What Do You Do When God Doesn't Make Sense

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:01

We're in the middle of a series tonight on what do you do when? And tonight we want to talk about what do you do when God doesn't make any sense. Next week we want to talk about what do you do when somebody tries to get you to violate your values or to compromise what you believe or to do what you know is wrong. We're going to talk about that next week. But this week, what do you do when God makes no sense? Last month, January, I took Brenda away, my wife away for a week, and we went down into the Caribbean and we went to Cosmo and I was out scuba diving and I heard the sirens going crazy on the island. I didn't know what was going on, but I could heard them. They were just all over everywhere. And so when I came in and I met Brenda, she said, You would not believe what happened. She said, We were over on the east side of the island, and she said, while we were over there, all of a sudden they pulled his body out of the surf. And all the sirens, all the ambulances, everything was coming, you know, over there. The guy was a guy who drowned, had just drowned. And he was on his honeymoon. Can you believe this? And his wife was standing there. They'd only been married three days on their honeymoon, and the guy drowns in the surf. And I was like, oh wow, man, that's kind of a bummer thing, you know? It really kind of puts a real down on the day. But you know, I was talking to somebody about that, and they said to me, now see there, that's why I don't believe in God. I don't believe in God. How can I believe in God when stuff that makes no sense like that happens? How can I believe in God when a couple tries to have a baby for months and years and they finally have a child and it has Down syndrome? How can I believe in God when TWA Flight 800 goes down? How can I believe in God with the Oklahoma City bombing or with the Holocaust and all the people that were killed? How can I believe in God when that kind of stuff happens that makes no sense? You know, and sometimes it hit clits closer to home. My wife's youngest sister, whose name was Sandy, died at the age of 26 years old from breast cancer. She got breast cancer when she was pregnant the first time, carrying her first baby, and it was very unusual, uh, that it normally doesn't happen. And uh the doctor who did the surgery came out of the surgery and said, uh, it's very bad, and he said, I give her 15 months to live. She lived 13 months and left a one-year-old. Now, how do you believe in God when something like that happens to a 26-year-old girl who loves the Lord and serves the Lord and has dedicated her life to worshiping God, and that happens? Good question, huh? How do you and I handle it when when stuff happens in our life that makes no sense? And that's gonna happen, friends. You and your lives are gonna have lots of things that come along that don't make sense. You look at them, you look at them from the top, from the bottom, from the side, from every direction, and no matter what direction you look at them from, they make no sense. So, what are you gonna do? Well, I'd like to submit to you tonight that you can maintain your personal faith and trust in God, and you can still process things that on the human level don't seem to make any sense. That you don't have to throw God away when things come along that don't look like they add up. And I want to talk to you about that tonight because you're gonna need this skill in your life, because I guarantee you, things are gonna come along that you're not gonna have a clue what's happening. And at those moments, God's gonna seem kind of quiet, and God's gonna seem maybe a little absent, and you're not gonna know where to go or what to do, and you're gonna need what we're gonna talk about tonight. So I want you tonight to uh take a Bible, if you brought one. Let's open it together to the last chapter in the first book, Genesis chapter 50. And if you're using our copy of the Bible, Genesis chapter 50 is on page 40, and I'd like you to turn there. Genesis chapter 50, and we'll be coming there in just a minute. We're not going to be there right away, but I want to talk to you about a young man, uh, really a young man that was about the age of most of you guys here, who had all kinds of stuff happen in his life that made absolutely no sense. And I want to show you how he handled it and maintained a faith in God through the whole thing. Guy's name is Joseph. A lot of you know, how many of you know the story of Joseph? Okay, good. Well then we'll just do a real quick review just in case somebody uh doesn't know it all. All right, remember Joseph? His father Jacob had 12 sons. He was the firstborn son of his father's favorite wife. Her name was Rachel. Remember? And he gave him this very special, you know, multicolored coat or