Whole-Life Worship with Cheryl Marshall

Overcoming Discouragement with the Gospel

• Cheryl Marshall • Season 1 • Episode 10

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Cheryl Marshall welcomes Christine Chappell, biblical counselor and author, to discuss how believers can overcome discouragement by turning to the gospel, especially through the practice of biblical lament. Christine shares her personal story of grief, depression, and faith, offering practical frameworks and spiritual truths to help listeners pour out their hearts before God in seasons of struggle.

Key Topics Covered

  • The reality of discouragement in the Christian life 
  • Christine Chappell’s personal journey through grief, sorrow, and depression 
  • The gift and practice of biblical lament: what it is and why it matters 
  • The “EVAC” model for practicing lament: Engage God, Voice complaint, Ask for help, Choose to trust based on Psalm 13 
  • Practical examples from Psalms 13 & 44 on bringing your pain to God 
  • Facing affliction and confusion when seeking to live faithfully
  • Finding hope and comfort in the suffering and love of Christ 
  • Encouragement for those in a place of deep discouragement 

Take Aways

  • You’re not alone: Both long-time and new Christians experience times of hardship and confusion, but nothing can separate us from God’s love 
  • Lament is a gift: It’s not just an emotion but a way to speak honestly to God, providing a pathway to refuge and healing 
  • Transformation happens in the presence of God: Relief from pain may not be immediate, but true strength and comfort come from drawing near to him 
  • Look to Jesus: When help seems absent, look to the cross for the ultimate proof of God’s love 
  • God-glorifying perseverance: Glorifying God in discouragement looks like trusting Christ and depending on him moment by moment 

Next Steps

  1. Practice Lament: Try using Psalm 13 and the EVAC model in your personal prayer time this week to honestly pour out your heart to God.
  2. Reflect on Christ’s Love: When discouraged, turn your gaze to Calvary. Let the cross remind you of God’s unchanging love.
  3. Dive Deeper: Explore Christine Chappell’s books and podcast for further encouragement.
  4. Connect with Scripture: Spend time reading and meditating on Psalms of lament and refuge (like Psalms 13 and 44).
  5. Share the Encouragement: If this episode blessed you, subscribe, review, and share it with a friend who might need hope.
  6. If you’d like more from Christine Chappell, tune in next week for another conversation about moving from weeping to worship in the midst of discouragement!

Resources Mentioned

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SPEAKER_01

Welcome to Whole Life Worship. This is Cheryl Marshall, and I'm so glad you're with us today as we pursue lives wholly devoted to God, without compromise, without comparison, in every circumstance. This is Whole Life Worship. The Christian life is not a pain-free life. As any follower of Christ knows, as believers, we still encounter difficulties and heartaches and discouragement. Just this past week, I spent time with an older woman who has walked with Christ for many years, and she's been in the hospital for almost a month now, and she's not sure when she's getting out. But she knows that God is faithful and that he cares for her even in her suffering and in the unknown yet to come. This past week I also spent time with a young woman who has known the Lord for about a year or so, and over the last year her trials of unjust suffering have only multiplied. Yet when we were talking together about how the Lord has worked in her life, she said, I now know that I'm never alone. Even when I'm physically alone, I'm not alone. God is with me. Both women, the older and the younger, the one who has been a Christian for decades, and the one who is only a few months into her walk with Christ. Both women are in places of difficulty and discouragement, but both know that nothing can separate them from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus. Today we are going to have a conversation with Christine Chapel about overcoming discouragement with the gospel. Christine is a certified biblical counselor and host of the Hope and Help podcast for the Institute for Biblical Counseling and Discipleship. She's the author of several books, including Lament, Crying Out in Faith, Midnight Mercies, Walking with God Through Depression and Motherhood, and Help. I've been diagnosed with a mental disorder. She currently serves as a council member for the Biblical Counseling Coalition and is a regular speaker at women's events and conferences. Christine lives in South Carolina with her husband and three children, and you can connect with her at ChristineMchapel.com. And of course, her podcast and books are all linked in the show notes. So welcome, Christine, and I'm glad you're with us today.

SPEAKER_00

Hey there, Cheryl. Thanks for having me on.

