Trusting When Things Go from Bad to Worse

This episode contains portions from the following programs:

"When You're Treated Unjustly"

"Hope for the Disappointments"

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Dannah Gresh: On today’s program, a parable of sorts. 

Okay? Time for a little “theater of the mind” here. Are you with me? Rebekah, are you ready with the sound effects?

Rebekah: I’m ready! 

Dannah: Picture this. We have a chair.

(sound of a wooden chair on a tile floor)

Dannah: It’s a standard wooden chair, with a cane seat and a cane back.

I forgot to tell you. We’re standing on the rim of the Grand Canyon, home of endangered or threatened species like the California Condor, the Southwestern Willow Flycatcher, and the Mexican Spotted Owl, among others.

(sound for all these species)

Dannah: So here we are with our wooden chair at the Grand Canyon. It’s the narrowest part—Marble Canyon. The opposite rim is about seven hundred feet away. Producer Phil yells “hello” to hear how long it takes the echo to bounce back from the opposite wall.

Phil: Hello! (delay hello!)

Dannah: Oh, and I forgot to say this. Here at the edge of Marble Canyon, there’s a sizable crowd gathered. They’re here to see Luigi LaFune, semi-renowned tightrope walker. Okay, so he’s not really all that famous at all. But he has obtained permission from the park to string a cable across Marble Canyon for this amazing feat of courage. 

Luigi: I will now cross from this side to the other side and back.

(gasps and applause)

Dannah: He also booked a local mariachi band for accompaniment.

(sound of a mariachi band¹)

Dannah: Ladies and gentlemen, he’s about halfway across now. It’s almost five hundred feet down to the Colorado River. That’s equivalent to the height of a fifty-story skyscraper. There! He made it to the other side.

(gasps and applause)

Dannah: And wow! Now he’s juggling three ice cream cones as he’s on the return trip. Amazing! Whoops, there goes the ice cream! Maybe a California Condor will clean it up.

(cheers and applause and band)

Dannah: Well, at least he made it back! But what’s this? He’s putting our wooden chair in a wheelbarrow (clunk!). Could it be? Yes, I think Luigi is going to illustrate the difference between mental assent and trust!

Luigi: If you believe I can take a person across, sitting on this chair in my wheelbarrow, please lift up your hands.

(sound of crowd murmuring)

Dannah: I see some hands. This is where Luigi shows us the difference between just agreeing with something in theory and actually entrusting yourself to his superior abilities.

Luigi: Okay, if you think I can do it, who will sit in the chair?

(sound of crowd walking away)

Dannah: And everybody’s just leaving!

Luigi: Hey, come back! I will go to the middle and juggle a bowling ball and a chainsaw and a . . . 

Dannah: Welcome to Revive Our Hearts Weekend. I’m your host, Dannah Gresh. Does life ever feel like that to you? It feels like God’s asking you to get in the chair in the wheelbarrow, and you’d just rather not. 

Now, that silly analogy breaks down, because it is possible that Luigi might make a mistake and send you plunging to your death. But . . . when God is asking us to entrust ourselves to His wisdom and care, why do we have so much trouble doing it?

Can I change the metaphor? It’s like your life is a novel, and God is the author. He’s planned out the plot of your life and all of history. Remember what He told His people, the Israelites, through the prophet Jeremiah?

"For I know the plans I have for you," declares the Lord, "plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future." (Jer. 29:11 NIV)

They were about to be exiled in a foreign land, and God wanted them not to lose heart. 

Sometimes our story arc goes through some rough patches. In Genesis, Joseph, the son of Jacob, experienced that . . . big time. His brothers hated him. They were going to kill him, but they sold him into slavery instead. He proved himself responsible in Potiphar’s house. But then Potiphar’s wife accused him of a crime he didn't commit, and he was thrown into prison. Basically, from age seventeen to age thirty, things kept going from bad to worse.

