovereignty in my life, I thought, You know, why can't I transfer that to my autistic daughter. And, God, why, why are you taking her through this every two months?

I thought, I've got to trust Him because He is completely sovereign. He's doing this for a reason. And He's perfect in His love. He loves Stephanie. He loves me, and He is all-wise. I don't know what He's doing. But He does and so I'm going to trust You.

Then January of this year she had the biggest, what we call funk—when she would go off for a week and not be there with us. I remember when she came back out of that funk, we were always so happy to have Stephanie back in her old autistic way.

But I remember this time when she came back, I had to pick her up from school for something. And she came running down the hall. I thought, You're not supposed to run. I was always trying to make her be normal, make her fit. You know, that was my goal in life because, who knows, when she gets older as an adult she's got to live in our world so as much as we can, we try to help Stephanie cope.

I remember her running down the hall with this smile on her face and I thought, I'm not going to tell you not to run anymore. You can be autistic all you want. What is wrong with autism? It was like God in a neon sign said, "Kathy, in acceptance lies peace." In acceptance of autism lies peace. But more than that—because of what I had learned about His sovereignty—in acceptance of God. It was from the hand of God.

I had known some of this along the way, but it all came together for me. It was like a three-corded strand when Nancy said, "What is your theology about God? Because whatever your theology is, that's how you will respond to life's situations."

I remember thinking, I know my theology now. It's that I have a sovereign, loving, wise God. And there will be things that will come into my life, storms that will have a beginning and an end and ongoing storms. But I feel like right now He's put me in the eye of that storm and given me a freedom to . . . I can't say, "I love autism," I'd be nuts if I said that, and you wouldn't believe me. But I can say that I love my daughter with a new love. I look at her with new eyes.

It's like God took me out of the cage and said, "You know what? Just trust Me with her life." And I don't know how long He's being trying to get that through to me, but I feel like those funks had no other purpose than for me as a mom to just let go and love her and accept her totally as from the hand of God.

It was interesting because in the beginning of that year (and I'll close with this) I'd been given a verse by a friend because she knew what I was going through. It's in Isaiah 42. She had written it to me. I claim a verse for my life every year. And so I thought, Well, Lord, You know what I'm going through this year with this daughter of mine, and I'm going to claim this verse. I had no idea how God was going to work. But now that I've told you the story, as I read the verse, you'll know.

This is the verse, Isaiah 42:16: "I will lead the blind by ways they have not known, along unfamiliar paths I will guide them; I will turn the darkness into light before them and make the rough places smooth. These are the things I will do; I will not forsake them."

I felt like everything was dark, it was unfamiliar, it was rough. And I thought, God, how are You going to take me through this? Then He turned that darkness into light, and it was because of His truth.

His Word is truth, and it changes our lives. I have never been more at peace. I was just saying to my husband, Bob, the other day, "You know, nothing has changed in our life—nothing—to make me so happy, so full of joy, that joy of the Lord, other than that His truth has set me free—and in acceptance lies that peace.

Nancy: Thank you, Kathy, for sharing out of your heart. There's something very precious and rich and life-changing about hearing a message illustrated in a life. It's one thing to hear the theology, to hear the doctrine—and we need to hear that. But then to see it fleshed out, to see it incarnate, to see it illustrated in a life . . . Your circumstances and mine are probably quite different than Kathy's, and yet maybe not so different in some respects, because we do have storms.

Kathy, as you were sharing, I was thinking of some of the storms in my life that, like the death of your dad, have a beginning and not an end, because there's still a sense of loss. But there's a sense of completion and finality in a storm like that. And then we do have other storms that go on and on and on and on and on. There may never be in this life any release from having to deal with and live in the midst of that storm—maybe with a child who has physical needs, maybe in a marriage.

I'm receiving notes regularly from women who are sharing issues in relation to their marriage, and as I read their notes, I realize this situation is not going to just go away, this issue with parents, this issue with background, this issue in a work environment, this health issue. And how do we respond in those times?

Kathy has given us a beautiful illustration of how theology, our view of God, ultimately determines the way that we respond to life. She said that there is a three-fold strand or cord that has been her theology. And when the tests have come in her life, she goes back to ground her heart in what she knows to be true of God.

Remember the three points she made about God? He is sovereign. What does that mean? I remember a little child saying to me (when I was teaching just the children some years ago), "It means that He's the boss." It means He knows what He's doing; it means He's in control; it means He doesn't make any mistakes; it means He is God most high. He is over all the events and people and circumstances in life and details and generations and everything that has to do with our world and every world. He is God over all! It means He has the right to do what He wants to with His creation.

