 Let's pray. Father, thank you. Thank you for that song that he is worthy. Does the Father truly love us? He does. Does our God intend to do well with us? He does. And we have the privilege of knowing that because of Jesus. And we can look back. It's been given to us through Holy Scripture. It's been told down through the millenniums of your son coming. And we believe that that happened. And because of that, we know that you do intend to dwell with us. You're dwelling with us now by your Holy Spirit. And someday in that new heaven, that new earth, we can dwell together. And that'll become a tangible reality. We look forward to that time. So Father, pray you a special blessing on our brother as he launches in to maybe more of a deep, hard talk this evening. Father, pray that you just pour your Holy Spirit upon him and give him wisdom, clear mind. Give him boldness, Lord. Boldness because he knows that he is just being a mouthpiece for you, Father. And also knowing that your heart is so close to those who have pain and who are suffering. So give him your heart and your word tonight in Jesus' name. Amen. So, Bill, thank you for your topic last evening. And that was a blessing. And for those of you who are listening in, we do have a handout that he'll be kind of working through. It's on our website at Kingdom Fellowship. You can pop it over there if you're on the Internet and get that. And you can follow along with him. So, bless him, Bill, all yours. Well, good evening. My name is Bill Shiley, and we've been talking here about the issue of suffering and evil in the world and some things to help us cope. Last night, we went through some truths and some of how we think about the world and we think about God. We went through what the story of the Bible actually is. And while there's truth to things like God is all-powerful, God is all-knowing, and things like that that seem to contradict evil in the world, we looked at some truths that are left out, I think intentionally by Satan and his team to put a really bad slant on God. So we looked at more facts in the story and informed our minds last night. Some of our basic journey, summing it up here, was that we see God making a good world, but integrated into the whole thing was free will. And because of love, love of necessity requires free will. We have to be able to choose. It has to be something voluntary, something given. And that God delegated part of his power to humans. And so, as humans made a choice, God will not mess with that because he values their free will and he respects the autonomy that he gave them. And so, man's choice to be other than good and to partner with God, to follow God's method of reigning and creating, has produced a world that is other than good, which we call evil. And we also noticed though that God has entered our brokenness. He came and became flesh and lived among us, experienced our evil. And he did that in order to be able to redeem us. And he has redeemed evil by defeating Satan and breaking the bondage that we brought ourselves into the ownership that we gave Satan of our world through obedience to him. And he has set up a revolution, a group of people who are now following his way to bring health and to bring healing to the world. And that ultimately God is going to redeem all evil. And he's going to judge evil. Evil is temporary. It will one day be judged and ended. So that's some of the facts we looked at last night. So tonight, I want to look at more some helps to us for us emotionally. Sorry, that wasn't all up on the slide there, the review there. As Lamentation says, this I recall to mind, therefore I have hope, that verses in the middle of chapter three, the middle of a lament, actually a lament because of the effects of sin. And he begins to turn his mind to recall truths about God that helped him to have hope. And that's what we want to do this evening here. It's been mentioned about me sharing my story. One thing I want to say off the bat is the only reason I have anything to share is because it's actually God's story, not my story. And it says I've given my story to God that that's become a good thing in my life personally and in the world around me. And so I love this verse that this quote from Jesus and John, that should actually be John chapter eight verse 33, but he says, he that receiveth his testimony, speaking of the Messiah, the human one himself, but he that receiveth Jesus testimony has set to his seal that God is true. The picture there is a king or a ruler stamping his signet in the wax, putting his own reputation under what God has said. So that's what I want to do tonight. There's lots of things we still don't understand, but I want to personally share from my own journey some truths and things I've learned about God and my commitment, my wholehearted enthusiastic witness that God is trustworthy. He can be trusted and he is good. Some of the things we talk about tonight, there's lots we don't understand about God, but I like this little scene from the Chronicles of Narnia the Lion and the Witch and the Wardrobe where the children are introduced to Aslan, who has a picture of Christ. And the story and the subject comes up when they find out he's alive. Is he safe? Well, Mr. Beaver says no. Don't you hear what Mrs. Beaver tells you? Who said anything about safe? Of course, he isn't safe, but he is good and I love that. And so, well, there's a lot we don't understand tonight. I want to look at some things to help us to have reasons to trust God and to choose to inform our minds and believe and orient ourselves quieter hearts with the fact that he is safe even though there's much we don't understand. So the first question I want to deal with is, does God care? As we're going through suffering, as we're experiencing pain in our lives, last night we talked about some different kinds of pain. And each of us, as you came and logged into this session, having your own mind, pain in your own life or things you've seen in the world around you that are difficult. And so that's a very important question. Does God care? We're supposed to trust this guy. We're supposed to give our lives to him. We're supposed to recklessly follow his directions. Is this a sensible thing to do? Does he care about me or am I expendable to him? This is something I've struggled with deeply. Each of us has our own perspective as we look at suffering and mine has been one of fear. I was raised being taught that God was irritated at me, that I was a pain to him, that I was just a reprobate. I was something that would I was just a person who just wouldn't respond to him and just was all-headed and made mistakes and was just going to end up getting cast out. So this has been a question I wrestled with deeply as I've stumbled through life. There's a passage in Psalm 50 that I think encapsulates how we often tend to feel when we look at the world, we look at things happening, it seems like God's not doing anything about it. Here he says, when you saw a thief, you consented to him, you've been a partaker with adulterers. You joined in, you sat and spoke evil against thy brother, thou slanderstine, thou mother's son. You did these things and I kept silence and so you thought that I was just like you. I didn't really matter. That's the message that comes to us as our tendency to feel in life as we see evil just going on, oppression and suffering and wickedness going on around us is to feel that because God's not doing something about it that therefore he's unaware or it doesn't bother him. He's not, he's disinterested, dispassionate about it and that is anything from the truth and so that's why it's important tonight. We're digging into God's world and highlighting some things that help us to realize it's actually quite the opposite. Yesterday we talked about the incarnation and how important that is in this whole thing. The fact that God came and lived among us and we see that so clearly in the incarnation that God does care about us enough that he was willing to come and live in it with us, experience it with us in order to redeem and I think also in order to show us that he cares. But Bryant mentioned this evening in his opening comments about him being able to be a high priest who understands because he's experienced it. And as the Messiah, this hero who is going to render evil, the snake, the serpent, powerless, as he's developed through prophecies through the Old Testament, we start to get this idea that's really different than a king and a conqueror and Isaiah chapter nine, he's a wonderful counselor, a mighty God, everlasting father of his, the Prince of Peace of his kingdom and his government will be no end. But we get into chapter 52, Psalm 22 brings this out, but Isaiah 52 starts talking about him as this person who's, he's not going to be very popular and he's not going to be that attractive and then Isaiah 53 talks about him bearing our griefs and carrying our sorrows and his identity was a man of sorrow and he was just acquainted with grief. It was just, it was a major part of his life. And I think that's interesting is we think does God care? We ask that question and we look at Jesus in the incarnation, the fact that God became human and lived among his shouts that God does care about it. And not only does he care, but he knows what how it feels. We see God's care as he weeps over Jerusalem and symbolically weeps over mankind. It's not that he's dispassion says, all right, guys, well, if you want to be that way, knock yourselves out, but our choices to run from him to resist his goodness breaks his heart. He cares, it hurts him because he desires good for us. And he cares enough about what we're doing to come in and bear the brunt of it ourselves to offer himself as a hostage in our place so that we would be set free. Jesus uses a metaphor there as he weeps over Jerusalem and says, how often would I have gathered that children together like a hen gathers her chicks under your wings, but you wouldn't let me. And that's such a powerful picture. There's a story that took place during the the pioneer movement west. There was a young couple who went out and started a farm, cleared the land and planted their solid potatoes and everything. And one day there was a smudged smoke on the prize and they realized there's a prairie fire coming. And it was coming too fast to do anything. All they could do was gather a few possessions and run down in the well and barely survive long enough for the smoke to blow over. And so they came out and everything they had put their life into was just ashes all around them. And as the young farmer was walking around dejectedly looking at the charred remains of their lives, as he was walking along there was a pile of char there in front of him and he just kind of kicked it with his foot in dejection. And as the as the char remains flew out ran all these fluffy little yellow chicks safe because the hen had called them to her and she bore as like the songwriter says about Christ the powers of hell have done their worst. He gave himself for evil to bring its ultimate destruction on rather than us. And in that dispersed their legions as the songwriter says. And so we sing hallelujah. But it's not just because he brought us victory but we see God's love in his care for us that he was willing to come in by himself and provide freedom from the slavery we sold ourselves into. The incarnation is tremendously precious to me as I as as we go through Christmases over the last couple of years. And there's all the family celebrations and and and holiday shopping and decorations and all the Christmas cheer and everything. I I'm a little detached from that world. I don't have some of those things in my life very much. But one thing that I like to sit and just be be still and think about is this fact that amid all that the real story is a God who came and he came in a sheep stable that smelled like sheep manure. And there he was born and lived a lowly life, a life of suffering, a life of rejection in order to associate with us and redeem us. So God that's one thing in the incarnation it just shouts the whole thing shouts that God really does care about us very deeply. I want to turn back to lamentation and look at another characteristic of God that often is brushed aside or or just probably just it becomes cliche to us. It gets used so much that it loses its meaning to us. But lamentation chapter three verse 22 is often quoted as the famous song Great is Thy faithfulness based on this verse. It's of the Lord's mercies that that we are not consumed because his compassion's fail not. They are new every morning. Great is Thy faithfulness. And I love I love that song Great is Thy faithfulness. But the song talks about God's mercies that are new every morning and we'll talk about that in a minute but it says his compassion's fail not. And it says they his mercy and his compassion are new every morning. So every day God feels deeply for us in a new way. And that is touching to me that God isn't just a big tough guy that is merciful but he has compassion he feels with us. Those are truths we have to hold on to by faith. There's times when it doesn't seem that way and we have to take the things we do see of his goodness in the world the truth of his incarnation and realize that God does feel for us. Another thing that is God's God's mercy that God