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In Rest Podcast
Are you a leader looking to thrive mentally and confidently? Join founder and coach, Noah James Wiebe, as he hosts the In Rest Podcast, a podcast all about experiencing greater mental health and confidence as a leader.
In Rest Podcast
Stay Happy in Hope when big losses (and changes) are coming || In Rest
Welcome! Are you in a moment of change right now? Maybe you're facing some depressing stuff. Either way, you can trust God has hope for you.
This testimony is all about hope and how to have joy in hope even while the worst is happening. HEADS UP-- about halfway through recording this, I interrupted recording it to go and help my youngest son who was in a life or death situation (#dadlife). I had a lot of joy knowing he was okay and that God was with us to help with that.
GOD HAS A FUTURE FOR YOU THAT IS BRIGHT AND FULL OF HOPE! Never give up! I'd encourage you to share this with someone you think could be encouraged by it.
This episode is another episode in our series on Hope. This Fall (and into 2025) we'll be focusing on God's hope for His people! Be sure to SUBSCRIBE and like and SHARE to get the most out of this episode and this upcoming series. PLEASE go to YouTube (or wherever else you get your podcasts) to watch, subscribe, and/or rate us 5 stars ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐!
Shalom!
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Hello and welcome to the In Rest Podcast with Noah James Wiebe. I am your host, oah, and today we are going to be talking about hope. So hope we've talked about it before. We're talking about it again because we are jumping into a series on hope. I got some amazing guests ahead for you this fall and I'm so excited to interview them and get that going. However, today we're going to be talking about hope. You can probably hear all of my kids talking in the background, so we're going to actually talk about a snippet of my story, and especially as that story pertains to having my kids come into my life.
Noah James Wiebe:The Bible tells us in Romans 12, verse 12, "'rejoice in hope, be patient in affliction, "'be faithful in prayer'". Be joyful in hope, be patient in affliction, be faithful in prayer Romans 12, verse 12. As we're gonna jump in, what I want to do is actually want us to pray. Maybe you've been struggling with hope lately, maybe there's a reason why you turned on this particular podcast episode today, and so I want to pray for us. Lord Jesus, I thank you for today. I thank you for the kindness that you have for us, the love that you have for us. Help me and help my listener today to rest in your graciousness and in your kindness. I pray, god, that you would help us to rest in the goodness that you have for us and the kindness that you have for us. God, I thank you that your kindness does not depend on our perfect performance, but rather upon your perfect love for us. So I just pray that whoever's listening or watching today would be the exact right people that need to be hearing this today. The right person. Even if it's just one person that needed to hear it today, I pray that that would be the person that's hearing and listening today to the In Rest podcast, and so I just pray that you would bless this episode, that you bless this time. I just invite you into this space, no matter how long it might take probably going to be a short time but I pray you bless it either way, in Jesus name, amen. Okay, so yeah, here we go Rejoice in hope or be joyful in hope, be patient in affliction, be faithful in prayer.
Noah James Wiebe:Long while ago, my wife and I, we were really excited to have our first son, so our first son, who later would be named Levi. He did not come to us until about three years into our marriage. So I was married, probably, you know, a year after I graduated from high school, so I was only 19 years old when I got married. That story brought me through university, or most of my university days in Bible college, up to the point where I was about to graduate. So that particular summer I'd done a lot of work to prepare in order to leave university, to leave the apartment that we had stayed in, to leave behind everything in that season, and we just felt this sense from the Lord that it was time to have a baby. We had prayed about having children in the past and now, after three years of us being married, there is just, there is a clear sense Now is the time, now is the now is the time to to, you know, to have a baby. And so we stopped not trying and eventually my wife conceived and we were able to have, uh, have, a pregnancy, and it was a beautiful pregnancy. It was like a blessing to my wife. My wife struggles with chronic pain, so to be able to have her experience a season where that pain actually subsided a bit during her pregnancy, which was kind of surprising, um, and she was probably at the peak her peak health as an adult. Up to that point. It was just a blessing to have a healthy pregnancy, to be blessed in that way, and we were really encouraged by that. So, of course, you know, nine months goes by by the time we have come to the hospital to have our baby.
Noah James Wiebe:We had moved to another province, moved into a brand new house, or I shouldn't say brand new. We had moved to another province, moved into a brand new house, or I shouldn't say brand new. It was new to us. It was a old house, it was like 111 years old, and we moved there. We had, you know, renovated the place a little bit, sort of to get it to the capacity that it needed to be, so that we could have our baby, have our family. We had started a new job. I had started a new job as a children and family pastor, children and youth pastor, and it was a beautiful season for us, that season of change, especially as we were coming out of our first province, you know, new Brunswick, into our new province of serving in Nova Scotia.
