Episode 80
Guard Your Heart Part 1: Don’t Let the Pain Have the Final Word

Jill:
00:09

Hey, everyone. Thanks so much for joining us today. This is the Finding Hope Podcast. We’re Charlie and Jill LeBlanc, and we’re here to talk about getting through what you never asked for.

Charlie:
00:21

Yeah. And many of us have been through tragic difficulties, in particular the loss of family members, the loss of close friends. And, that’s always very, very painful. And that’s what the Lord has encouraged us to speak on behalf of those who cannot speak for themselves. And many of you, have been hurting and grieving in a lot of ways.

Charlie:
00:43

And it’s hard to really talk about it to some people. You talk about it to people in your church and things like that, and they’re like, Well, why don’t you hurry up and get over that? People don’t understand the pain of loss. So, today we’re going to talk more about that. And in particular, I had on my heart to talk about guarding your heart.

Charlie:
01:09

And this is a really, really big topic, but it’s a very important topic because guarding our hearts in the midst of loss is so vitally important. You know, life throws a lot of pain at us and difficulty, but guarding your heart in the midst of all that pain and difficulty is so important. Proverbs four twenty three says it like this, above all else, guard your heart for out of it flows… Well, there’s two translations and I get them a little mixed up sometimes, but this one is in in the NIV. It says, above all else, guard your heart for everything you do flows from it.

Charlie:
01:54

That’s powerful. But I love that above all else. And then in the in the New Living, it says, Guard your heart above all else, for everything you do flows from it. So here’s the thing. When we go through losses and pain and tragedy in our life, our heart gets smashed and gets shattered.

Charlie:
02:16

One of the translations says shattered. I like that. But above everything, we need to guard our heart. Why? Because everything we do in life from this point forward is determined by our heart, by how healthy our heart is.

Charlie:
02:32

And that’s why we want to talk about this today, because we’re going to try to help you see the importance of making your heart healthier. And that’s not easy when you’re going through a loss and when you’re in pain. And, you know, the scripture just continues to say, give attention to what’s happening on the inside of you more than what’s on the outside of you. And we’ve all been through so many outside tragedies here and there’s, the world is full of outside tragedies, but it’s like, we’ve got to give attention to how our hearts are handling these things. Our circumstances can hurt us, but what happens in our heart is what will determine our outcome and our future.

Charlie:
03:12

So that’s the most important thing.

Jill:
03:14

It really is. And it’s super important because sometimes happens to us. We can’t control what somebody else says or does. You know, the phone call that comes, the diagnosis.

Charlie:
03:29

Like last night, doggone.

Jill:
03:31

Oh, gosh. Yeah. Last night, I got a call from my sister-in-law. My brother has been battling brain cancer. And we got a call last night that they have had to put him on hospice.

Jill:
03:42

And, you know, without a miracle, we knew this day would come. I mean, it’s possible even that by the time that this program airs, I’m not sure if he’ll still be with us or not. But regardless, you don’t know what’s going to come at you. You know, the disappointments, the betrayals, financial difficulties, just any kind of circumstance. You know, life just throws stuff at us all the time.

Charlie:
04:10

Right.

Jill:
04:11

But there’s something we have to pay attention to. And that’s what begins happening inside of our hearts. That’s right. Because the enemy wants to take full advantage of those moments. It may seem like something small and insignificant, but you’ve heard the phrase, if you give him an inch, he’ll take a mile.

Charlie:
04:31

True.

Jill:
04:32

And that couldn’t be more true in talking about the condition of our hearts. He wants to take something that is so painful and use it to change what we believe about God. Because, you know, most people’s concept of God in the earth today is that He is in control. Well, God, He is all powerful and all knowing and all everything, but He doesn’t control everything that happens to us. Live in a fallen world.

Jill:
05:07

And so we have to guard what we believe about God, because the enemy is the accuser. And he’s going to try to make it look like God is the one who is at fault for letting this thing happen, or that thing happen to us. And he wants us to become bitter.

Charlie:
05:25

Right.

