Spotlight Interview: Ray Ortlund finds good news at rock bottom

Where is God in our pain? When the bottom drops out and you finally discover a new rock bottom, is God really near to the brokenhearted? Is God there? Does he care? What is he doing? Why is he not helping me? 

If you have ever cried out in any of these ways, we’ve got some good news. We’re going to have that conversation with Pastor Ray Ortlund, about his new book, Good News at Rock Bottom. He comes to us today as the author of the book but also as a brother in Christ who knows that reality. One of the things that Ray does at the very opening of the book is he just kind of chronicles how you may have gotten there, but the reality is we all get there at some point. 

And so at some level, we’re all in it together. And there’s also only one way out. Hope is a person and hope has a name, and we’re going to set our hope on Christ and let Ray talk with us about what it looks like for Christ to be right there with us at rock bottom.

This is an edited transcript of Carmen’s interview with Ray Ortlund on The Reconnect with Carmen. Listen to the entire interview on MyFaithRadio.com or wherever you get podcasts. (Interview begins at 7:30 mark)

Carmen: This is a book that rises out of your own personal experience. And I don’t know how to start a conversation about this without letting people know that you know, you can’t write a book like this unless you’ve been there. And so would you be willing to give us a glimpse into what you know about being at rock bottom?

Ray Ortlund: Yeah. Well, thank you. It is hard to talk about, isn’t it? Because it’s so personal.

Carmen: It’s really hard to ask you about. Let me just tell you that. That is a hard question for me to ask because I feel like I’m just barging into the most tender of places.

Ray Ortlund: Yes, that’s right. But we can’t have a theoretical conversation. It’s got to be real. And I guess because it remains unresolved–I guess what I want to say, but I’m limited to say is there came a moment in my life, let me put it this way, Carmen– my life was too good for too long. I grew up in a healthy home, strong Christian Church, married the most amazing, wonderful woman in human history and had these precious children and so forth. 

But in my fifties, I finally was sort of initiated into what the rest of the human race had been facing all along. I wasn’t evading that. It’s not as though I didn’t care, but I didn’t understand it until I was submerged in anguish, suffering, heartache, and I was terrified, Carmen, I thought, how much must God hate me? I mean, am I stuck now for the duration with a plan B existence? Is this my life now, from now on? The life I used to have, which I liked, is gone forever? What am I left with now? What am I stuck with? And I just wonder how many of our listeners are wrestling with that very question. Is this my life?

And here’s what I discovered. Out of that loss and pain and heartache, I discovered Isaiah chapter 57, verse 15. I discovered God’s two addresses. It says, the Bible says, he dwells way up high in the high and holy place and also down low with the contrite and lowly that is the crushed and devastated. So when we really need God and life is not working, and it might be our own fault or maybe somebody else’s fault, when we really need help, where do we go to find God? Well, if we’re at rock bottom, the great thing is he’s right there already. He dwells way up high and way down low. He has two addresses. He’s right there waiting for us with open arms.

For thus says the One who is high and lifted up, who inhabits eternity, whose name is Holy: I dwell in the high and holy place, and also with him who is of a contrite and lowly spirit, to revive the spirit of the lowly, and to revive the heart of the contrite. 

Isaiah 57:15

Carmen: Ray, when you talk about discovering this passage, and again, for those of you who are listening, Isaiah 57, verse 15, this is this incredible verse where God’s word reveals as Ray puts it, God’s two addresses that God does dwell on high in the holy place, but also with him who is of contrite and lowly spirit to revive the spirit of the lowly and to revive the heart of the contrite. Talk about what we need when we’re down there, when we’re at rock bottom because when God talks about being there, he comes with resources and they’re resources that really do meet our deepest needs.

Ray: When we’re down there, we wonder, am I God-forsaken? Do I have a future worth reaching for and is this all my own fault? And we ask deep searching questions, and I wrote this book because I want everyone suffering to feel seen and understood, not isolated, not alone, not despairing. What everyone needs at rock bottom is hope. And I wrote this because I am everyone listening to us right now, Carmen, I’m asking. I’m saying, let’s dare to hope. Let’s dare to believe that God isn’t finished with us. He doesn’t despise us. He dwells with the crushed and devastated He is– I think the word solidarity. His heart is filled with solidarity for every suffering person. And we might feel very isolated and alone, but if we just turn, we discover to our amazement, the risen Christ is standing right there next to us, and he puts his arm around our shoulder and he says to us. I understand now, this is the man of sorrows acquainted with grief. He gets it and he says, let’s walk together through this. I want to get you through this. Man, that’s real Carmen, and I want that for everybody.