Noah James Wiebe:There was a season of change where, in the difficulty of the change, there was sadness and depression. Oftentimes the difficulty of a change is not so much of the change itself. It's just, it's the difficulty of depression in the midst of the change, and part of the reason why that happens is because there's a there's a loss that happens to us when we let go of a particular season and move into a new one. There is a sense of loss that happens when we step away from relationships that we are familiar with, that we have to now have a season of distance. There is loss and grief that happens when we say goodbye to things that we really cherished, about one season moving into another. We're in a similar season now, actually, of moving into a season of change and transition. We're saying goodbye to this house that we've been living in and this season of life and our children being babies. You know, like our, our youngest son. He is three years old now, which means that there's not many little boy days left. You know like soon he's going to be, he's going to be a big boy. You know he's going to grow up, he's going to go to school, and that's sad. There's sadness that comes with, you know, letting go of those younger days of your child's life. And so we're in a season now again of change and transition.
Noah James Wiebe:During that season back then, which was years ago, that was something that really was jarring to me. I did not expect to experience depression in the midst of change, and around that time I got a book from my friend, don, who was a mentor to me. He was a pastor to me, he had apprenticed me in ministry to help me grow into the pastor that I am and the man that I am today, and he left me with a book called All Things New, and I had it here in the office somewhere, and basically the premise of the book is that our hope as Christians is found in the love of God and in the future that he has for his people, which is assured, and that future is characterized by the renewing of all things. Everything you love about this world that has been destroyed, everything that God has loved about what he has made that has been lost, is going to be reclaimed and restored. And when Jesus comes again, he's going to renew all things. He's going to bring the renewal of all things, the perigenesis or the perigenesis genesis, again, again, genesis right, again, beginning. And so there's a sense of a new beginning and new seasons that we have where, you know, we have a sense of experience of something new being made or a new beginning, and that's that new beginning is what God is telling us to root our hope in.
Noah James Wiebe:So, in the midst of that new beginning that was stressful and difficult, god was reminding me of the hope of a new beginning to come. That would be an ultimate new beginning, that would be a complete restoration of all things. And when I was asking God about the word of the year okay, what, what do you go? Well, god, what do you want me to focus on? What are some of the things, as we come into this new season, that you want me to process? It was hope, you know. Hope in the thing that I have ahead for you, hope in the thing that is to come, the restoration of all things, regardless of what happens next. Hope, you know. And so obviously, there was a lot of hope for that new beginning, because beautiful things were happening and, in fact, we were living in probably one of the most beautiful places in the world and I know that sounds like a hyperbole, it sounds a little over the top, but it really was and really is one of the most beautiful places in the world from my perspective.
Noah James Wiebe:And so that season, by the time we got to me graduating from university, us taking on this new job, all these things, all this happening all around the same time that my baby is about to be born. New beginnings, right, hope for the future. Good things are coming like hope, hope, hope, hope. I'm not sure about you. I want you to pause on this and maybe and reflect on it. But, like, what are some of the things in this new season maybe that you're coming to, or a season in the past that was new? What are some of the things that gave you a sense of expectation? Because that's what hope is really about. It's not really about.
Noah James Wiebe:Hope is not about having a vain wish for something that is like a hope, a kind of hope, but what I'm talking about is an assured sense of expectation, right? So when God's word tells us to rejoice in hope or be joyful in hope, what he's saying is not to be happy about some sort of vain wish. Rather, he's talking about something that's assured, right? Um paul says earlier on in that same letter to the book, uh, to the to the church in rome, he says in romans, chapter 5 hope does not put us to shame, because the love of god has been poured into our hearts by the Holy Spirit or through the Holy Spirit, and so you know, this hope that he's talking about is something that is like a bedrock kind of hope, and it's an expectation. So what are some of the things that brought a sense of expectation for you in that old season? I want you to hold that in mind as I talk about the rest of this, because a lot of the things that I expected to happen did not. A lot of the things that I expected to happen were completely changed and upside down, and when my son was finally born, he really was like perfect, like I mean as perfect as a little baby boy could be.
Noah James Wiebe:My wife's pregnancy ended a little differently than we had planned on, because she had to have an emergency C-section. She had to have a different recovery time that we had planned on, and so there's differences there. There's also a difference in the terms of, like the timing of how things worked out. We had a wedding to attend, a family member's wedding. My brother's wedding was coming up, and so we were going to go back to New Brunswick, which was going to involve a trip across the ferry. You know there's a lot to happen. We've just had a baby, my wife just had a C-section and now we're going to travel and so, anyway, days go by, we're enjoying time with our baby boy. It's probably one of the best seasons of my life, one of the best, and we were so encouraged by that season.
