Trusting God When Life Is Hard: Finding Hope and Sharing Your Story

Hey.

Hey.

And welcome back to Faithfield Living.

Today's gonna be a little bit different.

I'm gonna share with you some of the things that my guests have walked through, that they've shared on the podcast about just how dark of a place they were in and that still God found them, because God is among us.

God is here.

God wants to be with us.

He.

He is there no matter what we're going through.

And I'm gonna share with you some encouraging words.

I'm gonna share with you some stories now.

Now I'm doing this off the cuff, so I don't have all my notes or anything in front of me.

I just wanted to share this because sometimes I think we forget that the things that built up our faith more, the things that built up our belief more in the God of the universe and that he's here with us and the Holy Spirit's within us.

I think sometimes we forget that we have so much to share, whether it's our own testimony or it's the testimony of others.

The stories we read, the testimonies, the things that people have walked through and how they've come through it, and still God.

So today, that's what we're going to talk about, and that's what I'm going to share with you.

Welcome to Faith Filled Living, the podcast for women who want to find joy again, grow closer to God and rediscover the woman he created you to be.

I'm your host, Kristen Fritsch.

Each week you'll find encouragement, honest conversations, biblical perspective, and practical tools to help you experience experience more joy, purpose, and peace in everyday life.

Because the woman God created you to be is still there.

And it's never too late to come alive to the life he created you to live, right?

So the first thing I want to share is that I've talked to hundreds of people.

I've had hundreds of guests on this podcast and my other two podcasts.

This is my primary one.

And here is one of the through lines.

People are resilient.

But when we put our strength, when we put our faith in Christ, when we put it all in God, when we try not to carry our burdens, but we let God, life changes, our outlook changes, our perspective changes, the way we show up in the world changes.

And just to start us off, I want to share both.

Somebody that I interviewed some several years ago, he was a pastor, but he had moved to doing online pastoring, if you will, meaning he was sharing the messages of Christ online, but he, in his story, shared that As a young boy, I can't remember, he was either 9 or 11.

He watched his mom raped at gunpoint.

And because of that, he was somebody that already had had faith as a young person.

But that, you know, that really wrecked him, right?

That that could happen, that God, like, where was God in that?

And then he shared how there were some years where he really struggled to find his way.

He got into all sorts of things.

But then as he was in college, I think, you know, he found God, right?

I mean, God was looking for him the whole time.

God was there trying to walk with him through understanding that and that, no, it's not okay what happened, but that God was there and was present.

And anyways, so.

So this now pastor, you know, rekindled this relationship with Christ and you know, be came to go on and become a pastor.

That's just one of so many stories.

I interviewed a woman last.

Last week who was in jail for 30 years.

And she shares a bit about her story.

But it.

It.

I think she was 20 or 22.

She was.

Had children, had two children, young children.

But she found herself in not great circumstances and someone was shot.

Now, she did not shoot the person, but.

But somehow she was tied to what happened with, you know, because of the state she lived in and the laws, they actually sentenced her to 60 years in jail because in their state, they were considering death penalty for anybody tied to that case.

So they took the sentence because it took the death penalty off the table.

But for 30 years, she spent every day in prison a young mom.

And yet God, God was there.

In her story, God was there.

And through her years in prison, yes, she had some low points.

She struggled for some of the time when she thought there was still a chance that there was an opportunity to get out, but that.

That did not come to fruition.

So she spent 30 years in J.

But through that she started a ministry in jail.

She went and got her bachelor's and master's degree.

I think it was a doctor of divinity or theology.

And now she has a company in the last 10 years when she was released in her 50s, that helps other people get their message and their story out.

Lies.

God is here with us.

God is.

Is waiting for us to come to Him.

And no matter what you've walked through, we've all walked through something now.

It's true.

Some of us have walked through more.

Right?

More of something or more continuous things.

There's someone I went to high school with and she has lost her husband, one of her sons, and most recently her Sister.

And none of them were expected circumstances.

And that's talk about a deep, shaking grief.

But there's God.

And like I said, I've heard and I've spoken.

I've sat well, often across from people through video.

But I've listened to their stories.

I've talked to them.

I've spoken to them about what they've walked through.

Of course I've walked through things, as have you.

But yet I, when I listen to these stories, when I have these conversations, when I read the books that many of the people I interview wrote, when I read the books, listen to the sermons by pastors that I enjoy listening to, I'm changed.

