This Month question of evil and suffering: Personal stories not merely intellectual question
- Linda: Good father, I just trust him
- Joy: I don’t understand it all, I do trust him
Interview: Corrie and Curtis
- What is Norah’s condition and what does it look like for you and her right now?
2. What did you think/feel when you first heard her diagnosis?
3. How did you faith prepare you? How were you unprepared?
4. How have you seen God use this?
5. What questions do you still have?
Life always comes down to trust…who will we trust?…we will all trust someone (self)
*Questions remain for every sufferer…everyone trusts someone and everyone has questions that go unanswered.
*These who have shared their stories…who are learning to trust…are not more special…don’t have what you can’t…you can have hope…he loves you…you can learn to trust him.
7 themes: sin, cause and effect, soul building, glory of God, Satan, Mystery, Gospel
These themes help us understand real life, real suffering…a real God active in our stories…we are active in his.
My life, like yours, is part of God’s larger story…our stories collide with other stories…here’s some I remembered this week:
-Mom holding new born who had died
-Bride of 36 hours
-My daughter in coffee shop
-Working one day in a combat hospital in Iraq…feeling so anxious and depressed I thought my heart would stop
-Standing at gravesides of people I really miss today
-I have stories…you have them too…we will all have more…those stories include suffering and questions and mystery…and ultimately…who will we trust?
Who is trustworthy?
Suffering can isolate people…no one understands me…(sick…everyone is well, lonely…everyone is loved)
But that is the lie…we are all together in this.
Suffering also can connect people…I have seen it happen many times.
God did not stand far off and watch us suffer…he entered into our suffering…Christ suffered for us.
So…I am with you and you are with me…and God is with us in this…solidarity here.
God wants our trust…he deserves it…will you give it to him?
Will you trust him with Your doubts, your suffering, your questions?
You will trust someone…we all do…will you trust him?
God is there, he is good…and he loves you personally…though you may not see all that he is doing.
Eccl. 3:11 He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the hearts of men; yet they cannot fathom what God has done from beginning to end.
*Some say this describes the absurdity of human existence…eternity in our hearts…yet we cannot find the purposes for our lives.
*That would be true…if God did not make everything beautiful in its time…he does and he will.
PRAYER
This is a Tapestry.
This year Bible: single narrative…it is the full tapestry of God revealed
-creation, fall, redemption, purpose, future.
-Larger stories and smaller sub plots of individual lives…we see the whole thing…beginning to end.
*We don’t have to guess…we can know how and why we are to live
We live in the tension of the Immediate and ultimate
-He has set eternity in our hearts
-We can’t see what he is up to
Struggle with the Tapestry: Is there a picture here? Do I matter in that picture?
I see the Biblical picture (the ultimate)…I live in the immediate…the land of knots…things seem random, disordered at times.
Everyone lives by faith: confidence/trust in someone
*Who will you trust?
*You will trust someone…who is worthy of your trust.
High trust is easy when there is a lot of light(I once thought I had high trust, but I really just had high light)…but what about when things grow dark…trust is tested.
*walk confidently through a well light forest
*black night…a voice says “walk this way” (is it familiar, a voice you have learned to trust?)
God has demonstrated trustworthiness in many ways…the greatest way is the cross.
Romans 5:8 God demonstrates his own love while we were sinners Christ died for.
7 themes or parts of the answer…Gospel is number is #7
“Do something God…we are suffering here!”
Gospel: God says… “I have, I am, I will do something”
“Do you love me, I can’t see it?”
God says…”See the cross.”
We now live in the already/not yet full answer to the question.
God has, God is, God will…dealing in a final way with evil and suffering…Christ is the center of remedy…we stand in the already/not yet.
Pet. 1:3 Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! In his great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, 4 and into an inheritance that can never perish, spoil or fade — kept in heaven for you, 5 who through faith are shielded by God’s power until the coming of the salvation that is ready to be revealed in the last time. 6 In this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials. 7 These have come so that your faith — of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire — may be proved genuine and may result in praise, glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed. 8 Though you have not seen him, you love him; and even though you do not see him now, you believe in him and are filled with an inexpressible and glorious joy, 9 for you are receiving the goal of your faith, the salvation of your souls.
What God has done is already but not yet.
We can with High faith/Low light situations: If we trust God…know why he can be trusted in all situations.
Despite everyone and everything that appears to say otherwise…God can be trusted: this is the God’s final answer to “do you love me?”
“Will you do something about this suffering?
The cross of Christ…the empty of Christ.
Heb. 12:1 Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles, and let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us. 2 Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy set before him endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. 3 Consider him who endured such opposition from sinful men, so that you will not grow weary and lose heart.
Heb. 11: lists the men and women who defied their times and circumstances because they trusted God…they had high faith in low light situations.
