Welcome to the For the Gospel Podcast, where we provide sound doctrine for everyday people. I'm your host, Costi Hinn, and this is episode two of a three-part series with my friend Tim Chalice, who's been walking us through an understanding of seasons of sorrow. That's the title of his book. I have it here. If you're watching, you can see it on your screen. Phenomenal book about his journey and continued journey with his son Nick going home to be with Jesus. If you haven't heard the first episode, I'd encourage you to go back and watch it or listen to it as he takes us into that story. But in this episode, we're going to talk about God being good, God's sovereignty, some theology and doctrine. I think great and challenging topics. And I just want to welcome back Tim. Tim, thanks for being on the For the Gospel podcast.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, thank you. I'm glad to be here.
SPEAKER_01All right. I want to get right to it. My first question is about God's goodness. We hear, I grew up in a church that did this. Preacher would say, God is good, and all the people would say all the time, and then end all the time, and everyone would say, God is good. As Christians, we, all of us, can be guilty of what I would describe as prosperity gospel light. It's like the diet version. You're not, you know, flying in a private plane and wheeling and dealing the gospel, but we think at times, because we're Christians, we follow Jesus, everything's going to be good, and that because God is good, uh, his definition of good is the same as ours. Can you help us understand? And I know you're gonna kind of go on a run here because I know this ain't a quick answer. Help us understand God's goodness, quote unquote, in the midst of something so terrifying, so painful, uh, so difficult as what you went through. I've got more questions for you, but could you start us there?
SPEAKER_00Sure. Um I I I've been in churches too where they said that God is good all the time, all the time, God is good. And it's one of those things that I think is so precious and yet can become so trite. And it all depends on how you're defining goodness and what you're you're attempting to accomplish through a phrase like that. It's funny how those things can happen. But I understand God's goodness to be the overflow of his character, if you will, or maybe the overflow of delight God has in this triune relationship. It just overflows from God into the world around. It overflows in love, it overflows in kindness, it overflows into grace and mercy. And so God is uh God's goodness is his display of who he really is, what he's really like. And we get to see that display. Not only that, but we get to be touched by it, impacted by it. We get to see it all around us, we get to benefit from it. And um because God is good, it means he's loving instead of cruel. It means he's kind instead of harsh. And I think as it pertains to grief, it means he's always up to noble purposes, not ignoble purposes. So uh that means we can trust that everything he does or everything he permits, depending on how you see those things, um, is in some way a manifestation of his goodness, which is to say God can never be ungood or not good in everything God does, in every way he acts. He is in some way being good toward those he loves. And so God will never give us anything that's ultimately meant to harm us, ultimately be bad for us. It may feel bad in the moment, it may be hard to spot the goodness in it. We may never see the good in it until we die and go to heaven, but somehow we know that God's goodness has not been taken away, it's not been uh removed in that moment.
SPEAKER_01That's super helpful. I have a a question about God's goodness and maybe a caricature, but also uh I know caricatures are usually just completely superimposed on things and twisted, but maybe just well-intentioned people will put Bible verses together and form a theology. Here's what I mean. James 1:17 says every good and perfect gift comes from above, and it speaks to our God who does not shift. There's no shifting shadow, he's not a finicky God, every good and perfect gift comes from him. And then we think of earlier verses, James uh one, and you got verses two to four, and we're to consider it all joy when we encounter various trials. So some people may misunderstand in Christianity that circumstances that are yours are really just gifts from God, and you're supposed to count it all joy. Now, this is where I think it maybe a both end, and you talked about this last time a little bit, how we need to be careful of holding things in tension. But can you help us understand the distinct difference between what happens as the result of sin and the broken world we're in, and then what is God's allowance of trials along with his goodness and the ability for him to work things out for good? But like, would you say, oh yes, you know, in the moment, November 2020, Tim Chalice is just supposed to say, Oh, I'm just trying to figure out how this is a good gift from God. You know, Nick has died, and now I just it's good because by the Bible says that it's from God, and since God controls everything. Can you pastorally help us understand trials, goodness, how all that plays in?