something. Anyway, it doesn't matter. Whenever you give one kid something that you don't give the other kid, it doesn't matter what it is, you know that's a formula for disaster. And so all the brothers began to hate him. And then he started having all these dreams, you know, that had in his dreams all his brothers were bowing down and worshiping him, and he told his brothers about it. That didn't make him real popular. And then he ratted on them, if you read the Bible. When they did something wrong, he went and ratted to his dad. That didn't make him real popular. Finally, the Bible says it got so bad, his brothers couldn't even talk to him in peace. They just hated him so bad. So they were out one day tending sheep, and here he came to check on them. Dad had sent him to check on them, and when they saw him coming, they said, Here he comes, the dreamer of dreams, let's kill him. But they decided, being Jewish, why kill him? Well, sell him. Let's make some money from the guy. So they did. And they sold him to some Ishmaelites coming by, and away he went into Egypt. And they went back and told their dad, they said, Hey dad, we found this coat, and they had taken his coat and dipped it in blood, and they said, We don't know what happened to him. Total lie. Absolute lie. They played hit and run with the guy, and then they lied to their dad about it. Well, he went down into Egypt. He wasn't dead. He went down and was sold to the captain of Pharaoh's bodyguard, a guy named Potiphar. Everything was going great. He was the second in command, right behind Potiphar, ran the whole household until Potiphar's wife got what in the South we used to call a hankerin. Yeah. For Joseph. And she wanted him to commit adultery with her. He said, Hey, look, I can't do this great sin against God. But anyway, she lied about it, told her husband that it was him who was the instigator, and they threw him in jail. And so he was in jail for 13 years, from age 17 to age 30. In his 20s, he never saw the light of day. And this is not the kind of jail we have today, you know, with televisions and VCRs and workout rooms and basketball courts. You know, I mean, this is not, this is jail in Egypt, folks, 4,000 years ago. Anyway, make a long story short, while he was in jail, he met this guy who was a a baker, the two guys, baker and the butler for Pharaoh. And they had a dream one night, then they couldn't interpret the dream. And so they, the next day he came in and and and they said, Well, we couldn't interpret these dreams. And he said, Well, tell me what they are and I'll give it a shot. So the butler tells him his dream, and he says to the butler, hey, that's a great dream. You know that your dream means in three days you're going back into Pharaoh's house and you're gonna have more honor than you used to have. The baker said, Oh, that's great, man. Here's my dream. Tell me my dream. What does it mean? He said, Your dream means in three days, Pharaoh's gonna hang you from a tree. Sorry, I asked, right? Well, that's exactly what happened. Well, a number of years went by, and finally one day Pharaoh had some dreams. Remember this? And nobody could interpret them. And the butler suddenly remembered Joseph in jail and said, You know, there was this guy in jail, and he interpreted a dream for me. Maybe you should call him out of jail. So the Bible says they sent to the jail and they called Joseph, and Joseph shaved. By the way, that's an incredibly important thing. You say, really? Yeah, it is. Because we know from archaeology that the Egyptians were the only culture in the ancient Near East that shaved. The Assyrians didn't, the Sumerians didn't, the Hebrews didn't, the Hittites didn't. Nobody else shaved but the Egyptians. Somebody writing this a thousand years later would have had no idea to write that. But this is telling us that this is reflecting accurate, truthful information from somebody who understood and knew that culture. Anyway, he shaved, went to see Pharaoh. Pharaoh said, Here's the dream, and he prayed about it and he interpreted it, and he said, You're going to have seven great years, and then you're going to have seven lean years. And if you're smart, you'll find a good administrator to collect food during the years when you got lots of produce and store it away, so during the lean years you'll have food. Pharaoh said, That's a great idea. How about you, Joseph? And he made him prime minister of the whole country. Pretty incredible, at 30 years old. And when the famine hit, just the way the Bible says it was going to hit, just the way the dream had said, guess who came to Egypt looking for food? You'll never guess. Would you believe his brothers? Except they thought he was dead and didn't recognize him. Now, when we pick up the story here, when we pick up the story, his his dad has just died, and now the brothers are terrified that Joseph's