Blessed in Trials

Today's episode contains portions from the following programs:

"The Blessing of Thorns, Day 1"

"Because He Lives, You Can Live with Joy"

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Dannah Gresh: So, there’s this little holiday coming up this week: Turkey Day some call it. And, well, you’re probably hearing the “thankful” word a lot lately—but don’t tune me out. You might be surprised by the direction we’re going today on Revive Our Hearts Weekend. Thanks for being here. I’m Dannah Gresh.

So, I want you to think about what you’re grateful for right now. What comes to mind first? I think a natural tendency is to think about the good in our lives—you know, for me, I’m thankful that God has blessed Bob and I to have all four of our parents living and healthy at our age—at their ages. I’m thankful for four grandchildren (and counting! are you listening?). I’m thankful for the sweet farm life God has carved out for me and a fulfilling career where I get to serve Him. It is good to give thanks to God for the goodness in your life. 

But, there are some things it’s hard for me to muster up gratitude for. There's that financial burden Bob and I are facing right now. Someone I love who’s taking the scenic route, shall we say, to surrender to Jesus? I could do without the back injury I have to constantly nurture? My schedule lately is just impossible to figure out! You probably have some of those kinds of things in your life, too, huh? Should things like these make our gratitude list?

This month on Revive Our Hearts Weekend, we’ve been talking about some of the different ways we’re blessed with life, with family, and now today, we’re going to talk about how we are blessed in the trials. In this episode we’re answering the question: Can we really give thanks in and through the difficult parts of our lives? Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth has some great insight on this topic. We’ll also hear an interview with Nicole Jacobsmeyer, a joy-filled woman who has a lot of experience with trials. 

But first, we’re going to listen to something that’s a bit different from our usual program. It’s an audio drama! I think you’ll find this story relatable and encouraging, especially if you’re feeling overwhelmed by the circumstances of life right now. It’s called “The Bouquet of Thorns.” 

(Phone Rings)

Sandra: Hello.

Sandra’s Husband: Hey, how are you?

Sandra: As well as can be expected.

Husband: Well, it looks like there’s a good chance we might be moving.

Sandra: Come on, are you kidding me? Let’s see, this will be, what? Our third move in like four years. Like I need another thing to be thinking about today.

Husband: Did something else go wrong?

Sandra: Mom called, and she can’t come to Thanksgiving Dinner.

Husband: Aw, that’s too bad. Well, I guess it will just be you and me.

Sandra: Well, I think we should just skip the whole holiday.

Husband: Have you been thinking a lot about . . . you know?

Sandra: Of course; you do know what today is, don’t you?

Husband: Would today have been the due date?

Sandra: Yes.

Husband: I’m sorry.

Sandra: Obviously not sorry enough to remember it. You’re not any better than Kim.

Husband: What did she do?

Sandra: She said maybe God let me have the accident and the miscarriage so I that would be able to sympathize with other people who go through that kind of thing. Do you believe that?

Husband: Well . . .

Sandra: I’ve got to go. I’m at the flower shop. I’m going to try to brighten my day at least a little bit.

Husband: Okay, see you later.

Sandra: Bye.

Jenny (store clerk): Oh, is it cold out there?

Sandra: It’s freezing.

Jenny: What can I get for you?

Sandra: I’m just going to take an arrangement home.

Jenny: Well, we have plain ol’ flowers, but for the more daring customers, we have the Thanksgiving Special.

Sandra: I’m not exactly into Thanksgiving this year.

Jenny: Why is that?

Sandra: Well, it just seems like everything that could go wrong, has gone wrong.

Jenny: Then you definitely could use the special.

(Door opens)

Barbara: Hello, ladies.

Jenny: Oh, in fact, Barbara here ordered the special this morning.

Barbara: It’s three years in a row now, isn’t it?

Jenny: Do you want to see?

Barbara: Oh, these are great. They’re perfect.

Sandra: Aren’t you missing something?