Now, looking at things from our vantage point, it’s easy for us to see the purposes of God being brought to pass in and through Joseph’s life. But from his perspective, rotting away in that prison, imagine how he felt! He faced unanswered questions and unjust circumstances that he had no control over. And it continued . . . year after year.

Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth and her husband, Robert Wolgemuth, wrote a book called You Can Trust God to Write Your Story. But they’re quick to say, that doesn’t mean you can trust that God’s going to automatically turn your problems around tomorrow, or even in this lifetime!

God had good plans for Joseph. He knew how the story would go. And Joseph stayed true to His God. 

Maybe you feel like your life has gone from bad to worse, over and over again. If you’re there right now, remember Joseph. In fact, sometime when you’re able to, pull out your Bible and re-read Genesis chapters 37–50. It really is an amazing story. You couldn’t make it up; it’s that compelling.

I love what Joseph told his brothers after their father had died. He said,

“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.” (Gen. 50:20 ESV)

Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth has some thoughts for us about Joseph and how we can learn to trust God better from Joseph’s life—even if things do seem to go from bad to worse. Here’s Nancy.

Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth: As we reflect on this story, in the midst of hardship and pain and injustice, we see God’s unmistakable hand, His sovereign pen. And we see that this story is not simply about one man. As with each story that God writes, as with your story and mine, Joseph’s story is part of the unfolding of a grander plot.

It involves his brothers, his father, the rescue of his extended family from starvation, what God did in Egypt in overcoming and judging the Egyptian gods and saving the people of Israel. It’s a lesson in forgiveness and reconciliation, and eventually, the salvation of a nation from 400 years of slavery and abuse. The story is so much bigger, grander, greater than what Joseph could see in that moment.

So I’ve been trying to help us see through this series that we need the perspective, that what we see now is not the whole of the story, and it’s not the end of the story.

I love that quote of Dr. John Piper. I’ve used it many times, and I go back to it again and again. He said, 

In every situation you face, God is always doing a thousand different things that you cannot see and you do not know.

Now, if we think hard, we might be able to discern a few things that God is doing in the midst of the mess around us. “Oh, I can see God . . . Yes, He’s doing this. He’s working in this person’s life.” And when we look back—that rearview mirror—we might be able to see a few more. But unseen and unknown to us, God is doing, in fact doing a thousand or more things that we cannot see, that we do not know, things that, one day, will become clear to us, whether in this world or the next. They are things that will cause us some day to exclaim in worship, “You have done all things well!” We just can’t see them now, but we will.

So, perhaps from where you sit today, you can see only miscellaneous, frayed, disconnected strands that make no sense at all, no matter how hard you try to figure it all out. All you can see is injustice and pain. And Joseph would surely have identified with you.

But as Joseph would one day learn, on the flip side of the tapestry that God is weaving in and through our lives—the tangle of threads that we can see on the underside of that tapestry—on the flipside, God is creating a picture of great beauty, of great value for those who will trust Him to write their story.

Now, doubtless, if he had been given the opportunity, Joseph would have written a different story, a different script—and so would you, and so would I. But with each twist and turn of this story, this young man was being shaped and transformed by God. And that’s what I want to point us to at the end here.

It’s not a verse in Genesis, but it’s a verse about Joseph in Psalm 105. You might want to just jot down that reference—Psalm 105, verses 17 through 19. It describes this remarkable progression of how God used Joseph’s circumstances to transform him. It says, 

The Lord had sent a man ahead of them [ahead of His people] into Egypt. The Lord sent Joseph, [not his brothers, ultimately. His brothers were the ones who sold him into slavery. So, in the human level, they sent him, but in the big picture, the truest picture, it was God who sent Joseph into Egypt] who was sold as a slave.His feet were hurt with fetters;his neck was put in a collar of iron;until what he had said came to pass,the word of the Lord tested him.

This young man whose father loved him so dearly, this young man who dreamed that he would one day be exalted as the ruler of a nation, was “sent ahead” by God to a foreign land where, unknown to anyone, including Joseph himself, God intended to use him to provide for His people.

