SPEAKER_00: All right.
SPEAKER_00: Let me invite you to turn your Bibles to Proverb chapter 3 verses 5 and 6.
SPEAKER_00: And uh the average age in our room just went down quite a bit.
SPEAKER_00: Jimmy's here.
SPEAKER_00: Hey Jimmy.
SPEAKER_00: Hey Ryan.
SPEAKER_00: Hey Kimberly.
SPEAKER_00: So baby Jimmy.
unknown: It's good.
SPEAKER_00: No, you can't hold the baby.
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
SPEAKER_00: Just to make sure that's clear for everybody here.
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
SPEAKER_00: So we're looking at uh Proverbs 3, 5 and 6, and uh answering and asking a question, and then we're gonna kind of dig into it.
SPEAKER_00: Um how do I trust God when life is painful?
SPEAKER_00: It's a big question.
SPEAKER_00: So let me read for us uh Proverbs 3, 5, and 6, and then we're gonna talk about that question for a bit.
SPEAKER_00: Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding.
SPEAKER_00: In all your ways acknowledge Him, and He will make straight your path.
SPEAKER_00: And ask God to make our path straight.
SPEAKER_00: We have current pain.
SPEAKER_00: Some of us carry past pain.
SPEAKER_00: Some of us don't know it, but the pain is on the horizon.
SPEAKER_00: We live in a broken and fallen world, as you well know, and that is why you came, Lord Jesus, to redeem your people, and someday, one day, to make the world right in all things.
SPEAKER_00: Uh for there to be no sadness, but for there to be joy, for there to be no pain, but but full health, for there to be no strife, but full peace.
SPEAKER_00: And we long for that.
SPEAKER_00: We'd love to see that right now, today, in our world, but the world is broken and fallen, and our hearts are broken and fallen, and the people around us and the world is full of pain.
SPEAKER_00: So we ask.
SPEAKER_00: We ask that today you would teach us and help us to see how to trust you in the world as it is, as we as we long for the world as it will be.
SPEAKER_00: Would you bless us and be with us?
SPEAKER_00: And Lord, would you bless me?
SPEAKER_00: This is a heavy topic.
SPEAKER_00: It's too heavy for me to carry, um, certainly not on my own.
SPEAKER_00: So I pray that you, by your spirit, would guide and direct all of our hearts to see and hear the Savior's voice and what we talk about.
SPEAKER_00: Bless us and be with us, we pray.
SPEAKER_00: In Jesus' name.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: So last year, a friend of mine got doged.
SPEAKER_00: Uh he uh he would tell you that he needed to be because the company where he worked, and I don't know any other way of saying this, it was um what's the word I put down?
SPEAKER_00: It was a grant mill.
SPEAKER_00: I don't know if that's really even a word or something I just coined, but that was in my head, is they did a lot of grants and they didn't really follow through on a lot of their grants.
SPEAKER_00: And they made up, they were making a lot of money writing grants, and that's kind of what they ended up doing.
SPEAKER_00: And so he was laid off with a lot of other people.
SPEAKER_00: And and he had been talking to us for a long time about getting out of that job because he didn't like it.
SPEAKER_00: But the timing was terrible because his son was in his senior year of high school, he's getting ready to go to college, and with the end of the job, they lost their health insurance, and you know, how are we gonna afford all the things that are going to be coming our way?
SPEAKER_00: And it was terrible timing for them.
SPEAKER_00: And so he was without a job and without a job and without a job.
SPEAKER_00: And and that means that verses like this that go from memory verses to life verses eventually become a lifeline.
SPEAKER_00: It's like, I'm clinging to this every single day.
SPEAKER_00: Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding.
SPEAKER_00: In all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make your paths straight.
SPEAKER_00: It gives encouragement, it gives comfort as we look out at the world.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, that knowledge certainly does calm an anxious heart.
SPEAKER_00: And that's what he's telling us to do is he's saying, trust in the Lord with all of your heart.
SPEAKER_00: And uh making it hard for our guys in the back today, because I'm kind of meandering through my outline, and I didn't give it straight up.
SPEAKER_00: So if there's a flaw on the screen, blame the guy who's speaking.