Barbara: No.

Sandra: But there aren’t any flowers; it’s just stems!

Barbara: Well, yeah. I guess that’s what makes the special so special. Thanks. Happy Thanksgiving!

Sandra: She just left without any flowers.

Jenny: That’s because I cut them off. I call it the Thanksgiving Thorns Bouquet.

Sandra: Someone would really pay for that?!

Jenny: Someone who really wants to be thankful.

Sandra: But why?

Jenny: Well, people are thankful for flowers all the time, but the flowers aren’t as special without the thorns. The bouquet reminds people to be thankful for everything.

Sandra: Okay, so how did you come up with this idea?

Jenny: Well, three years ago I was about to spend my first Thanksgiving alone. My husband had died, and I didn’t have anybody.

Sandra: I’m sorry. What did you do?

Jenny: Well, I prayed a lot, and I decided to thank God even though I didn’t feel like it. As I look back on it now, I am still thankful. I miss my husband, of course, but I have learned to trust God more.

And I think I have become more mature. And I’ve learned to be more empathetic. The Bible says that we get comfort from God so we can pass that comfort on to other people.

Sandra: My friend was telling me about that this morning.

Jenny: That’s why I made my first Thanksgiving Thorns Bouquet. It reminded me to be thankful.

Sandra: I don’t think I could be thankful like that.

(Door opens)

Jenny: Hi, Phil.

Phil: Hi. My wife has asked me to pick up our usual Thanksgiving arrangement. You know, twelve thorny, long-stemmed stems.

Sandra: Do you mind my asking why she wants something like that?

Phil: No, not at all. In fact, I like to tell anybody who will listen. About four years ago, my wife and I had been having lots of problems in our marriage. We had almost split up, and we knew we needed some changes.

I happened to come into the flower shop here, and that’s when I found out about this Bouquet of Thorns. It seemed almost . . . well, it seemed perfect for my wife and me.

It sounds crazy, but what we did is, we labeled each stem with an issue we were dealing with in our marriage. We prayed, and we were asking Him that He would use these problems to draw us closer to Himself and to each other.

Sandra: Well, that sure is interesting.

Phil: Thanks. By the way, I recommend the special.

Jenny: Isn’t that great?

Sandra (breaking into tears): Well, it all sounds good. But you don’t understand everything I’ve been through today.

Jenny: Oh, honey, here (hands her a tissue). You’re right, I don’t. But there is Someone who knows exactly what you’re going through, and He wore a crown of thorns to show how much He loves you.

Sandra (still crying): Well, I guess compared with what Jesus went through, I don’t have it so bad.

Jenny: No. So, what do you say, can I wrap you up some stems?

Sandra: Well, they’re kind of growing on me.

Jenny: Here's the card that goes with the bouquet. Maybe you'd like to read it.

Sandra: Dear God, I have thanked You a thousand times for my roses, but never once for my thorns. Teach me the value of my thorns; teach me the glory of the cross I bear. Show me that I have climbed closer to You along the path of pain. Show me that, through my tears, the colors of Your rainbow look much more brilliant.

(Phone rings)

Sandra’s husband: Hello.

Sandra: Hey, I’m on my way.

Husband: Okay. I am so sorry about forgetting.

Sandra: No, I’m sorry for everything, and I would love to celebrate Thanksgiving with you.

Husband: Well, that’s a relief! We’ll have to talk about it when you get home.

Sandra: Okay. I’ve got to tell you about this weird flower shop. You’re never going to guess what I’m bringing home.

Dannah: I wonder: have you ever thanked God for the thorns? 

If you’re in the middle of something hard right now, maybe it feels impossible to be thankful. 

Well, Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth is going to give us some perspective for those times. Back to the story we just heard—part of what that card on the bouquet said is actually a quote from someone, and she’s going to expound on that. Here’s Nancy.

Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth: George Matheson is a name that may not be familiar to some of you. He was a nineteenth-century Scottish preacher who was best known for his hymn called “O Love That Wilt Not Let Me Go.”

When he was in his late teens, he began to lose his eyesight, and by the age of twenty, he went completely blind. As he went through that process of losing his sight, George Matheson realized what we have all come to learn: It’s easy to praise God when all things are going right, when you have health and the sun is shining and you’ve got money in the bank and your mate is wild about you and your kids are responsive to your leadership.

He learned that it was easier to praise God when things are going right than when they went wrong. As he lost his sight, he struggled with that for some months (as you would imagine any one of us would); but he finally came to the point where he could pray this prayer that has been such a blessing and help to many, many believers over the last hundred-plus years. He said,

Dear God, I have never thanked You for my thorns. I’ve thanked You a thousand times for my roses, but never once for my thorns. Teach me the glory of the cross I bear. Teach me the value of my thorns.

It’s easy to thank God for His goodness, for His obvious blessings. But we don’t easily or naturally tend to thank God for our problems, for our heartaches, and for our trials.

I want to challenge you, as God has been challenging me to begin to look at these thorns, these afflictions, these headaches and heartaches and problems, from a whole different perspective—from God’s perspective and from heaven’s point of view—and then to begin to thank God for the thorns; to consider the thorns a blessing; to see God’s purpose and hand in bringing those thorns into our lives.

Now, let me back up to the beginning of this story, because thorns were not in God’s original plan for His creation. We have to go back to the book of Genesis to see how thorns came about in the first place.

They were introduced when sin came into the world. When God first created the earth and the man and the woman, there were no thorns. There was no affliction. There was no pain. There was no disappointment. There was no heartache or hardship.

But then we come to Genesis 3. After the man and the woman had disobeyed the voice of God and had chosen to go their own way, God came to them and said, “I’m going to have mercy on you. I’m going to extend grace to you. There is still hope. There is redemption available. But there are going to be consequences for the choices you have made.”

We read in Genesis 3:17 that God said to Adam, “Because you have listened to the voice of your wife and have eaten of the tree of which I commanded you, ‘You shall not eat of it,’ cursed is the ground because of you; in pain you shall eat of it all the days of your life” (ESV).

God had already spoken to the woman, and He had said, “In pain you shall bring forth children” (v. 16). And all you mothers know that that’s true.

But He said to the man, “In pain you shall eat of [the fruit of the ground] all the days of your life; thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you; and you shall eat the plants of the field. By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread, till you return to the ground” (vv. 17–19).

As the book of Genesis unfolds, we see that pain and sorrow and conflict and affliction and thorns—literal, physical thorns and thistles in the ground, but also thorny relationships, thorny problems, things that hurt—these are the unavoidable consequences of sin.

Everyone has to deal with them. God said you will deal with this “all the days of your life.” There’s no one who can avoid thorns, whether you are a believer or an unbeliever. Thorns and afflictions aren’t just for people who don’t know God. They’re for believers. Everyone who lives on this earth has to endure hardships, burdens, and trials.

And we all have different ones. What’s a thorn to me may not be a thorn to you. What hits you as a thorn may not be a hardship for me.

Whether they’re splinters or big-time thorns, we’re going to talk about chronic, recurring, prolonged circumstances. How can they be a blessing, these things that pierce you, that pain you, that press in on you?

There are two Greek words in the New Testament that are translated into the word affliction or persecution or tribulations. These words are related words. They’re used fifty-five times in the New Testament.

The word thlipsis is one of those words. It just kind of rolls off your tongue. It’s “afflictions, persecutions.” It’s a word that means “to press together,” as you would with grapes to squeeze them to make juice out of them. It speaks of “to press hard upon something.” It’s a word that refers to “a compressed or a hard way, a straightened path, pressure, affliction, distress.” And it can be distress that’s brought on by outward circumstances.