Carmen: And I love the way you invite us in. So Ray, what does Jesus know about the rock bottom reality of my life? Is he there?

Ray: Oh my goodness. The one thing Jesus knows so personally, even viscerally is he knows suffering–our suffering. The book of Hebrews is very clear. It makes him a sympathetic high priest. He’s not looking at you and me and any one of our listeners and saying to us, what’s your problem? Why don’t you get it, yet? He’s not standing over us with a stopwatch. Click, okay. I want to see how quickly you will change and things will get better. It’s not like that at all. He’s a sympathetic high priest. He has a personal, vivid personal memory of the very sorts of anguish that you and I and everyone we’re all going through. He totally gets it. And I wrote this book, Carmen, because we need to see the risen Christ with new eyes, and we need to stop seeing him as distant, aloof, above it all and dare to believe what the Bible says, that he is right down here with us in our mess and we are a mess, but how great it is when we’re his mess. So this book is my way of encouraging suffering people to dare to believe Jesus is actually most for us when we feel devastated and crushed.

Let’s dare to believe that God isn’t finished with us. He doesn’t despise us. He dwells with the crushed and devastated He is– I think the word solidarity. His heart is filled with solidarity for every suffering person. And we might feel very isolated and alone, but if we just turn, we discover to our amazement, the risen Christ is standing right there next to us, and he puts his arm around our shoulder and he says to us.

ray ortlund

Carmen: So Ray, there’s so much here that we could dig into and we could plumb. I’m wondering if you could talk a little bit about how do you navigate the reality of everybody around you? I mean, this is you personally, but this is also me and everybody else. When you’re on your way down, there are some people who run away. There’s no question about that. It doesn’t matter which way you’re on your way down, but when you’re headed to rock bottom, you do discover, oh, well, that was clearly not a friend who was going to be with me, who was going to stick with me like a brother. And even the people who are willing to love you and to continue to be with you in the rock bottom reality, whatever it is, the relationship with them is different because we are different when we have, I mean, I’ll use the word fallen, but it may not even be the right accurate word, but when we feel like we’ve lost all hope, when we feel like we’ve been abandoned or forsaken, it fundamentally changes how we relate to other people. And so could you just talk a little bit about relationships? Because I feel like one of the challenges that people at rock bottom have is that we do have a tendency to push others away, and we do need to allow the people God sends to come near.

Ray: Yeah, that is a great point. That’s in fact worth tracking with each other because that’s the very next place I wanted to go. We do need to see the Lord with new eyes the way the Bible describes him so beautifully and with such hope. But we also need to turn to one or two trusted friends who have proven faithful. They are in solidarity with us. They’re the real deal, and we need to meet with them regularly and put right out on the table how we’re really doing and how we’re not doing well and what’s really going on, and they can share with us in the same way. And the key is honesty, transparency, vulnerability. And it doesn’t have to be a lot of folks, just one or two trustworthy Christian friends who just get it. And we need to do two things together to put out on the table how we’re not doing well, and secondly, pray for one another.

And God works miracles when we come together like that. In fact, it says Carmen in this verse where it says to revive the spirit of the lowly and to revive the heart of the contrite. Those are plural words in the original Hebrew text. We’re talking about the crushed and the devastated as a group of people, a community and a healthy church is a bunch of devastated people stumbling toward Jesus together. We’re not heavy hitters. We’re not any big deal. We’re not hyper successful. We’re sinners and sufferers putting our standing shoulder to shoulder, putting our arms around each other’s shoulders and just stumbling forward toward Jesus. Do we stumble? Yes, but we stumble forward toward him. And we do that by being honest with each other, opening up.

You know what it’s like when you’re at a dinner party and you’re with friends and everybody’s so busy that it’s really great finally to be together for a while, and the conversation is fun, the food is delicious, and then somebody at that table starts talking about what’s hard in their life, and they go there and everything gets quiet and everybody leans in. It becomes very tender and very gentle and attentive. That is what everybody needs. I wrote this book because I want to see, oh, so many people coming together, prayerfully, tenderly, respectfully listening and praying, listening and praying. Man, we can get through anything that way.

