Resting In God’s Promises

CORE PRACTICE #10: Cling to each other and to God’s promises that He is always with you when you face hard times.

Trust in the LORD and do good. Then you will live safely in the land and prosper. Take delight in the LORD, and he will give you your heart’s desires. Commit everything you do to the LORD. Trust him, and he will help you. He will make your innocence radiate like the dawn, and the justice of your cause will shine like the noonday sun.

—Psalm 37:3-6

TONY

If someone in our family is going through a difficult moment, we all tend to share in it, doing our best to buoy the person who is struggling. That’s how it always works.

January 2002 was such a time. I lost my mother just after the beginning of the new year. My mom was a schoolteacher and a stickler for studying, writing well, and encouraging her kids and her students to do the best we could in everything we set our hands and minds to do. As you would expect, losing her left a void in my life that I felt for some time thereafter, and even today.

Later that month I was fired from my position as head coach of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. It came after being with the organization for six years, and there was a lot of speculation in the media about what might happen after that season. I felt we’d had remarkable success. The team had done a lot to stabilize the franchise and to set it on a long-term course for sustainable success. We just couldn’t seem to get far enough into the playoffs and failed to reach that ultimate goal, the Super Bowl.

I remember reflecting on that period of my life for quite a while as I wrote Quiet Strength. I didn’t become absorbed in those painful moments, but instead I remember spending some time thinking about what God had done and what He would be doing in the future in our lives.

I recalled that during those difficult days, I needed those closest and most important to me to be around me. Of course, that included Lauren, and as expected, she was my chief comforter and encourager. But she was also my number one challenger, not allowing me to wallow in feeling sorry for myself but reminding me to look to the Lord whenever I was discouraged. Also, she encouraged me to remember that God hadn’t gone anywhere, and that when He closed one door in life, He was already making certain that another would open.

Lauren and I were regularly drawn back to promises of His protection, presence, and plans for our lives. We remembered such assurances as those in Jeremiah 29:11: “‘For I know the plans I have for you,’” says the Lord. “‘They are plans for good and not for disaster, to give you a future and a hope.’” Although Lauren helped keep me grounded in what we truly believed about God, she also realized that a part of me was hurt and needed some time to heal. So she made sure to stay close, to affirm me in many other ways, and simply to make sure I knew she loved me.

Together we focused on promises such as those expressed in the verses of today’s Scripture passage, trusting in the Lord and taking delight in Him and His ways. We believed that when we did that, He would give us the desires of our hearts—in His time and aligned with His will. We committed everything to the Lord—our hurts, needs, hopes, family, and lives—because He, and He alone, could be trusted with all of that and more.

Not only did we make it through those tough times, as He knew we would, we began to thrive once again. Turn to Him and He will do the same for you, no matter what you face.

Adventure Application: Today’s passage from Psalm 37 is worth committing to memory—or at least marking in your Bible so you can read it aloud when you’re particularly discouraged. Take a few moments, too, to discuss what this Scripture means for you as a couple today.