Sometimes it's not the big things that bring us down. It's the days where if something could go wrong, it has gone wrong—big things, little things, circumstances.

Sometimes that word thlipsis—afflictions, thorns, pressures—is used figuratively of a mental or spiritual state of mind—affliction in the spiritual sense, the inner things of your soul. You can’t even explain why you feel so heavy-hearted, but you do.

Whether they’re outward circumstances or things that come from within our own hearts, we need to come to see thorns and afflictions from God’s perspective, and to discover His purposes.

And I want to tell you this: He does have purposes in thorns. You see, we have a redeeming God who is in the process of making all things new. He is redeeming this cursed planet. He is redeeming men and women who have been under the curse of the fall. He is making all things new.

The fact that He is doing that doesn’t exempt us from having to experience thorns, but it does give us hope. It gives us something to look forward to in the future, because we have God’s promise that one day there will be a world with no thorns.

As we keep our eyes on the finish line, we realize that we have something worth waiting for. That gives us courage to go on, on the days when it seems like all of life is thorny—to realize that yet ahead down the road, in a place and a time we cannot see except by faith, there will be release from all of those thorns.

We need to realize that God is able, even here and now, to transform our thorns into something valuable and useful and good. What Satan intends for evil, God is able to use for good—in our lives and in the lives of those we love and as part of His great plan.

Not only can God transform our thorns, but God is able to transform us through our thorns. They are means of preparing and fitting us for a thornless eternity.

Dannah: Wow, good reminders from Nancy. It’s not a matter of if we’ll face trials, but when. They’re inevitable. But isn’t it comforting to know we have a God who is with us and is working in our problems and suffering? And that this life is not the end. 

Are you encouraged yet? Do you believe the trials you’re in can be a blessing? Now, that doesn’t mean you have to feel happy in your difficult circumstances. Happiness is temporary, but joy runs deeper—it’s something that can be found regardless of what you go through.

Nicole Jacobsmeyer is one of the most joyful people you’ll meet, and she’s also well acquainted with trials and pain. My friend and Grounded cohost Portia Collins had the opportunity to interview Nicole. I think their conversation will give you a fresh outlook on the joy that comes from hard times. 

Portia Collins: You have this book entitled Take Back Your Joy. And when I hear that title, I assume that there was a catalyst or some pivotal moment that calls you to pause and really think about what it means to have joy. And so, what did God do specifically in your life to cause you to seek Him for true, biblical, lasting joy? 

Nicole Jacobsmeyer: Well, I had so many hard things happen, one after the other in my life, that I was having a very difficult time opening the word and reading verses, like James 1:2 where it says, “Consider it joy when you face trials.” I would stop there. I wouldn't read the rest, which I now know that you need to read the whole verse and the whole passage in its full context, so that we understand God's heart for us when we are going through pain. 

And when we are going through trials, He's not asking us to be happy. He is actually calling us higher to have this assurance in this joy, that no matter what we go through, He's not going to waste that. He's not going to waste every little hardship, every big hardship, every trial, all the suffering. He will not waste it because that is the faithfulness of God. 

I didn't know that. So trials really made me dig into the word even more so that I had a better understanding.

Portia: So just when you say trials, are we talking little stuff? big stuff? Give us an example of what that looked like in how that particular thing pushed you towards joy.

Nicole: Oh, yeah, they were all pretty big events in my life, some horrific, some traumatizing. I had rape. I had abuse. I had major depression, clinical depression. I was diagnosed with cancer. We lost a baby through miscarriage. I mean, it just has been a life of pain in so many ways.

I didn't want to look at that as the Christian life I didn't want to look at this Christian life thinking, This is all it's going to be. And when the Lord talks about joy, that's what I want. I want that because I want that unshakable faith, that no matter what I continue to go through, because I'm only in my 30s. I have a whole life ahead of me, God willing. 

And so, I want to make sure that I am so rooted, and an example for my children and for those around me that I can have that joy, no matter what big things happen, and no matter what little things happen.