I'm changed every single time because my faith is built up by what God does and is doing in the world.

My faith is built up by the story of transformation, by the healing power that God can heal our bodies, that he can heal our minds.

He wants us whole.

No, we don't always understand the story.

We don't always understand when something bad happens in the world.

But I can tell you that God's there among us.

God is waiting for us to come to him and for him to help us through, for us to see the miracles in the world, for us to see that even through tough seasons, through loss and grief, he's there.

He's there for us because he cares for us so much that he came down, you know, God the divine came down in human form as Jesus.

You know, he was birthed as a baby and then he had his ministry, and then he died and was resurrected for our sins.

And, guys, the power of the Holy Spirit lives within us.

But I'm telling you, no matter what you've walked through, no matter what you might be going through now, whether you have spoken it, whether you've gone to God or not, whether you've gone to a friend, he is here and he's just waiting for you to say, yes, God, I. I want you to be part of this.

I want you to take over some of these burdens from me because he's here and he's waiting.

And like I said, I've shared on the podcast before, you know, sure, my family's walked through things like everybody has.

You know, some are continuous things on a mom's heart, you know, that I still feel many times, many days.

But we've also walked through losing my dad.

After a tough physical and mental battle with Parkinson's, one of my sons struggled deeply and came home from college because of severe depression and struggling with, you know, harmful thoughts like all of us have walked through things.

All of us have had things happen to us, but it's seeing the power of God.

I just was there with a friend when she had a moment of just real struggle with something that her family's going through, you know, and she had a moment of just feeling that sorrow, which is absolutely expected.

But the point is, is she didn't want in that moment for it to happen, but it did.

But yet her friends came around her.

And so God is sending so many things to be there for you.

Yes, it's his spirit.

Yes, it's Him.

But he also sends the people around you.

He sends, you know, community.

But we do have to move.

We do have to ask.

We can't just stay hidden and not actually participate in the process.

But here's one of the things I've learned from so many of my guests and from my own faith practices.

It's that the more time we get in God's presence, the more we will know he's present in our lives, that he's present in our spirit.

I like what Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen said.

He was speaking to a group of nuns, and I think the talk was called the Holy Hour.

He says, my words have power because for 55 years, 365 days a year, I've spent an hour in God's presence.

Now, I'm going to guess he probably spent more than an hour, but he spent a devoted, specific hour in God's presence.

I like something that Mark Batterson says in his book Whisper.

He says, although we may never get to the bottom of the Bible, the Bible does get to the bottom of us.

It penetrates the soul and spirit.

It divides joints and marrow.

And like a spiritual sonogram, it reveals the thoughts and attitudes of the heart.

The Bible comes alive only when we actively obey it.

And that is what's amazing is we have God's word.

We have, you know, scripture.

We have Jesus's example as he walked on earth as a human, but.

But divine.

We have the stories and testimonies in the Bible.

We have the stories and testimonies of people that have come before us, of the people that are around us.

We have so much to fill us up, right, to build our faith up.

And yet it's when we stay hidden.

It's when we don't share what we're walking through, or when we've walked through something and we have come out on the other side, and we don't share it.

Because God also wants us to use our story.

He wants us to Use what we've been through and then how we've seen God's promises and blessings come upon us.

And yes, that does not mean that we didn't also have trials and tribulations, because we will.

That's very clear, right?

Being human, it's never only going to be perfect and rosy.

That's never what it was said to be.

Nor do you know anyone that's had that life.

But when we get in God's presence, that means having quiet time.

That means prayer.

That means giving thanks and praise.

That means, you know, maybe having a few other people, right, that you can pray with and pray for, that you can do life with.

It means having wise counsel, you know, that you have access to.

It means listening to and reading and building yourself up with things that build your faith up.

So for me, yes, the podcast, even though I'm the host, it does that for me.

Reading so many books, both ones I purchase and then ones that my guests have written, you know, when they come on, I try to obviously read their book before they come.

Come on.

Listening to sermons, listening to podcasts about people that share ways that God has been present and that God moves in the world and in their lives.

And so I would encourage you, what are you doing to build up your faith?

What are you doing to build up your belief?

And what are you doing to remember that God Almighty can do miraculous things and he can do them in your life, and that he is bigger than any problem, any struggle, any trial or tribulation that you are walking through right now.