SPEAKER_00Yeah. So we do live between Genesis chapter three and Revelation chapter 22. We live in this hard time between humanity's plunge into sin and God's full and final redemption of us from sin. And that doesn't just include the sins we ourselves are prone to or the sins that we ourselves commit, but the consequences of sin that have rippled out over this world. And one of the consequences of sin is death. And so uh we all must die. We all will die. Death entered this world because of sin. That doesn't mean that every death or every negative experience comes from sin or is the result of sin. It just means that there is sin in this world. Um, on the other hand, God's character has not changed. Um, even in our most difficult times, our most difficult days, God hasn't changed his character. He's not a different God than he was when everything was going well. So God is as good in our losses as he is in our gains, or he's as good in the Valley of the Shadow of Death as He is in the green pastures. God's character doesn't change. He's um God is unable to change. And so I think when we're in those moments, when we're in those times of great sorrow, we just need to keep our mind fixed on what we know to be true of our God, who we know him to be or who he's revealed himself to be. We might not be able to see the good, we might not be able to feel the joy, um, but we can know that God's character has not changed. We can know that God's heart is still inclined toward us, we can know that he continues to love and care for us. And our experience was very much that in our sorrow we we knew, we knew that God was caring for us, that God's heart was with us, that his heart was inclined toward us. Um He had not stopped being God, He had not stopped being good, He had not stopped being our Father who loved us. Um so yeah, maybe I'll leave it there for now. But God's heart is always inclined in love and goodness and mercy toward those he loves.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Super helpful. I the the question that I think people really want to know who have not endured what you have and gone through and are going through what you have is what would you say to someone or not say to someone in the early days of loss? Is that the time that we should throw out kind of one-liners about God being good? And I know even the way I'm asking that sort of makes it a bit of a cheeky approach to it. I don't mean to, I'm just saying, is it is that the time? Because there is a place for encouraging sentiments. Is it not? And then how do you process for you as a grieving individual that there are well-intentioned sentiments from people who don't know what to say, but they're trying to offer some sort of spiritually uplifting statement. Give us some wisdom in light of goodness and sovereignty and what God's doing and what people are trying to say are the things we should and shouldn't offer our grieving friends.
SPEAKER_00Okay, there's a lot bound up there. I might forget some of it, so come back if I if I neglect some of it. But one thing I in in our last episode, we talked about how even in your darkest moments, you're not absolved from displaying Christian character. You continue to serve, and you can't let yourself be um, you can't let your grief be an excuse to sin or to think that, well, because I'm going through such a hard time now, God won't really mind if I go off the rails a little. Still, Christian character needs to be displayed even in that moment. So even when we're going through those hardships and people come to us and say things that might be unhelpful, that might be hurtful, even in that moment, we're not absolved from the need to display Christian character. And so we we did our best in the early days. We we had heard enough to know that people were going to say things that were hurtful. We said right from the get-go, we are going to do everything we can to receive everything as love. And to say, is there anything in there we can take, anything in there that can bless us? If not, we'll set it aside and realize we've probably done something like that ourselves in the past. We've our intentions have been good, but our our ability to come through on those intentions has been poor. Um, so we won't fail to display good Christian character even in this moment. And so that's my message to people who are suffering. Take whatever comfort you can and just choose to overlook in love whatever might offend you. The message to those who have the opportunity to bring comfort is to, well, one, understand the circumstances. If you're speaking to somebody who really understands sound doctrine, somebody who's um really knows his Bible, knows theology, you can speak to that person differently from somebody who's a brand new Christian and maybe hasn't grappled with some of those big things. But you can always just express your sorrow. You can always weep with those who weep. That's maybe not as much of a North American way of processing grief. I think there's people elsewhere in the world who that's literally what they do, and in its own way, that's very helpful, just to go and cry together. Um, and you can always bring certain truths. Psalm 23 is always the right thing to bring to somebody, just to read the psalm, speak less rather than more, listen a lot, allow people to sit in silence, and maybe most of all, don't try to fix it. Some things cannot be fixed, they just have to be dealt with or accepted or endured. And so you can try to fix things. Well, at least he wasn't, or at least he's in heaven, or those sorts of things. That's trying to fix it. No, you can just sit with people in their grief and not try and patch things up.