SPEAKER_01

Well, as I mentioned in the intro, one of your books is titled Lament Crying Out in Faith, and that's coming out in September from PR Publishing. And I was able to read a preview copy, and I highly recommend it to our listeners. And I want our listeners to know that much of what we're discussing today flows out of this book on Lament. And I know every book has a backstory, and from reading the introduction to this book, I can tell that the backstory began long before the writing of the actual book. So can you take us back and tell us how you came to faith in Christ and then walk us through maybe a part of your life story that really planted the seeds for this book?

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, well, I think just kind of the Cliff Notes version of the story and kind of where this book all came about is you're right in saying that it's, you know, something that has been years in the making. Looking back, I can see how the Lord definitely brought this theme of refuge and lament, you know, into my story in ways I wouldn't have chosen for myself. But originally, I think I started, you know, really struggling to process grief and sorrow and discouragement after an accident I had in high school. That was that was not my fault, a car accident I had. And at that time, in the wake of that car accident, which pretty much ruined my senior year of high school and basketball playing and all the things that go with that, you know, time of life, I was diagnosed with a variety of different emotional and mood disorders that basically found me, you know, taking my sorrow, so to speak, to pill bottles, you know, and trying to manage my grief and sorrow and pain and confusion with medications. And then later on in life really started to turn to a different kind of bottle when life felt overwhelming and I felt discouraged or hurt or heartbroken, and that bottle was alcohol. And so never really, you know, knew and understood early on in life, even before I knew Christ, how to deal with those types of overwhelming emotions and pains. But then just that theme of repeatedly turning to Christless comforts is what I call them. Even when I came to know the Lord two weeks after my dad died from cancer is when I met my heavenly father. And, but in the wake of my dad's death, you know, turning to alcohol to numb the grief and numb the pain, numb the sorrow instead of really knowing, you know, what do I do with with these emotions and and how do I feel this in a way that doesn't lead to despair and hopelessness. And I obviously didn't know. And so, you know, over the years of even coming to know Christ, I still struggled. You know, there were times when I felt like I I knew what to do with my sorrow, and then there were times when when heartbreak and hurt was so overwhelming that I did continue to seek comfort or relief, you know, temporarily through self-harm and alcohol. So just lament was something that really met me where I was at, particularly in the wake of a second hospitalization that I had for a psychiatric stay, where I had basically drank a bunch of wine and then wanted to die and harm myself. And so, in the wake of that life event, the Lord really showed me how I had been turning to everything else but him when the pain was just so overwhelming that I wanted to escape. And he really used the Psalms of Lament to help me to see that I had been taking refuge in all of these other things, but that there was a way to bow down before him in my pain in a way that was authentic and not denying the reality of what I was enduring, but also in a way that was reverent, meaning that I could feel what I feel and be honest about that and yet not lose heart, and yet continue to trust right in him. And so just that's really, you know, kind of how the Lord grew even this ministry that I have today and counseling with women and speaking with women, a lot of times I hear the same kind of tendencies that I even struggled with in the past of either bottling up pain, turning to a bottle, some kind of a bottle, right, to handle pain, or blowing up in our pain and rage. And I I noticed that same pattern in my own life, seen it in my counseling ministry. And so that's what led to coming up with an IBCD workshop a few years ago in 2024 called Lamenting Together, which explored counseling and you know, working with women to help teach them the language of lament so that they don't get stuck in, you know, the trenches of either blowing up in their pain, in rage, or bottling up, but actually bringing that before the Lord. And that that's really that workshop is where the shape of this book took place.

SPEAKER_01

Well, I really appreciate your openness and sharing your story, but also sharing with us how God was so merciful and gracious to meet you in that. In our last episode, we were, I was addressing how God meets us in our discouragement. And just like the ladies I mentioned at the top of this episode, difficulties are still there even once we come to know Christ, and yet He is merciful and compassionate to meet us there. And for the listener who is deeply discouraged in her circumstances this very day, this very hour, as she's listening, can you explain God's gift of lament? What is lament in the scriptures, and how is it different from other forms of sorrow or grieving?

