In the days leading up to the death of my three-year-old son, Daniel, God deeply assured me of his gracious care for my family and me. One late night, I sat alone with my son in the intensive care unit, my Bible in hand. Knowing he had only a few days left, my heart was overwhelmed with grief. My chest felt constricted, as if the weight of impending loss were pressing down harder with each passing moment. I was desperate for a word from God.

Not knowing where to turn, I flipped open my Bible and found myself in Isaiah 53. My eyes immediately landed on these words: “Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows” (Isaiah 53:4). Isaiah’s words washed over my anguished heart like gentle rain on parched soil, bringing much-needed relief and a renewed sense of God’s comforting presence in my distress.

But that late-night mercy didn’t last.

Several days later, when the hour of Daniel’s death arrived, my wife and I knelt by his bed, praying and seeking to comfort our son. My heart was heavy with grief, yet I trusted in God’s providence as I held Daniel’s arm and softly ran my fingers through his hair. But when his heart beat for the final time, I was shocked to find my comfort gone, leaving me “so utterly burdened beyond [my] strength that [I] despaired of life itself” (2 Corinthians 1:8). In the hours that followed, I wrestled with how the feeling of God’s nearness could so quickly give way to a sense of God-forsakenness.

How are we to interpret such paradoxical experiences? Assurance seems inseparable from God’s comforting presence, while doubt appears inevitable when we feel abandoned by him.

Always a Light

In The Lord of the Rings, as Sam and Frodo trudge through the desolate land of Mordor, burdened by the Shadow and on the brink of despair, J.R.R. Tolkien reveals a profound truth hidden within their hardship:

There, peeping among the cloud-wrack above a dark [peak] high up in the mountains, Sam saw a white star twinkle for a while. The beauty of it smote his heart, as he looked up out of the forsaken land, and hope returned to him. For like a shaft, clear and cold, the thought pierced him that in the end the Shadow was only a small and passing thing: there was light and high beauty for ever beyond its reach. (922)

The lesson is clear: just as Sam found hope in the distant, once-hidden twinkle of a star, there is always a light — often beyond our immediate view — that points to a greater reality. Though sometimes concealed in “the forsaken land,” this light is no less real for being hidden. Like the star that pierced Sam’s despair, it reminds us that our suffering, though real and painful, is not the final word.

In the last days of my son’s life, I experienced what Paul calls “the sufferings of this present time” (Romans 8:18) — deeply harrowing trials that, though shrouded in darkness, are held within the sovereign care of a God who promises that “the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us.”

Hidden Hope, Present Pain

Twice in Romans 8:18–19, Paul uses the word revealed. He first speaks of a glory that is not yet visible to us — a promise that remains hidden beyond our present sufferings (Romans 8:18). Then he describes creation eagerly awaiting the moment when the true identity of the sons of God will be made manifest (Romans 8:19). This dual emphasis on what is still concealed highlights the profound reality of a future glory we cannot yet see.

Paul tells us that both creation (Romans 8:19–22) and we ourselves (Romans 8:23) groan with longing for this unseen glory to be revealed. Our current suffering intensifies our yearning as we wait for the day when our identity as God’s children will be visibly manifested in glory.

What makes “the sufferings of this present time” particularly challenging is the tension between our current experiences and our hidden identity as God’s children. As believers, we are already adopted into God’s family (Romans 8:14–16), but the full revealing of who we are in Christ remains unseen (Romans 8:23–25). We live in an in-between, tension-filled time where our true identity as sons of God is veiled.

“Even when God feels distant, our secure standing before him remains unchanged.”

This hiddenness, coupled with our ongoing struggles with indwelling sin (Romans 7:13–25), can make the trials we face — tribulation, distress, persecution, famine, nakedness, danger, and sword (Romans 8:35) — feel overwhelming and at odds with the truth about who we really are. The felt realities of our suffering, combined with our internal battles, constantly try to persuade us that we are less than what God has declared us to be. They work to strip away the assurance that God is truly our Father.

