Pain and Illness with Gloria Furman
On today’s episode of the Journeywomen podcast, we are talking about walking alongside others in pain and illness. Today’s guest, Gloria Furman, has walked alongside her husband, Dave, who has a nerve disability that affects both of his arms, while mothering their four kids and working cross-culturally, amidst other things. In 2010 Gloria’s family moved to the Middle East to plant Redeemer Church of Dubai where her husband, Dave, serves as the pastor. She is the author of Glimpses of Grace: Treasuring the Gospel in Your Home (Crossway, 2013), Treasuring Christ When Your Hands Are Full: Gospel Meditations for Busy Moms (Crossway, 2014), The Pastor’s Wife: Strengthened by Grace for a Life of Love (Crossway, 2015), and Missional Motherhood: The Everyday Ministry of Motherhood in the Grand Plan of God (Crossway, 2016). You can read her blog at GloriaFurman.com and follow her on Twitter. Whether you’re personally enduring pain or illness or supporting and caring for someone else who is, I know you will leave this conversation feeling refreshed, challenged, and encouraged.
INTERVIEW QUESTIONS
What has it looked like for you to walk alongside others in pain and illness?
What sustains you as you walk alongside Dave in his pain, particularly when things get really hard? Where do we derive our strength to walk alongside others?
How do you carve out time to nurture your own relationship with God while you have so many practical responsibilities regarding caring for your family? How do you abide in Christ and allow your ministry to Dave and others to be done out of the joy of being connected to God through Jesus Christ?
How do you speak the truth in love and gently point him to truth when he’s struggling with depression or deep discouragement? How do we point them to the hope we have in Jesus?
How do you weep honestly about the loss you too are experiencing while planting your feet firmly on the hope you have in Jesus?
How would you encourage us to battle the lie that our spouse, child, parent, or friend has nothing to contribute because of their disability, illness, or pain?
What is our responsibility as church members to walk alongside members of our body who are struggling with pain or illness? How about family members?
How has the Lord used walking alongside Dave in his pain to offer you more of himself?
NOTEWORTHY QUOTES
What sustains you as you walk alongside Dave in his pain, especially when things are feeling hard and you feel maxed out?... “The short and sweet answer is Christ himself, the person of Christ in me and me in him. Practically, remembering Christ’s strength, his ability to help me, his willingness and readiness to help me, his perfect plan as he has laid out all these good works for me to walk in, remembering all of these big truths about who Jesus is and what he’s already done for me and what he is doing in me and what he has promised he will do.”
“It becomes really key to hide God’s Word in your heart and continually refresh it and keep remembering what God has said. You do this and you know it’s working because you remember just how much you need him.”
“There is nowhere else for you to go. Jesus has the words of life, and there’s nowhere else for you to go.”
“Meditating on Scripture, rolling it around in your mind, talking it out with others, keeping the conversation going in fellowship with one another. Meditating on it in the context of community you get to see all the radiant aspects of God’s Word as it lands on us as a people of God. This helps engrain things in your heart.”
“Grieving the loss of my expectations is an ongoing thing, because you don’t realize you have expectations until they aren’t met.”
“Remembering God’s perfect character, going back to his Word. We learn in his Word that this God, his way is perfect, the Word of the Lord proves true, he is the shield for all who take refuge in him. Job says ‘I know that you can do all things...no purpose of yours can be thwarted.’ Remembering God’s promises, the things he says about himself: that he will never leave you or forsake you. Psalm 22, ‘He hasn’t despised or abhorred the affliction of the afflicted and he has not hidden his face from him, but he has heard when he cried to him.’ Remembering all of those truths about God helps when I have those reality check expectations and I can grieve the loss of those imaginary things that I thought about the way my life would go.”
“Hang on tight to God’s perfect character and his love. He has not designed my life in such a way to destroy me. He has not designed Dave’s life in such a way as to destroy him, nor our children. But he has prepared beforehand good works for us to walk in and if this is the way he wants us to walk in it then he surely is going to give us the grace and faith we need to get to the end.”
“You have to go back and go cosmic on it, in cosmic detail and see the big picture of ‘who is God?’ God is the Creator. He has made all things for his own glory. Included in this creation is me. Thousands of years later here I come, and he’s made me this way, in this context, with this people, in this time, to interact with all of these other image bearers. And he works all of the details in my life to be for his glory. And then your jaw is on the ground and you have to say ‘Wow. This God whose way is perfect, who created me, who’s amazing, wants me to use my little life to give him glory.’ And you pick your jaw back up off the ground and you say ‘Okay, give me the strength I need to do that.’”
“Christ willingly went to pay the penalty for my sin, the just penalty. I deserved death, and he’s exchanged his life for mine. That alone is cause for infinite praise, infinite worship for all eternity.”
“Use your gifts. God has equipped you according to his varied grace. His multicolored, multifaceted, diverse grace… God gives various grace to people to serve with the strength that he provides, and all of the things that we do through the strength that God supplies is for the glory of Christ.”
“Jesus is near to the brokenhearted, he saves those who are crushed in spirit, that’s his promise. So as I reflect on expectations that aren’t met or just sadness or grieving the pain, the Lord has been near.”
“Tell the Lord. Pour out your heart to him. He already knows what’s in there. You're in his presence, you’re praying through his Spirit, you have your Bible open, and you just tell him, ‘God would you with your Word search me and know me and show me who you are, and show me who I am in light of who you are.’ And then let the Lord lead you.”
RESOURCES
On the idea of ‘going cosmic’ - Alive in Him
Regarding the overarching redemptive story of the Bible - Missional Motherhood
SCRIPTURE REFERENCES
SIMPLE JOYS IN MINISTRY
Being a part of something bigger, something cosmic, that will have ripple effects in eternity
Having prayer support (and praying for others) around the world
The joy of being an ambassador for Christ
DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
What has it looked like for you to walk alongside others in pain and illness?
Where do we derive our strength to walk alongside others?
What is the hope we have in Jesus in the midst of pain and illness?
How can you specifically walk alongside someone in your church body who is struggling with pain or illness?
What are you going to do or implement as a result of what you’ve learned this week?
IMPORTANT NOTE
Journeywomen interviews are intended to serve as a springboard for continued study in the context of your local church. While we carefully select guests each week, interviews do not imply Journeywomen's endorsement of all writings and positions of the interviewee or any other resources mentioned.
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