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, well, I probably wouldn't put biblical lament into a category of like emotion. It's not lament is not a way of feeling, but a way of speaking. And so I really would love, you know, even just to offer lament as a way of talking to God about our pain, right? So lament provides a prayer pathway for us to take refuge in the Lord in the midst of our anguish and distress. Like I mentioned in my previous answer, lament helps helps us not to blow up or bottle up in rage. And actually, I get even the subtitle for the book, Lament Crying Out in Faith, I get that from a David Powellson quote from a journal of biblical counseling article he wrote years ago called Angry with God, I think, or Anger at God, one of those two titles. But in it, he says that when those when the Bible teaches us how to voice distress to God, it teaches a cry of faith, not a roar of rage. And and that has been so meaningful to me. And so lament is this cry of faith, these words, this prayer that goes up to the Lord's ear. And it's a way of not only praying to him in our pain, but also communing with him in our pain and discouragement. So having fellowship with him, and this is a gift, I think, for a lot of reasons, which we talk about in the book, a gift of grace in particular. But perhaps today for the woman who is feeling discouraged, I would say that this is a gift to you from the Lord because your grief needs to be heard. It wants a voice, and your heart needs healing, it needs comfort. And the Lord is your one true refuge. I love Psalm 62, 8 reminds us to trust in Him at all times, O people. Pour out your heart before Him. God is a refuge for us. And I would suggest to your listener today that if you are in a place of deep discouragement, that that is God's invitation to you, his gift of grace, is that you can pour out your heart. He's not asking you to be fake, to fake that you're fine, to pretend like it doesn't hurt, right? But to come to him and to fellowship with him where you are at, and that he will meet you there and offer you not only his refuge, but also his rest.

SPEAKER_01

So let's make all that really practical. How can we put lament into practice, into our own lives? And for our listeners, is there a a passage of scripture or a particular psalm that they could use as an example of that as they walk through praying like that to their Lord?

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, well, I think that the easiest place to kind of see a framework, so to speak, for lament is Psalm 13. That's what I typically go to when I'm introducing the concept of the language of lament to women. And when I was even learning to practice lament and talking to God about my pain, I wanted to create kind of an I guess an acronym, like an easy way to remember. I don't have a great memory, and so I need things to be easy for me to be able to remember and implement them. And so, you know, I was first introduced to kind of the the movements, the four major movements of lament by Mark Vrogub in his book on Dark Clouds, Deep Mercies. And so after I read that book, I think this was back in 2019, and I saw him and how he highlighted this movement of, you know, typical prayers of lament as we see them in the Psalms, then I thought of, okay, we've got these four movements. How can I remember this in a way that makes sense? And so I came up with the acronym EVAC, E-V-A-C. And I'll tell you what that means. You know, when we are talking about taking refuge in the Lord in the midst of our pain, I like to think of it as we're running somewhere for refuge. We're trying to evacuate, right? We're we're taking refuge or we're trying to run away from these overwhelming swells of sorrow or emotion, right? So this idea of evacuating to the Lord is kind of how I I describe taking refuge in him. And so evac, E V-A-C comes from that word evacuating. And the E means engage God, V means voice complaint, A means ask for his help, and C means choose to trust. And so when we study lament as we see it in the Psalms, these four movements, it's not a formula, it's not like some concrete step-by-step, you know, plan for prayer, but we tend to see these movements very fluid in the psalms themselves. And even in Psalm 13, while it's not fluid, it is very obvious. And so, like verse one, we see the psalmist engaging the Lord, saying, How long, oh Lord? Like that's that, it could be that easy. How long, oh Lord? Just asking a question. It's you're you're voicing your your prayer to him, not talking about it in your own head to your own self or talking about it to somebody else, you know, on the phone, but it's talking to God, engaging him. And we see that in Psalm 13.1. We see the psalmist in Psalm 13 voice his complaint. He says, Will you, you know, will you forget me forever? He says, How long must I take counsel in my soul and have sorrow in my heart all the day? So he's voicing his complaint from where he stands, his perspective, hit how he's experiencing reality. He's voicing, this is what it is, Lord, this is where I'm at. But then he moves and he asks for help in verse three, and even into verse four, we see him saying, Consider and answer me, O Lord my God, light up my eyes, lest I sleep the sleep of death. And so he's asking for God to help him according to what God has promised in the past and promised in his word. But then ultimately we see that even in his pain and unresolved sorrow, he lands in a place where he chooses to trust. And so, verse five and six, he says, I have trusted in your steadfast love, my heart shall rejoice in your salvation, I will sing to the Lord because he has dealt bountifully with me. And so we see these movements, like I said before, this is not necessarily a formula, and this is a very tidy lament in terms of it's very clear, it kind of has a beginning and it seems like it has an end. And it's not so much that the pain has resolved. The circumstance hasn't changed for David at all, right? But his soul, right, his soul has taken refuge in the Lord and then come to a place where he's willing to wait on the Lord, look to God's past faithfulness as an evidence of the future grace that he's expecting from the Lord, who will meet him where he's at, consider him and answer him in the midst of his pain. So that that's kind of what I would say. You could take that and and study it more, and then the devotional goes into it more in depth, but but that's kind of a framework for lament itself.