And once there, in what seemed like a failure of God’s story, God’s plan, Joseph was sold and shackled as a slave. And there, in those horrendous circumstances, “the word of the Lord tested him.” It shaped him. It honed him. It changed him. It transformed him—the Word of the Lord—because the Lord was with Joseph.

Taking this message to heart can make a huge difference as you navigate your own challenges and disappointments and pains, the ways people sin against you, the ways they wreck your life. Listen, the hardest parts of the story that God is writing in your life are not random or meaningless. They are full of purpose.

Many of the good things that God has planned for us will never happen apart from seasons of suffering and hardship and trials. You can read that all through the Scripture, and you can see it in the lives of those who have suffered but have trusted God in the midst of suffering.

In due time, all that God has intended for you and for this world will come true. In the meantime—just as God was with Joseph—so God will be with you—even in the prison, even in the foreign land, even rejected, even separated from his family, even not seeing his father for all those years. God will be with you. And God will be sending His Word to test you, to change you, to hone you, to refine you, until the promises of God one day are fulfilled. And that’s a God you can always trust.

How have you been hurt? How have you been wounded? What are you holding in your heart, and your heart’s become hardened rather than softened by maybe the sin of someone else against you? Listen, I’m not minimizing the pain. I’m not minimizing the offense.

I have a friend who has been through decades of various kinds of abuse—horrific—during her upbringing as a child, her teenage years, her adult years. When she first came to faith, a “trusted spiritual leader” manipulated and abused her for years—it’s a horrible story.

I was with her recently. She was going through a hard spot. She knows God’s Word. She knows God’s ways. But she says, in the middle of this pretty intense conversation, “What has God done for me? My abuser (she named him) got off scot-free—no consequences, yet. I’m left with a life that is wrecked with a lot of deep pain and scars and wounds.”

And in those moments, we can feel that someone other than God is writing our story, that that person, that perpetrator, that person who sinned against us or against someone we love, is writing the story. We can wonder whether God really can be trusted in the face of those kinds of atrocities. And yet, our faithful, loving God has the power to redeem the unredeemable and to turn ashes to beauty, not just in spite of the injuries we have suffered, but sometimes actually through those very wounds.

So what does it mean to trust God to write your story when others have sinned against you, perhaps grievously, and perhaps with no evidence of remorse or repentance? Well, it means trusting that God has purposes for you—as well as for others who are part of your story—and that those purposes will be fulfilled in spite of (or perhaps even through) the wrongdoing that you have endured.

It means trusting Him to provide for you and to protect you, though others have failed to do so.

It means trusting that, in His way and time, He will deal with your offenders.

It means trusting Him to protect your heart from becoming bitter or holding hostage those who have sinned against you.

It means trusting Him for grace to forgive that which seems unforgivable.

It means trusting Him, in His way and His time, to redeem and overrule the losses caused by those who have sinned against you.

Now, all of those responses might seem impossible, even ludicrous, if it weren’t for the fact that we have a Savior who knows what it is to be sinned against through no fault of His own and who suffered for us—“the righteous for the unrighteous.” And as He did, He “continued entrusting himself to God who judges justly.”

I’m thinking of my sweet friend that I had this recent conversation with. It is so, so hard. But I’m telling you that God is faithful, and God is good. Even if your eyes are filled with tears, as I see right here on the front row in front of me. I don’t know what’s in her heart or your heart. I don’t know what’s in your story. But I know that God is there. I know you can trust Him. And I know that in the end all will be well, and you will thank Him, and you will bless Him, and you will worship Him. And you will say, “Why didn’t I trust Him more?”

You can trust God to write your story. 

Dannah: Wow, such a powerful reminder there from Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth. She’ll be back to close our time in prayer in a bit. 

It may be that the sudden plot twist, the sudden punch in the gut for you, is health-related. Sometimes God asks us to go on a difficult ride with him, dealing with a chronic illness or life-threatening disease. 

