Episode 11: I Am a String in the Bow of the Lord

Katie Laitkep: Here’s Erin Davis.

Erin Davis: We can know the answer to our “how long” question. It’s this: just long enough.

Katie: This is The Deep Well with Erin Davis. I’m Katie Laitkep.

We’re in a season called “Dysfunction.” Erin has continued to point us to Jesus as we all go through highs and lows in our relationships and in our families.

Here’s Erin.

Erin: “This won’t end well, and it won’t take long.” A doctor whispered those words to us after he told us that my mom, who most of you will never know but I sure wish you could, was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s just a few years ago.

I grabbed onto those words for dear life. I knew we were heading into a dark tunnel, and I’m sure many of you know just how dark the tunnel of dementia is. I convinced myself it was going to be a short tunnel, and I put all my hope in that.

The author of Proverbs tells us in Proverbs 13:12 that “hope deferred makes the heart sick.” I can testify that putting all of your hope in the length of suffering instead of the God who is with you in the suffering will give you a stomachache, too.

Now we’re several years in, and it’s not ending well in human terms. My mom—her name is Jenny—was a gifted watercolor artist. She learned that hobby late in life, and she spent a lot of years making up for lost time. She can’t do watercolor anymore, but one of the few things she can do is color in coloring books. She fills about five of those a day.

She has always been a woman of deep faith. If you could have asked her before she got sick, “When did you accept Jesus?” She’d say, “I don’t know. I’ve just always loved Him.” She always has.

I want to say she’s still a devoted Gigi, even though she doesn’t know those children are her grandchildren. I believe that somewhere inside of her she still loves them, she’s still devoted to them, and they still love her.

She’s a woman I look so much like. She has black hair, I have blonde hair, but other than that we could be clones. Before she got sick people would always ask if we were sisters—which she loved, and I did not.

She has adored me every second of my life, even before I was born. 

She’s a woman who is slipping away in an incredibly slow and painful way. There’s nothing about it that’s smooth.

In this very, very hard season of family life, I am learning a good, hard lesson. It’s a good, hard lesson that every follower of Jesus has to learn. It’s a good, hard lesson that He often uses our families to teach us. It’s one that I’ve seen displayed over and over in the life of Joseph. Here it is: I am a string in the bow of the Lord.

Because this tunnel of Alzheimer’s is not a short tunnel, it’s a tunnel that we could be in for several more years. It’s one we could be in for decades. What happens when the suffering is long?

A couple of weeks ago I drove under the tunnel of the Chesapeake Bay with my boys. It was great at first. “Isn’t this cool? We’re in a tunnel! Everybody hold your breath!” Then, about halfway through, Judah said, “This is kind of scary!”

It feels that way when you can’t see the light on the other side, right? Sometimes in our individual lives and sometimes in the life of our family, we can’t see the other side of the tunnel. Something I’ve had to realize along the way is that hoping the path of suffering will be a short one is a false hope.

Here’s one of the lessons Joseph’s life teaches us, and it’s good news, even if it doesn’t feel like it. I’ll say it again—I’m going to keep saying it—you are a string in the bow of the Lord.

We’ve come to Genesis 50. Let’s think about all that has happened in Joseph’s life. If it was a slideshow that we set to music, it would make me misty. Those things always make me misty. If we were imagining Joseph’s life in that format, we’d see his long-hoped-for birth to his mama, Rachel. We’d see his dad, the deceiver, and his favoritism towards Joseph. We’d see that his brothers hated him and threw him in a well before they sold him as a slave. We’d see his unlikely rise to power. Then, as we just saw in the last episode, finally we’d see the restoration of those family relationships.

Now, here in Genesis 50 Joseph was at his father’s funeral. We see in Joseph really deep grief over the loss of an imperfect parent.

One of the things I plan to say at my mom’s funeral is that in these kinds of situations we often say things about the departed that aren’t necessarily true. But in my mom’s case, almost everything positive we could say about her is true. She has been a remarkable woman, but she’s not perfect. Jacob wasn’t either.

Genesis 50:1 tells us, 

Then Joseph fell on his father’s face and wept over him and kissed him.”

