Hope Is a Stewardship Issue | Psalm 42 and the Discipline of Remembering God

In this episode of Unspoken Stewardship, Dr. Lynn Abies explores what it means to steward hope when your soul feels heavy. Rooted in Psalm 42, this episode names the quiet ways despair can begin discipling us and invites believers to bring their inner life back under the authority of the risen Christ.

This conversation is for the believer who still loves Jesus, still believes the Bible, and still wants to obey God, but feels tired in places they do not always know how to explain. Through biblical reflection, honest discipleship, and practical application, this episode reminds us that hope is more than an emotion. It is a sacred trust.

Because Christ is risen, despair does not get the final word.

Transcript

Hope as Stewardship: Remembering Resurrection Faith

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Welcome to Unspoken Stewardship, where faith, culture, and responsibility intersect. Unspoken Stewardship is a thoughtful, honest podcast exploring the responsibilities we carry but rarely discuss. From faith and finances to culture, technology, leadership, and discernment, this podcast examines what it really means to steward our lives with wisdom. Hosted with depth, clarity, and compassion. Each episode invites listeners into conversations that challenge shallow narratives, confront cultural blind spots, and calls us back to faithful living beyond what's preached, hosted, or publicly praised. Hey you guys, my name is Dr. Lynn IBS and welcome back to Unspoken Stewardship. As I was praying about this week's episode, I kept finding myself in conversations around hope and joy. And honestly, it made me pause because people will ask me sometimes, How do you always seem to have joy? Or how do you always seem so hopeful? Some people will even ask, What is your secret? I think underneath those questions, there is sometimes this assumption that I do not go through things, or that my life is just all lights, or that I'm just one of those people with quote unquote good energy. And I always have to gently remind people, like, baby, this is not solely good energy. This is the keeping power of God. My hope and my joy comes from the Lord. And that doesn't mean I don't have hard days. That doesn't mean I don't get tired. That doesn't mean I don't cry or grieve, wrestle, question, or have moments where my soul feels stretched. It means that even when I do go through things, I truly believe God is truth. Really do. I truly believe he is faithful. I truly believe he is the author of my life. I just know what God has saved me from. And because he is the author, pain does not get to hold the pen forever. And that's the difference. My joy is not rooted in everything going right. My hope is not rooted in my circumstances behaving. My peace is not rooted in me being strong enough to hold everything together. It's rooted in Christ. And that is why I wanted to talk about this today. Because hope is not just something we feel when life is easy. Hope is something we steward when life is heavy. So before we get into today's episode, ask yourself honestly: where has your hope been resting? Has it been resting in God or has it been resting in an outcome? Has it been resting in Christ or has it been resting in life finally calming down? Because today we are going to talk about Psalm 42, the downcast soul, despair, resurrection hope, and the discipline of remembering God when your emotions are telling a different story. So today we are talking about why hope is a stewardship issue. There are some things we do not realize we are neglecting until they start leaking everywhere. Not out loud, not in obvious ways, not in a way that makes people immediately ask if we are okay. Sometimes it looks like going through the motions. Sometimes it looks like being productive but not present. Sometimes it looks like still praying but with less expectancy in your heart, still showing up but with less joy, still believing in God but quietly losing the strength and your ability to behold Him rightly in the middle of pain. And I'm guilty of all these things. I think one of the most unspoken forms of poor stewardship in the body of Christ is the mismanagement of hope. Not because people are evil, and I'm not saying that it's because people probably don't love Jesus, not even because they want darkness, but because many of us were taught how to monitor behavior before we were taught how to tend to the soul. We were taught how to stop doing certain things, but not how to notice when despair started discipling us. We were taught how to look holy in public, but not always how to stay anchored when sorrow sits in a room longer than expected. We were taught how to quote verses, but not always how to fight for hope when the heart is tired and the soul feels like it's dragging itself across the floor. And that is where I want to go today. Because hope is not just a nice Christian word. Hope is not just a soft concept we throw into captions when life gets