SPEAKER_00: That's who it needs to be like.
SPEAKER_00: So I really like the word trust in this context.
SPEAKER_00: I like it because it's it's easy for us to say, I believe in God, and it to be this kind of nebulous idea, like a cloud at the back of our lives that follows us around, but does it really have any practical implications for our daily lives?
SPEAKER_00: So I like the word trust here because trust here is it's active.
SPEAKER_00: It's it isn't just an intellectual belief, it's an active, confident reliance on God's character.
SPEAKER_00: The most common word for trust in the Old Testament, uh Hebrew word, is used here, and it means to be bold, confident, or to place one's full weight on something.
SPEAKER_00: In other words, this is where I stand, it's the only solid ground I have.
SPEAKER_00: This is your rock of Gibraltar that you're standing on.
SPEAKER_00: So trust was a firm belief in the reliability, the truth, the ability or strength of someone or something.
SPEAKER_00: And here it's God.
SPEAKER_00: To trust the Lord means to put one's confidence and hope of security in him because he's omnicompetent and so controls all situations.
SPEAKER_00: And so it means relying on God rather than our own finite understanding, our own strength, our institutions, or our own goodness.
SPEAKER_00: Trust means to take what I know about God and apply it to the circumstances that I'm in and live according to it.
SPEAKER_00: And there are really two applications here from this.
SPEAKER_00: This is wisdom literature.
SPEAKER_00: So one of the things he's talking that Solomon, who wrote it, is talking to his son about in the original reception of it, was trusting in the word of the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: So that's what he would have meant in the original context, was mainly that was trusting in the Lord's word.
SPEAKER_00: And so if you trust in the word of the Lord, he'll make your path straight, even when things are difficult.
SPEAKER_00: Now, in that context, it doesn't mean that God's going to bless you with everything you've ever wanted, because you can follow what God says in his word, and things may not go exactly the way that you want all the time.
SPEAKER_00: But it will, in general, make things straight for you.
SPEAKER_00: For instance, if you follow the command, do not steal, well, you're going to avoid a whole host of problems in your life, having to do with your reputation, jail time, all sorts of things.
SPEAKER_00: You're going to keep the to the straight and narrow.
SPEAKER_00: But there are going to be other people who might steal from you, and you might have to deal with those consequences.
SPEAKER_00: So it doesn't mean, it doesn't mean that, you know, if you're doing right, every right and good thing is always going to happen to you.
SPEAKER_00: But it is saying if you follow God's word, his wisdom, what he says, your way is going to be easier because this is the way the world works when God gives commands and tells us things.
SPEAKER_00: But the second one, I think, is really the one that captivates us.
SPEAKER_00: And it's trusting in his providence.
SPEAKER_00: Now, some of you may not know what providence means.
SPEAKER_00: It's a place in Rhode Island, I know, but but providence is this divine providence is the governance of God, meaning his reign and rule, is the governance of God by which he, with wisdom and love, cares for and directs all things in the universe.
SPEAKER_00: And what that means is God is in control of the things that happen around us.
SPEAKER_00: And we know in all things God is working for our good.
SPEAKER_00: So to trust his providence means that you believe he's going to do good to you.
SPEAKER_00: And much of life seems completely out of our control.
SPEAKER_00: Headlines, right?
SPEAKER_00: Deadlines, Iran, gas prices, politics, AI, there are lots of things that we can't control.
SPEAKER_00: So if you look to the news, you ought to be looking to Proverbs 3, 5, and 6 all the time.
SPEAKER_00: Got to be looking at this because he's in control.
SPEAKER_00: And we believe that we can absolutely trust him because he's shown that to be the case.
SPEAKER_00: Jerry Bridges puts it this way in his book about suffering and pain.
SPEAKER_00: He says, God's unfailing love for us is an objective fact affirmed over and over in the scriptures.
SPEAKER_00: It's true whether we believe it or not.
SPEAKER_00: Our doubts do not destroy God's love, nor does our faith create it.
SPEAKER_00: It originates in the very nature of God, who is love, and it flows to us through our union with his beloved Son.