Noah James Wiebe:And yet a few days go by and my wife starts to feel a little, a little ill, a little sick, struggling a little bit. She doesn't have a fever or anything, but she does feel you know, not 100% there's something going on with the wound of her c-section. And so we went and talked to a nurse practitioner and she said, listen, I know you need to travel, you, you know, just sort of be careful, and if there's more that happens, or if you get a fever, run to the ER right away. And I said, okay, cool. So we travel across the Bay of Fundy, we go back to New Brunswick, we visit with family and during that visit, actually during the wedding, my wife is like green in the gills, she's not well, she's pale, she's not looking good. So that doesn't look so good. So we ended up actually leaving the wedding after the ceremony and we didn't even really stay for most of the reception. We drove down to St John and we ended up going to the ER not long after that and they prescribed her some antibiotic and sent her home.
Noah James Wiebe:Well, I'm gonna keep this long story short because it is an immensely long story, but in that we started, we actually got admitted, like my wife was admitted to the hospital. So here, I got my baby, I got my wife. We're in another province where we do not live anymore. We have a lot of old connections that are around to help us out, but we don't have like our home to go back to and our church family are confused, I'm sure, as to like where we're at. You know, I'm supposed to be doing summer ministries, the summer programs, summer events, you know VBS or uh, which is a week long kids ministry thing, a kids program. I'm not able to do that. So what's going on? Well, my wife begins to get progressively worse as the days go by and instead of her recovering in a few days which is what kind of which was what I expected she ended up living in a hospital for about a month and in fact died in that hospital and then was resuscitated. Sorry, plot twist there, spoiler alert. So my wife survived, praise God. But out of that experience was the loss of her ability to have children.
Noah James Wiebe:So I'm going to skip ahead a bit, because I already mentioned like God was putting it on our hearts to have hope right, have hope, hold on to hope and was awesome. But during that season, of course, your hope is being put to the test. You're like whoa, like am I really going to keep trusting? Um, but during that season, I felt very strongly that god was calling me to rejoice and to still maintain my joy in the midst of what was going on with my wife and a lot of the time was spent with her was she was spent, spent. She spent most of her time unconscious.
Noah James Wiebe:Okay, so what do you do? Um? But for me, I felt really called upon by god to stay in an atmosphere, stay in an attitude of joy, stay grateful, keep reminding the people that are praying for us that things are going really well. Um, even though there wasn't not everything was going well, but, like you know, especially as things started to progress, we got, got clarity. I would always send praise reports along with prayer requests and there was just this atmosphere of worship and atmosphere of rejoicing because I really believe with all my heart that God was going to heal her even if she died, that God was going to bring her back, which is kind of what happened. But I'm not going to get too much into that, I want to skip ahead.
Noah James Wiebe:So my wife lost her ability to have any more children in the natural. So if you know anything about my story, if you've watched the intro to this podcast before, you've seen that I don't just have one child, I have four kids. So where the heck do they all come from? Well, my wife lost the ability to have kids. Months go by, okay, and so we're still grieving, uh, through this, I don't know that I'm grieving, like I'm so out of touch with grief, like I don't have emotional awareness, you know, I'm just angry all the time, you know. And so I'm struggling and like many more months go by and a lot of pain, a lot of distress, a lot of difficulty, a lot of just caring for my son, caring for my wife and working full time and doing all this stuff all around the clock. So we come into the following summer.
Noah James Wiebe:By this point, we've made the decision to return to New Brunswick, and part of that is that we were. So I just paused recording this because my son just like started choking to death. So it's not funny, but, um, I'm just really grateful that I was able to get up there in time because, uh, that was sketchy. So clearly, you know, clearly, this is important somehow. Maybe somebody really needs to see this or hear it because, uh, the enemy's against it somehow. You know what I mean. Like, if you've got a challenge going on in your life, you've got, if you got something going on where you feel like you're obeying the lord and something starts happening where it's a life or death situation or it's an accident or something's bad just immediately begins to take place. Never think of that as just a, a coinkydink. Okay, it's not, it's definitely warfare. Um, it's not always warfare, you know, sometimes stuff just happens.