Jill:
05:27

So, whenever we dwell in hopelessness, or discouragement, or anger, or become isolated, it’s like putting out signals that attracts the enemy. You know, we’ve all heard the story about a shark in the ocean, if there’s any blood nearby from, if someone got injured or from another fish getting attacked, the sharks smell the blood in the water.

Charlie:
05:52

And

Jill:
05:53

that’s why they throw out bloody bait to sharks to get them to come. And that’s just the same way with all this, because it’s like a call to the demons to come and mess with us, if we begin to open our heart and let these things start to affect us and change our doctrine. The devil wants us to begin thinking, I’m so insignificant. God doesn’t even hear my prayers. He doesn’t even really care that much about me.

Jill:
06:24

Why would he listen to me? Why would he hear my prayer? And that’s so far from the truth. He sees every single tear that drips down your cheek. Those are thoughts inspired by the enemy as bait to try to get you to camp out there so that he can get a hook into your heart.

Jill:
06:45

And this is why guarding our hearts is so important.

Charlie:
06:49

Yeah, that’s right. And you know, Jesus talked about that in so many different ways. But one thing that I saw was when in Luke twenty-two 31, when Jesus saw Simon there and he said, Simon, Satan has asked to sift you as wheat, but I have prayed for you, Simon, that your faith may not fail. So the thing about it is that Satan… Jesus saw that Satan was going to try to destroy Simon Peter because he saw in advance that Simon Peter was going to betray him, you know, going to deny him, I should say.

Charlie:
07:23

And, and so, and he knew that that would just destroy Simon’s heart and Simon would just be like, want to kill himself over it, which, you know, I understand that, you know, but Jesus said, I’ve prayed that your faith fail not. And the way I looked at that is, you know, Jesus is praying that his heart would not fail in the midst of that, that his faith and his heart… I look at those two things as similar things, your heart and your faith. Do we have hope? Do we have faith?

Charlie:
07:52

Do we have the heart to keep going even when everything falls apart in our lives? You know, he said essentially, you’re about to go through something and I’m praying that your heart will be strong through it. Sometimes the greatest issue is not whether we’re going to go through difficulty, but because we will. The question is, what will that difficulty do to our hearts? And oh my gosh, I know from experience our hearts were shattered and we needed the healing of our heart, which is, you know, guard your heart because Jesus wants to heal your broken heart.

Charlie:
08:35

And so there’s a healing taking place, and so therefore we have to guard our heart from letting poison come in to slow down that healing. Right. Letting bitterness come in, letting anger come in, letting hurt come in. You know, and we could talk, go so many directions here, but, you know, even with what people say when you’re grieving, you can get angry with that. You can get like, No one understands.

Charlie:
09:04

And they said stupid things. And we felt with all that. We were really offended when certain people said certain things. But then we realized the enemy is trying to get our heart messed up, you know, and we can’t allow him to do that. The enemy wants to take full advantage of you.

Jill:
09:23

Yes, he does.

Charlie:
09:24

Yeah.

Jill:
09:25

And Paul said something really crucial in second Corinthians two verse 11. He says that, Satan couldn’t take advantage of us or outsmart us because we’re not ignorant of his devices. We are familiar with his evil schemes.

Charlie:
09:43

We

Jill:
09:44

have to stay savvy and not be ignorant of the enemy’s tactics, because he will use the most unexpected ways to try to get you just when, you know, maybe you’re doing okay one day, maybe, you know, you’ve sustained some blows, but maybe it’s a little while down the road and you finally came up for air and you feel like, oh gosh, I’m doing okay today, you know, and you’re just kind of even or maybe, you know, you’re feeling a little bit of lightness. And then something happens, painful that you weren’t expecting, and bam, it just knocks you off your game. And we’ve, we had to stand against that kind of thing a lot. But the enemy is trying to get to your faith. He’s trying to change what you believe about God.

Jill:
10:40

Because when we’re hurting, we sometimes begin to ask questions like, well, where is God? Why did he allow this? Does he even really care? Is this ever going to change? And those questions may come naturally and honestly, but if we’re not careful, disappointment can turn into discouragement.

Jill:
11:03

And discouragement can turn into hopelessness, which can turn into bitterness. And then eventually we can begin living out of our wounded souls rather than living from our faith. This is why we have to guard our hearts.

