When Faith Feels Fragile with Kristen Wetherall and Sarah Walton Ep.750

What do you do when you’ve prayed, waited, and hoped for things to change, but they don’t?

In this episode of the Awesome Marriage Podcast, Dr. Kim talks with Kristen Wetherell and Sarah Walton, authors of Jesus Will Meet You There, about what it looks like to hold onto faith when life feels painful, confusing, or completely out of your control.

When illness, grief, disappointment, or struggles in marriage leave you wondering where God is, it can be easy to question His goodness or feel like you’re walking through the hard season alone. Kristen and Sarah share honestly from their own experiences about trusting God when you can’t see what He’s doing—and how suffering can actually draw us closer to Him.

They also talk about what happens in marriage when life gets hard, how spouses can support one another when one person’s faith feels weak, and why your spouse was never meant to fill the space that only Christ can fill.

You may not always have answers or see your circumstances change, but there is hope: Jesus meets you there.


Top Takeaways:

Faith means trusting God even when you don’t understand what He’s doing. 

Hard seasons can either divide a marriage or draw a couple closer together. 

Your spouse can’t fill the space that only Christ can fill. 

Quotes from This Episode:

Sarah Walton:

“The more we fixate on each other's growth and on each other needing to be what we think they need to be, the more we're distracted from our own hearts.”

“What an opportunity we have as spouses to be the picture of Christ to each other.”

“How often when suffering and struggle comes into our lives, do we immediately turn against each other as though we are the enemy when really what we are facing right now is hardship?”

“Preaching to our hearts the truth when our eyes can't see it is what we have to continually do.”



Kristen Wetherall:

“God has given us each other as an absolute gift to walk through this road together.”

“We cannot change our spouse's heart.”

“His job is the heart. That is what he can do. What we can do is we can pray for that heart.”

“There is not much more intimate than to literally pour out our hearts in a vulnerable manner and know that I can trust my spouse with my heart in this really fractured place.”


Dr. Kim:

“We've got to get past that expectation and let God do what he can do and then trust our spouse to God.” 

“I think especially the culture we live in where there's a lot of anger, there's a lot of stuff everywhere. And I think it's easy for a couple to buy into that. And then all of a sudden your spouse, instead of being your treasure that God gave you, the gift that God gave you becomes this enemy.” 



Time to Talk About it:

  1. Is there a place in your life where you are having a hard time holding on to faith because you don’t understand what the Lord is doing?

  2. Is that place causing you to turn to your spouse or against them? 

  3. Are you expecting your spouse to fill a void that only the Lord can possibly fill?



Mentioned in this Episode:

Kim KimberlingComment