Noah James Wiebe:But I mean, consider the context that you're in, right, um, so my wife and I have, by this point, made the decision to return back to New Brunswick and we start living in the vicinity of a pretty cool village and I start to just love the place. You know, we had said our goodbyes at the previous ministry that we were part of. We said goodbyes to the friends that we had made there and everything. So here we are, another new beginning of, we said goodbyes to the friends that we had made there and everything. So here we are, another new beginning, and this time we're carrying a whole lot of grief into another season, um, into another season. And so here we are, bringing this heaviness into this um, into this new job. And so I remember sitting down in my office in that new environment and just feeling that the Lord was guiding me to talk about healing with them and process healing and I'm like healing, sure, not sure why I need that Again, remember, I'm a little slow when it comes to this at that point and I just start weeping because I'm carrying a lot of pain into this new season and I didn't realize it, I didn't realize the need that I had to heal and God was meeting me and he was rescuing me in that season through that healing. And so that was the context of starting that.
Noah James Wiebe:Shortly afterward, covid-19 started, guys, wow. So COVID-19 happened and around that time don't worry, rejoicing in hope, being patient in affliction and being faithful in prayer is coming up here. Okay, it's already been through the story if you're, you're paying attention, but anyway, um, through this, there is a point where, um, we have it on our heart during during covid, like middle of covid that we want to adopt children. So we had had it on our hearts to adopt kids. My wife and I spent struggling. You know we're on the kitchen floor weeping blah, blah, blah. Where I am anyway, she's there too. Weeping isn't exactly her mode of choice for expressing deep grief, but it was for me.
Noah James Wiebe:So, shortly after this season of transition, I'm praying and asking God, like what's the story? What's the next step? And I start getting this name Jackson, okay. So Jackson starts coming up and I'm like, okay, what is that? What does that mean? Is that you? It feels like. Maybe I'm just imagining it, you know, maybe it's just me. Anyway, I keep getting the name Jackson over and over and over again and I'm like, okay, clearly something's coming up here. And the name, the word son and the word Jackson kept coming up over and over again. So I told my wife. I said, listen, here's what I think. I think that God is going to give us a son, he's going to give us another child and we're going to name that child Jackson. Or his name will be Jackson, or something. His name is going to be Jackson and or something. His name is going to be jackson and she said whatever, because at this time in her life, obviously she's struggling, I'm struggling. She was basically under the impression, like you know, adoption is a really long process. We might not be approved for that. We might not have our ducks in a row to do that. So, yeah, let's not get our hopes up too high, and so I understand her perspective there, but I kept praying into it.
Noah James Wiebe:So another year goes by, okay. So by the time this year goes by, okay, talk about. Talk about being patient and affliction. Okay, at this point, we had, we lived in a in a place. We had a hard time selling our home in nova scotia. We sold it, praise god, um, but we hadn't sold it until the following year, right. So we had. So it was covid, when we were having this prayer time or whatever.
Noah James Wiebe:2020, we're in the middle of it, right, right in the thick of it, into the thick of it, right. And then a year goes by and by that time, we're living with friends. We had moved from one place to another, we still have our house in nova scotia, we still haven't sold, paying a mortgage on it, all this stuff, stuff. So much time, waiting, waiting, waiting, waiting, waiting and our family member reaches out. So this is after, like having a phone call with the adoption representative you know what I'm saying and having a call with them and being like I want to adopt a baby and they're like, kate, we'll call you in a decade or so, feel free to call back anytime, but it's not going to change. So I was like, okay, cool, I guess we'll talk soon. And so I just waited, and so the waiting continued.
Noah James Wiebe:That was November 11th, actually, maybe it was November 10th, actually November 10th of 2020 that I called because I wanted to see about having a having a baby. So time went by, so a few months goes by and they reach out to us. Uh, some family members reach out to my, my wife by this point, they've already reached out to us before about another baby and he got adopted by somebody else. So gut punch there, great. But it did awaken in us this thing of like we want a baby man, like there's a desire on our heart to expand our family, even though that makes no rational sense whatsoever. So we get a message again and there's a. There's a. There's a message and it says there's two kids up for adoption and the birth mom is pregnant, pregant, pregnant, okay, and the child the oldest child is named axel. The other child is named jackson what? But do you remember, though? Like, come on, um, we have been getting the name jackson for like a year up to this point. So here's this child named jackson. He's two years old, so, or he's out here, he's about a year and a half at this point, right? So, okay, wrap your mind around this one. Okay, just bear with me.
Noah James Wiebe:So this child, in 2019, is born the same year that we had moved and started pursuing healing, the same year that we had, you know, been carrying all this grief, and you know, this child is born. I think, yeah, like it's kind of crazy to think that. So what was this july? So you know, july, august, september, october, november, december, january, february, march, april, may. So would have been like he would have been like conceived like nine months after my wife had like suffered in the hospital for a long time. Uh, nine months after we came home, nine months after my wife had like suffered in the hospital for a long time, nine months after we came home, nine months after all of that, like, there's just this crazy thought of like a whoa God, like you were brewing up this baby at the same time that we were losing our ability to have kids Boosh, you know, crazy. And actually our oldest son. So that child was named axel, his, his. He was actually seven days older than my son, levi, my first son. So get your head around that one. So even before, like seven days before, my son levi was born, and the sequence of events would unfold that my wife would die in the hospital in another province in fact, it's actually in the same province that they were born, in the same city that they were born my wife was suffering in this hospital. Anyway, it's good. It's a long story.
