Will You Add Your 'Amen'?

Faithful agreement with God’s promises turns waiting into worship.

Welcome to The Resilient Series—a collection of reflections from wise, faith-filled voices exploring what it means to live resilient in Jesus. Each week, we’ll hear from a different writer—authors, pastors, coaches, neurosurgeons, and everyday disciples—sharing their stories, Scripture insights, and hard-won hope. Whether you’re arriving here at the start or joining partway through, each piece stands alone and invites you to draw near to the God who strengthens us through every season.

This week, we are invited into the intimate story of a marriage tested by valleys, separations, and doubt—and strengthened by the steadfastness of God’s promises. Anna Tran shows us that resilience isn’t only about endurance; it’s about joining our “Amen” to God’s “Yes.” Through prayer, rest, and the daily choice of carrying our cross, resilience becomes an act of faith that transforms hardship into worship and waiting into witness.

How do you hold on to God’s promise when everything around you seems to contradict it?

My husband and I got married in 2016, we were 24. We didn’t have a fairy tale story, a completely unconventional match, but we had a promise.

We are now nearly 10 years married. In between that ‘I do’ at the altar and these words on the page have been many moments of doubt, two marital separations, countless tears and many questions to God. We have walked the valley of the shadow of death, sometimes hand in hand, but many times alone.

Within the same 10 years, we have seen miracles that would make your jaw drop, been radically changed by God and blown over by His faithfulness. We have seen love reborn and deepened, and our murky future crystallise so prophetically that we can but bow in worship.

This sounds like a story about marriage, but really, it is a story about a God who never breaks His promises.

2 Corinthians 1:20 says, ‘For no matter how many promises God has made, they are “Yes” in Christ. And so through him the “Amen” is spoken by us to the glory of God.’

I love this verse because hidden in its poetic flow is a profound invitation.

This verse tells us:

1. God gives the promise

2. They are ‘Yes’ in Christ.

3. They are agreed with (said ‘Amen’ to) by us, which…

4. Brings glory to God.

That is actually earth-shattering.

Though the promises are made by God and fulfilled in Christ, the glory is revealed when the believer responds with a faithful ‘Amen’.

Here are three ways that ‘Amen’ can look:

• The ‘Amen’ of prayer.

‘Prayer lays hold of God’s plan and becomes the link between his will and its accomplishment on earth.’ — Elisabeth Elliot

The greatest reward from the last 10 years of marriage has not been the breakthroughs but the intimacy found with the Lord in the hardest times. For it is in the hidden place that God reveals His plans to His friends.

During our second separation, it felt like the promises of God were truly dead. Praying during those seasons did not look strong at all, but even whispers in faith are more powerful than the greatest shout of the enemy.

When all seems lost, prayer is God’s invitation for us to rise above the storm, see from His perspective and declare over our situation His will. Prayer is the invitation to add our ‘Amen’ to His fulfilled promises.

• The ‘Amen’ through rest

‘Be still before the Lord and wait patiently for him’ - Psalm 37:7

In 2022, the prophetic words over our marriage took a sudden change. From words about breakthrough and strategies for prayers, they became words about rest.

Honestly, our marriage was far from restful, and so rest was welcomed! But turns out that it takes faith to sleep in the storm.

I have once heard it said, ‘You can only have authority over the storm you can sleep in”. It is an invitation to put our trust fully in Jesus. To say ‘Amen’ through rest meant to trust God for the victory in our marriage.

But what did that truly mean? It meant surrendering control and resisting despair, even in the hardest moments; choosing instead to place our faith in the One who faithfully fulfils His promises as we wait. Rest was the declaration of the completed work of the cross over our marriage.

Rest is the declaration of the complete work of the cross, full stop.

• The ‘Amen’ of the cross.

Many times we faltered. We grew weary of the cross of our marriage, and we wandered off into our own ‘promise land’. Jesus always came to find us. He sustained us and kept us. He carried the weight of the heavy yoke as we walked yoked to Him.

Yet it would be untrue to say we were never given a choice, for He is no slave driver, and He never takes us against our will. There was always a choice of an easier route, one that did not require a cross or the death to self.

But for us, the decision to say ‘Amen’ to the fulfilled promises of God over our marriage has meant carrying our cross. Staying when we wanted to leave, hoping when we want to give up and sharing in the death of Jesus “so that the life of Jesus may also be revealed in our body.” (2 Corinthians 4:11).

We now live in the manifest fulfilment of many of the promises given to us for our marriage, but every day is still a choice to add our ‘Amen’ to the ‘yes’ of Christ for all the promises given by God.

Will you add your ‘Amen’?

Resilience, as Anna reminds us, is not passive. It is an active, daily, again and again of choosing to say “Amen” to God’s promises, even when circumstances suggest otherwise. In marriage, in ministry, in personal struggles, this faithful agreement invites God’s glory to manifest and our hearts to grow steadfast. Whatever storm or trial you face, I pray Anna’s experience encourages you to respond in prayer, rest, and obedience, saying with courage and hope: “Amen. Yes, Lord, I trust You.”

Next week is a guest post from Emily Vermillion.