Charlie:
11:19

Yeah, you know, you said the word hopelessness. And that is so what we’re going to talk a lot about that in this podcast as well, because part of guarding your heart is finding hope. And interesting to think of our podcast is finding hope. But part of guarding your heart is to find a place of hoping and still trusting. And I know how hard it was at the beginning because I was hopeless.

Charlie:
11:52

We were hopeless. But the enemy just wants us to completely stay hopeless when devastating things happen. You know, I remember a good friend of ours, Jill, who just lost her husband, one of my best friends. And she said the hardest thing is just finding hope. You know, because there she was alone, her husband ran the business, her husband took care of everything, her husband was larger than life, and now she’s alone.

Charlie:
12:21

And it’s finding hope, and thank God she has found that She has… She’s recovered. It’s been a few years now. But, but, you know, she walked into her home, she just said, It’s dark, it’s all alone. You know, what do I do?

Charlie:
12:34

What do I do now? But God is gracious and God helped her. And we just need to make sure that we stay on track with keeping hope alive. You know there’s a scripture that says in Psalm 2seven 13, David said, I would have despaired unless I had believed that I would see the goodness of God in the land of the living. And another translation says, I would have lost heart unless I had believed.

Charlie:
13:06

And I really like that because we all get to that place of broken heart, hopelessness. But he says, you know, I would have lost heart unless I had believed. And the NIV says, I remain confident in this, that I will see God’s goodness in the land of the living. Now that’s hope. He says, I’m confident that I’m gonna see good.

Charlie:
13:32

And that’s, I think, what we want to encourage you today with is that even if you don’t see it yet, we want to encourage you to be hopeful that God has a plan. God is going to pull you through this difficulty and it may seem impossible right now, but he did it for us. He’ll do it for you. We’re seventeen years out now. It was so hard.

Charlie:
13:56

First year, second year, third year, fourth, fifth, sixth, I mean, just… We just didn’t even think that we could make it. But, you know, I started seeing this thing we talked about, spiritual warfare. I started seeing how the enemy just wanted to destroy my heart. He wanted to destroy me.

Charlie:
14:14

He wanted to destroy my faith. So I just said, doggone it. I’m gonna, I’m gonna, I’m gonna have hope. I’m gonna believe God. I’m gonna trust him for my future and not let the enemy win.

Charlie:
14:26

And that’s part of my, I’m not gonna let him totally destroy me. I still have two daughters. I still have a life to live. I have a ministry to go for. You know, I have my wife.

Charlie:
14:35

I have my parents at the time they were living. My friends, my cousins, my uncles. You know, I just thought, you know what? I can’t let him destroy me. I’m not gonna allow it.

Charlie:
14:48

And, and, you know, I just said, you know, we’re gonna… I’m making a choice. And, you know, Jill, you wrote this song, it’s a powerful song, it’s called I Choose To Believe. We encourage you to look that one up on one of our albums. What album is that?

Charlie:
15:02

Your Love Remains.

Jill:
15:03

Your Love

Charlie:
15:04

Remains album. You can find that on Spotify or Apple Music. I choose to believe when my prayers seem unanswered. Jill wrote this powerful song and I just thought, we’ve got to record that song. So that was you at one point.

Charlie:
15:19

Now it wasn’t immediately. But at some point you wrote that song and you said, I’m choosing to believe that God is good. I’m choosing to believe when my prayers seem unanswered. I’m choosing to believe when when lies look like the truth. When the mountain doesn’t move, I’m gonna I’m gonna I’ve made my choice.

Charlie:
15:37

I’m gonna I’m gonna choose. And that’s, I think, part of what we’re trying to encourage you today with. Yeah. Amen.

Jill:
15:45

Yeah, there is a choice. And, but like he said, I was not ready to make any kind of choice early on. And it came with time, as I began to heal one layer at a time. Our friend Dave Dwelle, God bless him. He’s in heaven now.