just been biding his time, waiting for dad to go, and now he's going to really nail them. You know. Let me just stop before we read the passage and say, hey, if you were living that life, the life I just described to you, didn't some things happen in that life that didn't make a lot of sense? I mean, here you are trying to serve God, your brothers turn on you, here you are trying to honor God with this woman and not sleep with this woman, and you get thrown into jail, and for 13 years you don't hear from anybody, you don't hear from God, there's no light at the end of the tunnel. I mean, aren't there some crazy things that make no sense happening to this guy? I want you to see the way he looked at his world. Look right here in Genesis 50, look in verse 20. Look at verse 20. Joseph says this to his brothers. He says, You intended to harm me. Is that true? Absolutely. You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good to accomplish what's now being done. I'm the prime minister of Egypt, and I'm saving many lives, including yours. Now flip back to chapter 45. It's a couple pages back. And let me show you. He says something else that tells you how he looked at his circumstances. Look at verse 8, chapter 45. Chapter 45, verse 8. So then he says to his brothers, when he first meets them, it was not you who sent me to Egypt, it was God. You say, well, no, no, no, that's wrong. It was them that sent him there. They were the ones that sold him, they were the ones who took the money, they were the ones who betrayed him. No. Joseph said, Yeah, but that's not how I see it. It wasn't really you guys who sent me here. You intended harm for me, but you see, God was bigger. And God took a circumstance that made no sense. God took a circumstance that was wrong and evil and sinful on your part, and God flipped it around. God overruled it. God transformed it into a blessing. It wasn't really you that sent me here, it was God that sent me here, and God turned it out for good, as you see today, he said to his brothers. Now, friends, this is the way God wants us to look at circumstances that don't make any sense. He wants us to have a view of circumstances that takes God into account. And he wants us to be able to do what Joseph did. And what did Joseph do? Joseph looked beyond his brothers. He looked beyond the Ishmaelites, he looked beyond Potiphar, beyond Potiphar's wife, beyond the baker, beyond the butler, beyond Pharaoh himself, and he said, I see God. And even though there's some things happening that maybe don't make sense when they first occurred, nonetheless, I see that God was orchestrating it all together the whole time with good in mind, I have a godly view of circumstances. Now, if you and I are going to be able to process things that come into our life that make no sense, you and I are going to have to develop a godly view of circumstances, meaning that we develop the ability to say, hey, what may be happening to me right now might not make any sense, but you know what? I see God as bigger than what's happening to me now. I see God as bigger than the meanest, cruelest thing that people might do to me. And they may mean it for harm, hey, but God's bigger. And God will turn it into good. And it may seem cruel and senseless right now, but hey, God's bigger. And God will turn it into good if I'll just trust him. I was reading an article a few years ago about a guy named Calvin Catter. Anyone know who he is? I don't know who he is. He's a missionary. He was a missionary in Africa. Anyway, I read this story in Decision Magazine, and here's how it goes. He was telling a story about how he was on the east side of Africa and he was going to fly to the west side of Africa to this mission conference. Well, he got on this airplane, he made his reservations. This was years ago, got on this little airplane, and you know, they take off. But they land in the middle of Africa. Now, when he got to West Africa, there was a truck waiting there, a big old truck that he had no use for, and he was gonna sell it, take the money, bring it back, and use it, you know, in his own missionary work. Well, anyway, plane gets about halfway across Africa, lands. He said the plane was totally packed. Wasn't a seat on the plane. And there was some commotion outside the plane. He heard some lady yelling and screaming. He didn't know what was going on. Finally, the pilot came on the plane, came back to him and said, Excuse me, are you Mr. Catter? He said, Uh, yeah. He said, Well, you know, sir, I hate to tell you this, but I'm gonna have to ask you to get off the plane. He said, What? He said, Well, this lady outside has had reservations for three days, and we don't have any record of you having a reservation at all. So, you know, kind of we start at the bottom. You're the last guy on, so you're the, you know, first guy off. And he's like, Are you