Noah James Wiebe:I can't get into all the details. This is crazy. How many ways that God moved and did something amazing, right. And so here I was that year 2018, just processing like, ah, like restoration, hope. How do I hold on to hope? How do I?
Noah James Wiebe:You know, and you know the adoption process, there's struggles with it. You know, at one point they called us and said I'm sorry to tell you, but even though you're approved to adopt these kids and everything, we're going to drop the plan. And they called me on my birthday. Happy birthday. You're not going gonna get the kids and I on the phone with them, had to like, defend the fact that, like, these kids being in our home is in their best interests in their best interest, you know. So y'all know how that's how it works, bro. So they're like, we know, we'll call you later, I guess, maybe. And I said, well, that's cool, that's a huge summation, like that's a huge over oversimplification of what happened.
Noah James Wiebe:But a few months later, they call us up and they said, hey, would you like a baby? Um, I'm gonna circle back again. So I'm gonna circle back to that because, um, there's an important point on that that I want to come back to in a moment, but what I want to do right now is to just like highlight, okay, oh my gosh, this is a crazy story and didn't take that long to unfold. I mean, like, if you think about it, big picture, big picture. If you're thinking about a big picture, you're thinking about three year period where my wife is like, have it, like we have our baby, awesome. And then, um, my wife almost dies and does die, and then it comes back to life, not awesome, awesome.
Noah James Wiebe:You know it's a mix, it's a tension. There's brutality in terms of, like, the traumas that we've experienced, the spiritual stuff that's happening while this is all ongoing, right, in an ongoing way, crazy. And then you get to the point where you know, now it's three years later and my kids are about to come into my life. You know, now it's three years later, my kids are about to, about to come into my life. You know, whoa, like god, thank you, you're amazing, praise the lord um. The part of the thing that I want you to remember in this is like, hey, okay, like there's a lot of ways that are super imperfect, with the whole holding on to hope thing, okay. But, namely, I want you to think about okay. Earlier I said, like what some of the things have brought expectation in a new beginning of yours. Well, I want you now, I want you to think like what brought me a sense of loss and grief because my expectations were dashed.
Noah James Wiebe:You know what has dashed your dreams, man, what has dashed your joys? You know, on like a tombstone in a cemetery, there's the year a person was born okay, that's when they began, right. And then there's on the other side of the year that they died, okay, and in the middle is a dash right, it's a dash that basically just outlines, like when a person died, like the dash isn't unnecessary until the death happens. So there's a birth year. Sure, you wouldn't put a tombstone somewhere just because somebody got born. You put a tombstone because somebody died, so you have the year of their death and the dash is useless until then. So they put the dash in the death year. Sometimes they put the dash in because they're like I know this is going to happen someday, so we'll leave the dash there, but we won't put the year of death until they die.
Noah James Wiebe:Well, okay, what has dashed you before? What has dashed your dreams? What has been something that that god like set in your heart? You had a desire in your heart and something just dashed those dreams. Man, put a dash and put a death year on that dream and put it in the ground. What's something that's dashed your expectations? Put a dash on your life, put a dash on your dreams, your desires.
Noah James Wiebe:You know the reason why I ask that is because and I mean pause and think about that, what's up, and maybe maybe something comes up right away. You know, maybe something, maybe a mistake that you made comes up, maybe it's something that was completely out of your control. Well, regardless of what it is you know, pause and process that and consider is god working in the dashing? Is there a way that God is actually like somehow behind a big plot to restore you? Is there a way, maybe, that God is actually looking to get into the soil of your greatest loss and rip out from it a renewed dream that's made completely resurrected and restored? Is there a way that God is about to reclaim a dream that you think is dying? And the reason why I'm talking about dreams and all this is not because having our deepest wishes fulfilled is the point.
Noah James Wiebe:But if you think about it, the Bible tells us that eternity is set in the hearts of man, right, and that God actually works in you to act and desire with, in accordance with his good purposes. That's in the book of philippians. You know setting eternity in our hearts that's in the book of ecclesiastes. If you think about it, you know, if you fashion it, if you look at it with the right angle, right, you can come to the conclusion that god actually is in the business of giving you your deepest desires, because he put them there and whether or not you realize them right, meaning you don't know about them or because somebody has decided not to put their faith in Christ and they never have their deepest hearts, souls, true desires realized. Regardless, that doesn't necessarily mean that God hadn't put them there right.