is rich in mercy and my animations are not going in the order I want here so you get the whole scoop here. But God is not just merciful which means he doesn't want to give us what we deserve but he's rich in mercy. And what's interesting to me is that the part of the Bible that people tend to look at and say God is mean and ugly and nasty the Old Testament that actually if you want to read about God's mercy read the Old Testament and that's the conclusions that are given in the Psalms and different times and that's this the picture is yes there's times where God brings judgment or allows them to reap what they have sowed a small part to try to get them to repent. Excuse me but but it's about God putting up with these people and letting them go and giving them a little bit to try to wake them up. God doesn't want them to reap the destruction that they're asking for. So we ask is God fair? Well no God isn't fair. God's merciful and we'll talk about that some more a little bit later. But God is rich in mercy he does really doesn't want to give us what we deserve thinking of when we are suffering because of our own of our own sin our own failure. I want to look at some more things from that that passage and again I want to highlight that Lamentation is a book written in lament of the suffering that Israel was experiencing because of their rejection of God and they're continually turning to the gods of this world. So we already looked to verse 21 and I think that's supposed to be verse 25 there. The Lord is good unto them that wait for him to the soul that seeketh for him. So this is something takes time we have to endure in seeking after God and trusting him. It's good for a man it's good that a man should both hope and quietly wait for the salvation of the Lord. It's good for a man he should bear the yoke in his youth. He sit alone and keep the silence because he has borne it upon him. So the the the man in his lament is also saying that this does some good things to us. For the Lord will not cast off forever but though he caused grief yet will he have compassion according to the multitude of his mercies. For he does not afflict willingly nor grieve the children of men to crush under his feet all the prisoners of the earth to turn aside the right of a man before the face of the most high to subvert the man in his cause the Lord approveeth not. God's point is it to precious and smear us into dirt and and beat us down. It's his mercy the things that we we do experience as a result of evil in our lives whether it's our own or other and one thing that's through here all over is God's compassion that God feels for even when it is something that's because of our our choices and we're reaping a portion of that. Does it matter? Does it matter if God cares? There are some people who deal with with pain or encourage others to deal with this pain you just need to grow up you just need to buck up and just get over it move on it's it's a tough world and you just gotta handle it. I'm going to push back really strongly against that because stuffing things just bottling it up and just dropping it down trying to deny it trying to push it out of the way just leave it leave it go and toughening up it for when it bottoms up things that will explode later you're not dealing with it it's still there it's unresolved and eventually it comes out and also this has become really important to me it kills a part of you that senses another's pain when we don't grieve and lament and find healing or things in our lives and find comfort in God's care for us we then are going to tend to become stiff and hard towards others pain and often end up creating more suffering in their lives. Learning to cry on the other hand on our Heavenly Father's shoulder leaves nothing in the closet you can't face and it also fills you with a comfort to radiate to others so people who have faced their suffering by crying and grieving and not as an orphan but on their Heavenly Father's shoulder and learning to live in the reality of his love and his compassion and his security for them that as as Jesus tells his disciples in John chapter 16 he is not leaving us orphans comfortless but they we have a father who is with us and watching over us cares about what we're going through in his brain good through it um that gives us something then to offer others to um to help them to heal so I think it is a big deal that we come to the point where we allow ourselves to be we allow God's care his compassion his tenderness towards us in our suffering um to to become reality to us and I know that's still a journey for me but I know that has transformed my own leadership tremendously so if God cares what is God doing about evil is God doing anything about evil last night we talked about that that what if God is good and he cares maybe the problem is he can't do anything about it and how is it that he cares but he's not doing anything about it that doesn't make sense well the fact is God is Romans 118 says the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who hold the truth in unrighteousness and that's talking about things that happen now the passage goes on to talk about how people who who pursue worshiping the creator the creature instead of the creator begin to reap in their own on their own flesh their their physical life now um they begin to reap consequences for that choice they don't get off scott free I like this quote from Charles Dickens book um Oliver Twist and for those of you who know the story um Bill in there um Bill Sikes um murders his wife Nancy and then runs off and tries to evade the police and um justice and he's but everywhere he turns he's he's being haunted by this apparition of his wife coming after him and calling him and saying I loved you I was faithful to you and um and Dickens turns to his his reader then as a narrator and says this let no man talk of murderers escaping justice and hit the providence must sleep there were 20 score of violent deaths and that one in one long minute of that agony of fear um a very wise observation about the reality in the world that all is not as it seems and people who do evil who use others and seem to reign they they they get they get what they want in the world it's not that way um that takes faith to believe but um there's a rottenness that begins to eat at them and they begin to live hell um now just like those who choose to follow Jesus begin to um live heaven's way now this has been a source of sad comfort to me and also has been a tool for me to be able to comfort others who look and say that man did that to my little girl or whatever it is and and he's getting away with it um is to realize with with a with a horror that he's not getting away with it um even now in his life he is sowing an acid that is eating away at him so God is not doing nothing about it it's not that evil gets away God is merciful all but um all begin to reap um some of what they sow and then also God is in the end God is going to defeat evil Paul writes to the Thessalonian church a church that was um just under a lot of distress because of persecution and he says this and to you who are troubled rest with us when the Lord Jesus will be revealed from heaven with his mighty angels in flaming fire taking vengeance on them that know not God and that obey not the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ I don't understand how all that's going to work with the judgment and and eternal destinies but we know that there is coming a time where um God will meet out justice and vengeance on evil and evil beings and so evil is a temporary thing um there is coming a time where everything is going to be set to rights that's the idea of justice another question that many people struggle with I struggled with deeply is is God punishing me so when when bad things happen in my life unfortunate things or disappointments or wrongs happen to me is God punishing me this is what I was brought up being taught to believe that everything that happens God's kicking me in the rear um um he's it's retribution for the supposed awful choices and hard hardness that um I was told I had growing up the reality is as uh Psalm 103 says if thou art sure to smark and at Greece who shall stand if God was had an agenda to to get even with us or or pay us back in full what we have what we have have sowed by our by our actions there we would we would all be vaporized I don't know how that would work but we would just we would experience the fullness of eternal damnation immediately and so even if it is that we are being chastened or disciplined um we're reaping something that we have sowed um it's not about God getting even with us the Lord is merciful more verses from Psalm 103 the Lord is merciful and gracious slow to anger and a bounding mercy he has not dealt with us according to our sins nor punished us according to our iniquities for as the heaven is high above the earth so great is his mercy toward them that feared him as far as the east is from the west so far as he removed our transgressions from us as a father pities his children so the Lord pities those who fear him for he knows our frame who remembers that we are dust so again even if it is that what we're experiencing in life is reaping for what we've sowed it's always in mercy and it's actually out of God's God is limiting and he's his heart toward us is that he doesn't want us to experience um what comes to us he knows our frame who remembers that we are dust that verse right there marks a turning point in my life I think it was around 16 I remember reading that verse that as a father pities his children so the Lord pities them fear him and that was just not what I saw in my world um pity and understanding that we're we're just we're children and we're teenagers and we're um we didn't choose to come into the world and go through this stage in life and so I thought either God's full of baloney when he says that or else there's something real out there there God is something that is not what I am seeing and that I just I don't know it wasn't out of my good necessarily but I chose to to seek after that I chose to believe there was something real there was a God out there it was not what I was being shown and not being taught and and begin to reach out to him to find that true true reality and um I guess that has characterized my life in a lot of ways as I see things that the Bible says this is what it's supposed to be like and I don't see that even in the Christian world to choose rather than to give up and to turn aside and throw it all out because that to choose to believe that there is something real there's a third way and to find it I'm not professing to do any better than anybody else but I'll die trying rather than throw it out because I believe there is something real there there is of God who is a father who does pity and understands and feels for us and as I've come to realize that about God it's also changed my leadership then as I relate to those who are weaker or younger than I am but God is not punishing us as in getting even with us revelation he says this to one of the churches as many as I love I rebuke and chase and be zealous therefore and repent so whatever God does allow in our life if it is something that is because we are reaping something that we have so it's never to crush us as lamentation said to just grind us down and push us into the dirt it's always to wake us up and give us an opportunity to turn back to him there's always an exit that goes up um in any situation wherever we're at in life so summing up some lessons from it God has no interest in making us pay for what we've done we're getting even with us that's just not God's agenda in life at all and if he would we would it would be over instantly but at the same time God does correct and train us through all of life sometimes correction is the mistake we made sometimes it's not there's nothing we've done wrong it's simply we live in a world where because of free will people can choose to be good or they can choose to be evil and we suffer the effects of that and yet God has redeemed that we're going to talk about that in a little bit and so God uses those things as training in our lives um things to shape us to soften us to break us to help us to learn um you don't make a navy seal by having him sit on a couch and eat potato chips um and so in the same way as we want to become warriors for God we want to become people who own God's story and own God's truth it's through it's through suffering um that we are trained God's chastening is not just correction or not just spanking but instruction and quality time and tough lessons to develop and grow us so God corrects and trains us through all of life and whatever's happening to us whether it's whether it is reaping a little bit of what we've sown or whether it's not it's just something that's happening to us because of the evil in the world we live in um the point of purpose of it always is to draw us up to make us something better one question that comes with that is what about people who don't know better or on a personal level what if what is it maybe there's something I don't know that I'm doing wrong and God's just sitting there saying no you keep getting this one wrong and maybe you haven't struggled with that picture of God I'm sure some of you have and that was something I