hard. Hope is not just a feeling that visits us when the weather is nice and things are going our way. Hope is stewardship. And if we do not learn how to steward hope, then pain will begin to govern places that only Christ should lead. Today we are talking about Psalm 42. We are talking about despair, spiritual heaviness, what it means to speak to your soul, why the resurrection of Jesus changes the way believers carry sorrow, and what it means to steward the inner life in a way that honors God. So let's start here. I want you to picture someone, whether it's yourself, picture someone in a room after doing all the right things. They prayed, they fasted, they stayed faithful, they kept showing up, they kept serving, they kept loving people, they kept trying to obey God, and yet somehow something in them still feels tired. Not tired because they hate God, not tired because they have abandoned faith, but just tired. Their soul is tired. The kind of tired where worship still matters to you, but it still feels heavy to get there. The kind of tired where you still know the Bible says God is good, but your emotions are moving slower than your theology. The kind of tired where you have not denied the Lord, but you can feel how easy it is to drift into numbness if you don't pay attention. I think a lot of believers live there longer than they admit, and I am one of them. I am guilty for having a lot of these attributes. And the reason I'm bringing that up is because in Psalm 42, it does not shame that place, it exposes it, it names it, it gives language for it, and then it shows us how to steward the soul when heaven shows up. So let's go there. We're gonna go to Psalm 42, and in verse 1, it says, As a deer pants for flowing streams, so pants my soul for you, oh God. That is desperation, that is survival language. That is the language of someone who understands that God is not a necessity, that God is not an accessory, God is not an enhancement, He's not a genie in a bottle, God is not a little sprinkle on top of an otherwise full life. He is water, he is life, he is the only one who can actually satisfy the deepest ache of the human soul. And what is so striking to me is that the psalmist does not first say, I need my situation to change. He says, My soul pans for you. That is important because many of us think our deepest need is relief when our deepest need is God. Relief is not bad. Asking the Lord to intervene is not bad. Wanting things to shift is not bad. The Bible gives us permission to cry out to God honestly. But there is a difference between wanting God to help you and wanting God Himself. One of the ways you can tell whether your soul is being rightly stewarded is whether your deepest cry is for him. Not just for the job, not just for the relationship to work, not just for the anxiety or depression to lift, for the door to open, not just for the money to come through, but for him. Psalm 42 keeps going and says, My tears have been my food day and night. That is such a sobering line. Like, have you ever been so anxious or depressed that you did not eat? I have. And I'm here to tell you it's not fun. It is not a game, it is not a joke. I have had moments where I wanted to take my own life. You get what I'm saying? I don't wish that type of pain on my worst enemy. But that's because it gives us a picture of sorrow becoming constant, it gives us a picture of grief interrupting nourishment, it gives us a picture of someone whose inner life has been so affected by pain that tears have become more familiar than peace. And then comes the question: where is God? That question is old. That question has been used in different forms for generations. Sometimes it comes from people, sometimes it comes from culture, sometimes it comes from the enemy, sometimes it rises up from our own hearts during hard seasons. Like God, where are you? If God is with you, why is he taking so long? Or if God loves you, why do you still feel this heavy? If God is faithful, why did that happen? If God hears prayers, why has that not shifted yet? If God is near to the brokenhearted, then why does your soul still feel bruised? What makes that question dangerous is not just this wording, is the temptation inside of it. The temptation is to interpret God by pain instead of interpreting pain by God. Let me say that again. The temptation is to interpret God by pain instead of interpreting pain by God. This is where stewardship comes in. Because stewardship is not just about money, it's not just about resources, it's about how you manage what has been entrusted to you under the authority of God. And your soul is one of the most sacred things you have been entrusted with: your intention, your memory, your interior life, your affections, your thought patterns, your expectation, your response to suffering. These are stewardship matters too. So when the psalmist say in verse 5, why are you cast down, oh my soul, and why are you in turmoil within me? Hope in God. He is showing us something powerful. He is not pretending he feels