kidding? I've had reservations for a week. Yada yada yada. Anyway, long story short, off the plane he went. The woman came on, they fired up the engines. He said, When's the next plane? They said, Eh, a few days. And he they taxi to the end of the runway and brmm, away they went. This little dirt runway, middle of Africa. So he's standing there with his luggage in the middle of Africa. He said, I looked around. No hotel, no coffee shop, no McDonald's. Now you know you're in the boonies in, friends. And he said, Here I was standing there, and he said, I was standing in an in my there, and I'm quoting from him now, he said, and I was in an irritable and disgusted frame of mind. End of quote. So while he was standing there in his irritable and disgusted frame of mind, he said, This woman came running over to him and said, This is a true story, said, excuse me, excuse me, she said, Aren't you Calvin Catter? And he goes, Yeah. She said, you know, I'm I was at a missionary conference that you spoke at a couple years ago, and she said, Frankly, uh, I don't know what you're doing here, but if you don't have any place right real particular to go, how about coming over for dinner? He goes, Yeah, I didn't really have any place to go tonight, so I'd be happy to come. So he goes over a house for dinner, and here's what he finds out. She and her husband are tent makers in the middle of Africa. They're there doing another job, but they're Christians, and their real heart is to reach people for Christ. They've got this tent, this huge tent that somebody offered them, gave them to hold open-air meetings and share Christ, but they don't have a truck big enough to carry the tent. Uh-huh. And he said, Man, as I sat there listening to the story, I knew where this was going. And so he gave them the truck that was sitting in West Africa to use with the tent they already had. And when he wrote the article years later, he said, as far as I know, that couple is still there using the tent they already had, and the truck that I gave them to reach people for Jesus Christ in the heart of Africa. And he closed the article by saying this He said, I was kicked off a plane in the middle of nowhere only to find out that it was exactly where God wanted me to be. Now that's a godly view of circumstances. You say, Lon, that's great. That's great. But you see, there's a problem. He didn't say that at the beginning. At the beginning, he was in an irritable and disgusted frame of mind. Anybody can say that at the end. The secret is, how do you get to say that when you're in the middle of this junk? Good point. So let's answer that in closing tonight. How do you get a godly view of circumstances when you're in the middle before you can see the last chapter? Okay? Let's answer that. Here's the answer. Friends, a godly view of circumstances is a result, not a cause. You say, what are you talking about? Well, it's the result of something else. You say, well, what's the result of? It is the result of believing a promise God made you. And I'm going to shoot that promise on the screen, I think, and we'll show it to you. Here's the promise. It says, and God works all things together for good, to those who love God and for those who are called according to his purpose. Now that's God's promise. And I want you to see what this promise is really saying. First of all, would you notice the promise is not for everybody. It's not for every American, every church grower, every citizen. It says for those who love God and for those who are called according to his purpose. This is a promise that is limited to people who know Jesus Christ in a real and personal way, who've answered the call that Jesus Christ issued for them to give their life to him, and who are trying to love and trust God through the circumstances of life. Now, if you're here tonight and you've never trusted Jesus Christ in a real and personal way, God has some promises for you, like that he loved the world so much he sent his only son that you've if you'd believe on his son, he'd take away your sin and give you eternal life. Now that's your promise. But this is a promise you don't get until you've made that decision and trusted Christ. And I hope if you're here and you've never trusted Christ, you'll take God up on the promise that he wants you to take him up on to trust Christ and get eternal life. But this is for people who've already done that. The other thing I want you to notice is what he's promising. He says that he will work all things together for good. Now, would you notice that he says he will work them, he will blend things together for good? And notice what he says? Not some things, not a few things, not only the good things, not just the nice things, not just the things you understand. But he said he will work all things together for good. Now listen, friends, God is not telling you in this promise