deeply battled with um like somehow I was supposed to study for something on the test and I didn't know about it and I just kept getting it wrong this verse is very simple but brought a lot of peace to me about that on a personal level as well as on on a global level as we think about primitive peoples who have never heard the gospel when Peter visits Cornelius and here's his story about how God sent the angel and reached out to to um to Cornelius in a unique way he says this now I'm paraphrasing here now I realize that God doesn't have favorites but in every nation the one who respects God and does what he knows is right is accepted by him and that's the father we have is he's somebody who that's what he's looking for um Isaiah chapter 66 I think it's verse two says that to this man will I look to him that is poor of a contrary spirit and trembles at my word so God is the reward of those who are seeking him and if we have a heart we want to do what's right we want to honor him um we're acceptable to him and God will lead us just like he did Cornelius on on a journey of of growing God is a redeemer this is one of the most precious um characteristics of God um partly because this is what brought me to a turning point in my own life basically summing that up or to redeem something is to take something that should be destroyed it was on a path for destruction and to to save it from that and turn it into something beautiful something good and God in his character is so good that evil even evil when it touches him it becomes good um so I've shared a little bit about the perspective I had on God growing up I was I was raised in a very religious setting um in many ways not Christlike on different scores I grew up in a home where my parents are from non-menic background we were almost eight we moved to the first um Mennonite church and there were a lot of issues in in my family my father especially had a horrendous anger problem and um and along with that there was a lot of um perversion that um that went on um molestation and things like that as well as physical and verbal abuse um just was um just like the bath that that our family was was steeped in I've already shared a little bit about the uh the perspective of God that was was hammered into me along with a lot of scripture and um and so through the the things that were talked to me about God and about myself and the voice coming from the circumstances the things that were done to me the way things happened in my life I developed this this a deep depression and a self hate a self-loathing um from the time I was 13 I began struggling with suicide I would take a knife and push it against my chest until it made a mark I didn't have to quite the guts to go all the way through it but that was something that just lurked all the time just a self-loathing and self-hate and um I'm a very sensitive person by nature from the from the inside and so I tend to be very rather pensive and I take things seriously and I've had a very sensitive conscience and so I just struggled tremendously with fear um to the point of of being um a nervous wreck at times even though probably most people even up until the last several years probably most people don't know it because I'm the type I I'll steal myself when I'm in public um I just can't let it get the best of me but it eats at you from underneath and um the church situations we were in were very difficult um church got involved with my family and for whatever reasons um just did not see through things and us children got blamed we got told we were all the problem and if we would just um submit then all our families problems would would end um my parents had I grew up with fighting and arguing um and that kind of thing all the time and so as I grew up I I I began to aspire to a different god in a different life but um I left home and I and I hoped to to change some of those things I hoped church would be different I hope that I could get married and experience um warmth and blessing and closeness in relationships and those things didn't materialize um I left home and I ended up I lived and worked with a man that was abusive and and angry and and come to find out later was into some of the same things as was one on my own family and um some of the things that went on in my own family I didn't know about until after I left home and that was just devastating to find out that kind of perversion had gone on and um and all those voices just told me you're junk you're just there's something wrong with you you didn't you fell off the conveyor line and god doesn't pay any attention to your oyster you're doing something wrong and you're just not good enough for him and I struggled deeply with with depression and suicide and it was finally one time after I got balled out by my my boss and the guy I was living with until about 1231 I finally just sat there and just cried and slept for a few hours and got up in the morning about five o'clock to go help the far I was working for him um I have never felt Satan so close to me as in the truck that morning driving through the the early morning hours and I just I was just done with I was sick of being a boxing bag and um and just a frustration and a hate for myself and for life just grew and grew and finally I got out on a more open road and I just I was just gonna end it I just hit the pedal and just held it to the floor and last time I looked at the sparrow and it was on the high side of 90 and it was a 90 degree turn coming up and it was lined with oak trees and I was just gonna just smash into it and just as they say end everything and somewhere through the fog of my insanity um I'd be ashamed to tell you what was going on in that truck I mean I was I was done I was frustrated I was angry I was yelling and pounding the steering wheel and I was just I was sick of it all and um somewhere through that insanity I was in God shown enough light into my mind to help you remember it wasn't going to be the end and I'm not sure how but somehow I made it around that curve and went on to struggle and grow through with life um and um through the next couple years there was some courtship difficulties and disappointments the church had a massive eruption of problems we didn't have community for two and a half years and there was just things that were right simple clear things that were right and wrong were being shoved under the rug and dishonesty about it because of political connections and just where is God in that kind of stuff when the church the pillar and ground of the truth is is full of corruption um when the leaders were to give life and nurture are the ones showering criticism and and um and um and not being honest about what's going on how how are we supposed to see God and so I walked into Bible school in 2007 was encouraged by somebody who meant a lot to me I know they really cared about me and so I went I still want to do it was right but I was just I was just dry I just felt like God all God ever did was kick me in the face it didn't matter how hard I tried to to be good enough for him and I was with church I was just fed up if I would have had a clue where there was some place decent that didn't have church problems I'd have been out of there on a shower gravel shout and praise the Lord and um so that was Wednesday evening the Bible school started and um it was good environment um Saturday evening um there was a family there and I think they're listening on the clock here tonight um that's saying and then another brother um shared a devotional from Ephesians chapter 2 verse 10 and Ephesians chapter 2 talks about who we were dead in trespasses and saying we walked according to the courses where we were enemies in our minds by wicked works and children of wrath and then God was rich in mercy quickened us made us alive and has cleansed us and lifted us up and made us to be children of God and then it says in verse 10 for we are his workmanship created in Christ Jesus unto good works which God before name we should walk in them and the highlight of the devotional was that word workmanship and that word workmanship is the Greek word poyama which is where we get our word poem from and it means a product something produced in essence a fabric I like that picture is something woven and created um together but it's simply it's artwork basically it's the expression of a craftsman it's the same term used in Romans 120 when it says for the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen being understood by the poyama that his artwork is the things which he has made even even his eternal power in Godhead and the uh the truth that was brought out there from that passage is that when we surrender to God we become his artwork we become a demonstration not of the abuse and the the corrosion of the world in our environment many of our own mistakes but we become a demonstration of his skill his passion and his purpose his goodness and beauty and for some reason I was at a point where I was ready for that and it was like a little beam of light came down from heaven and I realized that God had been wanting to write a story in my life and I had been fighting it and that's where really for the first time I latched a hold of that truth and I bowed before God and said God I surrender I give up I'm okay with you writing a story in my life through some very difficult things and I want to surrender to that my job from here out is to surrender to accept what you allow into your job to bring good through it and I don't have to understand all that now it was the beginning of a turning point in my life um my perspective about the happenings my life began to change that's when the suicide left me um working through depression has been a long journey since that's something that I still get tempted with honestly this morning I woke up in the first impression we're just a kick in the gut like I you just did something really stupid last night um but I've learned how to fight that and I know I know where that voice comes from and I begin to reach out to God I begin to give thanks and just tell myself the truth what I know the truth is about what God's been doing in my life um and so that's been a very exciting journey um to move out of that darkness and to be to grow and overcome that that despair and that that cloud of of depression and condemnation and um and be able to grow in my security and God and in my Heavenly Father's love and be able to handle things that there's tests that have happened this spring in the last six months things that I never would have been able to go through before but God has been growing me and and with his help I'm able to be I'm able to actually go and grow through them so that's that's tremendously encouraging probably most people look at those things and they blink because I don't appear as being a shaky scared person um but God knows there's deep struggles and we can share the joy of the journey and the growth um that he's doing in my life um through that so that that passage is incredibly um precious to me um and that's why I can share my stories because I've given it to God and allowed it to be his story and um and it's as we step out in faith and we trust his goodness and we let him take control instead of fighting him and running from him about the things in our lives whether it's the shape of our nose or whether it's our family or whether it's um whatever it is that we look at and we wish it wasn't that way when we give that stuff to God it becomes something that he uses and he creates something beautiful from it so with that is the passage Romans 8 28 that's often quoted and we know that all things work together for good to them that love God and we should read that verse like that we should say and we know that all things work together for good to them that love God to them who are called according to his purpose most of the time when this verse is quoted we stop at the first part and we know that all things work together for good to them that love God well when people look at their life then they say how in the world is this working together for good well we need to read the whole passage we need to read the context and if we keep going to find out that is to those who surrender to his purposes and we don't even want to stop there let's go to the next verse so whatever he allows is because he has good design through it for those who yield to his purposes but in the next verse we find out the king James says for whom he did for know them also he predestinated to be conformed to the image of his son so God knew ahead of time the choices people are going to make and he has worked everything together so that those who yield to his purposes can become like Jesus and see that adjusts a lot of things in my life because that was my promise I had purposes for my life I just wanted to be normal I wanted to get away from this cloud of family reputation that surrounded the name shyly and and just settle down and go to a nice midnight church and have a nice little business and a nice piece of property and marry a nice woman and have a nice family just I just wanted to be normal and God had other things in mind and God wanted to use some very difficult experiences to shape me and to trim things off of me so that I become more like Jesus and it's as I as I give up my agenda for my life and I let him do whatever