Dawn Wilson has experienced that. Dawn has been connected to Revive Our Hearts since we started in 2001. And for years now she’s been fighting a rare form of cancer. I had the opportunity to sit down and catch up with her not too long ago.

Dannah: Dawn, bring us up to date. Did you beat the cancer?

Dawn Wilson: Uh, no. You don’t beat this kind of cancer. You just ramp it down. We ramped it down for a little while, but not as long as what was expected. It’s been a little bit of a disappointment, but, as you know, disappointments are God’s appointments.

Dannah: I need you to say that again.

Dawn: Disappointments are God’s appointments.

Dannah: Disappointments are God’s appointments.

Dawn: That’s right.

Dannah: How did He teach you that?

Dawn: I think He has brought a sense of renewal into my life through the relapse. Just looking at life a little bit differently now.

The first time around, when I did go into remission, there was a sense of strong priorities. I wanted to be sure I was doing what God wanted me to do each day. And, you know, I have to admit, I kind of forgot about that. I got into remission. We start to take things for granted.

I said that the original diagnosis was a gift. I think the relapse is just as much a gift because it has drawn me back to the Lord’s side and His presence and reminded me that we’re very desperately frail, and we need Him every moment of the day.

Dannah: Tell me how it is you found out that you weren’t in what is known as remission. Your cancer is a bit unique. It’s very rare and unusual. But I think most of us understand remission is good news. At some point in the journey, that changed for you. Can you take us to that day, what that was like for you?

Dawn: I think it was, in some ways, more devastating to me than the actual first diagnosis. And I’m not sure why. Again, you get that sense that “I’ve beat this.” It’s almost like when you have beaten a bad habit—or you think you have—and then all of a sudden, one day you’re just going along, and boom and it hits you, and you succumb to temptation again. And you think, Man, I thought I had this beat, Lord.

And it’s just devastating to think, I can’t beat this. I can’t beat this by myself. It’s going to take something more.

Dannah: Yes. When you say that word “relapse,” my heart stands at attention. How is it that God got you to a place where you weren’t just responding to life when your fear of cancer returning happened, but it alerted you to something going on in the spiritual realm as well?

Dawn: I think it was when I was reading a Scripture. It’s kind of an odd Scripture in Proverbs—Proverbs 26:11. It says, “As a dog returns to its vomit, so a fool repeats his folly.”

I read that, and I thought, Wow! That’s relapse big time to realize that when we sin, we are returning to the ugliness, the vomit of our lives. I didn’t want that! So that’s when I began to realize, “Okay, Dawn, the same things that you’re doing to deal with the relapse into cancer is exactly what you need to do when you are tempted by these sins that are such besetting sins in your life.

Dannah: Yes. Because the true terminal illness of humanity is never cancer, heart disease, none of those physical ailments. The true terminal illness of humanity is in fact our sinfulness and our fallen nature.

Dawn: That’s right.

Dannah: I love that. We are prone to spiritual amnesia. We’re prone to forget the lessons we’ve learned, the truth we’ve learned.

Dawn: That’s right. What is the hymn that says, “Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it.”

Dannah: That’s me.

I remember a time when I . . . Bob and I have been public in recent months about his battle with lust and pornography. He did really well for a long time, and then he had a relapse. And I remember thinking, God, can I trust Your Word?

That’s where I went. I went back to, “Can I trust what You’ve written in Your Word? Because I’m living according to it, and this is what’s happening in my life.”

I did have to go back to the Word and read it and say, “I’m having a hard time believing it. Can You reawaken my spirit?”

What are some of the basics that the Lord has called you to in this relapse with cancer?

Dawn: The basics of the truth of His Word. Satan is the author of lies. But what is the truth about this situation in my life?

I am a realistic optimist. I don’t deny what’s happening in my life. I don’t deny the realities of sin in my life—in that parallel. But I hope in God’s Word. I’m an optimist, and I believe that He’s going to do what He said He was going to do.