better. He is not putting stuff under the rug and pretending to be happy. He is not lying about his condition, he is not doing spiritual cosplay. He is not performing joy, he is doing something far deeper than that. He is leading his soul, and that is one of the most mature things a believer can learn to do. Because a soul left unattended will begin to believe whatever pain says loudest. A soul left unattended will let disappointed narrate reality. A soul left undatended would drift into fear and call it wisdom. A soul left unattended would start rehearsing lies with the intensity that truth deserves. And this is why the song is talked back. Not because sorrow is fake, not because grief is sinful in itself, not because anguish means he lacks faith. He talks back because his soul is real, his pain is real, and you know who else is real? God. God, but God. He talks back because truth must be brought to the place of turmoil. And I really want us to sit with that. Some of you do not need more information, you need more holy interruption in your life. You need to interrupt the narrative your soul has been repeating and bring it under the authority of what the Bible says. You need to notice where hopelessness has become normal. You need to notice where numbness has become your coping mechanism. You need to notice where inner collapse has been excused because outward responsibility is still getting done. Because the issue is not just whether you are functioning. I know a lot of people who are deeply depressed and still be functioning pretty well. The issue is whether your soul is being pastored. And if your soul is not being pastored by truth, it will be discipled by something else. Maybe by fear, maybe by exhaustion, maybe by social media, maybe by disappointment, maybe by bitterness or by comparison, maybe by delayed hope, maybe by trauma you never really brought into the light with God. But something will speak, regardless. It's either gonna be you, the enemy, or God. Who are you going to allow to leverage your thoughts? You, the enemy, or God. And stewardship asks, what voice are you allowing to leave what belongs to God? That is the deeper issue. Now let's define hope in the first place, right? Because I think that matters. Biblical hope is not optimism. It's not crossing your fingers and hoping things get better. It's not pretending the pain does not hurt. It's not being a functional person, but still knowing that you need to be healed. It's not trying to talk yourself into positivity, it's not delusion. Hello? It's not aesthetic peace. It's not a cute quote over a hard life. It's not shutting down when people are trying to talk to you. It's none of that. Biblical hope is a confident expectation rooted in the character of God and the finished work of Christ. It is anchored in who God is, it is sustained by what Christ has done. It is strengthened by what God has promised, and it is not held together by your mood. And that is why hope is stewardship. Because if hope were merely emotional, then it would come and go without responsibility. But because hope is confidential, because hope is theological, because hope is tied to the resurrection, believers are called to guard it, feed it, and direct it and not fake it in no way, shape, or form, but to steward it well. And one of the reasons this matters so much is because many Christians have reduced spiritual maturity to behavior management. If they are not sleeping around or cursing people out or getting drunk every weekend or publicly wilding out, they think they are doing fine spiritually. Meanwhile, they're bitter, they're numb, they're prayerless, they're deeply discouraged. They allow their anxiety to shift their day every single day. They don't want to talk about their problems in a healthy way. They don't want to confess. Meanwhile, they have let their soul sit in chaos for months, weeks, even years, and never once truly brought it before God with honesty and submission. That is not maturity. It's just not. That is not maturity. I say that tenderly though, because I think many people were never taught that internal stewardship matters deeply to God. The Bible does not only care about what your body is doing, the Bible cares about the condition of your heart, your mind, your soul, your loves, your fears, your trust, and your expectations. God cares about the hidden places too. So when we talk about hope today, we are talking about how believers carry their unseen lights before God. Now, here's where I want to push this a little further. The psalmist say, For I shall again praise him, my salvation and my God. That line right there is so rich to me because he says again, that means he is not denying that praise feels difficult right now. He is declaring that this current state would not have the final words, though. He is saying, I am downcast, but I am not done. I am in turmoil, but I'm not abandoned. I am grieving, but I'm not godless. I am struggling, but I'm still in covenant with the one who saves. And the reason that matters so much to us