Portia: So, I guess, for me now, the looming question is, do you, have it? Can we have it? Can you honestly say that you have the joy of the Lord? I would love for you to just share your heart on what that looks like in your life?

Nicole: I mean, I would hope so. I hope I am. You know, but I do think it's a day-to-day thing. It's that obedience and that discipline. It's coming before the Lord knowing that we don't have anything to offer that He is on His throne, that He is the one that we serve that can transform our lives. He's the one that can bring us this joy. He's the one that restores and heals and redeems. We serve that God. And so, knowing that I'm His servant, that I am. I'm His, that brings me joy. 

And so, as much as I want to say, yes, I have joy all the time, I don't think that that's 100% true, because I have my moments like everyone else. But I can count it all joy because I know what God does with it and what He produces because of that pain.

Portia: Oh, I love that you can count it all joy, because you know what God does with it. Amen, amen.

Okay, so this brings me to a little bit of a follow-up. As believers, it can be easy for us to think, well, once we lay hold of that biblical joy that it's like a one and done thing. And you've kind of already alluded to this. But I know and I'm sure you know that we have to continue to fight for joy. So, it's like, once we realize what that is, we’ve got to keep persisting. And so how do we do that? Specifically, through surges of hard circumstances and situations that threaten to steal our joy? How do we continue to persist, enjoy and fight for joy?

Nicole: Right, I think it is different in every season and depending on what trial you're going through. But the first two things that I can think of, we have got to be rooted in the Word. We have got to know the true heart and character of God. 

Because when we know whose we are, and we know whose hands our life is in, then we're not doubting. We're not questioning. We want to remain disciplined. And when we know the Word, when we have those verses, and those passages that ring true to our soul, when we do go through painful things, that's where our mind goes. We don't look to the right or to the left. We don't look at what God's doing, or what He's not doing in other people's paths. We don't have the comparison. We don't have the discontented heart. We know whose we are. And we have those verses, those key truths that we can stand on. 

But that's where it starts: knowing the Word and knowing God's character and heart for His people, and for us individually.

Dannah: I want to ask you, do you have the joy of the Lord? Nicole Jacobsmeyer has been sharing how, even in the darkest, most difficult situations, we can have true joy. As Nicole said, we have to know God’s Word and keep coming back to the truth of who He is when we find ourselves lacking joy. 

Paul wrote in 1 Thessalonians chapter 5: “Rejoice always, pray constantly, give thanks in everything” (vv. 16–18). That’s possible because Christ Himself is our joy. That leads us to thankfulness. That’s why we are blessed in the trials. 

I hope no matter what you’re going through right now, that this episode has encouraged your heart and helped you see your situation from a different angle—from a more eternal perspective. 

Maybe you even need to get yourself a thorny stemmed bouquet—a tangible reminder that you can be thankful in all things. 

If this episode or any of our programs have been a blessing to you, I want to invite you to put your gratitude in action. Your support of Revive Our Hearts makes it possible to share hope with women everywhere through podcasts, broadcasts, and other resources. We are so grateful for listeners like you who give to our mission. And this month, when you make a donation of any amount, we’ll send you one of our favorite resources—our new ministry calendar.

This 2024 wall calendar will help you reflect on Jesus, the Incomparable Christ, all year long. It contains quotes from Nancy, Scripture passages, and beautiful artwork by Virginia Graham. Just ask for the calendar when you give by calling 1-800-569-5959, or go to ReviveOurHearts.com/weekend and click on today’s episode. 

We’re going to continue the theme of blessings next weekend as we talk about how our blessings go beyond ourselves. God blesses us so that we can turn around and bless others. I hope you’ll join me for that. 

Thanks for listening today. I’m Dannah Gresh. We’ll see you next time, for Revive Our Hearts Weekend.

Revive Our Hearts Weekend is calling you to freedom, fullness, and fruitfulness in Christ.