he wants because I know that he's going to make me more like Jesus that then then I can see the good that comes through those difficult things one thing that needs to get talked about with this whole thing about God working things out for good is is what do we believe about determinism or foreign knowledge and sovereignty predestination all that stuff I'm not going to go into a a long theological debate on that but I'm just going to tell you basically what I do believe if you want to learn more about that listen to David Brasau's message on what the early church believed about predestination and you'll learn there some of where some concepts about determinism in other words that God has a will for your a plan for your life and you have to you're supposed to marry that person and live at that house and that God has the script written on God does not write hours or other script he doesn't allow free choice he invites us to the stage and shows us what's going on and lets us choose to become partners with him as the protagonist or to be partners with the antagonist as we interact with with others and on the stage of his world he does know the choices we and others will make and he weaves I like that picture not that he controls him but in through our choices he weaves things together through it to bring good for those who choose to humble themselves and follow him God is a redeemer I love the story of Job in this this whole thing and Job's journey there's a couple people that I'm being sentimental here don't take theology out of this but it but when I get to heaven I would love to just give him a big hug and slap on the back and say thanks for sticking it out and two of our Job and Joseph run into Joseph later but in the book of Joe we have sort of played out on a in one man's life the big picture of what's going on and we're introduced to Job as someone perfect and upright um he's not the kind of guy that there's any reason for God to bring any sort of punishment if you please into his life there's nothing appear apparently nothing to be corrected and yet Job loses everything and Job screams out in some of the most gut wrenching and yet beautiful lament and pours out his heart to God he says God you I'm almost losing my sanity you bother me in the night and during the daytime I can't think straight and you can't you leave me alone long enough let me swallow my spit I love the way he's honest and point blank about his feelings with God and yet turns in respect and trust um Job asked why and finally God shows up in a whirlwind and takes Job on a virtual nature walk I think that's significant we're going to talk about that in a minute um and Job finally has a chance God stops and says by the way you you had some questions and Job just says no I'm I'm good I'm realizing that you operate in a you know in a world that I I don't even know how to start relating to trying to figure out when all the deer are going to have their fawns and how snow gets made and um how to handle a herd of t-rexes or brontosaurus or whatever you want to say Leviathan and be a moth are and Job finally has a chance to ask his questions but Job doesn't have any questions anymore they're not important enough to ask in in the end um Job never asks his questions but he doesn't need to and I think it's because he has learned that he can trust God he has learned he has become to realize that God has things going on God has wisdom God God um has a way of carrying out his designs that Job can't even scratch the surface of and so he he says with the with the hearing of the ear I've heard of you but now my eye sees you um he has no come to know God in a whole new way and trusted that God is good and God is going to bring good through this and the book of Job closes where we see a healing and a restoration coming um in Job's world um in the end and so this is an important truth to understand about evil pain suffering that happens to us is that when Satan tries to do evil he unwittingly does God's work in those whose hearts are turned towards him and so evil turns to good once a person chooses to listen to God and follow God and surrender to his goodness believe and trust um in his goodness evil actually ends up doing good another thing from the book of Job about this is we really don't really want answers we want a person just knowing why we say God why is this happening but if God would tell us why for one we probably wouldn't understand and number two it still wouldn't help because this is an emotional issue this isn't the issue about intellect we say oh okay so you know I know that if you cut my hand off it's going to be better for me so now it doesn't hurt no that's not the way it is we want a person um the answer to pain and suffering is that God shows us himself and we come to realize that we have a good father who is with us and is going to redeem what is happening um it's going to be okay in the end things are not out of control Psalm 4811 says for the Lord God as a son and shield the Lord will give grace and glory no good thing will he withhold from them that walk up greatly my life journey didn't end with in 2007 the bible school and there's been a lot of heartaches and disappointments since and this is something I've had to learn to to grapple with and in reality I have had to choose to to believe and act upon the antithesis of this that God will not withhold good from those who walk up rightly is that if God is withholding something from us then it must be that he knows it's not the force of this time there's something better I like this picture for those of you who can't see the this screen there is a girl standing there holding a little teddy bear in front of her and the traditional Jesus is standing kneeling in front of her reaching out asking for her to give up the teddy bear and he has this almost life-sized teddy bear behind him and he's saying trust me I have something better for you and the little girl is saying but I like this one and I love that picture because part of part of what we have to do in this whole thing is we have to become a child recognize that we're a child and humble ourselves before God and trust him and I see I see myself in that picture that as adults as an adult I'm the same way and I say God why can't I have this I wanted this it would be so good and I don't realize that God has something better for me not necessarily the thing I wanted maybe but he has a better thing to work in my life through it he's asking me to give up my hold on what I want in order to give me something better um but it takes it takes trust to be able to realize that I love this um this um outburst in the beginning of Isaiah 64 he says oh that you would run the heavens and come down and he goes on talks about how God used to came down and made the mountain smoke and straighten everything out came riding in and fixed all our problems um but then he says for since the beginning of the world men have not heard nor perceived by the year neither have the iseno God beside the what he has prepared for those who wait for him and um that's the challenge that I've had to accept in my life is it's really my choice am I going to get disillusioned with God and give up on him or stumble through life holding him at a distance because I don't think he's he's being fair with me or am I going to surrender to him and allow him to love me through the things that have happened the things that continue to happen and live to wait to to walk with him and to follow him to obey him and see the good that will come in the end or am I going to flip the switch and clock out and live with the with the devastation that that I'm seeing around me the question is in this is can we trust God so God's word says God is good and and and you know we can read Bible verses but when we look at the world around us and we the things that we were feeling we're experiencing when we're in pain or in suffering and there's evil going on around us doesn't look good it doesn't look like something we can trust is there's something tangible that we can't deliver our faith on something some evidence that shows us something good that we can that we can build our faith on this faith is not blind it but it calculates from what it can see and can know into what it cannot well God says that what may be known of God is manifest in them that's the created world well actually that's talking about humans in their consciousness for since the creation of the world his invisible attributes are clearly seen being understood by the things which are made even his eternal power and Godhead so that they are without excuse so God tells us look at what I have made and you will see who I am the things he has made or his artwork and that's what artwork is is is the expression of the artwork his character his values his vision his dreams and so I have found this incredibly blessing in my own life as part of my forays into science apologetics evidence for God and those kind of things you might some of those of you who know me my venturing into the world of photography was part of this journey of looking at the world the creation of God and being able to get a tangible picture of my heavenly father and his goodness I want to share one one that is of particular interest to me and that is the picture of God is a redeemer in the Hubble Ultra Deep Field project for those of you who can't see the screen the Hubble telescope is a satellite telescope is the biggest and bestest that man has has developed to date and so they did this project where they they pointed out a spot in the night sky is close to the big dipper it's about the amount of sky that would hide behind a grain of sand between your fingers you hold a grain of sand there and put out an arm's length about the amount of sky that would hide behind that and there was nothing there through the naked eye and through the through lesser telescopes they couldn't see anything and they decided to put the Hubble telescope there for a few days with some really good filters and processing and see if there was anything out there well this is what they saw in that dark spot and for those of you who can't see on the screen it is a picture that is full of not just stars but mostly galaxies spiral galaxies that have at a minimum tens of thousands of stars each and they've done computer calculations on that picture and the estimation is that there's approximately 10,000 galaxies in that picture in that dark spot that little bit of dark sky that we can't see anything in that would hide behind that grain of sand between your fingers at arm's length in that dark spot that's what god has going on they say it's approximately enough stars for everyone on planet earth to own give or take around three trillion each um i love that picture because if god's showing in his creation things he has going on that we have no idea about where we see blackness and nothing god has more going on than what we can see and that's been a comfort to me i've often prayed to god the god of the Hubble ultra deep field project um as i've looked at the blackness in my life or i can't see anything good coming out of it um and trust that he is good i'm not a derelict i'm not an orphan um left to grope for myself but he does have purpose and intent in my life um and is going to bring good out of it and i've lived long enough i'm thankful to be able to say i've lived long enough and began to trust god in these things long enough i'm beginning to experience the good out of it and that strengthens my faith as i look back and i see things a lot of ways my seven years teaching school was a little bit of a microcosm of life and i'm able to look back and see um some extremely difficult things i went through some students that were incredibly difficult and the good the the things that if i would have given up or got mad and thrown things to the wind or in the in the middle of it i would have missed out on so much and i want to allow that to continue to bolster my faith and help me to learn to keep surrendering to god to rest in him when i face difficult things when i face those fears that i'm going to be a failure a disaster um to trust that i will have things to learn um there will be things that will come in life to to bring me to brokenness but that god is going to do good um in my life as i continue to to reach out to him reaching out to me another one um these are just some top favorites of mine um there's lots of other fingerprints of god and creation that i love is the mambo broth set for those of you who um can't see the screen that's spelled m a n d e l b r o t it's like uh george schrader handle except it's mambo and then b r o t at the end the mambo broth set um if you search online for the secret code of creation by jason liall um you can um learn about that it's a set of numbers that the the the image you see on the c on the screen is nothing literally i cried and it just blew my mind what god has packed into this obscure set of numbers that we didn't even run into till the 80s check that out sometime if you want to spend some time worshiping god as you view his handiwork in the abstract world of numbers so the important thing is we need to realize that part of our problem is we look at suffering and pain in the world is our context and our context is so small and um so just simple things like a rainy day just a