as believers is because we are reading Psalm 42 on this side of the resurrection. And this is why I say resurrection has to be preached every Sunday. I'm telling y'all, we do not just have the hope of God's general faithfulness. We have the specific, historical, blood-bought, empty tomb hope of Jesus Christ. Hello? That changes the way we read every sorrow. Because the resurrection means darkness never gets the final word. The resurrection means death has already been interrupted. The resurrection means despair cannot claim permanence over what Christ has redeemed. The resurrection means what feels buried is not beyond God. The resurrection means your interpretation of this season must include the fact that Jesus is alive. Ho! And this is where I think many believers unintentionally fail in stewardship. They let their current circumstance become the loudest truth in the room. Your faith and your hope cannot be contingent on how you feel. It has to be contingent on the truth of God's character. They let grief become bigger than glory. They let delay become bigger than the promise. They let disappointment become bigger than the resurrection. I am not saying they do that because they are rebellious. Sometimes they do it because they hurt. And I get that. I really do. Sometimes they do it because they are tired. Sometimes they do it because suffering has a way of shrinking the room until all you can see is what is right in front of you. But stewardship calls you to widen the room again with truth. The fact is, your pain is real. Your sadness may be real. Your confusion may be real. Your unanswered questions may be real. But so is the empty tomb. So is the risen Christ. So is the faithfulness of God. So is the ministry of the Holy Spirit. So is the promise that the Lord will never leave his people. So is the truth that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion. That is not shallow. That is solid. That's why we always have to replace our backs with the truth. So once again, the fact is you're in pain. The fact is you're sad, you're depressed, you're confused. But the truth is Christ has risen and he will complete the good work that he brings in you. That is not shallow, that is solid, and that is just the truth. I think sometimes believers hear language like this and think it means they have to deny what hurts. But Psalm 42 gives us a better way. It says, tell the truth about your sorrow and then lead your sorrow to God. Tell the truth about your tears and then make your tears kneel before truth. Tell the truth about your term oil and then refuse to let term oil become your teacher. That is biblical. That is honest. That is mature. That is stewardship. I want to talk for a moment about what stewardship failure looks like here because I think it is more subtle than people realize. Stewardship failure does not always look like open rebellion or people just wilding out, right? Sometimes it looks like letting your soul run rile without correction. Sometimes it looks like rehearsing the worst case scenario over and over again more than the promises of God. Sometimes it looks like feeding yourself endless noise and wondering why hope feels weak. Sometimes it looks like withdrawing for Christian community and calling it self-protection. Sometimes it looks like clinging so tightly to one desired outcome that you stop trusting the character of God at that outcome delayed. Sometimes it looks like calling despair realism while quietly stripping God of his weight in your life. That is why this all matters. Because many believers are not outwardly falling apart, but they're inwardly collapsing under narrative that they never interrupted with the truth of God's word and his character. And beloved, your soul is too precious to be left without shepherding. You cannot just let every thought sit there. You cannot just let every fear preach to you. You cannot let every disappointment define God. You cannot just let spiritual heaviness build a home in your inner life without bringing it before the Lord. Hope has to be stewarded as well. Now I want to move into the heart of this episode and make it personal because I know there are people listening who are in very specific kind of pain. You are not trying to be dramatic. You are not trying to be the victim. You're not trying to romanticize sadness. You just know your soul has been heavy. Maybe you are obeying God and still feel weary. Maybe you are doing all the right things and it still feels costly. Maybe you are in a pruning season. Maybe you are grieving something nobody really sees. Maybe you are carrying disappointment you never gave language to. Maybe you have grown so tired of hoping in one particular area. Maybe you still love Jesus, but you can feel how thin your emotional endurance has become. Feeling downcast is not the same as being faithless. The psalmist is downcast and still reaching for God. The psalmist is in turn oil and still talking to God. The psalmist is honest and still anchored. The psalmist is hurting and yet he's still