Jill:
16:08

He was so awesome. But Dave used to talk about hardship and he would say, one thing’s for sure, we can become bitter, or we can become better. It’s up to us. And there’s really a lot of truth in that, you know, when something happens to us, you know, and it causes a reaction in our flesh, maybe, maybe we get mad or maybe, you know, something is, is really disturbing by what happened. You know, once we can get our wits back together, we, we sometimes have to make a choice.

Jill:
16:45

Are we going to allow this thing to embitter us? Or are we going to rise above it and be a better person because of it?

Charlie:
16:54

You know, I thought about when you said that, the victim mentality. Now, all of us who have had losses in our life that were, you know, they were young or, or, you know, they were, it was untimely losses, guess is what I’m trying to say. You know, my dad died at 87 years old and so did my mom. And my dad died just three months after Beau passed. And I was still just so broken over my son.

Charlie:
17:21

And my dad died at 87. I mean, I loved him. He was a great dad. I didn’t want him to go. But, you know, all of my siblings were there just crying at the funeral and concerned.

Charlie:
17:32

I’m just like, you know, my dad lived a good life and he loved the Lord. So, you know, so, you know, that was one thing. But for me, with my son, an untimely death, I became a victim at time. I said, this is a fair and and you know, and and you know, why God and how God and we’re gonna talk a little bit more about that in a few minutes. But but yeah, we we just, we can become bitter or better.

Charlie:
18:00

And that’s partly what we have to choose. We have to make that choice. And it’s not an easy choice.

Jill:
18:06

And it’s not a question of, is the pain real? That’s not right. It’s not a choice of if the pain is real or not, because the pain can be very real. And we’re absolutely not saying just get over it by any means. We’re not saying don’t cry or stop grieving.

Jill:
18:27

And I don’t say this lightly. But there is a choice that will affect our future. A choice to become bitter or better. And at first, it’s also automatic. We’re just operating out of an overwhelming heaviness that occupies every thought and emotion that we experience.

Jill:
18:47

There are things that happen in people’s lives that are absolutely devastating, things that change everything, Things that leave wounds. The Bible doesn’t tell us to pretend those things aren’t terrible. But it does tell us that God can take what the enemy intended for harm, and he can work it for good. You know, we’re all familiar with Romans eight twenty eight, that tells us that God works all things together for good, that those who love Him and are called according to His purpose. You know, we’ve all said that all of our Christian life, right?

Jill:
19:23

You know, that’s just one of these that we’ve all grown up and clung to. But you know, when we experience tragedy, it’s that even that concept to me, is completely incomprehensible. Mean, it first happened to us, we were not looking for God to work this together for good. That was the last thing on our minds. We were just trying to survive.

Jill:
19:48

Survive. Survive what Exactly. Just

Charlie:
19:52

I really trust that, that how can God turn this around for my good in any way, shape or form? And yet we have seen that in time. Time. Healing our broken heart, in time, helping us to help others with the same comfort that he gave to us, you know, in time making us a more compassionate person because of the loss, helping us to understand others in pain. And so, yeah, he did work that for our good,

Jill:
20:28

Boy, not in the beginning.

Charlie:
20:29

He didn’t cause it, though. No,

Jill:
20:30

he didn’t.

Charlie:
20:30

Some people think. Some people the scripture say, Well, God caused that for your good. No, no.

Jill:
20:36

God allowed it so that, yeah.

Charlie:
20:38

He’ll take it. Yeah. And he’ll, if you love God, even the most horrible things in your life, God will turn it around. I think about Joyce Meyer and all the difficulty and the child, abuse that she had as a little girl. And, she just came out with a new book, her memoir, and I think about all that that she went through and she, you know, she became better instead of bitter.

Charlie:
21:05

She did. She let God She turn it around for good so that she could help other people. Right. And she has helped so many, and we’re so grateful for that. Yeah.

Charlie:
21:18

By all means.

Jill:
21:20

But if you’re early in your grief journey, and it’s just so hard for you, you just don’t even worry about that today. Just get through today. But notice that that verse does not say that everything that happens is good, or that everything happens for a reason. Sorry, I do not like that phrase. But, you know, that honestly, that is just a cruel statement.