rainy day good or bad well it depends who it is are we a farmer who's praying for a crop so that we can make ends meet or so we can survive in some parts of the world we have food to eat or are we the vacationer who's having to sit under the tent instead of you know fishing out on the lake or whatever um it depends on our perspective and what may be may be um less than ideal for us is actually a blessing for somebody else or vice versa our context tends to be me my lifetime and the people I care about and that's not a good reflection on me because so I'm upset because the people close to me in my life it's not ideal for but maybe it actually is a being of the salvation to somebody else the life of joseph is an example of this um joseph transformed evil into good by his choice to follow god and be soft he's such a beautiful and such a healing person in his relationship with his brothers and then providing sustenance for the for the known world at the time basically um by choosing to surrender to god and remain soft through the devastation and if there was somebody in the bible story that it didn't pay it didn't appear to pay to to honor god and to be a man of integrity it was joseph you just you got punished for it every step of the way and i'm thankful for his example there um he waited and kept on faithfully trusting god and and just tremendous beauty and good came out of his life so our context is the uh is often the problem we look at right now and we get we get distressed and disillusioned and frustrated and upset um rather than being willing to be a child and say look god has more in mind than right now and as we listen to his word things are going to all turn for good if we if we choose to embrace his purpose of us becoming more like jesus and being able to be part of jesus revolution satan wants us to look at the casket and think this is it um last week and i i stood with my brother in his in his wife's family as they buried their father a man who was a tremendous blessing and nurture in in his family and in the in the community and in the broader context of his life and you look at the casket of a man who died um led to death and his features were not normal and just such an ugly ending to such a beautiful person and satan wants us to look at those things in our life our dashed hopes um the the pain or wrong done to us and say this is where it gets you following god and we need eyes of faith to look beyond that and trust and follow god um into the good that he has designed the question is when do we when do we clock out on god when do we say right god i'm gonna give you one more try and if you don't this time sorry i'm just gonna have to quit you just um we can't do that we follow along and we have to stick with him and um surrender ourselves to him and and follow to see what the end is going to be of his goodness pain also is has blessings um if we are exercised by it see us luis said that god whispers to us in our pleasure speaks to us in our conscience but shouts to us in our pains it's his megaphone to rouse a death death world pain lets us know we have a problem that there's a problem going on in the world so that we can avoid it ourselves correct it if it's something that is is indeed in our lives and um and so we can be more aware of how to be partners with jesus and um in redeeming it showing god's love bringing god's healing and um avoiding being part of that by following jesus and his commandments and living his way in the world i like the words of this song the title of it is the wound is where the light gets in by jason gray i was halfway up the mountain when the rocks i held gave way i came tumbling like an avalanche to the bottom where i lay and with the taste of blood and the twist of bone my healing could begin because the wound is where the light gets in i've stood there like a hostage with a knife held to my vein captive to the poison that i took to numb the pain because everybody wishes they were born with thicker skin but the wound is where the light gets in i love that that verse it's such a picture of what happens when we pull away from god and we look to other things to savour pain and we end up being held hostage to something that is is sapping the very life from us often as we look for something to savour pain because we pull away from god it's tricky how the heart works when the breakups and the big jerks make us never want to hurt that way again maybe i'm naive but in every scar i see the place where love is trying to break in because the wound is where the light gets in you can recognize the saint by the scars they don't disguise you can pick out a real sinner by the kindness in their eyes and that gives me someone who has been accepted and seen the fact that they have contributed to the evil in the world so if you're stumbling in the dark and bleeding at the shin remember the wound is where the light gets in i probably listened to that song about 40 times when i first discovered it and did some real crying and repenting and then just opening my life up to god as i just recognize that again that it's the pain the suffering that i experienced the difficult things in my life was god knocking and wanting me to give up to allow him to come in and be part of my life and bring healing and bring bring change to me through it pain limits evil the curse we refer to thorns and all that kind of stuff as the curse and yes it was a curse but in a lot of ways it simply limited man's ability to sit around and create evil if we didn't have to spend so much of our life just trying to survive imagine the evil and the and the the clever perversions and tortures for each other we would cook up i mean just think about boys who sit around and think of ways to tease their sisters if they didn't have any anything to do and then put that on the global scale for all of us it's in so many ways even the curse of work and things was a mercy to limit evil people can only do so much evil because in the end there it's gonna come back and bite them pain reminds us our hearts that this is not our home pain if we let it wakes us up to the reality there's there's more to this this is not the end things are not okay here and god wants us to to live here in a way we can be part of something better and greater a redemption of it that's coming pain is the anvil on which character is formed there are books written there are life stories about this besides my own many of you could probably share stories but even jesus it says he became complete or perfect through suffering pain is the anvil on which character is formed and pain is eclipsed in the good it produces the bible refers to a mother bringing forth child and the the labor pains and she forgets it the moment the baby is born and she has the delight of of the being able to meet the new life she's been carrying um then so many ways in the end if we if we wait this out and we follow god and trust him and obey him through this this life um the same will happen for us the solution to evil we talked about this yesterday but i think this is incredibly important you say it's god doing anything about this what is the solution to evil and christianity has reduced it down to that god wants to get us out of here because this whole thing is flawed and that's not what jesus what jesus says and it's not the picture of either the old testament or the new testament um when jesus came he began to preach and to say repent for the kingdom of heaven is a hand that he came to set up heaven living here on earth again he um the solution is a kingdom a community of people living god's way now it's a revolution to restore their good reign of god on earth and the reign of humans um with him and then in the end when when the time of fullness of time has come god is going to we're going to blip in a new heaven in new earth where in dwells righteousness there's going to be a complete union of heaven and earth god's space in man's realm again being able to be united together in fellowship and in partnership where there is no no evil so um the project isn't over yet and god wants us to join him in being disciplined by the suffering and the pain in our world to be partners with him in setting up something that is going to last forever and be good isaas 65 says for behold i create new heavens in a new earth and the former shall not be remembered nor come to mind it's it's going to be over and it's going to be gone it's going to be history in light of the good that will come revelation has several scenes like that where it talks about this and says things like um therefore there before the throne of god and serve him day and night in his temple and he who sits on the throne will dwell among them again this this union of of fellowship and and partnership together they shall need a hunger and any more no thirst any more the sun shall not strike them there any heat for the land was in the mist of the throne will shepherd them and leave them the living fountains of waters and this last part is very precious and god will wipe away every tear from their eyes so god in a personal way is going to bring an end to our sorrow in our suffering if we wait for him and if we follow him in trust and obedience evil is redeemed through suffering this is something that i really began to sink into me a couple years ago and in school through different our bible memory and study in different discussions we had this really began to sink into me and i i realized so much need in my life for a change in perspective but suffering is not a new sense to be tolerated but it's an atomic weapon for the christian it's god's way of turning evil to good that's how jesus came and ultimately defeated evil and opened the door for redemption is through suffering allowing evil to take itself out on him and responding by pouring good back into it and in that way evil is dissolved and peter is the peter's epistles are full of this i think it's because partly because that's why peter denied christ is because he wasn't willing to suffer he didn't want to hurt um to follow jesus and so he talks about this a lot in the last part of chapter two and three and four and five of first peter and so he says this is a passage is very well known charles shelton wrote his book in his steps um based on this but we need to think carefully and read the whole thing and see what it is that christ left us an example that we should follow in his steps and as we read we find this but if when you do well and suffer for it you take it patiently this is acceptable with god god looks at that and says wow now i am impressed with that um that's my kind of guy for even here on drew you were called to this because christ also suffered for us leaving us an example that we should follow in his steps of being willing to suffer in order to be part of the redemption of evil in the world and i think that's part of my problem is i was not taught that and i did not want that i i didn't have a perspective that following jesus was a life of embracing suffering following human embracing suffering and that is a weapon not just something to be endured but that is a weapon of absorbing evil and responding with god's goodness by allowing god's presence to live in me and i want to uh i want to continue allowing god to ingrain that in my mind and also as i as i lead others toward god i want that to be a major part of the picture i give them a following jesus that suffering is jesus way of defeating evil part of his upside down kingdom first timothy two second timothy two twelve says if we suffer we will also reign with him but if we deny him if we deny his way and his method of relating to evil in the world he also will deny us we will be left to ourselves i'm not gonna spend a lot of time talking about examples but there's many in the bible um there are many people through history there are people in modern history late uh contemporary history people who have been through a lot of suffering and have have become more beautiful people and have been able to leave a tremendous witness in the in their world want to talk a little bit about handling grief we talked a little up the beginning about this thing about can we trust god um it does god care and um handling emotions and some things i have found helpful for myself it's basically three steps one is reality we've got to face it i'm not a fan of this thing of trying to go back and dredge up in and create things that aren't there's there's times and places for some of that kind of stuff but we do need to face the reality of what happens um you don't need to forgive until you have unless something was wrong and um and then there's the whole thing of bottling things and just burying them and then they they rot because we're not okay but we're trying to say we are um living in the truth the truth sets us free in so many so many senses and lament this is a a thing that western culture we run away from at furals we're embarrassed to cry and those kind of things and i think there's there's a lack of wholeness in our in our societies because of some of this but lament the bible is full of lament and the Psalms and and lamentation and then jove and people crying out and just just turning into a puddle before god about what's going on and then have from that release being able then to turn into trusting god and to express confidence in god's god's