Carmen: I’m wondering how popular I would be as a dinner party guest if I’m the person who always just said, what’s the hardest thing you’re dealing with right now? Because the hardest thing that we are dealing with right now is, and then you just have to be willing to say it out loud. And I recognize that when we are assessing who’s at the table and whether or not it’s a safe place, because I’ll just confess to you, when you check out Instagram or Facebook or whatever it looks like I’m the only one who’s struggling. It looks like the forward-facing or the public-facing version of the church right now is very much like everybody is wearing perfectly white outfits and they’re standing on beaches with lovely breezes and all of their children are well groomed and nobody’s misbehaving and nobody has any sort of disability. I mean, that is what the church maybe looks like in heaven, but it’s not what it looks like lived out in my life, on my street.

Ray: Well, Carmen, you’re not kidding, but let’s, let’s just agree, appearing to be impressive and successful and formidable and so forth— it’s all fraudulent. I mean, that’s not real. If that were real. Why did Jesus come at all? 

Real Christianity is not a formula for polishing up our already pretty cool amazingness. It’s not what it’s there for. Christianity is for, if this verse has anything to say to us in Isaiah, this verse is for crushed, devastated people who are wondering if they have any life left worth living. That is where Jesus dwells. I don’t want to be anywhere else. I know you feel the same way. So do our listeners. If we’re at rock bottom and we find Jesus there, Carmen, the way I feel anymore, I don’t want to be anywhere else. I don’t want to be back up in the mushy middle where I used to be. I wouldn’t go there for all the money in the world because Jesus is down at rock bottom and the best people in the world are down at rock bottom. I love it there.

Carmen: Yeah. I love this sentence from the book. “What if we follow Jesus together? You there and me there, we can find to our surprise that it’s down at rock bottom where he finds us. In fact, the low place of loss and bewilderment and regret and tears–He’s already down there. It’s where he dwells, where he awaits us and welcomes us”. I think that that is a sure and certain hope, and hope is one of the things that you are absolutely trying to restore among us when we are at rock bottom. So Ray, I would like to do this. This might be an unusual question, but you know me well enough now to know that I like to ask unusual questions without naming them. What do you want to say today to those two or three friends who did stay with you on the way down and were found to be faithful and with whom you’re still walking today? What would you want to say to them today?

Ray: Oh my goodness. What a great question. Wow. It’s a very moving question. I would want to say, obviously, I want to say thank you for not turning away. Thank you for not giving up. Thank you for not finding something else to do. Secondly, I wouldn’t be alive if it weren’t for you. I would want to say the Christ living in you kept me over here alive, kept me going, kept me putting one foot in front of the other, and I wouldn’t be where I am today if you had not made that commitment to me. I owe you so much. I love what Dietrich Bonhoeffer says in his wonderful book, Life Together. He says, when my faith is weak, the faith in my brother or my sister is likely strong. So what we do is we get together and we cobble together my weak faith with your strong faith, we get together and one plus one ends up being three or four or five in the amazing ways of God. And when the faith in me is strong and the faith in you is weak, again, we get together, cobble together what we have and God works a miracle and one plus one equals 19. That is what God does when we come together. And I would want to say to my friends, thank you for making that real to me.

Carmen: Thank you, Ray, for sharing that you’ve brought to mind an experience that I had after my dad died when I was a teenager. And for me, that was my first rock bottom experience that I could look at that I can now look at the lens of the conversation we’re having now. I’ve been back to rock bottom since then, but that’s the first one that I can really point to and so I remember some weeks later standing in the context of a worship service. And one of the patterns or the rhythms of worship in that particular church was that we would stand and say together the Apostle’s Creed. And I mean that is something that can roll off my tongue literally without giving it any thought at all. But in that moment, I was considering maybe for the first time, do I really believe these things?

Do I really believe? And so I didn’t say it. I’m standing there and I’m not saying it, but the believing community is saying it. The people around me are saying it. They believe when I had a hard time believing they believed. And then at the point in the Apostle’s Creed, when it says He descended into hell, the person next to me just reached over and took my hand because that’s the rock bottom reality. When you don’t know, does Jesus, is Jesus really the way, not just to hell and back for you in terms of rising from the dead, but is he going there with you right now because it’s your living hell that you’re in right now? It’s your rock bottom.

And so I think that that’s what you’re expressing. Our friends believe when we can’t, and they still stand with us and they love us. And so thank you for so transparently and tenderly sharing that window because these are issues of life and death, and they are issues of how we live this life. So Ray, what a blessing. Thank you so much.

Ray: Oh, Carmen, what a wonderful story. What a powerful account. Everybody listening to you right now totally understands what you’re talking about. And I wrote this book because of what you experienced there. I mean, what if that went viral? What if that started erupting from sea to shining sea man alive? It would be revival. Oh, that’s what I pray for. That’s why I wrote this book.