SPEAKER_01Man, so good. Do you do you think that we need to teach on this more uh in the church? Are there classes? This is a side note kind of rant, but are would you recommend that pastors, I'm one and and others listening to this or churches, have some sort of teaching or equipping class or small group or way to equip people? I'm not talking about uh a grief share group where let's send you know the chalicees and everyone into their group to sort of grieve and talk about it. It's not that I'm talking about like the body of Christ being equipped to uh walk with each other more. Is that something you've heard of now and seen and thought, man, that that actually is really helpful?
SPEAKER_00I haven't heard of it, and I could see benefit in it, but I do think if you're preaching scripture, you're just preaching the word week by week, you'll be equipping people to do that. If you're preaching the book of Job or you're preaching Jesus outside the tomb of his friend and so many other places, you'll encounter that. Speak truth in love. I mean, what a great call there in Ephesians 4 to it's good to speak truth. But you can speak truth not lovingly, which means you can say something that is true and bring harm or even sin against somebody, even though you're speaking the truth. You need to speak truth in love. And so in a time of grief is a great opportunity to consider what truth does this person need to hear? Is this the loving time to tell them the truth? And if it is, is this the loving way to bring them that specific truth? And so I think if we're preaching God's word, we're calling people to Christian character, we as pastors are trying to apply scripture to real life situations, I think we'll cover it. And I think people will hopefully um understand what they are to do and are not to do, and yet they're sinners, they'll fail, they're weak, etc. And so that's where those who are grieving will also have to be willing to overlook things in love.
SPEAKER_01Spoken and answered like a true expositor. You tell me, just go verse by verse through the Bible, Costi. Oh, so good, super helpful. It helps, it helps. It really does, doesn't it? Okay, your uh you have a manifesto on page 37. This fired me up. Again, your book leaves people and parents, I have two sons, in a mixture of tears and confidence and and joy and perspective, also just education. It's phenomenal. You have a manifesto and I dog eared it, noted it. If this ever happens to me, I'm going to page 37. That's I've already determined in my heart. That's what I will do. Where did that come from? And can you tell people about it? I could I'm happy I'm happy to spend the entire episode just reading it, but it's better talking to you about it.
SPEAKER_00The manifesto is simply my statement to myself of how I will endure this grief for the long haul. And so the early days had come and gone. It was now setting in as okay, this is something I'll have to bear for as long as the Lord gives me, which might be days, might be decades. Um, so how am I going to carry this grief? What will I do with it? And so it was my call to myself in good manifesto format of how I would do that. And part of the reason I felt I needed that was that I have this tendency to feel sorry for myself. So I thought, if I don't guard myself against this sinful temptation, I'll I can just so easily become all wrapped up in myself. There's different things I could do. I could become useless to the Lord's purposes and just drop out altogether. Or I could make Nick's death my identity. That could become who I am, the first thing I'm always going to talk about. Um I've met some people for medical things. That's guarantee within the first few minutes you talk to them, they're going to talk about their medical things as if that's now their identity. I so didn't want that to be my identity as well. Um, so I knew there were all these different temptations, and so this manifesto is my way of calling myself to certain goals or purposes in my grief, and something I could go back to from time to time. Very shortly after the book came out, I had somebody write to me and say, I deal with a lot of parents who go through grief. I would never give them your book because of that manifesto. I think that would be so unhelpful to people. And yet, interestingly, I've gotten, I think, more feedback on that chapter than any other, not just from people who've lost a child, uh, grieving widows and widowers and so on, who the idea of a manifesto of calling yourself to something, then holding yourself accountable to it, has really um bringing the got brought them a lot of joy and given them a lot of purpose in their grief. It's really uh motivated them to do it well. So um I do understand that in order to have a manifesto, you first have to embrace God's purposes in it. You first have to submit yourself to God's sovereignty. But once you've done that, now you can say, well, here's how I I want God to use me because of this. Here's how I want to serve God because of this burden. He himself has called me to bear that somehow in his sovereignty he deemed right and good for me.
SPEAKER_01Man, I I'm sure they meant well, whoever said that in email. That just I I read it, and I know I'm on this side of things, but I know there's folks in my church who have gone through stuff. I'm looking at it right now. I am tempted, but I will not read the entire thing. But well, uh it'd be a great um blog post to plug your book, and I probably will. But man, this is it's so raw and honest, and the way you talk about things and honest. But I see a man who and a woman, I know that your wife and and daughters and sisters, your family are are behind a lot of those words and share them with you. I want to ask you a question then that's kind of tied to that and where that comes from. Because as Christians, we go through the valley of the shadow of death, and you did, and and still, I'm sure, have waves and bouts of grief, no doubt. But why is doctrine, or I guess the obvious question is how then is doctrine related to your view and how does it prepare and sustain us? Is your manifesto kind of a sneak peek into how your faith carried you through? Not that it's all well, I'm fine, but speak to doctrine and how important it is for people to have a theology of of this before it happens, even if they can.