goodness get it out um and as we relate to people who are have gone through pain we need to allow them encourage them to do that to get it out of their system and then move on to the deeper reality so this is what happened and it hurts i need to value what was lost and lament over it crying on my heavenly father's shoulder not as an orphan but cry to him and allow him to bring to bring comfort to sorrow with me and then move on to the deeper reality so how does god want how does who god is change my response to this how can god empower me to grow through this to become come better through it um how can he bring healing and wholeness to my life as a good heavenly father um and i found that a holistic approach those those things in cycling through as we work through layers facing the reality this has affected me um it was not okay and it hurt but then moving on to how does god who is how does god then who he has affect um how i handle this and my future expectations i like the reality in this song is by mark hall oh my soul oh how you worry oh how you're weary from fearing you lost control this was the one thing you didn't see coming and no one would blame you though if you cried in private if you tried to hide it away so no one knows no one will see if you stop believing oh my soul you are not alone there's a place where fear has to face the god you know one more day he will make a way let him show you how you can lay this down because you're not alone love the reality of this first here and now you can be honest i will try to promise this someday it all works out because this is the valley but even now he is breathing on your dry bones and there will be dancing there will be beauty where beauty was ash and stone this much i know helping the hurting i'm just going to run through this quickly um just i just want to mention some of this because it's um running through some well meaning some well well meaning people have made this journey very difficult for me at times and god has brought good through that um partly because i know not to do those things myself but just some some things to be careful of is for one we got to be willing to suffer so that we can be an example of trusting god's goodness and redemption weep with those who weep that's what the bible says to do and too often we we want to get over we want to fix the problem we and part of letting the pain work in our lives is weeping and sorrowing and grieving whether it's a lost loved one or whether it's um a loss of of um of innocence or whether it's um a loss of job or whatever it is a loss of reputation weep with those that we and then we can be part of the comforts don't lob roman's 828 grenades um don't just don't try to offer quick answers and just say well you know well we know it all worked together for good or i had this happen one time in the courtship break up that very night after we had officially i met her and said you know thank you for the privilege and i wish you the best in life and and we parted the very next night a couple who knew what was going on one of the major state well there'll be another one well dear i mean that was dear of them but right now i'm not interested in that i i loved her i cared about her i and it hurt right now and it wasn't don't don't do those kind of things um pain and suffering is messy and we have to be okay with that um don't just try to fix it weep with them walk with them and bring in trust in god and things like that let them see god's goodness through you and there's times to bring in that um the one man who probably has been the biggest influence through the last seven years of my life during that same time sat there and just put my arm around it around me and cried with me and just let me talk when i wanted to and he was also the man that i remember one time very distinctly we were i was just frustrated and sick of some stuff that was going on and i just blew off and i think i scared him a little bit and so finally he looked at me when i got done and he just kind of blinked and said well so where is god in all this and because of him soaring and weeping with me and listening to me as i as i pour out to him as a good friend my the things i was facing um he was in a position then to be able to call me to the deeper reality don't equivocate or act like you understand when there's no way you could don't try to say to somebody who's been through a deep abuse say well you know my dad sometimes he's thanked me too hard too or you know don't try to make it to level it out you actually ruin credibility by doing that remember people don't want answers they want a person they want to know that dad is still hearing he cares and it's going to be okay and let them see that through you um be an ambassador let them see that god loves and cares through your tears in touch i'm not saying don't bring truth but it just in my experiences these are the things that people need to be brushed up on not so much um how to give answers listen um especially when someone has gone through something in in private or in silence for years they need to be able to open up and talk so so listen and walk with them that's what jesus did as jesus way is discipleship which is an ongoing relationship of of mentoring of walking with someone with fellowship and then commenting into their life and encouraging them and showing them ways they can improve helping them work through difficult things that's the effective um help so the choice in wrapping up here the choice that we face is when do we when do we clock out on god when do we say god okay i've given you enough time you're not bringing good out of this i'm giving up really when do we do that are we somehow going to provoke the lord to jealousy or we're gonna make god feel bad and god's gonna say oh oh no no i don't want to lose you you know no we're the losers if we clock out on god if we if we withdraw from being exercised um by his his loving um training in our lives um do we think we're going to make god feel bad we're the losers if we quit this is something this is my experience as many times where i've wanted god to change things and i've threw a fit and i've gone and tasted sin and things like that i've become held hostage to the poison i took to numb the pain because i wasn't surrendering to god and ultimately what god does is god lets me try that stuff until finally i'm sick of drinking the cup of my own way and i'm ready i'm tired enough of it that i'm ready to accept something else except his option and to do what it takes to make it happen ultimately that's what happens and that's what we all have to get to is we're done with our way and we're ready to give up and accept the good that god wants to bring the story that god wants to write uh wants to weave into our life through our choices in the choices that others have brought to to plan our lives heber's 12 talks about this thing of chastening and and training and how it's it's a difficult thing and we need to be careful that we don't become weary and discouraged and sell out like esau did and this this statement i really like in is in verse uh things verse nine the end there says we we listened to our fathers we found out it was best to to go with dad's advice and and to listen to him shall we not much more readily be in subjection to the father's spirits and live um isn't it so much better than if it was good to listen to our natural dads to listen to our heavenly father and submit to his hard lessons in life and experience life um because of that because he is training us not just to make himself look good for his agenda but for our profit so that we can become like him and so the choice that i have had to face i continually need to face and the choice that each of us face is the fact that god resists the proud that gives grace to the humble when we resent what god has allowed in his goodness in our life and we resent his redemption of it and we pull away from him we push ourselves away from god we become something that god repels and so peter says therefore humble yourselves under the mighty hand of god that he may exalt you in due time casting all your care upon him for he cares for you and i think that's just a holistic um summary of what we've been talking about here is to humble ourselves to submit and give ourselves to the strange and mysterious ways of god in our lives because his purpose is to exalt us to lift us up and make us something better to make us like him partners with him in his his his um glorious triumph over evil and in the meantime cast your care on him don't cry it alone um come to him and pour out your cares to him the struggle to him because he does care about us i'll turn the time back over to uh to you brash thank you bill for the for the sharing that that you did here here tonight you have you have talked about how you've struggled with with um with suicide with fear with depression courtship disruptions and and different things like like that and we relate to story people can relate to story so well and i think that that for that reason it has and is resonating with with um many many people you're you're speaking from a place of of real of real experience and real pain the pain that that that you endured and and others are facing is not it's not an illusion it's it's it's real it's it's felt and and so and so you have provided an excellent um foundation an excellent excellent presentation on uh on the purpose of pain um giving your respect to the to the intense struggle of pain and and so some of the questions that came in and we'll turn to this one i think that was maybe maybe coming from last night's discussion isaia 45 verse seven says i form the light and create darkness i make peace and create evil i the lord do all do all these things and i think that um more than posing a question there was would you have a comment on on isaia 45 or seven yeah i knew that one was going to come up there's you can't talk about all of them i don't have a handy answer for that and i that is becoming such a comfortable position for me just be able to say hey i don't know i'm learning to quit trying to nail down and understand everything but at the same time i'm not in a place of ignorance that question doesn't bother me because there are other things that i feel like i've come to learn i know about god that helped me to be okay with not understanding that statement totally the question there is does god create evil uh i don't know god says that it's the same greek word or not greek word but the same Hebrew word is that uses a genesis when it says in the beginning god created the heaven and the earth i guess i would like to look at it differently i think that's a bad way of depicting things to say god created evil but i do know that god has created a world of free will because he is a god of love a god of relationship a god of community and partnership and so therefore he has created a world where evil is a possibility and he is he is sovereign and he super intends over that it is by his permission that those things happen and with his with his love his care and his his compassion with the happening and his purpose um his steadfast love and purpose to redeem it that's the best the way i choose to look at that i feel like to say god creates evil as is a is a a part of the picture that's very misleading i gotta ask that in school probably a a dozen or two dozen times that's that's a troubling passage thank you for that response so here's another question does god ever take away the autonomy that he gave us for example if a thief was stopped from carrying out his intended crime by a miracle etc yeah so suddenly there's a um if that happened in the bible a couple of times someone was struck with blindness you know so they couldn't carry it out um i i don't that that's an interesting an interesting question i don't know that would say god took away their autonomy but god stood in the way and and chose to bring good to bring people's attention to his goodness by by preventing it the person could still choose to keep fighting but there was there just um uh were hindered uh that's that's an interesting question i don't know i really have a really good answer for that and then god didn't change their choice he simply stood in the what chose to intervene and protect that's the way he chose to bring good out of that situation supernaturally intervened yeah okay brian did you have a comment on that uh no actually i i you might have saw me kind of sit up a little straight and that was a comment they just came in on isaiah this uh other back discussion and i'd actually read it in my septuagint and it was a little different um but it this this gentleman is saying that the septuagint does read a little bit differently it was a comment that just came in uh i and during the the course here i picked my bible up and that was septuagint and i noticed that there wasn't quite word at the same but i didn't didn't connect that so yeah that that is interesting so maybe bill i don't know if you read it in the septuagint before but check it out it is it is yeah yeah that's good that's a good point i'm i'm starting into to transition into that a little bit but i still the king james is my mother tongue so i would i would say this about it too is that seems like god has created real evil self-destructs in the end if people choose to relate to the world