Jill:
21:50

Because if everything happens for a reason, and that our father allowed it for a reason to teach us something, that’s cruel. And that’s not our Father. Our Father is loving and, and patient and weeps with those who weep and and supports us in our grief. So that’s just a little pet peeve I have sorry to get get personal here. You know, a lot of things are heartbreaking and terrible, and should have never happened.

Jill:
22:23

But the Lord was not the source of them. But he is the only one who can bring redemption out of your suffering. He can bring light into darkness, and he can bring purpose out of your pain. And that means the enemy doesn’t get the final word, thank God.

Charlie:
22:42

Yeah. You know, this whole thing is just so much what we’ve experienced in our life because we went through all this. This is why we can talk about it. So we can speak through it because we went through how hard how our hearts wanted to go and bitter than how we just wanted to just forsake God and run from Christianity and run from Christians who were telling me, oh, praise the Lord, worship him anyway. You know, so we wanted to get…

Charlie:
23:09

We we were… We’ve been through this, so we understand, you know, and we’ve been to that place of, Lord, you know, where are you? You know, I think sometimes we have this picture that if we go back to God, we’re going to find him standing there waiting to tell us everything we did wrong. But, you know, we have to realize that God is love and that God continues to draw us closer to him, even when we, are faithless. The scripture says he remains faithful.

Charlie:
23:40

And I just know in my life, and I know Jill, in your life too, you’ve told me your testimony. Because we grieved differently and we reacted differently to both passing. Jill was extremely angry, and I was upset, but I was hurt more than angry, and shocked. And of course, we were both shocked. We all had similar symptoms.

Charlie:
24:08

I had my share of anger along the way, that’s for sure. But you know, when we finally took enough breath and we said, Where else can we go, Lord? You have the words of eternal life. And we came back to him. And I know your testimony is just beautiful about how the Lord just pulled you back in little by little.

Charlie:
24:27

Truly. He wooed you in and drew you in. But he did the same with me, you know, because I was just… I didn’t know what to do. But my eyes were on Him.

Charlie:
24:38

When I came to Him, I found that the Lord was weeping with me. I’ve shared that testimony how I was outside and it started to rain and I was crying and the Lord said, Charlie, I’m weeping with you. And we talk about this a lot on our podcast that Jesus wept at the tomb of Lazarus, that he suffered when we suffer. And, but you know, when I came back to him, found him patient, I found him kind, I found him humble and compassionate and lovely, and he found someone that I could run to even when others didn’t understand me, I could run to Jesus.

Jill:
25:12

Yeah.

Charlie:
25:13

And I wrote a, I read a book once, and this scripture was based on it. It says, come unto me, all you that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn of me, for I am meek and lowly in heart, and you shall find rest unto your soul. Just a beautiful picture of Jesus.

Jill:
25:34

Yeah.

Charlie:
25:35

You know, come to me, and you wrote a beautiful song, Come unto Me. We don’t do that song enough. Funny, as we go through this, I’m thinking about all the different songs that we wrote or that others wrote that were such a blessing earlier when you said something about, I thought about seeing by faith, could see light in the midst of darkness and so forth. But, you know, Jesus said, Come. Come to me.

Charlie:
25:59

I understand. You know, he doesn’t say you should have done better. But, you know, he says, Just come to me and I will bless you. I will help you. If you’re tired, come to me.

Charlie:
26:13

If you’re hurting, come to me. Don’t run away from God. We have a tendency to run. Come to me. If you’re carrying something you can’t handle, come to him.

Charlie:
26:23

Just know that God is a safe place. We talk about safe friends so often, but we need to remember that Jesus is a safe… God is a safe place for us to run when we’re in pain. As I’ve said so many times, he never rebuked a broken heart. He only rebuked hardened hearts and Pharisees and things like that.

Charlie:
26:43

So, you know, I think about Jesus understanding our pain. So I think about when he was in the garden, the Bible says that, that, you know, he knew what he was going through. So it said he, he sweat like drops of blood and Hebrews tells us, and I think we shared this at the last podcast that Hebrews showed us that he was actually in tears and agony as he went through that. So, we have a Savior that understands.

Jill:
27:09

Yes, we do.