SPEAKER_00For those who are interested in the manifesto, I did put it on my website, and you are 100% free to copy it and paste it and change whatever details you want. You don't have to credit me, you don't ever have to think about me again. Feel free to take that and make it your own. I know a number of people who have done that, and it's just again motivated them. Um I am so thankful that I had a good amount of doctrine already worked out before we went through this loss. And I'm so thankful that by God's grace, I had um taught my children to accept this doctrine as well. And a lot of that doctrine is simply what we call reform theology, which is the doctrine of there is a big and sovereign God over this world, and we don't exist ultimately for our own good, ultimately for our own glory, ultimately to fulfill our own purposes. Neither are we mere pawns of God here on this earth, and he just moves willy-nilly around a chessboard, he doesn't care about them, anything like that. No, we live here for God's purposes. We live here to do good to others and bring glory to God. And yet this is our Father's world. He oversees this world, he is sovereign over this world, he's king over this world, and so there's not a single thing that transpires within this world that isn't in some way decreed, permitted, allowed by God. And if that includes mundane things, it most certainly includes very significant things such as life and death. And so before we had gone into this time of sorrow, we had that in place. I would not want to be in the midst of the deepest grief and asking questions like, I wonder if God is good. Is he good? I'm not sure. Or is God sovereign? Is it maybe Satan who did this and God was standing helpless by, or maybe God was, you know, out to lunch or something, and Satan's snuck one in here, or who knows? No, if we work out our doctrine before we go through this, then what we're doing in our time of grief is just enacting that doctrine. We're just saying, I know these things are fixed and true, and I'm gonna live like those things are fixed and true. Um, God is sovereign, so how is that gonna impact my grief? God is good. How is that gonna impact my grief? God does love me. He loves me dearly, he loves me as a child, he loves me enough to send his very own son to die for me. How am I gonna live in my grief on the basis of that? So if you get your doctrine in place, then you have what you need to endure that grief in an entirely different way, and I think in a way that uh really does please and honor God, and hopefully in a way that displays to people around you what it means to live as a Christian. Um I was challenged early on by a writer who said maybe the reason most Christians go through times of grief and sorrow is because the world around them needs to see that Christians will remain true to their God even when he takes away what they love the most. I mean, what a challenge then to say, okay, maybe there are unbelievers in my life. Those family members I've been praying for. Maybe what they really need now is to see how deeply I believe this. I will keep praising the name of Jesus even when God has taken away the one I love so much. That is a that is a voice to the world. That is its own form of evangelism.
SPEAKER_01Is that where you are filing and putting, not as a coping mechanism, but as a definitive belief, you're the human tendency to speculate? Like, why did God do this? And why would he allow us? And in the end, you're going, I I don't know every single detail, but I'll tell you this. God is good, and how he fulfills Romans 8.28, is that is that where you and your family, I mean, you rest in that truth? And of course you're seeing it now, but even in those dark moments, is that what you've gone back to?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, we've we've refused to speculate because I'll put it this way, what answer would satisfy? What answer could I arrive at by studying, I don't know, providence or circumstances or anything else? What answer would satisfy me? So maybe the answer comes booming out of the clouds or something. I took Nick so that this person could come to faith. Would that would that satisfy me? What I say, oh well, that's a good deal then. Nick's gone. This person's a Christian. Great. What answer could we want? I I think God's purposes are so big and so vast and so beyond what we can imagine that we simply need to leave those to him. Piper says God isn't accomplishing one thing or ten things. He's always accomplishing 10,000 things through any one of our circumstances. And we might see one of them and we can praise God for that. But imagine what it'll be like when God shows us the whole thing, which I'm sure he'll do in eternity. We'll be praising God's name for all of eternity, as I think just bit by bit he shows us what he's been doing, how he's been using the likes of you and me, people who can barely get computers working, and um people who stumble and stammer and and all the rest. I mean, we're we're ridiculous people, and yet God uses us to accomplish significant things. Just imagine what it'll be like in eternity when God shows us all that he's been accomplishing, not only how weak we are, but how great he is.