SPEAKER_00: So God is good, and God is loving, and God is trustworthy, and he's invested.
SPEAKER_00: And he's working even when we don't think to pray, but he often is working in and through our prayers.
SPEAKER_00: And that's where we sometimes encounter this.
SPEAKER_00: I can trust God.
SPEAKER_00: I can trust him, not just that he's working when I'm unaware of it, but he's working even to answer prayers that I'm praying.
SPEAKER_00: And Rebecca and I have seen this in our lives, and many of you have seen this, and there's just three vignettes answered prayers that were unexpected.
SPEAKER_00: Some's one is silly, but the others are pretty intense.
SPEAKER_00: One was when Cat when Rebecca and I were doing campus ministry in Mississippi, we went on a paddle expedition down a river for a day with some of our students.
SPEAKER_00: So there are about 20 students, and for whatever reason, the person who had the least paddling experience and was the most uncoordinated ended up in Rebecca's canoe with her.
SPEAKER_00: And so there's this one part where the river kind of like funnels down and you go through kind of a loose thing where you have to kind of like navigate your way through.
SPEAKER_00: And basically you just get your paddle out of the way and let the water do the work.
SPEAKER_00: Well, they were on their way through the little gully, and uh he lost his balance and they went out.
SPEAKER_00: And Rebecca, as she's going down, she's looking at the rocks, and the paddle goes and she's like kind of like catching herself as she's going in.
SPEAKER_00: The canoe capsize, we're at the bottom, we like get it out, we turn it over, and we can find his paddle, but we cannot find Rebecca's.
SPEAKER_00: And she's kind of like, How are we gonna get down the rest of the river?
SPEAKER_00: And it's a borrowed paddle.
SPEAKER_00: I don't know what we're gonna do.
SPEAKER_00: And she said, Let's pray.
SPEAKER_00: So by the banks of the river, we held hands and we prayed.
SPEAKER_00: And she said, Amen.
SPEAKER_00: Oh, there it is.
SPEAKER_00: It was like as soon as she opened her eyes, it was across the river in a bush.
SPEAKER_00: I don't know how far she threw this thing, like the javelin in high school or something, where it's like it's in the bush, and we went and got it.
SPEAKER_00: That's simple.
SPEAKER_00: That was one of the things.
SPEAKER_00: If um, but I'm gonna tell you, praying for your car keys if you lose them.
SPEAKER_00: That's okay.
SPEAKER_00: We've that's that's been very helpful.
SPEAKER_00: Second, and I mentioned this for just a little bit last week, uh, when Catherine was uh middle school age-ish, early high school, she had some sort of skin thing that we didn't, and we went to doctor after doctor, and it was painful and bright red.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, you couldn't notice.
SPEAKER_00: She walked in and her face was you couldn't help but see this young girl had bright red skin, it was inflamed, it was painful, nothing was working, it was getting worse.
SPEAKER_00: And so we did decide, and I made it sound like it wasn't as miraculous last week as it had a miraculous element to it.
SPEAKER_00: But we went to see the elders of our church who prayed over us, laid hands on her, and anointed her with oil.
SPEAKER_00: And this is what Catherine, she'd been in pain for weeks, low-grade pain for months.
SPEAKER_00: And she's sitting there with the elders having their hands praying over her, and she said, the pain stopped while they were praying, and she it never came back.
SPEAKER_00: And she went home, and the cream that she had tried to use, but it was too painful even to put onto her face and her arms and legs, she went and tried it again.
SPEAKER_00: And that is the beginning of the end of that skin rash, whatever it was.
SPEAKER_00: Prayer.
SPEAKER_00: God is faithful, he loves us, he takes care of us.
SPEAKER_00: And then uh even in the darkest of things, so for the past ten years, I would say that has been the hardest on the Speaks family.
SPEAKER_00: We moved several times, we've had a lot of things that are been going on.
SPEAKER_00: And there there was this one, you know, both we had we both had a parent pass away during all of this.
SPEAKER_00: We moved, it was in a pandemic, like the rest of you were in a pandemic.
SPEAKER_00: And it was hard.