Charlie:
27:10

And, you know, even when God was… You know, people have said this, they said, Don’t ask him why. And I understand because they don’t want you to get caught in the whys and the hows, and we, we, we agree with that. But you know, Jesus even said, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Jesus felt that abandonment that you and I have felt when when you lost your son, when you lost your husband, when you lost your wife.

Charlie:
27:38

Jesus, felt that same abandonment when God had to turn his back on him for that moment so that the sin of the world could be thrown upon him so that he could bear our sins and our pain and our agony. And so, you know, when we’re hurting, you know, just remember, we don’t have to clean up our own pain. We don’t have to fix ourselves. Just come to him. He understands our pain, our tears, our sorrow.

Charlie:
28:06

You know, just go ahead and pour out your heart. Just tell him exactly what you feel. I just knew we had that biker friend of ours, Jack Harris, Charlie, God can take it. Just tell him how you feel. He can handle it.

Charlie:
28:18

And you know, I just feel like that’s a healthy place. But now, all of this in context of guarding your heart. Right. You know, and… But you need to not clog your heart.

Charlie:
28:31

You need to allow it to weep, allow the sorrow. But I always say it, just do it with Jesus. Whatever you do in your grief journey, do it with the Lord, with knowing that he loves you, knowing that he’s with you.

Jill:
28:46

Yeah. Amen. Yeah. And there’s a powerful truth in the middle of suffering because we live in this fallen world. And so pain is inevitable, But hope can still be found even in the midst of pain.

Jill:
29:03

I may not be able to choose what happened to me. But I can choose what I’m going to believe about God in the middle of it. And, you know, I confess, I didn’t believe the best things about God in the beginning, right? Because I was so disillusioned. And, you know, I’ve shared this so many times before, but, but there did come a day when I was healthier.

Jill:
29:29

And I, I chose to believe the best about God. And that that’s where that song was birthed from when the Lord was working those things inside of me. But it can be really difficult because I know it was for me, I really struggled with anything positive for a long time. Yeah. I was a wounded soul who, who lost a child and, and I felt like I lost my faith.

Jill:
29:55

And I felt like I wasn’t able to make any effort to try and heal, or begin recovering from my loss. So I understood that this may not be simple. You know, it’s not a simple thing. And, and God, God’s, God is there for you. He is with you right now.

Jill:
30:15

And I know some of you are facing the same things that I did. In Psalm, we see this question asked, why, my soul, are you so downcast? Why are you so disturbed within me? But then comes the answer. Put your hope in God.

Jill:
30:34

And now again, I couldn’t do this for a long time. But the Lord carried me during that time, and eventually brought me back to the place where I could.

Charlie:
30:44

Yeah.

Jill:
30:45

Sometimes we have to speak to our own soul and remind ourselves what is true. You know, I know that when things are tough, and maybe I didn’t get a good night’s sleep, and so my emotions are a little more raw. You know, I have to tell myself I have to speak to myself and and convince myself of what’s really going on was really true. And the word of God is he, you know, the presence in the word of God is just there for us to support us as we try to make good steps forward.

Charlie:
31:22

Yeah. My foe, know, why so downcast? Oh, my foe, put your hope in God. Yeah. And, you know, we’re talking a lot about guarding your heart and about keeping…

Charlie:
31:34

Trying to find that hope again, trying to come back to a place of hope. And, you know, I I remember when I was rewriting this song about You Never Leave Me, You Never Forsake Me, you know, I put a line in there, I said, Though my world turns upside down, your peace can still be found. We’re talking about finding hope and finding peace. And the thing is this, I specifically didn’t write, when my world turns upside down, your peace is all around. I thought about that.

Charlie:
32:12

That’s a good little rhyme, and that’s faith. When my world turns upside down, peace is everywhere around me. Praise God. No, because I knew that wasn’t true in my life. Although it’s true, it was there, but I wasn’t grabbing it.

Charlie:
32:28

And so I put that line, I said, though my world turned upside down, your peace can still be found.

Jill:
32:38

Yeah, that was powerful. I remember when you played that for me that day and we talked about that line, I thought that is profound. That is profound.