that all things are good. He didn't say that, did he? No. Bankruptcy is not good. My sister in law dying was not good. TWA flight 800 crashing was not good. People getting cancer, people losing their job, this is not good. But what God's promise is is that God Will take all the circumstances of our lives, the good ones, the medium ones, and the awful ones. And he will blend them together, mix them together, and by the time he's through mixing and combining them, his promise is he will overrule them and turn the whole mixture out for good. You see the promise? Now it's kind of like baking a cake. I got some things up here that I brought with me. Have you ever baked a cake? I don't know if you ever baked a cake. Okay, I want to talk to you about baking a cake. Because have you ever noticed the stuff that goes in a cake? It's actually pretty yucky stuff. Okay, first, ready? Egg. Alright? Egg goes into cake. Take an egg, crack it. Alright? Into there. That goes in. You know when I was in college and I used to get drunk? People used to say, hey, you want to get over your hangover? Drink a raw egg. Are you kidding? Are you kidding? I'll take any headache in the day before I drink this slimy thing. Raw egg. When any of you drink one of those things? I mean, really, would any of you take one of the would any of you really drink one of those? Who drink one of those? Alright, here. Hey guys, it's hard boiled. Okay. Now, next thing that goes in, oil. Now, who in their right mind would drink this stuff? Your cholesterol count would have to be in the negative numbers to drink this stuff. You know? Oil. All right? Next. Flour. White flour. And lots of it. Now who would eat this stuff with a spoon? This is no good. Okay? Next. Vanilla. I used to drink this for a cheap high, but I wouldn't drink it now. Vanilla. Next. Butter. I don't think I can do this. A stick of butter. Now, who in their right mind would actually take this and eat this? It's warm. Alright, I can't do it. I was gonna do it. I had myself all psyched up to do it, but I can't do it. Alright, where does this go? And then we put a little yeast in it. That works. Fleischmann's dry. And then we mix it. Now, folks, I gotta tell you something. This looks terrible. This is awful. You say, well, you gotta cook it. Okay? So I would put this in the oven, and let's say halfway through cooking it, I pull it out. Is it any good? No, it's still terrible. It's terrible. But when you put it under just the right amount of heat, right? Even though all the stuff that goes in doesn't really look all that good, hey, when you're all done and it's just the right amount of heat, what do you think? How about an Oreos? You want an Oreo? Good for you. Now, this is good. This is really good. In fact, I'm able to stop and have a piece right now. This is very good. Now, what is God's promise to you? You know what it is? God says, all right, let me tell you what I'm gonna do. I'm gonna take a little bit of egg, and I'll take a little bit of cooking oil, and yeah, if some flour comes along, we'll do some flour too. And I'll take some yeast and I'll take some butter and I'll take all kinds of junk that comes along and I'll mix it up and I'll put it under just the right amount of heat. And when I'm done, what'd he say? God will blend all things together for good. He didn't say everything is good, did he? He said by the time he gets done with it, mm-hmm, mm-hmm, it'll be good. Now that's God's promise. Friends, has God been true to his promise down through the ages? Well, was he true to his promise to Joseph? Huh? You say, if Joseph had looked at his circumstances when he was in jail, he would have said, There's no way God was true to that promise. There is no way, sitting here rotten in this jail at the age of 27 years old, that God was true to that promise. But wait a minute, the cake was only what? Half baked. It was the wrong time to decide whether or not the cake was going to come out good. It was just half baked. You know, do you remember the story of Ruth? Remember Ruth, uh, Ruth was married. There was this lady named Naomi, and she had a husband, and she had two sons, and Ruth was married to one of her two sons. Her two sons were named Melion and Chilon, which in Hebrew means weakly and sickly. It's true. I don't know why you name your kids that. But anyway, weakly and sickly died. It's true, they did. And Ruth at that point was a widow, and Naomi said, Look, my husband's dead, my kids are dead, I'm going back to Bethlehem, my hometown. Ruth, you don't want to go with me. Go look for a young man and get yourself married or whatever. And Ruth said, No, I'm going with you. And Naomi comes back to her town, and when she arrives in town, everybody says, Naomi, welcome home. And she said, You remember? She said, Don't call me Naomi. Call me Mara, which in Hebrew means bitter. She said, Because the Lord