Noah James Wiebe:And at the end of the day, the gospel is about reclaiming you. That's what the gospel is about, man, not about you specifically, but, yes, you specifically and all of us right. Like jesus died for us and that was on his heart. That was his desire. And along that process comes the reclaiming of his sons and daughters, so that his sons and daughters having their deepest desires realized, which are really actually just his in disguise. His desires realized in your life, though they're in disguise as your desires right, they are realized by God coming in and saving you, the gospel integrating into your life.
Noah James Wiebe:Now I'm not talking about, oh my gosh, you're going to become a multimillionaire, necessarily, maybe you will. A lot of Christians actually do become-millionaires because they're wise, you know, they're good thinkers and they're good and smart with their money. And a lot of christians don't become that because they, you know, don't, maybe don't have that skill set or whatever. I'm not. That's not the point. The point is is there a desire, a dream on your life that's going to impact other people that God wants to see realized in your life, and is there a way that one that has been dashed or it's on the way to being dashed that he's trying to reclaim it?
Noah James Wiebe:Earlier I said I paused the recording of this podcast episode because I needed to go upstairs and save my child's life. I literally did because he was choking on something right Dying, and the irony is that it was my youngest son who was choking. And the reason why I find that interesting is because my youngest son whenever I think about my youngest son, whose name is Luca, which means light, I think about the word restoration. That's what comes to mind for me. Is there somebody or something in your life that, when you think about it, you know, makes you think about restoration? Because it is for me. That is Luca for me.
Noah James Wiebe:So, rejoicing in hope, being patient in affliction and being faithful in prayer, all come together in that all the difficulties that you're facing, all the things that are trying to dash your heart, your soul, your dreams, your everything, even your being, your whole being all of that can actually be used to actually advance and accelerate God's desires for your life. And I want you to be challenged today with hope, because the reality is that, no matter what reality you're facing, there is a hope in it and behind it. If you're going to allow God to define it for you, if you would allow and not refuse it, god redefine it and reuse it. Okay, so that's what he did for me and I know you can do the same for you, but that doesn't mean that everything that's going to go your way. I mean, quite frankly, I was broke for years. God provided, but god, but I was broke.
Noah James Wiebe:I struggled with anger and grief. I mean that affected my relationships with, especially my son and my wife too, but namely my son at the time and my grief and my anger continued to carry into my life even after I had all these kids come into my home, you know, and there's a lot of difficulties that came with that too. But this is where I want to land here, this is where I want to start to finish and land this plane. Okay, let's talk about restoration, right, like there's a hope that comes to us through Jesus, because there's an assurance of being restored, right? So that's the whole idea. Like what is God reusing your difficulties for at your restoration? It's a setup, you know. It's a setup, because God is able to take the horrible things that have happened to you and set them up to restore you. So what does that have to do with you know? What does rejoicing and hope have to do with that?
Noah James Wiebe:Well, in all the times where I thought that God, that God was not going to give me what I had longed for or whatever, that, that that sense of a God given dream was being dashed and put in the grave, there is a sense that I was like I know that God is faithful and there's a sense that I'm kind of internalizing this whole Jackson thing as him promising me that it's going to come about and that he had already put adoption on our hearts. The moment that the doctors told me that your wife will absolutely lose her ability to have children, I also got a sense from the doctors that she could die. But I mean, god did great with that one too. And that's not to say that the losses that you have experienced maybe you've lost your spouse irreconcilably, irrevocably lost them, him or her. Maybe you lost a child, maybe some situation with choking or drowning, whatever it is that happened. Maybe your child was in a pool one day and he never got out or she never got out.
Noah James Wiebe:That's brutal, that's deep, that's loss, and there has to be a way to which you accept both. You know I remember being in the hospital and saying God, I just consent for you to do whatever you're going to do. I know you're going to restore me, because that's what your word tells me is that you're going to restore me even if it doesn't look like it now. And I also said if my wife dies, I know you can bring her back, but even if you don't, even if you don't, I will still trust you. Like, are you willing to accept reality and accept a restoration? Are you allowing God to define the situation? Are you allowing God to have his say on the subject?
