How is life going for you? Are you in a season of peace, the seas are calm, all seems right with the world. Are you in a season of uncertainty, pain, disappointment, fear? Have you ever cried out ‘WHERE ARE YOU, GOD?! ARE YOU EVEN THERE! CAN’T YOU SEE MY PAIN, THE PAIN OF MY LOVED ONES, CHILDREN, THIS WORLD, WHERE ARE YOU?!”. There is a saying, you are either going into a storm, going through a storm, or coming out of a storm.
Sometimes we can be riding that boat on the calm seas, children are great, marriage is great, family is great, job is great, health is great. Then BAM. The waves come out of nowhere, and capsize and toss about everything we knew. You think ‘I didn’t even have time to react’.
There is no one immune to the pain, heartache, disruptions in life. No one. Some may seem to have greater sufferings than others.
Is God really in control?
There were times in my life, one of the greatest capsizing waves I had faced, on January 9th, 2002 to be exact, when my very young sister at the age of 32 died after long suffering from cancer, leaving 3 young boys and a husband behind. The healing didn’t come. After days, months, a couple of years of praying and fasting. The healing didn’t come. I screamed at the top of my lungs on the interstate on the way to the funeral “Where are you, God?!!’ To be honest and transparent, I even screamed ‘Go to hell’ and intended in that moment to never attend another bible study, never to open a bible or attend a church ever again. True story. I was done. I was weary and heavy laden. And I felt He didn’t show up, was He ever really in this. Did he really ever care?
But…He has a promise in His word…Romans 8:28. And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose.
The next evening, standing there at the wake, so unexpectedly, , there were over 1,000 people that showed up. Even her oncologists. They don’t come to funerals. The funeral director told me that was more than the mayor of his small New Jersey town had. One after another after another spoke to me how she changed their lives, and they found their faith in Christ through her testimony, peace, and faith despite her suffering. Her hairdresser, her neighbors, the grocery clerk. The priest (she was Catholic by marriage), cried at the funeral, saying he had been a priest for 30 years, when he went to minister to her, she turned the tables on him, and showed him what it meant and what it looked like to have a relationship with Christ, which He never had. He gave his heart to Christ after 30 years of being a priest.
Now the number doesn’t matter. Whether it is one or 10, or whether it is 1,000, to have been able to somehow use everything together for good for our own journey, or for the journey of others, ourselves, our children, others around us, it is not meaningless. Even if it is just one.
2 Corinthians 4:16-18
16 Therefore we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day. 17 For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. 18 So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.
In a John Piper sermon jam – so movingly said “not only is all your affliction momentary , not only is all your affliction light IN comparison to eternity and the glory there, but all of it is totally meaningful, every millisecond of your pain from the fallen nature or fallen man, every millisecond in the path of obedience is producing a peculiar glory you will get because of that. I don’t care if it was cancer or criticism, I don’t care if it was slander or sickness. It’s doing something, it’s not meaningless. Of course, you can’t see what it’s doing. Don’t look to what is seen. When your mom dies, when your kid dies, when you got cancer at 40, when a car careens into the sidewalk and takes her out, don’t say it’s meaningless, it’s not. It’s working for you an eternal weight of glory. Therefore, therefore, do not lose heart. But take these truths, and day by day, focus on them. Preach them to yourself every morning, get alone with God and preach His word into your mind until your heart sings with confidence that you are new and cared for.”.
I will to this day never understand the extent of why so young my sister had to endure the suffering she did. I know I will never ever understand it on this side. I saw a brief glimpse as the veil was slightly parted at her funeral. I came to realize His truth – even if it is not evident in the present moment, I know that I know He will show up and use it all for good. He has shown it in the past, in His word, and in the present.
I want you to reflect upon…In what ways have you seen the Lord use things for good in your life? In others’ lives around you? Or how could you imagine He could use the current or past trials and tribulations somehow for good?
Moses. Can you imagine placing your tiny baby, your 3 month old in a basket in a river, because of the horrible tyrannical times of government you lived in, hoping he would be found, and you had no idea what would happen to your precious baby? (Do you feel that way sometimes with our own children during these times of uncertainty, what could possibly lie ahead for them?) Regardless of even this or the 40 years in the desert, God had a plan, and used it all for good.