When God sent Moses to announce his promised deliverance, the people were too broken in spirit to listen (Exodus 6:9). Their harsh reality overshadowed their hope. What are we to do when we find ourselves in a similar place, where the promise of deliverance seems distant, and our hearts struggle to believe?

Our Durable Assurance

Paul doesn’t leave us without an answer. He frames his entire discussion of the already–not yet tension in our Christian lives with one great enduring reality.

He begins Romans 8 with our unshakable confidence: “There is . . . now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus” (Romans 8:1). There is no condemnation, now or ever, for those united with the one who was made to be sin, though he knew no sin, “so that in him we might become the righteousness of God” (2 Corinthians 5:21). God himself has graciously given us a righteousness that forever frees us from the most horrific circumstance imaginable: the just judgment of God against us because of our sin.

As Paul concludes Romans 8, he asks, “Who shall bring any charge against God’s elect? It is God who justifies. Who is to condemn? Christ Jesus is the one who died — more than that, who was raised — who is at the right hand of God, who indeed is interceding for us” (Romans 8:33–34). Robert Haldane writes,

Among the temptations to which the believer is exposed in this life, some are from without, others are from within. Within are the alarms of conscience, fearing the wrath of God; without are adversity and tribulations. Unless [the believer] overcomes the first, he cannot prevail against the last. It is impossible that he can possess true patience and confidence in God in his afflictions, if his conscience labours under the apprehension of the wrath of God. (Romans, 412)

Confidence in the face of adversity begins with the unshakable assurance that Christ, who died and was raised, intercedes for us. In our darkest moments, when God’s comfort seems to vanish and suffering threatens to overwhelm us, we hear again the gospel’s good news: the God who justified us in Christ will not allow any accusation to stand. Even when God feels distant, our secure standing before him remains unchanged.

Our hope rests not on fluctuating emotions or our sense of his presence but on the unshakable truth that Christ is our righteousness — our “light and high beauty” — ensuring that nothing, neither internal fears nor external trials, can separate us from the Father’s love (Romans 8:35–39).

Righteousness for Real Life

During the last three weeks of my son Daniel’s life, which he spent in the hospital, I found great help in Jerry Bridges’s The Gospel for Real Life, a book that had just been released. As I write, the same copy I read during that severe trial sits before me. One highlighted passage particularly resonated with me, both during his illness and in the dark days that followed. Bridges writes about Paul’s daily joy in God’s gift of justification, stating, “By faith he looked to Jesus Christ and His righteousness for his sense of being in right standing with God today and tomorrow, and throughout eternity” (111).

When I struggled with my sense of God’s absence, I was tempted to gauge his acceptance by how vividly I could feel him near. Yet Robert Critchley’s hymn “On Christ the Solid Rock” counsels us not to “trust the sweetest frame but wholly lean on Jesus’s name.” My emotions were not the measure of God’s acceptance. What mattered was Christ’s righteousness, declared to be mine through faith alone. To paraphrase Paul’s words in 2 Corinthians 1:9, my dark night of the soul taught me to rely not on my experiences, no matter how sweet they may seem at times, but on Christ, my righteousness. He alone is the deepest rest for our souls.

Thirty-seven hours after my father died, my phone rang. “Dan, your mother only has hours to live. You need to come to the hospital now.”

Even now, over three years later, my heart rate speeds up as I recall the ICU doctor’s words. The first words I spoke after hanging up the phone were to my wife, Melissa. “I just can’t take this again. I have no emotional capital left. How am I going to make it?”

What I needed at that moment, and in the hours that followed, was exactly what my mother had needed just two days before when we told her that her husband, our father, was in his last hours: endurance to continue trusting in the God who never fails to love us, even when all we see is a frowning providence. The razor’s-edge difference between doubt and assurance lies in the strength to believe God loves us when circumstances scream otherwise.