This was after his father died, when his dad’s body was lifeless. There was sadness, there was grief, there was loss. Let’s face it: those are among the ties that bind our families together.

Scripture goes on to give us some really beautiful language about how Joseph grieved. It’s been a comfort to me in my times of loss, because we don’t make time for grief. But I want to skip over that and get us to Genesis 50:15–21.

When Joseph's brothers saw that their father was dead, they said, “It may be that Joseph will hate us and pay us back for all the evil that we did to him.” (v. 15)

What I see here in the brothers is they still had guilty consciences. They weren’t sure that the offenses that they’d committed against their brother were really forgiven. They thought it was just Dad holding it all together. What we’ve had to learn in my family is that in a lot of ways, it was my mom that was holding us together. So, they’re worried at the funeral that Joseph, who now has a lot of power, is going to take his revenge.

Verse 16:

So they sent a message to Joseph, saying, “Your father gave this command before he died: ‘Say to Joseph, “Please forgive the transgression of your brothers and their sin, because they did evil to you.”’”

They’re still not coming at it honestly. They’re still not quite taking ownership of what they did. They’re telling him that their dad said he needed to forgive them. Whether their dad said that or not, we don’t know. But the verse says that Joseph wept when they spoke to him.

Verse 18: 

His brothers also came and fell down before him and said, “Behold, we are your servants.” 

In many ways, this whole series has been moving us forward to this next passage. I’m in Genesis 50. I’m going to read us verses 19–21. “But Joseph said to them . . .” Remember, they were lying down in front of him in a posture of humility. They were committing themselves to be his servants if he would just spare their lives and not take out his revenge. Verse 19:

But Joseph said to them, “Do not fear, for am I in the place of God? [That’s trusting them to Jesus; that’s the safest for them to be. He was saying, “Judgment is Gods.”] As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good, to bring it about that many people should be kept alive, as they are today. So do not fear; I will provide for you and your little ones.” Thus he comforted them and spoke kindly to them. (vv. 19–21)

We read Joseph’s story in a few verses in a single podcast season, and our lives just don’t unfold that way. Sometimes reconciliation doesn’t come in a few chapters. Sometimes, as we said, reconciliation doesn’t come at all.

Sometimes the people who threw us in a pit—an emotional pit, a relational pit—sometimes they’re not sorry. Sometimes every time we crawl out of the pit, they throw us back in! Sometimes sons are not reunited with their fathers. And sometimes our families are the very reason we ask a very honest question of God. I wonder if it was a prison prayer that Joseph prayed: “How long, O God?”

I could give us a long list of “how longs” here. How long until you receive something family-wise that you’ve been praying for—a husband, a child? Any number of things that you’ve been asking the Lord to do in your family for a really long time: “How long, O Lord?”

How long till God gives someone you love relief? We’ve talked some here about addictions and patterns of sin in our children. It makes mamas ask, “How long till You get ahold of that boy?” 

How long until a hurt is healed? You thought it was healed, and then you came back together with that family and you realized, no, actually, it had just scabbed over.

How long until there’s restoration? How long till somebody in your family who’s sick is cured and healthy again? How long until the prodigals return? 

That’s probably just the tip of a very large iceberg.

I don’t know your “how long.” You might not even know your “how long.” We need the Holy Spirit to illuminate these kinds of things. So let’s take a moment—just a moment, right where you are, wherever you are as you’re listening. I want to give you space to ask Him. Ask God, “When it comes to my family, what’s my ‘how long’?” Go ahead.

You might have felt like you knew the answer right away. Some of you might be driving down the road ten years from now. I hope this season comes to mind and you go, “Oh, that’s it. That’s my ‘how long.’”

Let’s keep Joseph’s words to his brothers in mind, and let’s flip forward in our Bibles to Psalm 13. It’s a little psalm, just six verses, but it packs a punch. For every heart that has ever asked “how long,” Psalm 13 is for you. Let me read us verses 1–4.

How long, O Lord? Will you forget me forever?
   How long will you hide your face from me?
How long must I take counsel in my soul
   and have sorrow in my heart all the day?
How long shall my enemy be exalted over me? [That could be family language.]
Consider and answer me, O Lord my God;
   light up my eyes, lest I sleep the sleep of death [That’s him saying, “Is this going to be fixed before I die?”],
lest my enemy say, “I have prevailed over him,”
   lest my foes rejoice because I am shaken.