They knew that God is there and that God is good…so the known facts were never all the facts…
They saw knots no picture at times…but they knew God makes everything beautiful in his time.
When the known facts seemed to be against God…they trusted and waited and waited and worked…but they trusted God even when all they saw was the knots or even just dark.
Time after time the known facts of our lives and our world around may be against God…but one day the missing facts will be known too.
Will you learn to trust him are you learning to trust him…whatever the odds, whatever the suffering?
You will live by faith…everyone does…you will trust someone…everyone does.
But who is worthy of your confidence, your trust?
Who has done for you what Christ has done for you?
John Von Neumann was one of smartest men to ever live.
-At age 6 he could divide two 8-digit numbers in his head and converse in ancient Greek.
-By 8 he knew Hungarian, English, French, German, and Italian and was familiar with differential calculus and had read a 46-volume history collection.
As an adult he could repeat from memory any book or article he had read…even years later.
If he had read it in another language, he could quote it in English.
His accomplishments as a physicist, mathematician, computer scientist are too numerous to list.
He was a key figure in the Manhattan project…developer of the first nuclear weapon…and instrumental in developing what became modern computers.
At age 51 he was diagnosed with Cancer…he lived in terrible fear of death from that day on.
He went for a Priest and converted to Christianity.
One friend said that “he was completely agnostic all his life but suddenly upon facing death turned to Christianity…it doesn’t agree with anything whatsoever in his attitude, outlook and thinking when he was healthy.”
There are many things people believe that cannot be consistently lived…and they cannot be held on to all the way to death.
Intelligence is irrelevant when facing the facts of our limits
Who is wise compared to God…who can add a single hour to his own life by his own power and intelligence?
Von Neuman died at age 53.
His enormous intelligence did not change the fact that he was a man who had to live and to die by faith…when he faced death…he doubted himself…he could not think his way out of his fear.
Faith is a part of every story.
It is the story of the Bible, the story of your life and mine…we all trust someone…who will you trust?
All will suffer, all will die…life is for all people…even the smartest ones…a very personal thing…our lives are our stories…not a just series of facts…data points.
Von Neumann…had learned lots of facts…but he was after all a person not a machine…it was his life, his death, his story…his fear…his faith…who would he trust in the end…not himself…smart as he was.
Our stories matter to us…they matter to God…we matter to God.
But our pride (always misplaced) is often a barrier to God mattering to us like he should.
1Cor. 1:18 For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. 19 For it is written: “I will destroy the wisdom of the wise; the intelligence of the intelligent I will frustrate.” Where is the wise man? Where is the scholar? Where is the philosopher of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? 21 For since in the wisdom of God the world through its wisdom did not know him, God was pleased through the foolishness of what was preached to save those who believe.
My friend Bryan Linn was on his way to a professional golf career when he discovered he had stomach cancer.
He turned his car around just outside the city on the way to a tournament and went to the hospital because of his great pain…they looked cut him open, found a lot of cancer…and there was nothing they could do.
Shortly before that he had become a Christian and we had become good friends…I was 22, he was 25.
In the hospital, 24 hours before he died…he grabbed my hand and said “It’s worth it Terry.”
“What Bryan?”
“The cancer.”
He then began to tell me all the people, including himself that God had brought to deep faith in Christ as a result of his suffering.
I understood him with my head…I believed it to be true…but he was living it in front of me…not just words…ideas…it was real and powerful…right there in that hospital room.
He was pale, sickly, bed ridden…I had a summer tan, I was fit…but he was living in power…I felt like I was the sick one in the face of the power he was living in.
HOW could this be?
God was giving Bryan grace right there in that bed…real power at that moment.
I could say the words “God will give grace”
Bryan was living the power in front of me…It was something to see.
1 Cor. 4:20 “The kingdom of God is not a matter of talk but of power”
Ollie my grandson is 5:
“When you get baptized you don’t do bad things anymore right?”
“What does it mean to invite Jesus into your heart?”
“You promise to not do bad things…I don’t think I can keep my promise?”
“Oliver…you don’t make the promise, Jesus does.”
“You open your hand, he gives the gift”
This is not about faith in faith…but casting ourselves fully on God’s mercy…if he does not hold us…we will not be held.
There are answers…and they are good ones, sound ones…but they point to a personal relationship with God through Jesus Christ resulting in the Holy Spirit living in you in a way that changes you from inside out.
It is power based on his promises to keep you…not your promise to keep him.
You don’t make promises to him…he has made them to you…way before we are lovable, he loved us.
Romans 5:8 “God demonstrates his own love for us in this, while we were still sinners Christ died for us.”
*Believer? Who will you trust? Where will you put your confidence?
*Not yet a follower of Christ? Is the one you are trusting, worthy of that confidence? Will that confidence, that person (maybe it’s you) fail you at the worst possible time…maybe already has.