SPEAKER_00: And there was this one moment where there's this one we we've we have gone through tragedy and almost tragedy, and there was this one moment where we were just uh at the end, at the end of our ability to carry anything, and we said, Lord, just send help.
SPEAKER_00: Just send help.
SPEAKER_00: So that week, like that day, even was it that day?
SPEAKER_00: That day we found a person online that was the exact help that we needed.
SPEAKER_00: It's like okay.
SPEAKER_00: That was an answer to prayer.
SPEAKER_00: I think that was the first, and only time we said just send send help that kind of desperation, and he did.
SPEAKER_00: God meets us in our brokenness and our hurt and our sorrow send help.
SPEAKER_00: Trust in the Lord with all your heart.
SPEAKER_00: It's a memory verse, right?
SPEAKER_00: It's a memory verse, but it's true.
SPEAKER_00: It's true, it's a lifeline for those who need it.
SPEAKER_00: And I find that when I'm when I pray that prayer and I can entrust it to God, there's a peace that I've I've experienced.
SPEAKER_00: And for some of you, it's the opposite.
SPEAKER_00: And for some of us, it's the opposite.
SPEAKER_00: Because we've prayed and it hasn't gone the way we wanted.
SPEAKER_00: So instead of peace, we feel pain in the midst of that.
SPEAKER_00: It it's painful to many who have gone through or are going through something painful.
SPEAKER_00: How can you trust God when life hurts?
SPEAKER_00: How do you trust him when life hurts?
SPEAKER_00: Why is it so hard to trust God with all of our heart the way he talks about here?
SPEAKER_00: And he tells us, he tells us right here, trust in the Lord with all your heart and do not lean on your own understanding.
SPEAKER_00: And there it is.
SPEAKER_00: That's why we have trouble understanding because we see from our perspective, we have an understanding that is ours, that has been shaped by a lot of things that may not be true.
SPEAKER_00: Alistair Begg uh found a great quote from him this week talking about just struggling.
SPEAKER_00: He says, Despite the obvious emphasis of Scripture in regard to suffering, we are bombarded by suggestions that the success, that the successful Christian living takes place in the realm of constant victory, health, wholeness, and financial prosperity.
SPEAKER_00: That's very American, and it is very uh it's very media, like our social media.
SPEAKER_00: You see that all over the place.
SPEAKER_00: And the assumption is if I trust in God, he will make my life go well, as I define well.
SPEAKER_00: And I encountered it yesterday.
SPEAKER_00: I was uh like YouTube or something, and this is what somebody, this is a quote.
SPEAKER_00: The more you believe and trust God, the more limitless your possibilities become for your family, your career, for your life.
SPEAKER_00: But life hurts, even for Christians.
SPEAKER_00: And the Bible is very honest about the suffering of those who believe in Jesus and the things we go through.
SPEAKER_00: And so it doesn't make sense to us.
SPEAKER_00: What good is faith if it doesn't get me what I want?
SPEAKER_00: I had a college student ask me that years ago.
SPEAKER_00: You've heard stories of God doing good for others, and you believe it so deeply that it will, and then it doesn't happen for you the way it seems to have happened for other people.
SPEAKER_00: Is he powerful?
SPEAKER_00: Does he care?
SPEAKER_00: Does he not love me?
SPEAKER_00: And that's why Solomon counsels do not lean on your own understanding.
SPEAKER_00: It's faulty.
SPEAKER_00: You have your own understanding, you would, your own attempt to understand, to make sense of the world, but it's full of those cultural influences and assumptions and expectations and hopes and experiences and usually oversimplifications.
SPEAKER_00: I hated algebra.
SPEAKER_00: Give me a simple occasion, one uh equation, one plus one equals two.
SPEAKER_00: I can do that one.
SPEAKER_00: I can even do a plus one equals two.
SPEAKER_00: I got that one.
SPEAKER_00: But in terms of the equations we have, we it's very simplistic.
SPEAKER_00: If God loves me and God is all powerful, then nothing bad should ever happen to me.
SPEAKER_00: And that's a very simplistic equation.
SPEAKER_00: And we don't we become disillusioned when we think the answer to that is God is going to do what I want him to do.