Charlie:
32:48

I just think that that’s just part of what we’re trying to say here is that there’s a place of finding peace. There’s a place of finding hope. And this is so important so you can protect your heart in the midst of it. That reminds me of one of our favorite scriptures that we have just quoted so many times on this podcast. In, Lamentations three twenty one, Jeremiah says, yet this I call to mind, therefore I have hope because the Lord’s great love we are not consumed.

Charlie:
33:24

And you know, Jeremiah was lamenting over Israel being in bondage, his people being in bondage, And yet he said, I’m remembering now that God’s loving kindness are new every morning. His faithfulness reaches to the clouds. You know, he’s there for me. And so he said, therefore I have hope. When he remembers how good God was, he said, I’m gonna hope again.

Charlie:
33:51

And I like the New Living. He says, Yet I dare to hope. And that is so powerful to me because I don’t know about you, but I was afraid to hope. Hope had disappointed me. I had hoped for Bovee to get healed from his sickness and to live.

Charlie:
34:14

So my hope was crushed but like it says here yet I dare to hope when I remember this that the Lord’s loving kindness never ceases his mercies are new every morning. Great is his faithfulness and I had a hard time singing that for a long time. Great is his faithfulness. But yeah, he did bring hope to us at just the right time and restored our hope restored our faith and restored our heart. And we just want to encourage you with that today that, you know, heart is the most important part

Jill:
34:55

of It our

Charlie:
34:58

determines our future. Don’t let the enemy destroy your heart. Yeah. That’s the heart of this podcast. Don’t let the enemy destroy your your peace your your your future your your hope Hope in God.

Charlie:
35:17

Yeah. Trust in him. I know that’s hard, but just keep your eyes on him. Yeah. And trust him in the midst of this pain.

Jill:
35:26

He’s so faithful. And it’s, you know, I’m just echoing it just what you’ve said. But this is what we live out of. We live our life flows out of our heart.

Charlie:
35:40

Yeah.

Jill:
35:40

And this is why it’s so important to keep that healthy and not let the enemy get a foothold in there.

Charlie:
35:48

Amen. And you know, this is such an important subject, Jill. I think we need to come back on the next podcast and just continue to just talk about this because it is is your life. It is your future. In everyday life, even now seventeen years out, when when when we sense, bitterness or or unforgiveness or a problem or whatever, we realize that, Hey, we can’t afford.

Charlie:
36:17

You can’t afford to have unforgiveness. You can’t afford to get bitter. You can’t afford… It’ll destroy your future. Your future is hooked to your heart and to the healthiness of your heart.

Charlie:
36:30

And there’s one last scripture I want to say is that, Let the words of your mouth and the meditation of your heart be acceptable unto And that has been a real help to me, especially in the last few years that the meditation of your heart has to be healthy. Yeah. And, yeah, and it’ll help you.

Jill:
36:51

Well, before we close today, we want to tell you that we have a brand new resource to help you. We have just released a video course. It’s eight lessons. It’s called Finding Hope After Loss. So it’s just for you.

Jill:
37:09

And there’ll be a link below the show under the video, that you’ll be able to find how to get it. Or you can go to our website, charlieandjill.com, and find it there. But it will really minister to you, I believe. So check that out. It’s just being launched right now and we believe it will be a real help and blessing to

Charlie:
37:33

you. Amen.

Jill:
37:35

So, thanks for joining us today and we’re going to continue on this subject because God is just so good, and we have a lot more to say about this. So God bless you, and we’ll talk to you soon. Bye.

Charlie:
37:49

Hello again, everybody. This is Charlie, and Jill and I just want to say a special thank you for joining us on this latest podcast episode. And we want to remind you, we actually have a new episode every Tuesday. So come and join us on all of these. And if you could, share them with your friends, give us a thumbs up, follow us, however you can.

Charlie:
38:12

It’ll help us reach more people, and that’s our heart. And we also want to encourage you that we have a website that will really help you. We have grief resources. We have music, lots of music that’ll really bless you. So we encourage you to sign up on our mailing list, and, there’s free resources if you do, free songs, lots of good stuff there as well.

Charlie:
38:36

So God bless you, and thanks again for joining us.