Daniel. This has honestly been one of the most powerful visuals to remind myself of God being in complete control. Although he had a whirlwind life of quiet childhood, snatched into slavery, favored by the king, then sentenced to death in a Lion’s den, the visual that sticks with me is the win-win situation. As the lion’s prowled around him, wanting to devour him, him raising his hands in the lion’s den to the light, knowing either he’d be delivered to the Lord (to be apart from the body is to be with the Lord), or to be delivered from the lions. Either way it was a win-win.
Ruth. She lost everything. Everything. Her husband, provision, her home. She risked it all to go to a strange place with her mother-in-law and commit herself to the one true God. And you know what? He showed up. God gave her provision and a new husband, and a purpose – she was to be the lineage for the Messiah – she would have never seen this on her side of eternity – how He was using it all for good.
Joseph. He had it all. Nice comfy family, nice comfy prosperous family farm. Great future ahead for him. No worries. Until, like the others, lost it all. Almost killed by his brothers, sold into slavery, accused of unspeakable crimes. But his obedience and love of God through it all, knowing somehow God was still in control and would show up, he rose to second-in-command, saved many from starvation, and God restored all in his life. As Joseph said to his brothers “And as for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good in order to bring about the present results, to preserve many people alive” (Ge 50:20).
God is in control. And He cares. And he will use all things together for good.
Isaiah 61:3 To bestow on them a crown of beauty instead of ashes, the oil of joy instead of mourning, and a garment of praise instead of a spirit of despair.
God is alive and present in lives today. In recent times, from Corrie Ten Boom, who during the Holocaust faced unexplainable suffering, yet continued to spread her hope of Christ from the concentration camps up until 1983. Horatio Spafford, lost all four of his daughters on the vessel that had sunk going across the ocean. Like so many previous hymn writers and current contemporary Christian song writers that had poured their pain and hope into their songs, his song ‘It Is Well With My Soul’ went on to inspire and touch millions of hearts and lives with the reminder of hope.
To Nik Vujicic who was born with no arms and no legs (can you imagine how his parents may have screamed out to God, ‘really, God?’). And he has went on to reach millions with the hope that can be found in Christ. Can we not see how, as Nik said ‘send me’, how God used it all together for good to spread that hope? Bethany Hamilton, an avid surfer, who lost her arm to a shark – using that suffering to spread the hope of Christ. To Joni Eareckson Tada, paralyzed from the shoulders down after a cliff diving accident as a young girl. Again, a ‘really God?’ moment. She also has went forward to touch many lives. To our local Barrick family, who’s minivan was struck head on by a drunk driver literally on the way home from their 15-year old daughter Jen singing worship that night, and being left with all in critical condition and Jen with permanent brain injury. But God using all of this to again spread His hope in the midst of suffering through their Hope out Loud ministry that has brought tens of thousands to Christ.
No one wants to carry this cross. Not one. Not even Jesus in Luke saying “Father, if you are willing, take this cup from me; yet not my will, but yours be done.” His intense suffering was not meaningless. He rose again.
Even we have that hope that the smallest and greatest of our suffering is it not meaningless. He promised in His word He will use it all for good.
He can use our smallest of trials and sufferings to the greatest to bring hope to ourselves and others. The numbers don’t matter. Whether it is one or a thousand, or transformation of our own life, He somehow can work all things together for good.
Do you think the Lord can use your current story for good? Your past for good? How do you think He would be able to weave all things together for good from your past, present, and future?
On this side of the tapestry, things can look so ugly, so chaotic, so messy. But when the tapestry is turned over, it is all woven together for good, into a beautiful masterpiece.
There is a Japanese art called Kintsugi. It is where an artisan repairs broken pottery with gold. It not only makes it stronger than before, but it makes it even more beautiful. The premise is, brokenness does not destroy an object, but the Lord can turn it into something more beautiful and even stronger than before, and even make it into a masterpiece.
I know for myself, even in the midst of my doubt and not even being able to conceptualize how He could possibly use everything together for good, I have seen the beauty, restoration, and how He truly has used everything, everything, together for good. There are a few I will be waiting on, and may not see the other side of tapestry on this side of eternity. But one thing I know that I know. He is real, He is loving, He is present, and no matter what is going on in our lives, our community, our world, He is working all things together for good.