SPEAKER_00: And we don't understand the interconnectedness of everything that's around us all the time.
SPEAKER_00: And that God is not just aware of your life, he's aware of all how all the lives fit together.
SPEAKER_00: He knows the full equation for everything and the interconnectedness.
SPEAKER_00: You don't have enough variables in your head for your own life to know how it should go in relation to everything that's happening in the world.
SPEAKER_00: So Solomon says, do not lean on those assumptions, on your own understanding.
SPEAKER_00: Instead, he says, and in everything, acknowledge him.
SPEAKER_00: Acknowledge God.
SPEAKER_00: Now that acknowledged word is a bit soft, so somebody else has translated it a different different way to talk about as drawing as close to God as you possibly can.
SPEAKER_00: I bring God into it.
SPEAKER_00: Like acknowledge him is like you tip the hat and you keep going with your life.
SPEAKER_00: But you, what he's saying is that the Hebrew word is actually, I bring him in as close as I can.
SPEAKER_00: So everything I'm doing, I am making him a part of my mental equation.
SPEAKER_00: This is what I want.
SPEAKER_00: But God is in this too.
SPEAKER_00: Jerry Bridges said this as well.
SPEAKER_00: He said, God's plan and his ways of working out his plan are frequently beyond our ability to fathom and understand.
SPEAKER_00: We must learn to trust when we don't understand.
SPEAKER_00: So he's acknowledging that there's a plan.
SPEAKER_00: The plan is perfect, the plan is exhaustive, it includes everything, and the plan is secret.
SPEAKER_00: We don't know it.
SPEAKER_00: So you don't know what the plan is.
SPEAKER_00: So how do we move forward with this?
SPEAKER_00: Well, what does the Bible tell me about the person who made the plans?
SPEAKER_00: What does it tell us about God so we can trust God with all of our hearts?
SPEAKER_00: This is a quote I came across this week.
SPEAKER_00: I think it's uh really helpful.
SPEAKER_00: And he says, the problem for us is the problem of God's silence when things are hard.
SPEAKER_00: And what he says is, I think this is the hardest part of all, is the silence of God and suffering.
SPEAKER_00: You can take just about anything if you know why.
SPEAKER_00: Everywhere I go, every meeting I'm asked why, I'm going to tell you something.
SPEAKER_00: God will very seldom answer your question of why.
SPEAKER_00: It's not that there are no answers, it's just that you and I probably wouldn't be able to comprehend the answer if God were to tell us.
SPEAKER_00: And besides that, we have to learn to trust him without knowing why.
SPEAKER_00: We ask him questions, and what we're usually doing is saying, Lord, explain yourself calling God into account.
SPEAKER_00: Why God, why?
SPEAKER_00: That's why we do it.
SPEAKER_00: If I only knew why God did it and was satisfied with his reason, then I could face it.
SPEAKER_00: But you don't know often why God has allowed or sent the trial you're facing.
SPEAKER_00: So we trust him.
SPEAKER_00: The Bible reveals a lot of things about God that anchor us in the moment where we're suffering.
SPEAKER_00: It does.
SPEAKER_00: Paul David Tripp talks about one.
SPEAKER_00: He says the Bible never minimizes the harsh experiences of this life in this terribly broken world.
SPEAKER_00: Scripture never looks down on the sufferer, it never mocks his pain, it never turns a deaf ear to his cries, and it never condemns him for his struggle.
SPEAKER_00: The Bible presents to the sufferer a God who understands, who cares, who invites us to come to him for help, and who promises one day to end all suffering forever.
SPEAKER_00: So we know some things.
SPEAKER_00: We know that God loves us.
SPEAKER_00: We know that he cares for us.
SPEAKER_00: The Bible talks about this throughout, and we also know how this all ends.
SPEAKER_00: It ends happily.
SPEAKER_00: This is in Revelation chapter 21, verse 4.
SPEAKER_00: He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning nor crying, nor pain any more.
SPEAKER_00: For the former things have passed away.
SPEAKER_00: And the Bible speaks about the pain that we may experience as light and momentary trouble that we face here.