 

Now the fact that He is sovereign means that we're not. We don't know what He knows, we don't have the authority He has, we don't have the rights He has. It means that we are under sovereignty.

To those who don't know the heart of God that can seem repressive because there's an innate bent in us to want to be in charge—that's called sin—to want to be in control. And since Eve first said, "I will" when God said, "Don't," we want to do what we want to do.

The human natural flesh does not want to bow to sovereignty. But once you become a child of God, you have the Spirit of God living in you, then you are in a position to come to adore sovereignty. Now I tell you, ladies, I do. I don't always, but I have learned to adore sovereignty.

What is my response to sovereignty? It's to bow the knee, to just surrender, to say, "Yes, Lord, have it Your way."

Have Thine own way, Lord!
Have thine own way!
Thou art the Potter,
I am the clay.

("Have Thine Own Way, Lord!" by Adelaide Pollard)

We want to be the potter, we want to be molding things and making them. We want to mold our families and our friends and our environment and our circumstances. We want to mold them to our liking and God says, "No, you're not the potter."

Now we can try and be the potter, but two things will happen. One, we will make a mess, sooner or later. And two, sooner or later we will turn it back over to the One who is the potter.

The time will come when we will realize (in this life or the next) that we were not sovereign. How much better, while we can still choose to bow the knee, to say, "Lord, I accept Your sovereignty. I trust that You know what You are doing. I trust that You don't make mistakes. I trust that it wasn't an accident that You gave me this child."

I remember a young woman who served in our ministry years ago who had a very rare and life-threatening disease, actually another member or two of her family died from the same disease. Before she could die from this disease that had her incapacitated in a wheelchair much of the time, she was killed in a car accident. I remember, I believe it was at her funeral, hearing one of her relatives say, "It was a wreck, but it wasn't an accident. God is sovereign. There are no accidents."

You may not be able to fathom, and often we can't fathom, why it is that God makes the choices that He does. But the fact is, He has the right to. And peace, as Kathy has just reminded us so beautifully, comes from acceptance of God's sovereignty, surrender to His sovereignty, embracing it, just relaxing in it in a sense.

I remember calling a friend some months ago. I was real bent out of shape over a situation that had taken place in our ministry, and I was confiding in her some of my frustration. You have those friends you feel like you can call and you can tell them what you really think. And this is a true friend. She said, "Nancy, remember you're not God." Well, I can't tell you that I really wanted to hear that at the moment, but I needed to hear that. We need to remind each other, "Remember, you're not God. God alone is sovereign."

You read through the book of Isaiah, particularly the last half of the book, and you'll find over and over and over and over again reminders that God is sovereign. "You alone are God. Lord, there is none like You in heaven or on earth; there is none like You. You are sovereign. You are in control." He is the blessed controller of all things, as you've perhaps heard it said before. So peace comes through acceptance, relinquishment, surrender, bowing the knee, saying, "Lord, I accept this set of circumstances that has come into my life, trusting that You are sovereign."

Now Kathy said that there were three threads to her theology: God is sovereign. God is wise. And God is love. God is wise! That's because He is sovereign. He's sovereign because He is wise. I mean it all goes together. You can't separate who God is. He's wise. That again means that He knows what He is doing. There's no foolishness in God. He is wisdom.

As you read through the Proverbs, you find the heart of wisdom, the value of wisdom, the rewards and riches of wisdom. God is wise. He is wisdom. He knows how to handle every situation taking place on this earth. He knows how to handle all the international crises that are taking place in our world today. And He knows how to handle the little relatively mini-crises—but when you're going through it, it doesn't seem mini. But the crises in our world.

I don't know about you, but sometimes I find it easier to trust God's wisdom as it relates to the nations and the planets and the galaxies and the world, than I do to trust His wisdom when it comes to my situation, my life.

I can trust Him to keep the sun and the moon and the earth and the planets doing all that they're supposed to do. But why do I find it difficult to trust Him to be wise as it relates to my life, my circumstances? If you believe that God is wise, then you will trust that He doesn't make mistakes.

Someone has said that in the midst of that crisis, God's love is never removed from you. His love is steadfast. We've talked before about the hesed—H, E, S, E, D—love of God that you read about in the Old Testament many times when you read the word "mercy" or "loving kindness" or "faithfulness" in the Old Testament. It's a Hebrew word hesed, which means God's covenant love, His faithful love, his undying love.

Nothing can bring it to an end. Nothing can make God love you less, no failure of yours, no failure of anyone else's, no circumstances in your life. Paul said, "I'm persuaded that neither death nor life, nor angels nor principalities nor powers, nor things present nor things to come, nor height nor depth," nor autistic children, nor loss of parents, nor loss of health, "nor any other created thing, nothing shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord" (see Rom. 8:38–39).