in a way that's not real in the end they bring their own destruction in some ways that that type of thing is the same way death death to to an evil person is that they are relating into the world in a way that brings their destruction and sometimes people may run into that type of thing sooner like in the illustration of god just creating an invisible wall so you know somebody can't molest somebody or something like that there's still our choice to interact in a way that we come up against consequences yeah okay thank you for for that so another another question here and this is probably a big discussion maybe one that can't be be covered too too too well here this is a very difficult subject on which you have been speaking on in in apologetics the problem of excruciating pain extends to to the innocent extends to the unaware god can can intervene can supernaturally intervene like we just said a minute ago but he does does not always do so and we have how do we reconcile i'll say it this way how do we reconcile god's sovereign goodness and and and and moral consistency can we ask it like that so you're saying the fact that god does not choose to intervene he lets horrific things happen right yeah that's right that i'm that's a that's a home territory subject because i've wrestled with that deeply in myself why did god let things happen to me and it's that's enough of a struggle but then why has god let it happen why did god let this happen to my siblings as a big brother to six sisters that's something i've had to grapple with is why why did god let this happen and why didn't i know about that to be able to stop and there's all kinds of things that i could say about that that i'm at rest with but one thing that has helped me to understand this is is we tend to look at god in the context of who we are rather than looking at ourselves in the context of who god is and i wrestled with that deeply in the last couple years with some situations of people like i cared deeply about it just seemed like the situation was there was no way out there was it was just going to end in there they were going to be turned aside out of the way and i had to come to grips with this fact that if i care about it in my sense of justice says somebody should stop this and it it burdens and greaves me deeply that love that sense of justice is something that is in me because i am a reflection of god i mean god's image and so therefore in the heart of the almighty has got to be exponentially more of pain and of burning in a of a just an overwhelming urge to do something about it that has brought rest to me is that my care the amount i care is all just a little picture of god's and so much more god cares and and he's allowing this not because he doesn't care and joys it but because there's something much greater to be to to happen through it um leigh strobel i think is in his interview with peter creft and uh the case for faith but he gives illustrations how as humans in a much much smaller way we do that gives the illustration of a father watching his daughter learn to thread a needle and she pokes herself and there's blood and it hurts and he doesn't do anything about it because if there's a greater good of her learning the freedom and and the excitement when she says i did it i got it and now she can do it and she can move on into other other realms um with my students as we talk about this that's at school um one picture that's helped been helpful to me and i think helpful to them is riding bicycle um as we all know that riding bicycle there's almost always there's some pretty big scraped elbows maybe even broken bones um in the process of learning to ride bicycle and yet all my students when i ask them if they become parents will they allow their children to learn to ride bicycle and they all raise their hands and i think that's just a in a small way i know that we're talking about you know molestation and rape and genocide and and those kind of things that it's on a much greater scale but we're also talking a much greater person and that in the same way that we will allow danger physical harm because there's a greater good of the freedom of being able to ride bike and go places and do things um and the same way the heart of of god as a father he allows painful things to happen because there are things this is where we have to submit and become a child and realize he has wisdom as we look at the creation he has things going on he has he knows how to work things together and create good and beauty that we doesn't even show up anywhere as close to our radar screens and we have to submit to that to that love and that goodness when he allows things like that but comforting myself with that that the love and the care the the pain the i feel the empathy i feel in the urge for justice is just a just a minuscule picture of of what resides in god's heart about the situation and yeah it's part of that that stamp of the of the divine we could say that god has a god is placed in in our heart um we can take things into our own into our own hands and and uh uh scripture say that that vengeance is mine i will i will repay says says the lord so of course there's coming a time when god and i will make things all right and you know our our duty at times is is to is to pray is to keep praying is to yeah so thank you for those those thoughts our knee jerk reaction to pain suffering in the world in our own lives is to run from it avoid it right and it's i we called to to to embrace it now it's one thing to say it one thing to say that but it's another thing it's another thing to to do it to embrace it is to is to walk through walk through it and learning those things that god wants to teach us you know the exercise by it yeah and having that having that understanding of of the wound is with has how the light gets and right yeah amen that was that was good thank you for mentioning that that song i i um i appreciated that um just a comment of of my own from from last night there was a few you had mentioned a few songs that that described the the struggle of the person that's crying out in in anger and and rebellion against against god and staying there staying in that place and so and so my thought was you know where are the where where's the literature where's the poems where's the inspirational yeah literature that we can read where people are wrestling with these same kinds of hard questions and yet finding faith yeah yet find god and so so when you brought some of those out tonight i was uh i was touched and blessed and blessed by that because you know most of us i can speak for myself i can speak for i'm sure most of our listeners you know some of those songs that reflect on the on the struggle and the and the rebellion you know it can touch a core it can cut it can touch a core deep deep down in my my heart but we need to check ourselves to make sure that we're not resonating with with the rebellion yeah or the or the bitterness we identify the strong we identify that we agree with the journey but we no longer right experience the the bitterness does that make sense yeah yeah definitely and there's there's many songs the ones i mentioned were more contemporary ones but there's many songs like for example it as well with my soul written as i forget the name of the guy john d could say it rattle it off right away but it was wrote that song sailing over the place where his wife and daughters had had drowned in shipwreck and um oh it was another one um the song um now think we all are god i believe it is yeah was written by a a a preach of the pastor of a church in i believe was germany or austria during the 30 years war after in a village torn by rampant by the rampages of war and pestilence and one i think it was one i forget now but it was a incredible amount of funerals in one year that he had um conducted in his small village including that of his wife and he writes the song now thank we all are god um who from our mother's arms is blessed us on our way with countless gifts of love and still is ours today and and the only reference to the suffering he makes there is and guide us when perplexed um that testimony of trust in god and um and accepting it you know and and being able to be such a vessel of healing in that that war torn in and time of pestilence is is um is um is astounded that and there's there are many of those yeah we need to be real careful about those so there's you know there's different songs and growing up the one some of you will know it the country song um if you're going through hell um you know in that rest day with because life is tough and it seems like everybody's just kicking you and and life just all it does is throws throws you a you know a bucket of rotten tomatoes for everything you do and so just be tough and just hang in there and you might get through it and i just i can't as i've as i've grown in my journey i just realized that is not the perspective of a christian the christian doesn't just buck up and handle it because life stinks he cries to his heavenly father and he allows himself to be comforted and he softens himself and surrenders to to the discipline the training um that god's bringing for this in his life so yeah we need to guard against that the lies that are in those expressions while they do express the the uh the sentiments that we we tend to have as humans it's it's not wrong to have to to have the struggle yeah right but right to harden ourselves to harden ourselves and to pull away from god is is to is to is to choose our own destruction yeah yeah so while we're while we're talking about this subject i thought of the song he giveth more grace yeah when the bird roger greater i won't quote the whole song but to our listeners if you do not know the story behind the song look that up because it's it's written by annie johnson flint he giveth more grace and it is a amazing story this woman had suffered a bill that we know the story better than i but but tremendously this woman had suffered tremendously and the song the song is just so when you realize that the song is so meaning and so so powerful another one is the song the love that will not let me go um was written by a young man who was engaged and he found out he had a eye disease that was causing him to go blind and his fiance his fiance broke up with him and in in that wrestling through that pain and that rejection but choosing to allow god's love to fill him and give him purpose he wrote that beautiful song um i traced the rainbow through the rain and know the promise is not vain that mourn shall cheerless be shall tearless be sorry all right brine did you have a comment there and i cut you off i said that's good stuff okay so let's see what we have for for some more questions um brian i don't have a sense for how much time we're spending here i guess if i'm doing going over time while you can alert us we should probably try to shut it down at the top of the hour here so that gives us about nine more minutes so okay thank you all right so we have another question here here and this question there's there's not uh there's not context here given so i'll just i'll just uh read it to you as it was sent to us how can a same-sex attracted person be a be pointed to the redemption of god of which you speak yeah uh that's a very touchy issue and i'm just going to be honest it's an issue i can't relate to from the perspective of of having that that um that appetite that orientation that um um i will say this um tim mackey has a really good message on that tim mackey from the bible project about marriage and sexuality and there's some real good realism about that and that um without talking about whether or not it's a legitimate to say that i have a certain gender orientation but the fact is is um is sexual sexual being sexually active is not is not a necessity is not a right and i'm i'm in a place in life where i have to grapple with that issue and deal with it even though i'm i'm i'm very heterosexual um but we we have to find places where we have to deal with and surrender and fit what we're experiencing in our feelings and our appetites are walking into what god is allowing in our lives in the in the way he has made the world i'll just say that from just my own personal experience it's not maybe dealing with the orientation and things but as far as dealing with the need for companionship and the sexuality side of it is is something that is not just uh is not just something that that that orientation has to has to grapple with and learning to surrender and realize that there is good and there is um there there is grace for god to um to help me to be able to be pure and to be a healthy person in my relationships um where i'm at in life is is um is the choice that we have to make um go ahead before we move on i'll i'll say a comment but go ahead joe no you that's fine brad you go ahead um you know one thing the person who submitted that um i've walked with someone in that journey myself and um but opening up about it you know and sharing it you know with and you would have talked about that like open up about it don't hide it just in but talk about that with with a trusted brother or sister um you can journey with you through that i think that would that would be tremendously healing i think it's too it's way too taboo um in in our settings maybe to just you want to