SPEAKER_00: Romans 8 18.
SPEAKER_00: I consider our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us.
SPEAKER_00: And I can see Jimmy in the back back there.
SPEAKER_00: I'm going to use Jimmy for an illustration.
SPEAKER_00: Since y'all are here, so I'm going to use Jimmy.
SPEAKER_00: Jimmy, you're getting Called out from the front up here.
SPEAKER_00: You don't even know it yet.
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
SPEAKER_00: When Jimmy is going to be about three or four, Jimmy's gonna fall and he's gonna get a boo-boo.
SPEAKER_00: And it is going to be the worst day of his life.
SPEAKER_00: And he's gonna cry and he's gonna come and show Ryan.
SPEAKER_00: He'll show Ryan.
SPEAKER_00: Ryan, you'll be the one.
SPEAKER_00: He'll show Ryan his bu-bu.
SPEAKER_00: I've got a bu-bu, I've got a bu-bu.
SPEAKER_00: And then Ryan's gonna get some cake and put it into Jimmy's hand, and Jimmy will no longer have a bubu.
SPEAKER_00: I'm just gonna have cake.
SPEAKER_00: Right?
SPEAKER_00: In some ways, that's what Jesus is telling us here in these verses.
SPEAKER_00: You're going to face really hard things here.
SPEAKER_00: But when you get there, all the boo-boos will be forgotten.
SPEAKER_00: They won't be there.
SPEAKER_00: They'll be as forgotten as a boo-boo when cake is presented, and he's taking us all to something really good.
SPEAKER_00: So he's telling us the context.
SPEAKER_00: Whatever you go through here, the end will be so joyful that what you feel right now, you're gonna have, you're not even gonna have a tinge of sadness about it.
SPEAKER_00: No regret, no grief, nothing missing.
SPEAKER_00: You will see then as God sees now, and it will all make sense.
SPEAKER_00: All of it.
SPEAKER_00: What is in the dark will be brought to light, and you will second guess no situation, no question will haunt you, no pain will follow you, no decision will keep you up at night.
SPEAKER_00: You'll be free.
SPEAKER_00: And there'll be joy the way that we want.
SPEAKER_00: Second is this.
SPEAKER_00: Here's another context for you.
SPEAKER_00: God is not a helicopter parent.
SPEAKER_00: We have a God who lets us ride our bicycles, fall off our bicycles, and then kisses our boo-boos.
SPEAKER_00: We have a God who meets us when we're broken and fallen, but He lets us, He lets us do those things that sometimes can be hurtful.
SPEAKER_00: I oh whenever the Olympics are on, kind of like the World Cup, uh, we watch.
SPEAKER_00: And there are there are certain things I watch and say, I would never in a gazillion years try that.
SPEAKER_00: And one of those are the trick skiers, those those guys that come, guys and gals who come down these ramps, and then there's a ramp, there's a kind of a jump off of the end, and they're spinning as they go through the air.
SPEAKER_00: And you've seen them.
SPEAKER_00: And it was fascinating during one of the last, I guess it was the last Winter Olympics, they interviewed one of the people who does this and gets golds, medals, and those kind of things, and they asked, How do you, how did you learn to do this?
SPEAKER_00: It's like, how do you learn to do something like that?
SPEAKER_00: And he said, Well, when we were young, we would jump off the chimney onto like, you know, stuff at the bottom.
SPEAKER_00: But my dad decided that was too injurious, so he actually made us a ramp.
SPEAKER_00: And like, it's like his dad jumped right into helping them get to that point.
SPEAKER_00: And it's amazing because you know they fell, you know they broke things, you know that they were injured on many occasions, but dad let them do that because on one day, someday, there's going to be this gold medal.
SPEAKER_00: And this kid who's jumping off the chimney and doing all these things is gonna jump in front of the whole world, spin through the air, and then land, and then go down the hill.
SPEAKER_00: And then they're gonna get on the podium and get a gold medal.
SPEAKER_00: God lets us get boo-boos because he can see where we're heading, he knows what we need.
SPEAKER_00: So, how do we know?