If you know David’s writing style, you know that there is often a pattern in the book of Psalms. David will honestly pour his heart out, just like he’s doing here. He doesn’t filter it. 

I was just texting with a friend last night, and she was talking about her grief. I could tell she was trying to polish it up for me. I had a suspicion that if she was trying to polish it up for me, she would also try to polish it up for the Lord. I said, “You know, you don’t have to put a polish coat on that.” 

She said, “Really?” 

I said, “Yes, read the Psalms.”

So, David had this habit where he would just get it off his chest. He would just be honest, which is so beautiful, because the Lord already knows those things are in our hearts. But then there would always be a pivot. Listen to verses 5–6.

But I have trusted in your steadfast love;
   my heart shall rejoice in your salvation.
I will sing to the Lord,
   because he has dealt bountifully with me.

What was going on there? How was David so riled up and so anxious to know the “how long,” and then he makes these declarations about how God is? David knew he was a string on the bow of the Lord.

God doesn’t answer our “how long” question with answers about time. I don’t know anybody who was walking through something and cried out to the Lord and prayed some version of “how long” and the Lord said, “Just two more months, three more days, twelve more hours.” That’s not how it works! God created time, but He stands outside of it.

We often don’t know how long in the way we think about time. But through His Word and by His character we can know the answer to our “how long” question. It’s this: just long enough.

God is going to stretch us back like a string on a bow just long enough to hit the target that He intends, and not one second longer.

My boys are into shooting bows right now. I don’t have the muscles to even pull the things back, usually. But I know that if you release the arrow before you should, you will break the arrow, you will break the bow, and you might break your arm.

God pulls us back on His bow. He’s going to keep that tension, the tension in our lives for what we’re waiting for, He’s going to hold it there until the exact right moment, not one second longer, and then He’s going to let it go so that He can hit His target.

What I’m learning in this very hard season where I am being stretched, and there have been many times when I have said to the Lord, “God, I can’t take this one more day. I cannot be stretched any further on Your bow.” Then I am, and I realize I can, and that God’s target must not yet be in sight.

You see, God’s target is often not our target. My target is relief. I don’t know how many times, as I’ve faced caregivers’ fatigue (which is very real) I’ve thought, I’ve said, I’ve even prayed, “I just want this to be over.” And to confess that is to confess something pretty significant. Because the way this story ends, unless Jesus comes back, is with the death of the woman I adore. So there’s something in me that says, “I just want her to die. I just want to get to the end of this tunnel.” But God’s target is not my target, and when I feel that way, it’s a sure sign that I have put my hope in comfort, in relief, and not in Jesus. 

Oh man, am I a comfort seeker! I really want to be comfortable. This interesting thing has been happening in my life lately as I go places on trips with my family or to teach like this: I worry because I don’t have all my pillows with me. That never happened in my twenties. I never had those thoughts in my thirties. But the older I get, the more I’m drawn to comfort at any cost. So I will ever be steering my life into whatever will give me comfort.

What is God’s target for my life? What is God’s target for my mom’s life? What is God’s target for your family? Well, I’d never claim to know everything God is trying to teach us. He’s much too big for that, and I am much too small. But I can read His Word and know some of what He intends for us.

Let’s look back at Genesis 50:20 again with that thought in mind: “What is God’s target for my family?”

“As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good, to bring it about that many people should be kept alive, as they are today.”

I hope you know that the whole Bible is pointing toward the gospel—not just what we call the Gospels, where we see Jesus live, die, resurrect. But the whole Bible is telling that story of God’s plan for the redemption of His creation.

This one feels like a no-brainer! What Jesus has done for us, He has done that many lives would be spared. We should just plagiarize Joseph’s sermon and speak it every time the enemy comes at us and every time he comes after our families—and he will. 