has dealt bitterly with me. Okay, put it on pause. Now, what have we got there? We got a cake that's what? Half baked. We're not done yet, are we? Because remember, Ruth went out in the field one day and she met Boaz. And Boaz was rich and he was godly and he was nice and kind and he shared his feelings. You know. And he loved the shop even if he didn't buy anything. And best of all, he's available. Right? And she marries him, and all of a sudden, Naomi ends up being the mother-in-law of this rich, powerful, godly man. Did God finish the cake for her, like he said? Yeah, she you she just was looking at it half-baked. How about the Israelites? You remember them at the Red Sea? Remember them? Oh yeah, man. They're down there, Red Sea at their back, Pharaoh up on the hill, ready to swoop down on them, you know? And you remember what he said, don't you? He said he looked down over the cliff and he saw him down there. Remember what he said? He said, the God of Moses is a very poor general to leave him no retreat. You say, how do you know he said that? It's what you Brenner said in the movie. Bro, watch what we do. So but hey, what was the cake at that point? Tell me. It was what? It was half baked. By the time it was over, hey, had God been true to his promise? You bet he had. There was another young man, about Charles' age, named Adnan Judson. I don't know how many of you ever heard of Adnan Judson. I wouldn't expect you to, because he lived, oh, in the late 1700s, early 1800s. I wouldn't expect you to know him. But anyway, in 1815 he left America to go be a missionary in India to join William Carey, the father of modern missions in Calcutta, India. Well, the problem was that India was British. Adnaram Judson was American. The British kind of had this little thing about them, and they wouldn't let him in to India. So he was determined that God wanted him to be a missionary, and he and his new wife, they'd just gotten married. His wife named Anne, she was pregnant when they set out. They got back on the boat in the Bay of Bengal and they said, We're going to go to every port this boat stops, and the first port that will let us off, that's where we're going to be missionaries. They got out in the middle of the Bay of Bengal, they got into this incredible monsoon. Three weeks they were at sea, never got to land. His wife gave birth to her baby at sea in the middle of this storm, the baby died. They had to throw the baby overboard and buried at sea. And when they finally lumbered into a port at the end of three weeks of storm, it was a squalid, filthy little town called Rangoon, Burma. They'd let him off. They let him become a missionary. So he started. Do you know, while he was in Rangoon, Burma, this young man, he was about 22 years old when he left the United States, about y'all's age, maybe a little younger. Do you know that while he was there, he shared Christ every day for six and a half years and never saw one person come to Christ? All of his funding from America dried up. People wrote him and they said, This is stupid. You're wasting your time, you're wasting your energy, you're wasting our money. They stopped sending him money. He wrote back home and said, I need help. Will more people come? Nobody came. After a while, he became the enemy of the Rangoon authorities because he was preaching righteousness and they weren't practicing it. They put him in jail. He spent years of the time in jail. He translated the whole Bible into Burmese laying on his back. They chained him with his back and his shoulders and his head touching the ground, his feet up in stocks against the wall. He spent two years in that position. Going to the bathroom in that position, eating in that position, sleeping in that position for two years, and he translated the Bible into Burmese laying on his back and hid it in his pillow at night so the guards wouldn't take it away from him. After the end of seven years, he saw his first convert come to Jesus Christ. All three of the children by his first marriage died in Burma. His first wife Anne died in Burma. He married again. Both of the children from his second marriage died in Burma. His second wife died in Burma. He married a third time. That wife actually outlived him. You say, Lon, time. You're going to tell me that this promise, Romans 8.28, worked for that guy? Oh, wait a minute. Wait a minute. Wait a minute. Wait a minute. Wait a minute. The cake's what? Half-baked? Because you see, by the time he died in 1850, after 35 years in Burma, Adnan Judson had established 63 churches in Burma. He had personally led over 7,000 Burmese people to personal faith in Jesus Christ. And today, if you go to Burma up in the highlands, there is the Karen tribe, K-A-R-E-N, the Charon tribe. There are over 180,000 believers in this tribe. They have a hundred elementary schools and Christian high schools. They send