SPEAKER_00: We can trust him is because he's in it, he knows where it's going.
SPEAKER_00: And then number three, uh, we know because God did not exempt himself from the pain.
SPEAKER_00: We ask, couldn't God just?
SPEAKER_00: And apparently not, in some cases.
SPEAKER_00: Because in one particular case, 2,000 years ago, Jesus prayed in a garden.
SPEAKER_00: Father, if it is possible, may this cup pass from me.
SPEAKER_00: And in that particular moment, the cup did not pass from him.
SPEAKER_00: This is what C.S.
SPEAKER_00: Lewis wrote about that.
SPEAKER_00: He said, In Gethsemane, the holiest of all petitioners prayed three times that a certain cup might pass from him.
SPEAKER_00: It did not.
SPEAKER_00: And Jesus is saying, We're going to go through hard things.
SPEAKER_00: In John 16, 33, Jesus said, In the world you will have tribulation, but take heart, I have overcome the world.
SPEAKER_00: And what he didn't say was, take heart, because you're never going to have any kind of trial or tribulation or pain in this life.
SPEAKER_00: That's not what he said.
SPEAKER_00: He said, You're not exempt from that.
SPEAKER_00: You're going to go through that, but I will be in that with you.
SPEAKER_00: But what he also did not say is, I'm not going to exempt you from the pain, but he also didn't exempt himself from the pain.
SPEAKER_00: He entered into our pain to bring about our rescue.
SPEAKER_00: And the Bible says it was for love.
SPEAKER_00: And the suffering of Jesus brought about the salvation of everyone who believed.
SPEAKER_00: So when Jesus was dying on a cross 2,000 years ago, he wasn't dying because he had done something wrong and because he had done something for which he needed to be punished.
SPEAKER_00: He was dying because God loved his people.
SPEAKER_00: And this is the only way that you could be saved.
SPEAKER_00: And the only way that I could be saved is for Jesus to die and to take my sins and pay for them 2,000 years ago, so that a summer camp, 2,000 years later, roughly, I would hear this and believe, and all of my sins would be taken away from me.
SPEAKER_00: I would experience the forgiveness of my sins at that point.
SPEAKER_00: If God is using Jesus redemptively in that way, he certainly can use our suffering for redemptive things in our lives.
SPEAKER_00: And that brings us to our last is God is always working for our good.
SPEAKER_00: The plan is for our ultimate good.
SPEAKER_00: Romans 8.28.
SPEAKER_00: And we know that in all things, God works for the good of those who love Him, who have been called according to His purpose.
SPEAKER_00: If God is for me, who can be against me?
SPEAKER_00: Is what the scripture asks.
SPEAKER_00: So the gracious purpose of God will certainly be accomplished in my life.
SPEAKER_00: And the gracious purpose of God in other people's lives will be accomplished, sometimes, through me.
SPEAKER_00: If Jesus' suffering was redemptive, that means that my suffering and your suffering and others can be redemptive.
SPEAKER_00: This is Jerry Bridges again.
SPEAKER_00: God does not willingly bring affliction or grief to us.
SPEAKER_00: He does not delight in causing us to experience pain or heartache.
SPEAKER_00: He always has a purpose for the grief he brings or allows to come into our lives.
SPEAKER_00: Most often we do not know what the purpose is, but it is enough to know that his infinite wisdom and perfect love have determined that the particular sorrow is best for us.
SPEAKER_00: God never wastes pain.
SPEAKER_00: He always uses it to accomplish his purpose, and his purpose is for his glory and our good.
SPEAKER_00: Therefore, we can trust him when our hearts are aching or our bodies are racked with pain.
SPEAKER_00: You don't know.
SPEAKER_00: You don't know how God's using your pain.
SPEAKER_00: You don't know how your pain is shaping you and molding you and making you somebody that is incredibly useful in God's hands.
SPEAKER_00: This is a quote I came across this week.
SPEAKER_00: It said, your struggles are not because you didn't pray the right way, or because you didn't pray enough, or because you have weak faith or insufficient intercessors.
SPEAKER_00: It is because God is using you in ways that you may not understand now, but one day you will.