SPEAKER_01

That is so helpful, just really helping us to think through praying to the Lord. Like you were saying, it's not just thinking about it, it's not just calling a friend, it's being able to go before the Lord and lay your heart before him and all that pain, but also seeking him in that. And I really appreciate the word you've used earlier. You said that this is a way to commune with the Lord, even in the pain, even in the discouragement.

SPEAKER_00

And Cheryl, yeah, Cheryl, can I add something to that? Sure. Because somebody might be listening right now and thinking, what difference does that make? Right? Especially if you're discouraged. You're like, I've already been trying to pray. I've already been trying to cry out for help. You know, and and we wrestle a lot with that in the particular book, but I would say to that listener today who's even thinking right now, what difference does it make that I commune with the Lord in my pain when that's not making the pain go away? My answer to that, and you didn't ask this question, but I think it's a real, it's a real tension. I just want to be sure to leave your listener with just this encouragement is that this is how you get strength. This is how you find true comfort in the moment. This is how you find wisdom to live for the glory of God in the midst of your grief. And that's what you need most here, in the midst of everything that is unresolved, in the midst of the pain that is unrelieved, and the conflicts that have not been restored, right? And so in the midst of your unresolved pain, what you need most is not necessarily for the pain to be relieved, but to draw near to the Lord that he may strengthen you and give you courage to endure and ultimately to persevere by his spirit and word in Christ. And so I just wanted to offer that because I know in my own my own story I wrestled with, well, we can use all this language about communing and praying and all that sounds great, but but what's the point if it's not going to lead to immediate relief? And that's really what the gift of grace, you know, that God gives in our lament is that look, this is not a formula for this is how you make God fix things right away for you. That's not the point.

SPEAKER_01

If you want to grow as a whole life worshiper, my new book, All of Me, Pursuing a Life Wholly Devoted to God, was written especially for you. It's available through major booksellers and the link in the show notes. Sometimes we suffer when we are really truly seeking to be faithful to the Lord. And then we have these unexpected setbacks or disappointments and maybe even opposition as we're seeking to honor the Lord in our family, in the workplace, maybe even in ministry. And you take us to Psalm 44 at one point, and you help us to see that we can cry out to God in those types of moments. So, what can we learn from Psalm 44 about lament and these types of circumstances? And how does that apply to our lives?