Noah James Wiebe:Listen, whatever it is, whatever happens, whatever has happened, you have a reason to rejoice in hope, and the reason why is because the things that you're looking to happen, whether they be vain wishes or somewhere deep, some precious hope for you or something that is assured, an expectation of God's goodness for the future, you can always rest on God's goodness and his kindness. You can always rest on his assurance to do the best thing in the future. You can always rest on God's goodness and his kindness. You can always rest on his assurance to do the best thing in the moment. Because the fact is, even though we might wrestle with trust issues with God and an insecure attachment with him, god tells us that he knows best and he's working actively to bring about the best for your situation.
Noah James Wiebe:Because you love him and you're called according to his purpose, there's nothing that can separate you from his love. He can make you a conqueror in all those things that you're dealing with. That's what Romans 8 tells us. There is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus and for those who have put their faith in Christ. Even the mistakes that we've made, even the things that were in our control, we can put the death and move forward in a more life-giving direction through Christ, because we're sons and daughters, because we've been given the spirit of sonship instead of the spirit of fear that we may again be slaves. God has made us sons and daughters through the spirit of sonship, by whom we cry out, abba, father. When we cry out, abba, father, we're acknowledging to the Father that he is over it all.
Noah James Wiebe:You know who went upstairs and saved a little kid's life today His dad, me. Now I want to acknowledge too that as soon as that was over, I was like Jesus, thank you. Thank you, jesus, for saving my son. Thank you, jesus for providing for him. Thank you, jesus for letting me be in the right place at the right time. Thank you, jesus for what I tried to do, for bringing effectiveness to that. And it must feel kind of weird, like hear me talk about this and like see me laughing or something, but like I'm just so enjoy because my son is okay, you know, and um, but who did that? It was his father. It was his dad, right. And like my wife called out and said hey, I think Luca is choking, come here, you know. And so I ran upstairs and dealt with it.
Noah James Wiebe:And the thing is like God is ready to drop everything and save your life. God is ready to drop everything and do what's absolutely the best thing you know, and he's going to do the absolute best thing that he knows to do for your life, just as I would as dad. I'm an earthly, I'm an earthly man, broken, mistake making, dude, okay, and I got four children that depend on me to be a dad and and that receive good gifts from me. And yet how much more does your Heavenly Father love you and have the intent to come in and rescue you and provide for you. In the midst of what you're going through, there's nothing that can separate you from your Father's love for you, even the mistakes you've made. He's not looking to condemn you, bro, sister. Okay, he's looking to help you. He's looking to change you. Okay, he's looking to help you. He's looking to change you. He's looking to restore you. He's looking to rescue you and if you let him, he will redeem and reuse every struggle, every problem, every loss to work out and redound to his glory and your goodness. So I'm not sure where you're at. I just want you to just be assured of the hope, though you know I want you to have the hope.
Noah James Wiebe:Have hope, because hope is all you've got sometimes. Sometimes, whether you're crying on the kitchen floor, like I was one day, or you're holding your baby boy in your arms because God provided, or you're holding your baby boy in your arms because God didn't the way you wanted, hope is all you've got, man. Even the Bible tells us don't mourn as those who have no hope. Even in mourning we have hope. That's in first thessalonians, chapter 5, by the way I'd encourage you to read it because it talks about the future hope of jesus returning. Don't ever mourn your losses as if there is no hope, and not because god is trying to come in and devalidate your feelings of despair. What he's trying to tell you is that yo, in your feelings and in your thought life that says there's no hope, here there is hope, actually, there's hope under every rock, because no matter where you're going through, no matter what you're dealing with, god is in control in those things. He's superintending the whole process to work out for a greater story, and if you're willing to let him, he'll use it. Anyway, process to work out for a greater story, and if you're willing to let him, he'll use it. Anyway. I said that enough.
Noah James Wiebe:I want to circle back to restoration. You know how could this situation tend towards restoration? So I've already mentioned, okay, that my son, luca, reminds me of restoration, and I want to circle back to that because there's stuff in your life that if you were to look back on, you could think, yeah, god is a restorer. God gave me hope. Then he can give me hope now. God gave me provision. Then he can give me provision now. God helped me through that transition. He can help me through this situation. So, reflect on this too.
Noah James Wiebe:Reflect on this. What is something that God has done in your life or shown you in the word that reminds you of his restoration? What's something that hearkens back to his restoration in your life? What is something that hearkens back to the presence of God meeting you and hearkens back to a rescue? What is something in your life today, you know, like I've got scars on my body that remind me of how good god is. You know, I literally, um, I have, uh, I have, you know, scars on me. I've got my wife. You know my wife carries the scars from her surgery and, even though she doesn't like scars on her body, duh, um, you know, it is a reminder that she's okay. Uh, it's kind of interesting that the scars that were made on her body, like save her life, uh, created an anchor on her belly.