SPEAKER_01So good. Uh honest question, it can be a brief answer. Did you ever doubt God in your darkest moments or uh some version of like what was it like in when you and you took us on the journey in the book? You you start you showed us how you called it kind of an immature, there's an immature side to it, and I I'm glad you did that and showed that. I think it helps us all realize everybody would go through that. It's a it's a phase of the whole thing. Were there moments where in your humanity you're just like what in the world, or where are you? Or like did you cry out and have doubt and then how did you recover, or did you have doubt and then need to recover?
SPEAKER_00I don't think I did. Now, those early days are a blur, and my memory really I have little snapshots in the early days. My memory doesn't really kick in again until several weeks later, other than isolated snippets. I don't recall ever doubting God. I don't ever recall turning on God. I had a friend who essentially told me that you should shake your fist at God and just let God know what you think of what he's done. And that was a very brief temptation, but not one that ever latched on to my desires, if you will. I was never seriously tempted to shake my fist at God. So I just think God, by his I'm sorry.
SPEAKER_01I'm sorry to interrupt. You gave me permission before we did this if I had one of those. I've got to ask this because I know people are probably driving or walking or working out and going, wait, wait, wait, what do you mean? What was what do you think your friend was trying to help you accomplish or do? Was it like, let it out, Tim, and and and be authentic. Take us into that and then keep going, please.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I think it was probably a misunderstanding of what what happens maybe in the Psalms of Lament or something along those lines. Um he's not a great theologian, so it may not even have been that, but I think probably as much as anything, it was that sense of this is how you process things. You just let it out, you regurgitate it. Even if it's wrong, God's big enough that he can handle it. And uh, even if it's sinful, he doesn't really mind because you've been hurt so so badly. But probably he's not deeply grounded in God's sovereignty. He may not share my convictions about the goodness of God or the sovereignty of God being displayed in an event like this. And so I really felt there that this was the temptation we we read about in Job, you know, this temptation to curse God and, if not die, to curse God and sin, and to essentially look God in the eye and say, you did wrong, but I'm willing to let it go, or eventually I'll forgive you. Um, as you know, each of us is prone to do as a husband or a wife or something, right? I'm gonna give you the cold shoulder for a while because you did something wrong for me, and eventually maybe we'll patch up our relationship. Um, but I I couldn't do that. I couldn't say that God had done wrong because I know who God is, and I know God can do no wrong, wish no wrong, want no wrong, commit no wrong. Um and so that temptation passed quickly, and as far as I remember, I didn't ever doubt the existence of God or the goodness of God. I had to grapple with the goodness of God. How is it displayed in this? Or maybe is it displayed in this, but never doubted the heart of God as one who truly loves me and is constantly displaying his goodness.
SPEAKER_01My last question centers on God's sovereignty. I think that out of uh a short list of doctrines, God's sovereignty might be one of the most used and abused doctrines in trials and loss. You've got some who would uh flippantly toss out God's sovereignty is just the reason everything happens, and maybe a sort of like hyper Calvinistic attitude. If people have heard that buzzword before, it's this idea that, well, God is sovereign, he's doing it all to you, and there's no sense in worrying about it, you know, and it gets to a bit of a cold rationalism, like I got the answers for everything, and this is what it is, and it's it can be actually a really messed up coping mechanism where we're just well, God's sovereign, so whatever. And you can't even have uh not it's not very Psalms-like, by the way, where David does pour out his heart. And then others, though, suffer from fear and feeling like God is this distant deity, he's not in control. He sort of has set it and forget it, and like the old infomercials with the ease, the little oven where the guy would go, set it and forget it. And he's sort of turned the world onto a timer, and you know, to them the devil is wreaking havoc and they're a sitting duck, and it's someone's hearing your story and going, Oh my goodness, how do I I've got to pray a hedge of protection and I've gotta pray over my kids every day. I mean, what happened to Nick could happen to mine. How do I how do I stop that? Can you speak some truth to land the plane on this episode about God's sovereignty and how that truth was an anchor for your soul? And then even now, for you, for Aileen, like you're you have all these memories, you have this, and you live fear-free, confident in God, even in those moments of fear, you go back to the Lord. How does God's sovereignty impact the way you live now? You're not uh a hermit over this.