Dannah: That's Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth wrapping up our series on storms. You know, if you're in a storm right now, you may feel really alone, but let me just tell you, we have countless listeners who write in to tell Nancy about their own trials and hope they found through biblical teaching. One listener shared a particularly powerful testimony to God's grace in the middle of what sounds like a really raging storm. We're going to have Ana Lee, who's on the Revive Our Hearts staff, read this letter for us.

Ana Lee: This listener began:

Dear Nancy,

I don't think you'll ever grasp on this side of heaven what an impact you've had on my life. I feel like you are my big sister who has poured truth into my life. Eight months ago, my dear sweet daddy went into the hospital to have back surgery. He came out of surgery, but the Lord took him home. Those two days were a shock and still seemed nightmarish. Mistakes were made, and I know things happened that shouldn't have. It has been hard to let that go, but I rest in God's sovereignty. I listen to you talk about how hard sudden loss can be.

Dannah: In 1979, Nancy experienced the sudden loss of her own father.

Nancy: I received the news, having just been with my family and then having flown back to my place of work. I landed in Virginia, where I was working at the time, and received a phone call that my dad had had a heart attack and was instantly in the presence of the Lord.

Dannah: Arthur DeMoss was fifty-three years old. He left behind his wife and seven children. Nancy, the oldest, had just turned twenty-one.

Nancy: My dad and I were very close. In the days that followed, there were lots of tears and an enormous sense of loss that I feel sometimes even to this day. 

Ana: It was such a comfort to know that it was okay for me to hurt. In my mind, I thought I shouldn’t hurt as much as everyone else because I knew my daddy was with the Lord. 

Nancy: But in that very first moment before there was any other thought, God brought to mind a verse that I had read, I think it was just a week or so earlier. It's from Psalm 119:68. Paraphrased it reads, "God is good, and everything He does is good."

Ana: I learned that you grieve, but you grieve with hope.

Dannah: Well, for this dear listener, the storm wasn’t over.

Ana: I was carrying flowers from the funeral out of the church when I stepped off a curb and broke my ankle. At the time, my sons were seven and two, and my mom lived thirty minutes from me. The Lord slowed me down quickly and reminded me He is in control.

Two weeks later, we were informed that my brother had a mass on his liver and that it was cancer.

Our dearest family friend, whom my son is named after, passed away and was buried on my dad’s birthday. So from May through July we were jolted in such a way that I didn’t know if I was up or down. All I knew was I needed Jesus. 

Dannah: What a spiraling storm! It was disorienting. It didn’t make sense in the moment. But now? Now she’s beginning to see just a few of the ways God was sovereign in her circumstances.

Ana: I believe I learned to really depend on the Lord during this time. I needed Him so I could breathe sometimes—He gave me that breath. You shared so many things on grief that spoke truth into my life. That’s the key. I needed truth. 

Dannah: Here’s Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth, again.

Nancy: Now, my dad had spent the first twenty-some years of my life teaching me that God is good, and everything He does is good. But in that moment, theology that I had in my head became doxology in my heart. I knew that whatever we had to face in the days ahead, God was good. God laid in that understanding, that reminder of His good character, a foundation that became a resting place for my heart, a steadying place for my emotions, and allowed us to walk through the days and the months and the years that followed confident in the goodness of God.

Ana: Nancy, thank you for cheering me on during some really dark days. I’m still battling, I’m still grieving, I’m still hurting—but heaven rules, and I will rest in that.

Dannah: Praise God for sustaining this listener, for being sovereign in her suffering, and for using Revive Our Hearts to speak truth into her life. We’re able to encourage women with biblical truth because listeners like you are so generous. When you give, you’re joining our mission to help women all over the world experience freedom, fullness, and fruitfulness in Christ.

We’re so grateful for you. If Revive Our Hearts has served you well, would you consider making a donation? Today, with your gift of any amount, we’ll send you a booklet called Endure: 40 Days of Fortitude. It’s our way of saying “thank you” for partnering with us. Visit ReviveOurHearts.com or call us at 1-800-569-5959 to donate and request your booklet.

Well, friend, have a great weekend! And join us next week as we hear from a woman who is beloved by the Revive Our Hearts family. Colleen Chao was struggling as a young mom. Her son faced many serious health crises and Colleen felt overwhelmed.

Her mentor said, step one, get an orange. Yes, the fruit.

Step two helped Colleen take her eyes off her struggles. Hear about it next time on Revive Our Hearts.

This program is a listener-supported production of Revive Our Hearts in Niles, Michigan, calling women to freedom, fullness, and fruitfulness in Christ.

 

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