Noah James Wiebe:An anchor and anchor, of course, is, you know, symbolic of hope. Like jesus is our forerunner, he goes behind the curtain, he holds on to hope for us and, um, this hope is an anchor for the soul and you know you need that sometimes. Sometimes you need that hope. You need that hope to anchor you and harbor you. Is there something in your life right now that you look around and you think that's an anchor for me, that's an encouragement, that little drawing that my child did when they were seven years old, before this accident, blah, blah, blah. That reminds me of God's love, that reminds me of God's goodness, that reminds me of God's goodness. This reminds me, you know, and I mean maybe for you it's like your child's wheelchair or something that like they had a horrible accident, something terrible happened, maybe they had a stroke or whatever it is. And when you look at that wheelchair you think if it hadn't been for God providing my child would not even be here at all, and that wheelchair is now carrying them into every area that they end up being in. You know this is a reminder for me and now for some of you you might think about it as a chain or something as a burden to carry or whatever. But, like I want to remind you that what you're left with after a season of loss can be what lifts you up through a different season of loss. Wrap your head around that one. What you are left with after a season of loss can be the very thing that lifts you in another season of loss. So you know, for me, what we were left with was the scars from my wife's surgery, and we were left with the inability to have kids. We were left with all kinds of things, and yet God used those exact things to lift us up later when, three years to the day that my wife was admitted to the hospital, three years to the day that my wife was admitted to the maternity floor, because they didn't really know where to put her, so they just put her in the maternity floor because there were other babies there and so we had her baby with us at the time. So they're like, okay, fine, um, so they put her in the maternity floor on the exact same maternity floor come, on the exact same floor my wife was admitted to three years ago. Three, three years to that day, three years later, my son Luca was born. My son Luca was born on July 1st 2021.
Noah James Wiebe:My wife told me about something that she had seen her grandfather, her dead grandfather, in the corner of the room around that same time of night, that same day, three years before. And she went into her surgery July 2nd in the morning I think it was like seven or eight in the morning she went into her surgery. Maybe it was nine, doesn't matter. So she went into her surgery July 2nd 2018. July 1st, canada Day. She was telling me that she was going to. She was like, she was basically indicating to me I'm dying, you know. And then, three years to the day, that same hospital floor, we have our baby boy born to us, because the department called us and said, yo, you still want a baby. And we're like, yes, and you know, it was like maybe a week and a half, two weeks, and we had a baby, had a baby, had a baby boy and, um, the uh, the pajamas that my baby boy were wearing, my boy was wearing, um, after he had, you know, gotten cleaned up and all this stuff, like we were in the room, we were in the room for the birth of our, of our youngest son, what like. Anyway, it was crazy. And he came home with us like days later. He had to go on a little boogie board, you know, for the uv thing, and then he came with us later that week.
Noah James Wiebe:God is faithful. God can bring restoration out of any situation. If you allow him, if you, uh, if you allow god and not refuse it, he can redefine and reuse it whatever it is, he'll help you. So I want to pray for you and say goodbye, father. I pray for the person listening today that they would be transformed by hope, that their mind and even the pathways in their mind would redefine for them what they're going through in their life, that they would experience the difficulties as a sign that you're faithful, a sign that you're up to something, and they would see behind every sign the indication that you're with them in their situation for their restoration. Amen, yeah, whoa, listen, this is great. I want you to pray this with me. Okay, I have never done this before. I think maybe a couple times. Repeat this after me if you want to allow God to reuse your situations. Dear Jesus, come into my heart afresh, holy Spirit, invade my life afresh, life afresh. Father, set your love in my heart afresh. Save me, rescue me here, forgive me of my sins and restore me. Use it whatever it is. You can think about that right now. You're thinking about the situation you're going through. Use it In Jesus' name. Amen. Oh my gosh, thank you so much.
Noah James Wiebe:I went so much deeper into that story than I was planning on doing, but I think it was for a good reason, good purpose. May you be blessed. This is NREST. Would love to see you connect with us on Instagram @inrest. insta. We've got Spotify. Okay, if you're watching this on YouTube, check it rest dot insta. We've got Spotify. And if you are watching this on YouTube, subscribe to this channel. Okay, right, or somewhere. Subscribe to it and like this video and share it with somebody that you think needs it. Maybe it's somebody's going through a health problem, maybe somebody's going through fertility issues and they're struggling. Hey, send it, send the story, send this podcast episode, because this is probably the most in-depth I've ever gotten on my story, I think, in a podcast episode in my life so far. So you know, use it, don't lose it. Reuse it, you know, rocky, okay, that's a Paw Patrol reference, by the way. Anyway, jesus loves you, so do I? Check out and rest, okay, bye.