As we saw early in this series, families are God’s idea. So, when your family feels under attack (and mine often does), we can just say this: “As for you . . .” I hate Satan, and he hates me. We are in an epic battle, and we will be until Jesus returns and puts him in his place. But I can look him in the eye, so to speak, when he comes at my family. I can say back to the enemy, “As for you, you meant evil against me. You meant evil against my husband. You meant evil against my sons. You meant evil against my family, my parents, my brothers and sisters; but God means it for good, to bring about that many people should be kept alive, as they are today.”

There’s something unique and powerful that happens when the people of God suffer and struggle. God uses all of it. We struggle as gospel witnesses to those who do not know the Lord, that they would take notice that God is using our lives so that many people would receive new life in Him.

One of my primary mission fields in this season is the home where my mom lives. It’s the nurses that take care of her. It’s the families of the other people who are watching the person that they love walk through the dark valley. I hope the way we’re grieving—and we are grieving—and I hope the way we’re suffering—and we are suffering—I hope they can look at us and say, “What was meant for evil, what is devastating, God seems to be using it for good.”

We can get tunnel vision so easily. God’s Word calls us to remember, “Hey! You’re the light of the world, and it can’t be hidden!” When we are pulled back on the bow of the Lord, it is never, ever, ever for nothing. When we are pulled back on that bow, one of the ways God redeems it is that we get to be gospel witnesses to a lost and hurting world. Our Christian witness is on the target. I’m not sure it’s the bullseye.

Let me read us Isaiah 43:1–2. This is God speaking to the Israelites, so keep in mind this is the family of Joseph.

But now thus says the Lord,
   he who created you, O Jacob,
   he who formed you, O Israel:
“Fear not, for I have redeemed you;
   I have called you by name, you are mine. [Family language.]
When you pass through the waters, I will be with you;
   and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you;
when you walk through fire you shall not be burned,
   and the flame shall not consume you.”

God was speaking to the nation of Israel here, the nation He promised would come from Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. He was describing their stretching. He said, “When you pass through the waters (stretch!), when you go through roaring rivers (stretch!), when you have to walk through the scorching fire (stretch!) . . .” God allowed their stretching.

It speaks back to that question earlier about were these words that Jacob spoke over his sons really words of blessing? Here God’s saying to this nation of Israel, His children, “I’m going to let you go through really hard stuff, but I’m going to be with you. I’m going to stretch you.” God allowed their stretching. God allowed Joseph to be sold as a slave, and God allows your stretching. Why? What’s the bull’s-eye?

Listen to Isaiah 43:7.

“. . . everyone who is called by my name,
   whom I created for my glory,
whom I formed and made.”

His glory; that’s what’s in the center of the bull’s-eye. The answer to the “why” and the answer to the “how long” both point back to the Who. 

Why does God allow suffering and struggle? So He would get the glory! Why is there dysfunction in every family? Well, because every family is broken by sin. What’s the hope in that? That God uses that dysfunction for His glory! How long will it last? Whatever God has stirred up in your heart as you’ve been listening to this series, whatever it is about your family that makes you ask, “How long is that going to last?” . . . only as long as it needs to to make sure that God gets the glory.

You know what my tendency is? It’s probably yours, too. I like to convince myself that I rescued myself! I often say I’m a type AA personality. There aren’t many things that I don’t think I can figure out on my own. I often say Rome could have been built in a day if I was in charge. I tend to think I can muscle through it. I tend to think I can find a solution. I tend to think I can rally the resources.

If God doesn’t string me back on that bow very far, I almost instantly think, I got myself out of that jam. I got my family out of that jam. I made it happen.”No! 

The situation I’m in with my mom, I spent months or years doing that. I was going to find the right supplements. I was going to help build the right schedule. I was going to build the caregiver plan. I was going to rally my family. I was going to get everybody to see it my way. I was going to figure this thing out! It wasn’t going to take me down. It hasn’t taken me down, but the only reason it hasn’t taken me down is because I got stretched far enough that I had to surrender. It’s in the stretching that we learn our utter dependence on God and that He deserves the glory.

Joseph seemed to understand this. Do you know where I think he learned it? I think he learned it as those slave traders were hauling him into a land he’d never been to before. I think he learned it as he got sold to Potiphar. I think he learned it as he was cast into prison for two years for a crime he didn’t commit. How many times do you think Joseph asked, “How long, O Lord?” in the prison? Every day . . . several times a day.