One of the things that God gave me after the relapse was a Scripture. It’s 1 Corinthians 16:13. And this works for me for both in approaching my diagnosis but also dealing with sin. And it says, “Be on your guard; stand firm in the faith; be courageous; be strong” (NIV).

And those are four fighting phrases there. So, I realize I’m facing temptation. Recently, I was facing a really old temptation of mine, and I gave in to it. And afterwards, there’s always this shame when you give into an old sin that you think you had conquered. And that was the verse that came to my mind.

It’s like the Lord said, “You weren't doing this. Be on your guard. Stand firm in the faith. Be courageous. Be strong.”

I felt like I was weak in that moment. I wasn’t. I needed to believe the truth and not the lies that Satan was feeding me. And so the same thing’s true in my relapse in regard to my health. “Be strong.” It’s a word that the Lord has given me as I’m hopefully going into a new phase.

I may be having Car-T self therapy, which is another whole procedure. And it was just made available to multiple myeloma patients in 2022. So it’s very new and hopefully will give me a couple of years

Dannah: Praise the Lord.

Dawn: But the word the Lord gave me was “perseverance.” I read a quote by Glenna Marshall. I’m going to read it to you here. She said, 

It is tempting to draw inward and focus on survival when life is hard, but remember that holding on to Christ is survival, and it’s how we let perseverance complete its work.

So it’s not a matter of just trying to survive, trying to deal with it, trying to, “Lord, what do I have to do next?” But it’s holding on to Christ who is my survival.

And so that concept of perseverance, Peter taught us that perseverance is essential to our Christian life and our faith walk. In 2 Peter 1:5–11, that is made very clear. Peter teaches that. 

One night I felt that God was silent, and I thought, Lord, where are You? It was one of those middle-of the-night things when Satan was feeding me lies. But even then I didn’t feel like I was empty-handed, because God kept feeding me Scriptures in the middle of the night that builds my faith, that builds my sense of, “I can persevere in Christ. He is my survival.”

So, I want to finish well. I’m realizing that my end point is also an entry point into heaven, and I want to finish well. I want to stand before the Lord . . . I want some more time, like Hezekiah got, because there’s things I still want to do. But at the same time, I want to seek those things that are above, as Colossians 3, verses 1 and 2 says.

I thought my priorities were narrowed down before; my priorities now are even tighter. It’s like, “Lord, I want to please You. I want to bring You glory. I want to serve You. So what do You want me to do this day?”

Dannah: That’s an incredible perspective from Dawn Wilson, great friend of Revive Our Hearts. 

The book by Robert Wolgemuth and Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth is called You Can Trust God to Write Your Story. It’s our gift to you in appreciation for your gift of any amount to support Revive Our Hearts. To make a donation, do it at ReviveOurHearts.com/Donate. Thank you so much!

Next week, we’ll look more closely at the theme of God’s Providence, and the comfort it brings us to know He’s completely and lovingly in control of all things, caring for us and providing for us. I hope you’ll join us for that, next week on Revive Our Hearts Weekend. 

We started this episode with that silly illustration of a tightrope walker inviting someone to trust him, hop in his wheelbarrow, and head out over the Grand Canyon. If God were the tightrope walker, would you trust Him enough to get in? I hope so. He doesn’t make mistakes. You can trust Him.

Now, here’s Nancy to close our time in prayer.

Nancy: I’m going to pray for someone listening today who’s in the throes of that woundedness, that injustice, being sinned against, being wounded so deeply. 

I pray that You would assure that woman of Your presence, that You are with her, that You are there in her home, in her work place, in that family dealing with the chaos caused by other people who sinned against her or against someone that she loves. And give grace, oh Lord. Give grace to trust when she cannot see, to lift her eyes up and to worship even in the midst of the pain.

The day is coming when there will be no more pain, no more sorrow, when all wrongs will be made right and Your children, those You’ve trusted to write their story, will be with You for an eternity of nothing but beauty and glory, happily ever after. I pray in Jesus’ name, amen.

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

¹Sobre Las Olas, by Juventino Rosas, mariachi band

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