A short devotional episode (day 36 of a 66-day "Summer of Scripture" series) where Dave and Ashley Willis read Zephaniah 3:17 and reflect on God’s delight, protection, and calming of fear. They discuss how the verse reshapes fearful perceptions of God and illustrate application through Ashley’s personal experience with postpartum anxiety and worries about her newborn (Cooper).
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Welcome to Summer of Scripture on the Naked marriage podcast. For 66 days in a row, we're releasing a short daily devotional for your marriage. Over these 66 days, we'll be sharing one scripture from each of the 66 books of the Bible and talking about how it applies to your life and marriage. Listen to all 66 episodes of these and you'll have a better understanding of God's word and his perfect plan for your marriage. Let's dive in to today's scripture.
Hey, friends. Hello, friends. Welcome back. We're on day 36 in the book of Zephaniah, another one of the minor prophets. And In Zephaniah, chapter 3, verse 17, our verse today is, for the Lord, your God is living among you. He is a mighty savior. He will take delight in you with gladness. With his love, he will calm all of your fears. He will rejoice over you with joyful songs. And this is just like a beautiful love song from God to us. And it's a beautiful picture of just how God delights in us, and it shows us the heart of our heavenly Father. I think sometimes, again, we can see God through these broken lenses, and we can see him as just angry and disappointed. And maybe we had an earthly father that was really critical, and we look at God as if he's just always critical and disappointed in us. But here is this reminder of what our perfect heavenly Father is, that he's loving us, he's living with us, he's mighty to save us, and he delights in us. He wants to calm our fears. He wants to rejoice over us with joyful songs. And just let those words wash over you today. I mean, just let that picture bring hope and gladness to your soul today.
You know, I love that. I love the part about how he will calm your fears. I know for me personally, especially when I was dealing with anxiety and depression, I think the thing that would get me would be thoughts that were really fear based, where, I mean, thoughts like, am I ever not gonna feel this way? Am I ever not gonna feel sad? Am I ever not gonna have these irrational fears? Because it starts with a thought about something you can't control usually. And what if? It's all these what ifs, what if, what if, what if? And I remember in particular, I started having my anxiety and depression before we had our first son. But after we had Cooper, there was this one fear of that just would keep me up at night and really send me into a panic attack. And it was that Cooper would somehow Stop breathing or like have sudden infant death syndrome. That was really something that was talked about a lot back then. It's called sids. You guys may have heard of it. And back then in 2005, I guess when we had Cooper, there wasn't a lot known about it. And don't you remember? There weren't the contraptions that kids can wear these days where they can have a little footie. Like I think it's called Owlet is.
A brand where there weren't cameras either.
Yeah, I don't even know if they had that yet.
Yeah, they had come a long way. They had these baby monitors.
It's a baby monitor.
Like the sound quality wasn't. It all sounded just like Darth Vader. Like you couldn't tell if somebody was breathing on it or if it was.
Your house or your air conditioning baby.
Everything just sounded terrifying coming through it.
It did. And, and we, and this was before too, when people would actually have the baby in your, in the room. Like, I know you guys, you young people are like, why don't they have this and this and this.
It was basically a Little House on the Prairie in 2005. Like we, you know, the doctor had to come over.
No, no, no. We had a hospital birth. Let me just. We're going to age ourselves for a minute. We had a hospital birth. Like I think I might have known. Well, I don't even know if I knew what a doula or any of that stuff was. Like, that's so much more like talked about today. There just weren't a lot of options. Like you went to the hospital, right?
I thought a midwife was a middle aged wife.
I mean, seriously. So like we had a, we had a hospital birth. Everything went well, Cooper's born, we bring him home. And back then there was this, this, you know, baby book that was very popular called Baby Wise. And it was like unless there was something very wrong, you had your baby in their room. Like you would not co. Sleep, you would not have them by your bed because you put them in their room and you had a baby monitor and you just trusted they were going to be okay. And then when you had to nurse in the middle of the night, you just went to their room or brought them to you or whatever. But that was kind of the way we did things. Okay? A lot of people did things. At least that was kind of the, the foremost parenting resource that people were following. And so anyway, Cooper was in our room and it was actually next door to our room. But I remember for Night after night after night, not sleeping at all. Feeling, like, worrying to death about Cooper. I also was having trouble breastfeeding. I didn't understand. I mean, I'd read books on it, but you don't really understand how it all works until you're actually doing it. And, like, not being sure if he's getting enough milk and, like, just completely a mess. I mean, don't you remember this? And to the point where I would be crying throughout the day, just exhausted. But I remember one night in particular just not sleeping again, worrying he's gonna die, or. I mean, it was just very. You know. And again, I'm prone to, like, I was already going through anxiety and depression. I was already experiencing postpartum depression as well. But I remember that I woke you up and was telling you, like, worried about Cooper. And I was getting up and checking on him all the time, like, physically getting up and checking on. And you were like, sweetie, at some point, we've just got to trust that God's with him. Like, he's healthy. Is he fed? Has he been changed?
Yeah, we need to.
Does he have a comfortable bed?
Do what we can do. And we gotta trust that God is the one that keeps all of us breathing.
Right? Exactly.
We just need to trust in our gracious heavenly Father and rest in that. God wants us to rest. He gives rest to those he loves.
And I did finally rest. Like, it. It helped me, but I had to really lean on the truth of God's word of knowing. Okay, I've done my part as a mom. You've done your part as a dad. Now I just have to trust God. And I was able to finally get some sleep, but it just riddled me for the longest time. It really did, didn't it?
Yeah. And I think we can get fixated on any kind of negative thought or fearful thought, and it becomes so much bigger because we fixate on it. But instead, we need to remind ourselves of promises like today's. And I'm going to read it one more time for the Lord. Your God is living among you. He's a mighty savior. He will take delight in you with gladness, with his love. He will calm all your fears. He will rejoice over you with joyful songs. So, friends, whatever is fearful in your life today, whatever is stressing you out, just remember, God is bigger. He is for you. He is with you. And I hope that promise from scripture encourages you today. Thanks so much for tuning in. We'll see you tomorrow. Day 37 will be in the book of Hegai.