Then he came out of the prison and he got a lot of the things that he wanted, probably, that all of us wanted—a wife and children and a good job and a steady paycheck. But he knew his dad was back in Canaan. How long? “How long till I see my dad again? How long till I see baby Benjamin? How long?”

Why does God stretch us back, and why does it take so long? Because that’s often what’s required for God to get the glory. Don’t you hear it in the final chapters of Genesis? Joseph is fully surrendered to God’s plan, and he has no animosity towards his brothers, because he says, “Yes, you intended to harm me, but God put me on His bow and He stretched it back, and He used it for good.” Why does God need the glory? Well, God doesn’t need anything, but God alone is worthy.

Lest we think we’re the ones that built beautiful families, lest we think we’re the ones that produced children who walk with the Lord, we have to be stretched, because we’re not built for that. God deserves the glory.

I want to jump back to Genesis 49. We already talked about this. This is the part where Jacob pulled the sons together and gave each one of them a blessing. I want you to listen to what Jacob said as he lay dying in front of the son he loved most, Joseph. I’m in Genesis 49:22.

“Joseph is a fruitful bough,
   a fruitful bough by a spring;
   his branches run over the wall.”
It reminds me of that prayer we prayed, that our families would be oaks of righteousness planted by streams of living water. Verse 23:
   “The archers bitterly attacked him,
shot at him, and harassed him severely,
   yet his bow remained unmoved;
his arms were made agile
   by the hands of the Mighty One of Jacob
(from there is the Shepherd, the Stone of Israel),
   by the God of your father who will help you,
by the Almighty who will bless you
   with blessings of heaven above,
blessings of the deep that crouches beneath,
   blessings of the breasts and of the womb.
The blessings of your father
   are mighty beyond the blessings of my parents,
   up to the bounties of the everlasting hills.
May they be on the head of Joseph,
   and on the brow of him who was set apart from his brothers.”

I’ve been thinking about this thought, that I am a string in the bow of the Lord, for many months. It’s given me a lot of comfort. But I guess I’d never before read Joseph’s blessing. That’s archery language. He talked about the arrows that came at his son. Those weren’t literal arrows; it doesn’t say that the brothers shot arrows at him. They would have killed him if they had. That’s about what the New Testament calls “flaming darts” that the enemy hurls at us. But it says that Joseph’s bow was steady because the hand of the Almighty was on him. 

The purpose of knowing God’s Word is not to idolize the people in God’s Word. But don’t you see in Joseph a willingness to endure whatever God had for him for as long as God stretched him because he wanted God to get the glory?

I want you to think back to your “how long,” and let me ask you some questions that I’ve been asking a lot in these days. 

• Could you endure, whatever your “how long” is, for the rest of your life if you knew God would get the glory?
• Whatever it is in your family that you’re asking God to do, could you live without it if you could see that as a crown you were putting on the head of Jesus?

There’s a verse in Revelation that talks about Jesus being crowned with many crowns. There’s another passage that talks about these elders, that all day long, every day, they just cast their crowns before Jesus.

I don’t do this perfectly, but I have decided that I will endure this trial with grace because it puts glory on the head of Jesus. You are a strong string on the bow of the Lord, and He will pull you back exactly as long as He needs to and not one nanosecond longer, until He hits the target, His target. The bull’s-eye our families are meant to hit is His glory.

I’m going to take us back to Psalm 13. I hope that you’ll listen to it with new ears. I’m going to add something in between the stanzas—obviously, Erin Davis does not add or take away from Scripture, but this is an exercise that has helped me in this long valley of grief. 