SPEAKER_00

It is confusing. We might think for some of us, we might not, or we might struggle to connect the dots right between our pain and God's promises. And so there is this confusion, and the fact that even Psalm 44 we see that God's people are talking about the reality that they had boasted continually in God, that they had maintained their allegiance to the Lord in this particular season. So that there's an army, and and this army went out to go have a battle, and it's like they were they were lifting their banner high of the Lord, and they didn't forget his covenant, is what the psalmist said. Uh they didn't depart from God's way in the midst of the fight, and yet their piety did not prevent them being sh slaughtered like sheep, right? And so they suffered defeat. They were faithful and yet suffered defeat. And so that can be very confusing and discouraging and disheartening. And there can be times even I'd get this quote from Charles Spurgeon, and he he talked about that sometimes we will question our allegiance to God when its wages are paid in the coin of affliction. You know, so we won't have this allegiance to the Lord. We're living for the Lord's and his glory, right? But then we just seem to get nothing but affliction in response. And so that that experience and the fact that Psalm 44 articulates that, I think, is a comfort because it tells us that we're not the only ones and that this is actually a very common experience. That thousands of years ago this was going on in the lives of God's people. And so being perplexed about what God is doing in our lives is not a sin. We get it's not a sin to be confused and say, wait a minute, that doesn't line up with what I thought what my expectations were or what was I thought that the Lord was going to do, right? And so just that perplexity in itself is not necessarily sinful. That there is sometimes a gap between our expectation and then our experience. And sitting in that gap is incredibly disheartening sometimes because it kind of shakes up what we might think we believe, right? Or what we think or who we think God is or what we think he has promised to us. But I love how in Psalm 44 the Psalmist says, Rise up, come to our help in verse 26. He says, Redeem us for the sake of your steadfast love. And so there's this sense of we can talk to the Lord in this way and ask for his help boldly. And why is the reason for that? Is because we are his people, because we belong to him in Christ, because he has called us to himself. Not everyone gets to talk to the Lord in this way, but his people get to talk to the get get to talk to him in this way that is earnest and seeking his help and not just slinking down in defeat and resignation. But I think this lastly I would say Psalm 44, you know, as all the Psalms are, are so precious to us because in some way or another they point forward to Christ. The fact that if you are discouraged today, you feel defeated, even in the midst of what what you believe is your earnest, faithful attempts to not be perfectly obedient, but to be faithful in what God has called you to do, and you are suffering affliction, and it seems like there's sorrow after sorrow and wave after wave. Like the ultimate comfort that I could offer you is Christ Himself, who lived perfectly righteously. And yet for our sake he suffered horrifically. Right. So his faithful obedience did not prevent his pain. He cried out in his obedience, which and his his faithfulness led to unparalleled sorrow, right? The perfect one. And for three days it seemed as though he was defeated, that his faithfulness had been in vain. And then we know that's not how the story ends. But sometimes in our discouragement, it's more of a comfort to look to our Savior at this point in his story, where we see him suffering not only for righteousness' sake, but also suffering for our sake. So that when we endure these types of discouraging experiences, we know that he knows what it's like to go through this, but also to remember that we are getting just a small taste of what it was that he went. Through for our for our sake, for our sin. So we are, in a sense, in our own discouragement and in our own suffering for righteousness' sake. We're tasting a bit of his suffering, which is what we are called to, you know, that before we share in the Son's glory, we will share in his suffering. And for some of us, and even myself and the season of life that I'm in, you know, sharing in in his suffering can be discouraging, but we have hope because he went through it for us first, and because he went for us first, we can know that our story doesn't end in this darkness or discouragement, but it ends in light and life.

SPEAKER_01

It reminds me of the portion of your book called Seeing the Gospel in Lament. And I'll have to say personally, as I was reading through the book and I came to that section, I found it to be truly beautiful. That's the word that came to my mind, just to be able to look upon the Lord and see his beauty in his suffering. And for me personally, it was like a balm for my own heart at this season of life. And what I loved about it is that you showed us the sufferings of Christ in the Psalms, but you also showed us the spiritual blessings we have because of his suffering for us, as you were just mentioning a moment ago. And I was curious about yourself as you were writing that, as you were studying those psalms, and as you were looking at his suffering, was there a particular reflection on Christ and His gospel that you found most meaningful to you personally? And why was that?

