Q&A with Nancy Guthrie

Hearing Jesus Speak into Your Sorrow

Q. You say that Hearing Jesus Speaking Into Your Sorrow is the culmination of your search for understanding that has come with the perspective of years, and further study of the Scriptures since writing your earlier book Holding on to Hope following your daughter, Hope’s death. How has your understanding deepened and developed?

A. Most of us who experience a significant loss have to struggle to reconcile our understanding of who God is and what we’ve believed we can and should expect from him with the harsh reality of our experience. For me, that has taken the form of seeking a clearer understanding of the role God has in our suffering, the purpose of prayer, whether or not we can expect God to heal here and now, and the spiritual realities beyond this life. I have found many of the answers to these questions in examining the ministry of Jesus and digging deeper into the implications of things he said.

Q. Each chapter in Hearing Jesus Speak Into Your Sorrow focuses on a statement Jesus made that you think the person who is hurting really needs to hear and understand. What are some examples?

A. When Jesus says, “My soul is crushed with grief to the point of death,” we are comforted in knowing that Jesus understands the intensity of our sorrow. When we hear him say, “My Father! If it is possible, let this cup of suffering be taken away from me. Yet I want your will to be done, not mine,” we realize that Jesus is showing us what to do when God doesn’t give us what we desperately want. When we hear him answer the questions about why a man was born blind saying, “This happened so the power of God could be seen in him,” we begin to believe that God might actually have a good purpose in our pain.

Q. You dedicate this book to “friends and family who live with the sorrow of infidelity, infertility, a spouse’s rejection, a child’s rebellion, paralysis, bipolar disorder, suicide, depression, dementia, a learning disability, death, fear over finances, loss of reputation, a difficult marriage, an unwanted singleness, an embarrassing failure, an ongoing conflict, a pervasive loneliness.” What difference does hearing Jesus speak make to people experiencing these kinds of difficulties?

A. Sometimes it seems so simplistic when we offer “Jesus” as the answer to life’s most painful realities, doesn’t it? And yet, the more we understand about who Jesus is and what he has done, and the more we welcome him and his work into the pain in our lives, we discover that hearing Jesus speak truth and challenge and comfort really does make a difference in these hard places. But it can’t be just a surface hearing. We can’t simply listen for a formula for how we can use him to get what we want. We have to seek to understand the deeper meanings of what Jesus said. We have to chew on his words, maybe even wrestle with them, and ultimately embrace them.

There are so many things Jesus said that we’ve misunderstood or misapplied. I hear these things so often in my conversations with hurting people who are disappointed with, and estranged from God because of the pain in their lives. God has not come through for them in the way they expected, in the way that a shallow reading of the scriptures might suggest he will. So to deal with the big questions loss leaves us with, we have to go deeper than a shallow reading. We have to listen to understand the bigger picture of the purpose of Jesus’ ministry and what following him really means.

Q. In one chapter you explore Jesus’ words to Paul when he asked repeatedly for the thorn in his flesh to be removed. What did Jesus say and why do we need to hear it?

A. Jesus said to Paul, “My grace is all you need. My power works best in weakness.” This is startling if we take in the scope of what he is saying. And it completely refutes the health-and-wealth gospel that has found its way into the way even orthodox believers respond to and pray about painful problems. Jesus is saying here that he wants to display his power in Paul’s life not by removing the thorn but by sustaining and satisfying Paul as he lives with the thorn. He is promising to be enough for Paul even as he agonizes over the pain of the thorn. We need to hear this, because the reality is that most of us don’t get the miracle we pray for either; we too have to live with the thorn.

Yesterday I was talking to a friend whose husband told her last week that he doesn’t want to be married to her anymore, and she said, “I guess my only hope is that God will do a miracle and change his mind.” And I told her, “Certainly we are hopeful God will do that, but that is not your only hope. Even if your husband does not come home, your sure and solid hope is that God will take care of you, be with you, and be enough for you.” In other words, the ground of our confidence is that God will give us the grace we need in the form, quantity and timing in which we need it.

Q. How does hearing Jesus help those of us who desperately want God to heal us?

A. A lot of us feel a little confused about what we should expect from God and what real faith looks like when we face a physical illness. We read the gospels, and over and over we see Jesus healing those who come to him. And since we believe he is, “the same yesterday, today and tomorrow,” we pour ourselves into prayer and pleading for miraculous healing.
But many believers have a profound misunderstanding of the purpose of the healing ministry of Jesus during his days on the earth. Jesus healed bodies that had been made sick by the effects of sin so that we will believe that he is who he said he is—the son of God—and believe that he can and will heal our sin-sick souls. We tend to brush past this because we don’t really see our sin as that big of a problem. We see our cancer or depression as our most pressing need. But Jesus knows our physical healing is not our primary need—our most significant need is forgiveness and healing from our sin-sick ways.

We think that physical life—the length of it and the quality of it—is of ultimate importance. It isn’t. Jesus did not die on the cross to give us a certain number of days of health on this earth. He came to fit us—body and soul—for eternity in a new heaven and a new earth.

Q. So are you saying we shouldn’t pray for physical healing?

A. Just like Jesus poured out his “wants” to his father in prayer, we are to pour out our needs and concerns and desires before our Father. And here again, hearing Jesus speak is helpful to us, specifically hearing how Jesus responded when what he wanted was not what God wanted. In the Garden of Gethsemane, Jesus poured out his repeated request to his Father to accomplish the salvation of sinners in some other way than through the cross. But God, through his silence, said no to his son.

So when we hear Jesus say, “I want your will to be done, not mine,” we discover that it is possible for us to overcome our own wants, to push through them to surrender. Many in our current Christian culture suggest that strong faith is evidenced by throwing all of our energies into begging God for a miracle and believing without doubting he will do it. In reality, genuine faith is not measured by our ability to manipulate God to get what we want, but rather by our willingness to submit to what he wants.