Such moments of crisis reveal the profound need for a deep assurance of God’s love.

Grasping Niagara

In his book Children of the Living God, Sinclair Ferguson recognizes that, for many Christians, “the reality of the love of God for us is often the last thing in the world to dawn upon us. As we fix our eyes upon ourselves, our past failures, our present guilt, it seems impossible to us that the Father could love us” (27). This seeming impossibility underscores our need for divine strength to truly grasp God’s love.

In Ephesians 3:14, Paul introduces a prayer for the Ephesians with the words “for this reason” (picking up his train of thought from 3:1) precisely because of our tendency to doubt God’s love and grace. Paul’s two opening chapters lifted us up to the towering heights of what the Father has done for us in Christ by the Spirit. Imagine standing beneath the plummeting waters of Niagara Falls, trying to take a drink. The sheer force and volume might just make it impossible. In the same way, we have no natural capacity to grasp the magnitude of what the Father has graciously done for us in Christ. We cannot comprehend the depth of God’s love without divine strength.

And so, Paul prays that the Father may grant us to “have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge” (Ephesians 3:18–19). If we are to find doubt-banishing assurance in the Niagara of Christ’s unfathomable love for us, we need a strength we do not naturally possess.

When my wife was three months into her pregnancy with our oldest child, Hannah, I started journaling prayers to the Father about the daughter I had yet to meet. Each morning, I’d write a prayer about my desire for her to come to know the Father and Jesus Christ (John 17:3). These written prayers revealed my heart’s deep desires.

“Your Father wants you to grasp the ungraspable so your heart will be strengthened in hard times.”

The same is true of Paul’s prayers. But we can go a step further. As inspired Scripture, Paul’s prayers are “breathed out by God” himself (2 Timothy 3:16). Paul prayed this prayer because the Father wanted him to pray it. God-inspired prayers like Ephesians 3:14–19 reveal the very depths of the Father’s heart for us. The Father wanted Paul to pray this because he sovereignly intended to grant his requests. Your Father wants you to grasp the ungraspable so your heart will be strengthened in hard times.

None Left Out

For as long as I can remember, I have struggled with severe introspection and regular bouts of doubt. I have talked to many Christians who also struggle with assurance. On the other hand, my wife does not struggle with too much introspection. She rarely, if ever, experiences doubt. From time to time, I find myself envying her and other Christians with the same experience. On the surface, I seem to require more strength to grasp Christ’s vast love than they do.

In God’s kindness, Paul reassures us that our particular inclinations will not exclude us from a deeper experience of God’s love. Paul prays that we would have the strength to grasp this love “with all the saints” (Ephesians 3:18), whether Jews or Gentiles (2:11, 17–18), husbands or wives (5:22–33), children or parents (6:1–4), slaves or masters (6:5–9). This unity in experiencing God’s love emphasizes that his grace and strength extend to every believer, regardless of background, personality, or struggles. Paul prays with confidence that all believers can receive the strength to grasp the depth of Christ’s love, even those with a past marked by fear and uncertainty.

I am helped by remembering that Paul’s prayer is a corporate prayer. You, like me, may read Paul’s prayer and think mainly in terms of yourself rather than the whole church. But every “you” in Ephesians 3:14–19 is plural. So, when Paul prays that God would grant strength to comprehend “with all the saints,” I think he means every singular “you” within the plural “you” of the church at Ephesus, but he also implies that God answers this request mainly when the saints are gathered together. The Father loves to answer this corporate request within the gathered church.

Christians often wrestle with doubt in isolation, striving to preach the gospel to their lonely heart. However, the best place where assurance replaces doubt is in the gathering of the whole church. It is in the fellowship of believers, united in our need for grace, that the strength to comprehend Christ’s love is most powerfully imparted. Here, amid our brothers and sisters in Christ, we find that our collective faith and mutual encouragement help to dispel the dark shadows of doubt. The gathered church becomes a sanctuary where our wavering hearts are fortified (Psalm 73:16–17), and together we grasp the boundless love of Christ that surpasses knowledge.