conceal it and not talk about it but find someone you can trust to talk about that because it it is you know we live in a cursed world and because of that we grapple with these things with our flesh and um you're not alone and there are other dear brothers and sisters to grapple with this thing as well i i would like to say this as well about it as i've had friends that that's battled with that issue i'm glad you brought that up right about talking about because that's one thing i hear from those people is that what's one of the most difficult things is feeling like if i say i'm struggling with those or i'm having this these feelings that they're going to be ostracized um and we need to we need to change that yes um but also i'm i'm i want to be careful in saying this because i'm speaking from outside i don't know what it's like to be in those shoes but what i have observed in working with some people some from both sides both males and females that had um a homosexual appetite is that one thing i've observed in all of them is there's it seems like there often is some i'm not going to say all the time but what i've observed is there is seems like there's something that has happened in their life that has caused them to be afraid or have a resentment towards being a certain gender or closeness with the opposite gender um often there's there's some of that that at least plays into it i think god wants to bring healing um through um through the community of believers and through um openness and finding god's god as a father in their lives i hope that was i hope i'm not you know speaking out of place or without understanding there but that's just a one one perspective from some of the the people that i've been acquainted with thank you for your response to this question here moving on i have i have another question for for you bill actually it came it comes in a group of three which are all in a similar vein i think i'll just give them to you like uh like they came to me did you go for for counseling what is the role professional counseling these are these are good questions and is there such a thing as going for too much counseling i have never gone for professional counseling i have talked to some counselors and so basically like a one time session um but i've never like gone for a week or um that kind of thing or or longer um i have been blessed by a lot of people who walked with me in the journey and um it's just been a truth here and a truth there in a long long growing process through a lot of it um maybe some of that could have been helped by a session i will say this about counseling i think it has its place um i don't necessarily think that all the gifts in their fullness are given to every local congregation some of that is in the church collectively um on a broader scale that there are gifts given to to bring christ the christ healing and christ guidance but i do believe that the the model jesus sets up is discipling and that is the way that growth is is going to happen in person's life and that happens in close community um and so i do believe that counseling going off for counseling a church sending someone to be kept back counseled with the idea that they're going to go get fixed and they're going to come back and be and be fixed is really i feel like it's detrimental often for what i've seen and i think it can be helpful to get some people who are experienced to have experience in working through some of these things to speak into a person's life but it is going to be minimal in its impact if it is not um primarily nested in community and a mentoring uh discipling relationship excellent answer thank you we are going to run out of time here i think that maybe i'll i'll ask you one more question and then and then i'll read a few of these um encouragements that came in and the the question here is how do we if we know of some if we know of somebody somebody close to us who may be struggling with with depression or maybe struggling with suicide at a deep level um how can we how can we help how can we invest help them how can we yeah how can we best help them yeah that's that's a really good question one thing though i think is is is listen to them whenever somebody quits talking that's when you should get scared um because it's a prison and because we we no longer the lights not shining in we're not allowing input and something is sitting there rotting it's just us and satan to feed our fears and and feed lies into it um i know it's messy but i'm just i'm just sharing from i don't have a professional opinion i've not lived through 10 lives um i am indebted to god's goodness through um men who have and their wives who have put up with with the time i've taken from their husbands as well as just good ladies but um i'm indebted to men who have been willing to sit there and listen to me and walk with me through and give advice give give tell me painful things at times um it's been a long journey um i've been talking i'm talking 20 years um i couldn't have shared this kind of thing 10 years ago hardly i was just the beginning the first talk i gave on why god allows suffering in the world was very elementary it was 2010 um and what i would share today is just is completely different in so many ways it's going to be a messy journey that's all i know how to say and god has a messy journey and we're walking with us and if we're going to be partners with him it's going to be that way encouragement just spending time with them um yeah those i'm just i'm just looking at my own life and some of the things that have helped me but at the bottom each person does have to choose whether i'm going to listen to depression or whether i'm going to cry out and be willing to take the hard steps of faith and trust and i'm telling you it's not easy and i have i have fought some horrific battles i have in the same way i jumped up and down and pounded the steering wheel that morning i nearly committed suicide i have battled i have yelled and and cry out to god and then yelled at satan and declared just there's been times i have just yelled up and down i fought a lot of battles on the road um and just yelled up and down god is good i'm gonna trust him god is good i'm gonna trust him because for me there wasn't any way out um god didn't bring something else that fixed my problem and we lived happily ever after and i just faced with i'm going to go nuts literally um if i don't just choose to just do the hard work of choosing till to just fix my mind and fasten my mind on this like philippians chapter four um six through eight tells us uh so i don't know if that answered the question but just some of some of my perspective just sharing what's what's happened in my life yeah god give us god give us grace and empathy to to relate to people have to have to give safe spaces for people to to have have these conversations um with us you know we live in we live in it interesting and difficult i guess you could say time when when people are people are seeking many many alternate ways to escape their their existential pain and through drugs through alcohol huge problem huge problem in our in our country and and they're doing it because the the pain of their present reality is is too great to bear and so they seek to to medicate they seek to numb it i guess you would say by by taking drugs by taking alcohol but um but yeah before we get off this line i mean let's let's just point people to jesus brothers come on to me i said all all ye that are weak and are heavy laden and and i will give you rest right and you'll never and you'll never experience that until you decide to try it without reserve yeah bill um thank you so much joe i'm sitting you're done here or you have some more well sorry yeah i was sorry i was just going to there was basically two comments brian by a way of encouragement that came in that i was going to mention and then and then i will i will be i'll be finished and and this these are actually directed to you bill and oh i want to say one other thing and that is we have not addressed every question that came in right um thank you very much for these questions these are all very important questions and um we just for for lack of time we have not been able to to touch them all but thank you for engaging with them i hope that you have all um found this to be this to be helpful but bill this was addressed to you you speak from a real place bill i really enjoyed the message today your candor your honesty and vulnerability and using scripture to put it all together nice i wish to add if i can second Corinthians 12 8 through 10 summary for when we are weak then i am strong when we place our trust and pains in god he makes us strong when we are weak amen thank you okay there's another one if i can find it here this is an excellent summary of the role of pain and suffering in the life of christian may the lord bless bill for his transparency and for coming to terms with that design and calling on god in how to respond to his experiences so yeah i think with that bright i'm going to hand it back over to you and also thank you thanks to you bill shiley and god god bless you very much yeah thank you i'd like to say this about is thank you for the encouragement but god god has blessed me and he is blessing me and one of the ways he's going to continue to bless me is by more pain in my life i know that um and so this is this is not a journey that's over you know this isn't bill's all fixed now and he is over things this is going to be a lifelong journey of learning to trust god allowing to redeem redeem me and um and when i want you to go away with is not bill shiley but this is god's story and if if you need to quit on god then i need to quit on god but if god can change my life and he can bring good out of the evil that i've suffered and good in my family um from the evil that we've suffered god can also do it in your life and it's him that's going to bring answers to your life not me um and simply simply a vessel so latch on to him yes amen yep he'll make you into a beautiful artwork right very good yeah so joe i'm just going to ask you then just to close the prayer here just in a minute but yeah thank you bill god bless you we said thank you for the privilege we still have a lot of people on the call we stayed on right to the end here stuck it out for two hours but it wasn't sticking it out it was um i think we're all we're all here and we've we've been pulled in and you take us on the journey and uh it's impacted us yeah thank you again i would just ask all of us who listen to this call to um pray especially for bill over the next over the next days uh when you do um this is why you gave this talk now twice this week in one week yeah it's it's well i guess it's next week we know it's not next it's you this is the we're into sunday here so um but last week last week we gave this talk four times or twice four sessions so god bless you for that and so let's we'll we need to surround you in prayer especially at this time to certain of that so i would like to end this with that quote from east sandley jones and he says this we now know that god is like jesus he is christ love and if he is he is a good god yes if the heart at the back of the universe is like this gentle heart that broke upon the cross he can have my heart without fall of the king and without reservation amen amen so uh you've lifted up jesus and we can continue to lift him up and that this god that can seem so distant if he's like jesus and we know he is just yeah if you close this prayer please yeah let's pray father we come to you at this at this time the at the close of of this of this meeting and father we thank you for the way in which you have you have spoken to us tonight we thank for we thank you for your faithfulness in in bill's life we thank you for how you have you have rescued him from from depression and despair and and suicide thank you for that and i just pray for for him specifically now in the in the next days and weeks that that you would in the name of jesus that he would be he'd be kept he'd be kept safe he'd be kept strong he'd be kept faithful lord and uh and not just for him but but for all of our all of our listeners on this on this line here tonight all of the viewers on the line here tonight just lord would you meet each one where they are in their journey we're not all that we're not all the same and yet we're a lot the same we can resonate with what we've heard today but lord you have given us you have given us your son jesus he is not a stranger to suffering and pain but he has entered into our experience and endured the cross for the joy that was set before him he did this for me he did this for for each person on this on this call here tonight and i just pray that you would you would bless each each person and and help each one in their struggle in their journey to continue on may they be refreshed may they be encouraged to uh to continue on and and find and find you faithful thank you that that you give more grace when our burdens grow greater you send more strength when our labors increase to added afflictions you add your mercy to multiplied sorrows multiplied grace thank you father thank you for this time bless my brothers and sisters on this line in jane amen amen thank you thanks again brother bill thanks for the gift thank you god bless you all