hoping in God. That matters. We have to pay attention to how people respond in the text. Maturity means knowing what to do when heaviness comes. Maturity means not idolizing your own emotional consistency. Maturity means not panicking every time joy feels weak. Maturity means not assuming God left you because your emotions got loud. Maturity means staying submitted to truth even when your eternal weather is rough. That is spiritual adulthood. Despair is not always loud. Sometimes despair sounds like, alright, whatever. Sometimes it can sound like I don't even care anymore. Sometimes it can sound like it is what it is, or I'm just being realistic, or whatever. Sometimes despair hides under overworking yourself. It can hide under sarcasm. It can hide always telling jokes when you know deep down inside those jokes came from trauma. Sometimes it hides under intellectualism. Sometimes it hides under religious performance. Sometimes it hides under a very functional life. But whenever the soul stops expecting God, stops delighting in God, stops bringing its full self before God, something has started leaking somewhere. And stewardship means paying attention to the leak before the whole house feels flooded. So let me ask you, what has been discipling your soul lately? Your pain or the presence of God? Has it been your algorithms or the Bible? Your disappointment or the promises of God? Your fear or the character of God? Your exhaustion or the spirit of God. Because something is shaping how you see, regardless. It's either going to be truth or your circumstances. And if you do not intentionally bring your soul before God, it will passively be formed by something else. Now I want to rebuild with you. I do not want this to be a diagnostic of any kind. I want it to be restorative. So let's walk through what it looks like to steward hope well in a hard season. So the first shift is this stop treating your feelings like final authority. Your feelings matter, they are real, and they reveal things. They can alert you, they can expose deeper wounds, they can show you where care is needed, but they are not the Lord. Your feelings are not your shepherd, your emotions are not your savior. Your inner turmoil does not have the right to rewrite God's truth in your life. And one of the most practical ways believers can mature is by learning how to acknowledge feelings without enthroning them. Psalm 42 does that so beautifully. The psalmist does not say I'm actually fine. He doesn't say that. But then he says, Hope in God, meaning what I feel is real, but what I feel will not rule me. That is a word for somebody. Hello, it might just be a word for me. But you do not need to lie about your sadness. You do not need to pretend disappointment does not hurt. You do not need to shame yourself for the fact that your soul has been struggling. But you do need to resist the urge to bow before every feeling as though it carries ultimate authority. What does that look like practically? Catching yourself when your mind starts spiraling and answering with truth. Saying yes, I feel afraid, but the Bible says God has not given me a spirit of fear. Saying, yes, I feel forgotten, but the Bible says the Lord would never leave nor forsake me. Saying, yes, I feel weak, but the Bible says his grace is sufficient. Saying yes, I feel uncertain and uneasy, but the Bible says Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever. And that is not corny. That is warfare. Combat your facts and your feelings with God's truth. The second shift is practice holy remembrance. Psalm 42 shows the psalmist remembering prior worship, prior nearness, prior encounters among the people of God. And that matters because remembering is one of the ways believers fight spiritual amnesia. And spiritual amnesia is dangerous. I think that's why the Bible tells us over 250 plus times to remember. Because I think the Lord just knew that we will always forget easily. Because when pain gets loud, you can start forgetting who God has been. You can start forgetting how he carried you before. You can start forgetting the doors he opened. You can start forgetting the prayers he answered. You can start forgetting that he has already sustained you through things you thought would take you out. Memory is a stewardship matter too. Because if you do not use your memory in the right way, people will try to rewrite your history with God. So remembrance says, no, let me tell the whole story. Yes, this hurts. This is heavy. I do not understand everything. Because guess what? Even when you define what faith is biblically, faith is the assurance of things hoped for and the conviction of things not seen. That means at the end of the day, faith and hope coexist. It is active trust and reliance on God rather than just your mere intellectual belief. Faith involves trusting in Jesus Christ for salvation and acting on that belief in daily life. So if it don't make sense, it makes faith. It's not supposed to always make sense all the time. You get what I'm saying? But guess what? The