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, I love that you ask that because I think I I mean I too, you know, appreciate the beauty of the gospel, particularly as we see it in Christ and his suffering, and then ultimately in his resurrection, too. But I think with this topic of lament, like I said previously, you know, this is where we look to see the heart of God for us in the midst of our unresolved pain is to Christ's suffering. And so on day 10, I talk about Christ being helpless, and the subject verse for that day is from Psalm 109, verse 26, and it says, Help me, O Lord my God, save me according to your steadfast love. And the reason I think why that day is probably the one that I have the most affection for is because I feel like it's the one that articulates kind of the watershed moment for me in my own, even in honestly, Cheryl, even in my own decades-long battle with depression. But I think in our discouragement, there is this sense of if God loved me, he'd help me. Right? So if God loves me, then why doesn't it seem like he's helping me to get out of this problem or to fix this issue or or to to heal this hurt or this brokenness that I'm experiencing? And so we can wonder, you know, if God loves me, where is his help? And and I think for me, looking at Christ in the midst of that question, we have to look to Jesus. For all of our spiritual questions, we have to look to Jesus. But I think especially when we are having a hard time reconciling the love of God with the help, he seems to be withholding. Now I'm not saying he is withholding it, but it appears as though he's withholding his help. And so we struggle to reconcile that because it seems like he would fix this for me if he really loved me. So when we look for Jesus, I mean, even here in Psalm 109 and consider the fact that he was helpless for a period of time, it led me to ask the question, well, where do we look for proof of God's love when he seems to be withholding his help? And the reality is, Cheryl, is that a lot of times in my discouragement, and even maybe even for the listeners, we look to our circumstances. We look to our circumstances for proof of God's love and for proof of his help. We want to see something fixed or resolved or changed. We want to see the Lord's hand move in mighty ways, we want to see the miracles, the mountains move and all these things. And I'm not saying he doesn't do that at times, but a lot of times when we're in the middle of a lament, right, we're not seeing that right now. And I can and it just thinking about the fact that there have been so many times I had looked away from Calvary for proof of God's love. When in reality, like Romans 5.8 says that God proves his love for us in this, that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. While we were still sinners, it's not what the scripture says, but we could even think about it this way: Christ became helpless for us. He suffered and died for us. This is where we look to see the proof of God's love for us. And so, even though asking God for help is a major part of biblical lament and we want to do that, he invites us to do that. In fact, it's an act of faith to ask boldly according to his word for the help that he has promised, right? We cannot look apart or away from Calvary for proof of his love. So as I was crying out to the Lord in my depression, I was looking to being depression-free as a proof of God's love for me. I was looking for a change in my circumstances or healing in my relationships for proof of God's love. But looking to laments, looking to see even Christ in Psalm 109 and looking to his helplessness gave me a fresh awareness of no, this is where we look. We look to Christ crucified, for him hanging helpless on the cross to remember that this is what love looks like. This is what love looks like. This is where we go to find the evidence of God's love. And so we're not gonna always be able to discern the love of God or even his help in the midst of our pain. We're not always gonna be able to see that. And he doesn't promise that we will be able to, right? That's not something he says, oh, you're always gonna see how I'm working. No, he tells us the opposite. We're not gonna know, right? But what we can know is Christ crucified. We can know that we can look to the cross, find evidence of his heart for us, for sinners at the cross, and then let that be what gives us comfort in the midst of our pain and what ultimately gives us courage to take our next steps by faith.

SPEAKER_01

You have given us so much encouragement to feast on. And I thank you for pointing us back to Jesus and just the phrase you said, the proof of his love, that it is Calvary, that it is on the cross. And when everything else looks confusing and dark, we can look to Christ and see what he's done for us. If you have one more thing you want to say to that woman who loves the Lord and wants to live for his glory, but she finds herself in a place of deep discouragement. Anything else you want to say to her?

SPEAKER_00

I think I would just kind of flip those two phrases around. I would start off with, it's true, you are living in a place of deep discouragement. And the scriptures don't ask you to pretend like you're not. You can be honest about that and say, yes, this is true. This is what my reality looks like right now. It's not what maybe you would have chosen, but it is what you are dealing with. And we can be honest and true about that, but it is also true. So I'm flipping the butts around, okay, Cheryl. We're starting off with yes, it's true, you're in a place of discouragement. Okay, but it's also true that because of Christ, you can glorify God in this place. He can help you to do that, he will strengthen you and establish you and confirm you, right? He will give you the courage you need as you depend on him in the midst of your pain. And this will not look like faking your way through your grief or bottling it up or pretending things are fine or anything like that. Glorifying God and your discouragement does not look like having some kind of self-confidence, right? But it is, it looks like Christ reliance. And if you will resolve to rely on Christ to be everything that you need today, that is glorifying God with your life. That is glorifying God in the next 15 minutes, is relying on him, crying out to him in faith, asking for his help, and then choosing to trust that as you rely on him, he will continue to carry you through, and that you can count on him to be your strength and to give you the refuge that you need in the midst of your pain.

SPEAKER_01

Amen. Thank you, Christine. And friends, please join us next week as we have another conversation with Christine Chapel about moving from weeping to worship when we are discouraged. Thank you for listening to this episode. I invite you to please review, subscribe, and share, and keep pursuing a life wholly devoted to God without compromise, without comparison, in every circumstance. This is Whole Life Worship.