SPEAKER_00God's sovereignty is not an abstract doctrine. It was never meant to be. God's sovereignty uh means that he has purposes in this world. He's not just over this world and controlling this world, but God has purposes in this world, and his sovereignty controls those purposes. And uh we have to believe that God's purposes are much bigger than we can possibly wrap our minds around. As we were saying before, we're just little dusty creatures created by God. We're deeply loved, but we're very small and very sinful and uh very foolish. Um, God's purposes are huge and vast, and his purposes are good. And uh his sovereignty then says that these purposes are unfolding in this world. And these purposes sometimes involve our pain. They sometimes involve things that we wouldn't wish upon ourselves. Uh God's sovereignty includes, for example, the death of Jesus Christ. If we go, we consider that. Um, here is the most evil thing that ever has happened in human history or ever could happen in human history. God the Son being put to death by people he had created, by people made in his image, they're slaughtering him and putting him to death. There's literally no more evil act that could ever be done than that. And yet we find out in the book of Acts, as Peter's speaking there, uh praying there, he says that whatever happened there was whatever your hand and your plan had predestined to take place. And so God's sovereignty was on display in the death of Jesus Christ, not in such a way that God was morally responsible for the evil, not in such a way that God made those people do that horrific act, but in a way that God was overseeing it, that this was in some way a manifestation of his sovereignty. And yet from that act of deepest evil that fell under the sovereignty of God came the greatest good, which is the redemption of humanity. Um, we would not be saved if it was not for that act. That act would not have happened if God was not sovereign. And so that allows us in our grief to make this argument from the greater to the lesser, to say if the most horrific act of evil brought about the greatest possible good, then somehow, and that overseen by God, that somehow part of God's will and plan for this world, then surely in my grief, which is much less, or my sorrow, my my loss, which is much less than what Jesus experienced, then surely God can bring good from that as well. Surely I can trust him with it. Surely I can understand that this too falls under his jurisdiction, his providence, his sovereignty, and in some way will be used by him to accomplish great good.
SPEAKER_01So helpful.
SPEAKER_00And maybe we could just continue the comparison a little bit just to say that the disciples didn't see the goodness until Christ was resurrected. It took them a few days. Uh what God had accomplished or what God's sovereignty had decreed did not look so good on Saturday. It wasn't until Sunday morning when Jesus arose. And the same is true for us. We're living in Saturday right now. We see the pain, we don't necessarily see the glory yet, but we will. And so the faith that we put in the Lord Jesus Christ to save us, that's the same faith we continue to exercise in Him, even in these moments. I continue to trust, I continue to lean on you, I continue to rely on you, even in this pain and even this sorrow, trusting, trusting that someday you will prove yourself. All these things you said about are true about yourself. I'm taking you at your word. I look forward to the day that I get to see it, that faith becomes sight.
SPEAKER_01What a perspective. Thank you for offering that. And thank you so much for this episode on God's goodness, God's sovereignty. I'm sure there's a ton of questions that people have had answered. And of course, when it comes to this topic, I know there's a lot more. Uh, we're going to talk next time uh about how you guys actually grew closer to the Lord, how that's even possible in the midst of trial and loss and grief. And I've got a few other loaded questions for you. But, Tim, thank you again. This has been tremendously helpful.
SPEAKER_00You're very welcome.
SPEAKER_01Well, for everyone who's listening or for watching, thank you for uh your support. Thank you for engaging and sharing these episodes. If you know somebody who's grieving and going through a lot, I would encourage you to send this to them along with episode one. And if that's you, well, we pray that these would be an encouragement to you, an anchor to your soul, and uh really a blanket of comfort for you from the Lord through Tim and the wisdom of God's word. Next episode, we're gonna dig into how trials and loss can actually bring us closer to the Lord. If you're new to our ministry, be sure to subscribe. If you're watching this on the video version on YouTube or on Apple or Spotify, feel free to drop us a review. You can learn about our ministry, our team, and get free resources and teaching that can equip you at forthegospel.org on our YouTube channel or on all of our social media outlets. I'll be back next episode with Tim again. Keep on living for the gospel.