Our Father does not want any of his children left out of his warm home of assurance, including you.

Our Naming Father

When it comes to replacing doubt with assurance, it truly matters to whom we pray. In light of the towering doctrinal heights of Ephesians 1–2, Paul kneels “before the Father” — and not just any father, but the Father “from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named” (Ephesians 3:14–15). A better translation of “every family” might be “the whole family in heaven and on earth,” emphasizing the unity of all believers under the fatherhood of God. The whole family is named by the Father.

Earlier, Paul described the Ephesians before their conversion as alienated, outsiders, and strangers without hope (Ephesians 2:12). But now the Father has named them. Isaiah 62:2–4 illustrates what it means for the Father to name us. Although God’s people were returning from exile, they still felt forsaken. Then Isaiah says,

You shall be called by a new name that the mouth of the Lord will give. . . . You shall no more be termed Forsaken, and your land shall no more be termed Desolate, but you shall be called My Delight Is in Her, and your land Married; for the Lord delights in you, and your land shall be married.

In a similar way, Paul tells us that God has “predestined us for adoption to himself as sons” (Ephesians 1:5) and that “Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her” (Ephesians 5:25). In other words, the Father and the Son have named us sons of God and the bride of Christ. The name we carry in this world, even amidst our relational trials, is this: “My delight is in you.”

This is one crucial reason we gather: to hear and be reminded through faith that the Father actually delights in us. Only the love of this Father can cast out our doubt when we are weak.

When the news that my mother was in her final hours drained the strength out of me, the Father provided the strength I needed to grasp more of the ungraspable love of Christ, especially as I gathered with all the saints in the weeks and months that followed. In the midst of my profound grief and weakness, the assurance of God’s love “strengthened [me] with power through his Spirit” (Ephesians 3:16) in the gathering of the saints, to the praise of the Father’s glorious grace (Ephesians 1:6, 12, 14).

My father died of COVID on January 4th of last year. My mother died of COVID just 48 hours and 3 minutes later. At the time, losing both parents within two days of each other felt like far more than I could take.

The depth of the grief and shock that my brothers and I felt was compounded because we had to tell Mom of Dad’s death over FaceTime. It was the most difficult conversation I have ever had, and we are fairly certain that the devastating news of her husband’s death contributed significantly to her dying so soon after. Having been separated for a week by two hospital floors, she lost the man who loved her most without getting the opportunity to say goodbye.

I share the circumstances of my parents’ deaths because I believe they highlight the kind of man and husband my father was.

In Health and in Sickness

For nearly 56 years, my father loved my mother with a fierce, self-sacrificing love — in health and in sickness.

“For nearly 56 years, my father loved my mother with a fierce, self-sacrificing love — in health and in sickness.”

My mother was seriously ill for well over half of their marriage. When I was 15, she was days away from dying from ulcerated colitis, which she had battled for several years by that point. If not for God putting her in the hospital that had the only surgeon in the country who was capable of doing this particular life-saving surgery, she would have died.

In those many months of suffering, I witnessed my father lovingly care for her when the pain was so severe that the only relief she could fathom was to die and be with the Lord. He was a full-time music professor during the week and was our church’s music minister on Sundays. And he was always a very present father for his three sons. When I was 15, my father’s care for my mother was daily marked by a love I could observe but not fathom.

In 1999, my mother was diagnosed with stage 4 ovarian cancer. Once again, her suffering was intense, and his care was remarkable. My wife and I were teachers at the time, and we were off for the summer, so we decided to take the nine-hour drive to live with them for a month. Oh, what a month it was. His loving care for my mother in her sickness remained indomitable. He loved; I marveled.

And in Humility

Lest my reflections above tempt you to think that my father didn’t struggle with temptation and sin, he did something that has impacted me even more than his love for my mother. I actually believe it holds the key to understanding how he loved the way he did.