missionaries all over Southeast Asia. And it all began in 1832 when he led a Karen tribesman to Christ who had come to Rangoon on business. And this man went back and took Christ to his tribe. And today there's 180,000 believers in the Highlands because of Adnan Judson. Was God true to his promise to this guy? Yeah, but you can't analyze the cake before it's done, see. Now, how does all that apply to you and me? Well, let's close it up and say this. Friends, there are going to be a lot of things that are going to happen in your life that you're not going to be able to figure out. The issue as a Christian is not whether you can figure them out. The issue as a Christian is whether or not you and I are willing to trust God to be true to his promise, whether you and I can figure them out or not. But let me warn you, be careful that you don't analyze God and decide whether God's doing what he said he was going to do while the cake is still what? Half baked. You gotta give him time to finish. Hey, why did you lose your job? I don't know. But the cake's only half baked. Give it time. Why, why, um, why did that person that I love die? I don't know. I don't know. But the cake's only half baked. Give it time, give God time. He'll do what he said. Why is my boss giving me such a hard way to go at work? And how come that promotion that I should have gotten went to that other person? I don't know. But hey, it's only what? Half bake. Give God time. How come my boyfriend broke up with me? Because he's a jerk, that's why. But even in spite of that, it's still only a half-baked cake. Give God time. Folks, I feel so bad for God. He spends his whole life being patient and gentle and forgiving with us for judging half-baked cakes. When if we'd only wait and give him time to finish, he'll do for you and me what he did for Judson, what he did for Moses, what he did for Joseph, what he did for Naomi, and what he's done for thousands and hundreds of thousands of believers down through the ages. He'll do it for you. How are you going to handle things that don't make sense? Well, basically, you got two choices. One of them is you can get mad at God, accuse God, indict God, argue with God, even possibly forsake God. The other is to say, hey, I don't know why this is happening. I'm not smart enough to figure it out. But I know God made me a promise. And here's my promise that God will work everything together in my life and turn it out for good. Maybe all the ingredients going in aren't so good, but God says by the time he's through with the cake, it's going to be yummy. So I'm just going to trust him. I don't understand it, but I'm just going to trust him. It's your choice. But I'll tell you, if you choose to trust him, not only will you be happier, not only will your faith deepen and grow, but God will bless your life in incredible ways. Well, I hope this is helpful for you. I hope you'll never forget half-baked. And I hope you'll remember it as you start in your life to look at things and go, gosh, this makes no sense. Ah, that's right. It's only half-baked. Let's pray. Thank you, Lord Jesus, for this great promise. That you take the good things, the medium things, and the awful things in our life. And you blend them together. You mix them together in your big mixing bowl. And you put them in your oven of heat and suffering and trouble. And when it's all done, not when it's half done, but when it's all done, the results are yummy. Lord Jesus, forgive us so many times as Christians for trying to decide whether you've been true to your promise while the cake is just half baked. Help us to be mature enough. Help us, Lord, to be patient enough that we're willing to give you the freedom to finish the cake before we pass judgment. And Father, remind us that there'll never be a cake that you finish that doesn't turn out exactly the way you say for good to those who are your children. And just before we quit tonight with our heads bowed and our eyes closed, I want to give you a moment. You know, if you've got some stuff going on in your life that doesn't make sense and you've been really struggling with where God is with all of this, and maybe even indict God and saying, God, you've let me down. You've forsaken me. You broke your promise to me. And I hope as a result of tonight that you'll be able to say, you know, God, that's wrong. I'm looking at a half day cake. Forgive me for my attitude and help me just to trust you. Thank you that you are very patient and understanding God. And I pray you'd reassure everyone here who prayed that prayer that you do understand. That you understand we're just human. That you understand how easy it is for us to judge a half day cave and that it's okay. Everything's fine. That you forgive, and you're still gonna finish the cave. It's gonna be easy. Thank you, Lord, we can't trust we pray these things in Jesus' name.