Lord has still kept you. He has sustained me before. Also, he has proven himself before. Also, he has already done the impossible through Christ. And can I say this plainly? The cross and resurrection are not just doctrines to admire on Easter Sunday, they are the realities to remember until your soul regains perspective. Jesus really did enter suffering. Jesus really was rejected. Jesus really did bear sin. Jesus really did die. Jesus was really buried. He really did rise. So when the enemy tries to tell you your current season isn't the full story, remember and say no. The empty tomb has already interrupted finality. You have to remember. The third shift is anchor your hope in Christ, not in your outcome. A lot of our discouragement comes from attaching hope to one specific result. We say we trust God, but what we often mean is we trust God to do this exact thing on this exact timeline in this exact way. And when that does not happen the way we think it should, discouragement starts flooding the room. It is okay to desire outcomes. It is okay to pray specifically. It's okay to ask boldly. The Bible gives us language for petition. But mature hope says my anchor is not contingent to my outcome. My anchor is Christ. Because outcomes can shift, timelines can stretch, people can change, doors can close, bodies can weaken, plans can unrival, but Christ does not change. So if your hope is built mainly on getting what you wanted, you will feel unstable whenever life disappoints you. But if your hope is built on who Jesus is and what he has done and what he promised and the fact that he reigns right now, then even grief cannot server you from a deeper steadiness. That is stewardship. That is saying I will not make my desired outcome into my functional God. I will not demand that God prove himself by submitting to my script. I will trust the author more than I trust my own preferred ending. That is hard, but it's holy. Now I want to give you one spiritual practice and one community step because I think they matter here deeply. Okay. So for your spiritual practice this week, I want you to pray the Psalm 42 refrain every morning. I want you to wake up and say this out loud. Why are you cast down, oh my soul? And why are you in turmoil within me? Hope in God, for I shall again praise Him, my salvation and my God. After you read that, add three honest lines. Today my soul feels fill in the blank. Today I choose to remember fill in the blank. Today I will hope in God because fill in the blank. Don't underestimate it. You're not trying to impress God. He already knows. You are training your soul, you are practicing biblical self-address here. You are reminding your interior life that truth is still in the room. And that matters. And the community stuff I want you to do this week is tell one trusted believer where your hope has been leaking. Not just that you are tired, not just that life has been busy, but tell the truth. Even when you look at the Bible, confession is between you and community, and repentance is between you and God. You don't need to confess to God. He already knows. The point of confessing within one another is so you can feel a form of relief and also be able to do this with community. Because once again, we're not meant to do life on our own. So say I think discouragement has been discipling me. You can say I think I've been losing expectation. You can say, I think I have been quietly letting despair shape how I see God. Say I need prayer. Say I need help being reminded. Say I need help carrying this, right? We're called to carry our brothers and sisters' burdens. Because even here, the psalmist remembers the house of God for a reason. Hope is often strengthened in community and not fake community. Hello? Not crowded loneliness, not people who only know your public strength, but real healthy, godly community with people who love God and love you too. The kind where somebody can remind you of what is true when your own voice feels shaky. The kind where someone can pray over you, help hold your arms up when the battle has made your soul tired. You were never meant to steward sorrow alone. And for those of you who have spouses, I'm not saying that you can't do this assignment with your spouse, but I even challenge you to do this with someone who is not your spouse. For those of you who are married, go to someone you can trust that is not your spouse. Okay? Now I want to kind of just land this in a really specific place. I think one of the enemy's goals in seasons of heaviness is not always to make believers renounce Jesus outright. Sometimes it's much subtler than that, than we come to realize. Sometimes the goal is to make believers spiritually dull, to make them stop expecting, to make them stop asking, to make them stop delighting in the Lord, to make them stop rejoicing, to make them stop imagining that God is still active, to make them carry low-grade hopelessness for so long that it starts to feel normal. And that is why this matters so much, because when your soul starts accepting