Throughout the entirety of my growing-up years, from elementary through high school, if my father realized he had sinned against me (or my brothers), he would come to me and say something like, “Daniel, I was wrong to do/say that. Would you please forgive me for sinning against you?” My father never merely apologized. If he thought that he had sinned against me, he asked me for forgiveness.

Every time my father did that, my admiration and respect for him grew. Here is a man, I thought, who walks in humility before God and others. Even more than his fierce love for my mother, my father asking his sons for forgiveness has impacted and shaped me, mainly because of what it revealed to me about his God.

Skies of Parchment Made

My father was a consummate musician. I remember him telling us boys of the time when Stan Kenton, the king of big bands in the 1940s and 50s, recruited him to play trumpet for him. For all the love my father had for jazz, though, he loved sacred music all the more.

For decades, my father taught music in Christian colleges, and while he did that, he would also lead worship on Sundays at our church. My mother would play the piano while he would direct the choir and lead corporate worship.

This was back in the days when churches would have “special music” in the worship service. Over the many years I heard my father sing solos, the song that left the deepest impression upon me (and I probably heard him sing it over twenty times) was the song “The Love of God” by Frederick M. Lehman.

The love of God is greater farThan tongue or pen can ever tell.It goes beyond the highest starAnd reaches to the lowest hell.The guilty pair, bowed down with care,God gave his Son to win;His erring child he reconciledAnd pardoned from his sin.

Could we with ink the ocean fill,And were the skies of parchment made;Were every stalk on earth a quill,And every man a scribe by trade;To write the love of God aboveWould drain the ocean dry;Nor could the scroll contain the whole,Though stretched from sky to sky.

Every time he sang it, my heart would burn within me. This is the song that revealed what made my father’s heart tick. He was a man who saw the love of the Father written large, and he couldn’t get over it. Whenever he sung of the Father’s love, you knew he was singing “to the praise of [the Father’s] glorious grace” (Ephesians 1:6).

Fuel of His Love

Often, when I think of my father, my mind goes to Luke 7, where we read of the sinful woman who shed tears on Jesus’s feet. She “wiped them with the hair of her head and kissed his feet and anointed them with the ointment” she brought with her (Luke 7:38).

When confronted by a Pharisee for letting a sinful woman touch him, Jesus says to him, “I tell you, her sins, which are many, are forgiven — for she loved much” (Luke 7:47). Jesus is not saying that the woman was forgiven because she loved much. No, he’s saying that the evidence she was forgiven was that she loved much.

If we say, “Summer has come, for the temperature has reached 100 degrees,” we do not mean that summer has come because of the high temperature. We mean that the evidence of the arrival of summer is the scorching heat. Or, to say it a different way, the effect of summer is 100-degree weather. My father’s love for my mother and the humility needed to ask me for forgiveness was the evidence and effect of the Father’s great love for him, by which he was forgiven of all his sins. He loved much because he had been forgiven much.

What More Could a Son Want?

Over the many decades that I watched my father care for my mother, God the Father had graciously given me a regular glimpse of something of what it meant for Christ to love the church and give himself up for her (Ephesians 5:25). My father loved my mother like he did because he couldn’t get over how Christ had loved him.

“My father loved my mother like he did because he couldn’t get over how Christ had loved him.”

But that kind of love wasn’t limited to my mother; it spilled over into how he loved his sons — into how he loved me. My father was kind to me, tenderhearted, forgiving me, and humbling himself to ask for my forgiveness, because God in Christ had forgiven him (Ephesians 4:32). He was unwaveringly humble because he knew just how much mercy he had received in Christ.

As I look back on my father’s life, it’s clear to me that he was carried by love — not by a love of his own making, but by the love of the Father in Christ Jesus, poured into his heart through the Holy Spirit (Romans 5:5).

Oh, how I miss him. In my eyes, his life was lived to the praise of the Father’s glorious grace. What more could a son want?