But so often we think, because from our human perspective, the thing we're walking through seems grand and big and great and maybe unsurmountable.

But God is bigger than all of that.

He defies the time that we understand as humans.

He defies all of it.

And so, you know, my hope for you today is that you'll know God is with you.

God is here for you.

Even if you've pushed God away for so long, or maybe you've never known God or at least not known him in an intimate way, I want to tell you that he's here for you and he wants to have that relationship with you.

And, you know, we just have to start.

Start small.

And let me remind you, prayer does not always have to be sitting down and, you know, saying certain words.

I like something.

I'm going to share this with you that I think she was a nun said.

Let's see.

It was an excerpt from the Monastic Way by Joan Chittister.

She was an author and lecturer too.

She's talking about prayer, and I think this is important for two reasons.

One is that prayer isn't always just words and getting on our knees, although that's good and important.

She's saying prayers, other things, but also prayer is when we.

We are not just praying for what we have, right?

We're praying for the world, we're praying for other people and hopefully taking action.

Here's what she says.

The question is not whether or not God is with us.

The concern is whether or not we are really with God, aware of God, open to God's actions in our life, alert to the presence of God in this moment.

Whatever its nature, however it feels to be for ourselves alone, even in prayer is not holiness.

We must pray for the needs of the entire world that God created.

Otherwise, what we are calling prayer is simply spiritual narcissism.

There is no magic in prayer.

The magic lies only in our willingness to do ourselves what we pray for.

Make peace, show love, do justice, show mercy, work hard, be patient.

Do unto others what you would have others do unto you.

Prayer is not only words.

Sometimes words get in the way.

Prayer is silence.

It is dance, it is poetry, it is song, it is tears, it is laughter.

Then little by little, it becomes life.

Oh, I love that.

And God's there for all of it, guys.

And guess what?

He's put people around you for all of it, too.

And so today I just want to.

Come on, I want to do a short message and just say, go to him.

He's here.

He wants to have a deeper relationship with you.

And I. I'm just going to wrap up with two things.

One, I heard something really interesting.

It was Andrew Huberman.

He has a podcast, but he's a professor at Stanford.

I mean, it's like a really popular podcast.

And he's this.

He might be a neuroscientist, I forget.

But basically he was sharing that.

They've note, they have, they've studied people and when the people are struggling and they think there's no way, there's no way I can do this thing, like, I'm stuck, I'm an impasse when those people tap into the divine, you know, so.

So in this case, they didn't say that everybody believed in God or Christian God, but.

But they were tapping into a spiritual divine, you know, beyond themselves.

But when they did that, every one of them was.

Was then able to get beyond the thing.

In other words, what am I saying?

I'm just saying that God allows for us to move in ways that by ourselves we cannot.

And so just go to Him.

Start small, start without words if that's what you need to do.

Bring your burdens, bring your tears, bring them to him, but also bring them to a trusted person that you can, you can speak to.

Because sometimes speaking the thing out loud, or if you don't have that person, write it down, write it in a journal, a prayer journal.

Write it in your phone, do whatever you need to do to get it from thought or your heart out, release it, and that's it.

I just want to come on and share this with you today.

I'll be getting back to regular episodes on Wednesdays.

I have both lots of great guest interviews coming up for you, but I also have some really good solo episodes that'll be coming as well, and I can't wait to share those with you.

If you would like to feel the presence of God in your life, if you want to set your sights on how God is beside you, how he's walking among you, and what is he doing even when we don't sometimes notice it, I have a great freebie for you.

It's called Joy Rising and it's a workbook that basically lets you fill in, you know, a daily check in for gratitude, joy and God's presence.

So you just print it off and then there's a spot each day that you just fill in.

Like how did you.

Where did you notice or hear God speaking to you?

Or how did he show up in your life?

And then what are you grateful for today?

So it's a great way to get in a daily practice of gratitude and also of noticing God moving in your life.

So go to KristinFitch.com and then you can go to my workbooks page and you can grab that completely free.

But I think it will be such a great jumping off point for you if today's episode spoke to you or just opened your heart a little bit more.

If you enjoyed today's episode, if you could leave a rating review on Apple Podcast or wherever you listen to podcasts, it helps the show get discovered by more people so that we can continue to uplift and encourage people in their faith journey as well as all of the other parts of their lives.