despair as normal, you will stop fighting for the kind of life Christ died to form in you. Not a pain-free life, not a perfectly easy life, but a life that is deeply anchored in him. And beloved, you cannot afford to let your soul become casual with hopelessness. Jesus is too glorious for that. The gospel is too real for that. The resurrection is too powerful for that. The spirit is too present for that. You may have tears, you may have questions, you may have nights where your soul feels thin, you may have seasons where praise feel costly, but you still have God. And if you still have God, hope is still justified. Not because everything is fixed, not because everything makes sense, not because everything feels better today, but because he is still God, because Christ is still risen, because the spirit still dwells in his people, because the promises of God are still sure. Because your sorrow has not changed his nature. That is why hope is stewardship. Hope says I would not hand over the keys of my soul to despair. Hope says I will not let disappointment define God for me. Hope says I will bring my whole heavy heart into the presence of God and refuse to leave truth outside this room. Hope says I may be cast down now, but I will direct my soul towards the Lord. Hope says I may not feel triumphant in this moment, but I know who my salvation is. Hope says I shall again praise him. Again. That word is for somebody. The word again. You will not always feel like this. Again. This current heaviness is not your final identity. Again. Praise is still your future. Again. Joy has not been enraged from your story. Again. The God who kept you before is able to keep you now. Again. Christ is still worthy of your trust. So here's where I want to leave you with. Maybe your greatest stewardship issue right now is not your money. Maybe it's not your goals. Maybe it's not your time management. Maybe your greatest stewardship issue is your hope. Maybe the Lord is inviting you to notice what has been shaping your inner life. Maybe he is inviting you to bring your downcast soul before him with honesty. Maybe he is inviting you to stop letting pain have the final word. Maybe he's inviting you to practice remembrance. Maybe he's inviting you to anchor yourself again in Christ and not your preferred outcome. And maybe today the holy work is simply this: tell the truth. Speak to your soul. Remember God. Hope in him. Because believers do not steward hope by pretending they are never hurting. For those of you who have ever felt that way or have been told that, let me be the one to apologize to you. Because that's not right theology. We steward hope by bringing our heart under the authority of the risen Christ. I'm gonna close by speaking this word over you. If your soul has been heavy, the Lord sees you. If your heart has been tired, the Lord sees you. If your faith has felt stretched, I want you to know the Lord sees you. If you have been quietly fighting despair while trying to obey, the Lord sees you. He is not standing over you in irritation. He's not mad. He's near. The Bible says he is near to the brokenhearted. That means your sorrow has not pushed him away. Your heaviness has not disgusted him. Your tears have not made him distant. Bring your soul to him. Not the polished version of yourself, not the cleaned up version, not the churchy version, but bring the real, honest, raw thing to him. And then let your soul hear the real truth. Jesus Christ is alive. Your pain is not ultimate, your sorrow is not sovereign, your despair is not your master. Your current season is not the full story. Your God is your salvation and you shall again praise him. That is not to hype you up. That is real Christian hope. And that hope is worth storing. And you might be asking, How do I know? Because he did it for me. And he's still doing it for me. So if this episode met you in a tender place, send it to the person who has been caring more than they can explain. And this week, do not just ask yourself whether you feel hopeful. Ask yourself whether you're stewarding hope in a way that agrees with the resurrection. So I love you guys. I want you to soak this episode in. I pray the Lord meets you. Jesus loves you more. And I'll see you next week. Bye. Thanks for listening to Unspoken Stewardship. You are seen, you are loved, and you are entrusted. And what you do with what you hear matters. So make sure you steward it well. And let me say this clearly: this podcast is not a substitute for your child of God. Go sit with him. Open your Bible, pray, wrestle, test everything you hear, including me, the way scripture tells us to. Let the Spirit lead you into truth. Think deeply and don't outsource your discernment. If this conversation is strengthened you, make sure you're following so you don't miss what's next. Share it with someone who might need it. And if it's been a blessing to you, leave an honest review so it can reach beyond this space. So until next time, store your life faithfully, love God deeply, and love people well.