There’s something I’ve said often. I said it the day we got the diagnosis. I’m not sure I meant it then, but I mean it now. I’ve said, “I am in the valley of the shadow of death, and there’s gold embedded in the walls.” The gold that is embedded in the walls of my mom’s slow and terrible death is Jesus and the people of God and the Word of God. So this is something I’ve done with my “how longs,” and I hope it helps you. Psalm 13:1:

How long, O Lord? Will you forget me forever?
   How long will you hide your face from me?
[I am a string in the bow of the Lord.]
How long must I take counsel in my soul
   and have sorrow in my heart all the day?
How long shall my enemy be exalted over me?
[I am a string in the bow of the Lord.]
Consider and answer me, O Lord my God;
   light up my eyes, lest I sleep the sleep of death
[I am a string in the bow of the Lord],
lest my enemy [Alzheimer’s is an enemy] say, “I have prevailed over him,”
   lest my foes rejoice because I am shaken.
[I am a string in the bow of the Lord.]
But I have trusted in your steadfast love;
   my heart shall rejoice in your salvation.
[I am a string in the bow of the Lord.]
I will sing to the Lord,
   because he has dealt bountifully with me.
[And with my mama. I am a string in the bow of the Lord.]

Katie: That’s Erin Davis. If you want to get more perspective on caring for parents who are struggling, Erin was interviewed by Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth on the Revive Our Hearts podcast. You’ll find that interview on the Revive Our Hearts YouTube channel. The series is called “You Can Trust God to Write Your Story in Spite of a Difficult Family Background.” You can find it at ReviveOurHearts.com.

Okay, it’s time for Erin Unscripted, and this time, Erin, I’m the one that gets to ask you the questions!

Erin: I’m ready!

Erin Unscripted

Katie: I want to know . . . I know you’ve walked through a really difficult season of grief in the past years. So, when grief crashes over you, I know it can be paralyzing for a lot of us. What do you do? How do you practically ground yourself in hope?

Erin: Two things come to mind. One is that a lot of the things people say to us that we should do when we’re grieving are well-intentioned . . . and very unhelpful. When you’re really walking through grief, any thought that you can kind of pull yourself up by your bootstraps or rub some of your own elbow grease into it and be better just doesn’t work. The other thought is that you really have to have the infrastructure of your life, of your heart, of your soul built before you get to that grief moment.

As I recorded this series of The Deep Well and as we’re having this conversation, I still feel like I’m very much in the thick of it with my mom’s disease. But the things that were built before she got sick have held. Jesus keeps His word. When you hide God’s Word in your heart, it comes back to you in those moments when your eyes are too bleary to read it again for yourself. Those songs that you’ve sung, maybe over and over, on Sunday mornings or in your own time with the Lord come back to you. If you can reach for them, they’re right at your fingertips. 

But the other thing you just have to have: you have to have God’s people around you. Those relationships need to be forged before the grief comes. They might be strengthened in the grief—mine have been—but you have to have those people that can say God’s Word back to you, that can have the faith when yours is weak.They can pray for you when you feel totally prayed out. That’s been the beauty of this experience with my mom’s disease, is these beautiful, beautiful relationships with people who love Jesus and love me and speak truth into my life when I’m having a hard time believing it.

That’s part of why God’s given us the church. It is for those moments of heartache and hardship. So, practically, you have to lean into that, which means we have to stop acting like we have it all together. We have to stop acting like we don’t have needs, we have to stop saying we’re okay when we’re not okay. I’m not okay, and there are a lot of days when I’m really, really not okay. I have to be honest about that with my Christian friends, my pastor, my family. But that’s been the secret to riding this tsunami in a way that feels like I’m not going to go under.

Katie: When I think about that group of friends, they care about you and they’re wanting to do all that they can to support you in this. But I know sometimes, even when we mean the best, sometimes we can say things that are hurtful. It wasn’t our intention, but we just say the wrong thing, or we say the right thing at the wrong time.

When you think about ways that your friends have supported you, or maybe some things that people have said to you that you wish they hadn’t, what are some of those things? What advice would you give? And what would you say not to do?

Erin: Well, I think you can always use God’s Word. You can rely on that. Send that friend a passage of Scripture in a text, write her an actual card, drop off a loaf of banana bread with a Scripture written in Sharpie on the top. You can trust that God’s Word will do a work in your friend’s heart.

The other thing that I think is so smart is to say, “I don’t know what to say.” That just happened to me last week. I was having coffee with a friend, and the conversation had kind of dwindled. She said, “Erin, I don’t know what to say. I don’t know how to make this better.” 

I said, “Can we just talk about my mom for a few minutes? Could I just say her name and tell you some of the things I miss about her?” 

She said, “Erin, your mom was magical.” 

She was! She was like this Snow White character. So I appreciated that she set up that conversation by saying, “I don’t know what to say here. Can you coach me a little bit through your own grief?”

Now, I’m a communicator, so that was relatively easy for me to do. I can think of other people in my life who would not be able to say what to say, but just owning that. “I get that this is such a heavy grief. I get that this is such a long challenge. I get that this hurts so much that I feel like if I threw some words at it right now they’d be trite. But I love you, and God loves you, and I’m praying for you.”

That’s the other thing. If you say you’re praying for somebody, actually pray for them. That has been huge to me, to know people are praying for me on the really hard days, people are praying for me when I’m just worn out from this particular trial. That means something to me! So you can let them know you’re praying.

We have this beautiful promise from Scripture that when we don’t know how to pray as we ought, the Holy Spirit somehow mysteriously intercedes for us in groanings that are too deep for words. So, I feel like there’s a permission slip in there to go like, “I don’t really know how to pray for this friend, this family member, this spouse, but the Holy Spirit is my prayer partner, so I’m going to pray, and He’s going to help me. He’s going to interpret it in some way.” Then let your loved one know, “I’m praying for you. Even there I probably am not saying all the right things, but I am taking your need to the Lord and trusting Him with it.” That’s a powerful thing to say.

Katie: Now, if there’s someone listening right now who feels like the Lord is prompting them to send a text or write a card to that friend who’s really struggling, you mentioned that you’re the communicator here. I know there are some women who, when they think about, “Oh no, I’m going to have to put this into words,” they don’t know where to begin.

Is there a verse or some truth from God’s Word that you would say would be something that—maybe it wouldn’t be a one-size-fits-all response, but it’s something that they could send right now to that friend who really needs some encouragement?

Erin: Well, if you’ve listened much to The Deep Well you can probably predict where I’m going to go, which is Revelation 21. There’s a verse in that chapter of the Bible that says, “Behold, I am making all things new.” That is such a remarkable statement—all things! “I am making grief new. I am making death new. I am making sickness new. I am making family feuds new. I am making dysfunction new.” When God says all things, He means all things. That’s a verse that has so many applications.

I also take a lot of comfort in passages about God’s love. I know that we can feel they’re trite, but to know that we’re loved in the midst of something maybe makes us feel unloveable is so powerful.

Romans 8:28, of course, is that beautiful promise that God works all things—there’s that “all things” again!—to the good of those who love Him and are called according to His purpose. It’s not the same as saying everything happens for a reason; that’s not what we see in Scripture. What we see in Scripture is we live in a fallen world, we’re fallen people. But we have a promise that “God’s going to redeem this in your life at some point. He is making good from this mess.” Those are things that I think anybody would cling to in a time of need.

You’ll have to look up the reference, Katie, and those who are listening, but there’s also a passage where God says He cannot forsake His own (Psalm 37:25). I love that thought. Not only will He not abandon, He cannot abandon me, because I belong to Him. That’s such a comforting thought when you feel abandoned or like you’re walking through something alone. So, fortunately, Scripture is rich with treasures, and they can be so helpful.

Maybe avoid some of the ones that feel a little bit taken out of context. Maybe you’ve learned that on The Deep Well. Jeremiah 29:11, I’m looking at you, which is the idea that God has a hope and a purpose for us. That’s true, it’s inspired, but that context there is really pretty graphic. So, try to be a good Bible student as you’re passing that along. Try not to weaponize something or use it in a way that it wasn’t intended, but fortunately, there’s a lot of safe ground on those verses of comfort that are just everywhere.

Katie: Amen! Thank you, Erin. I wish we could keep talking about this. I could talk about this with you all day long. 

On the next episode of The Deep Well, Erin’s going to be wrapping up Joseph’s story, and she’s going to be wrapping up this entire season called “Dysfunction.” Join us for that final episode.

The Deep Well with Erin Davis is part of the Revive Our Hearts podcast family, calling women to greater freedom, fullness, and fruitfulness in Christ.

All Scripture is taken from the ESV.
 

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