SPEAKER_00: One day you will see how God used your affliction to prepare for you an incomparable weight of glory.
SPEAKER_00: He's shaping you.
SPEAKER_00: Follow-up quote from somebody else.
SPEAKER_00: The places you've often been deeply hurt the most are the same places God will use you the most.
SPEAKER_00: He is a God that takes us from ruin to redemption every single time.
SPEAKER_00: The fire of affliction can help ignite the dormant fires of affection.
SPEAKER_00: Those who have been wounded are the best at tending the wounds of others.
SPEAKER_00: We know this.
SPEAKER_00: Those who have suffered most have often seen heaven most clearly.
SPEAKER_00: The hidden hurts often display the most obvious trust.
SPEAKER_00: God redeems our bruises, and God can redeem your bruises.
SPEAKER_00: Do you trust that?
SPEAKER_00: Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding.
SPEAKER_00: In all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make your paths straight.
SPEAKER_00: But by accepting them and offering them to him, throwing away all defensive armor.
SPEAKER_00: If our hearts need to be broken, and if he chooses this is the way in which they should break, so be it.
SPEAKER_00: And that is not pleasant at the time.
SPEAKER_00: But there's something behind it.
SPEAKER_00: Have any of you ever heard of William Cowper?
SPEAKER_00: William Cowper was a hymn writer.
SPEAKER_00: He wrote some fantastic hymns, but he himself struggled his whole life.
SPEAKER_00: Couldn't hold a job.
SPEAKER_00: He was taken care of by other Christians, but he was an amazing hymn writer.
SPEAKER_00: And one of his hymns that he wrote was one called God Moves in a Mysterious Way.
SPEAKER_00: Have some of you older people heard of that one?
SPEAKER_00: God moves in a Mysterious Way.
SPEAKER_00: And there's a line from the hymn that goes like this Judge not the Lord by feeble sense, but trust him for his grace.
SPEAKER_00: Behind a frowning providence, he hides a smiling face.
SPEAKER_00: God never drops the ball on anything.
SPEAKER_00: It's impossible for him to be mistaken.
SPEAKER_00: He's never overstepped a line.
SPEAKER_00: We may not understand, even that phone going off right now.
SPEAKER_00: God has never overstepped the line.
SPEAKER_00: We may not understand or even like what he does sometimes, but that's often because we don't see the big picture.
SPEAKER_00: And at the end of time, when we stand before him, we will see it all spread out, and we will see his smiling face no longer behind a frowning providence.
SPEAKER_00: We're going to see his full work.
SPEAKER_00: We'll be in his presence and we will applaud and we will cheer.
SPEAKER_00: It may not make sense at the moment, but it will make perfect sense then.
SPEAKER_00: And sometimes, sometimes, it makes sense here now.
SPEAKER_00: So my friend that got doged.
SPEAKER_00: Remember him?
SPEAKER_00: I hope so, because I just talked about him a few minutes ago.
SPEAKER_00: We had been praying.
SPEAKER_00: I had prayed with him several times for him to find another job that fit his gifts, that fit his who he was, his mission, what he was good at.
SPEAKER_00: Because he didn't like his job, but it paid the bills.
SPEAKER_00: And so we prayed numerous times, and he wasn't ever going to pull the trigger on that.
SPEAKER_00: So guess what God did?
SPEAKER_00: God fired him.
SPEAKER_00: God doged him.
SPEAKER_00: And he was out of work for months.
SPEAKER_00: And it was hard.
SPEAKER_00: It was difficult.
SPEAKER_00: He didn't know where he was going to work.
SPEAKER_00: There was nothing in their area.
SPEAKER_00: He thought this is going to be a good place for me to work.
SPEAKER_00: And then some people that he knew from a previous church there in town reached out to him and said, Hey, we heard you got laid off from your previous job.
SPEAKER_00: We think you would be perfect for this new role that we're set, we're setting up a whole new office here, and we think you'd be perfect to oversee the staff.
SPEAKER_00: Because he's so good with people.
SPEAKER_00: God knew what he was doing the whole time.
SPEAKER_00: But not until he got into that moment could he look back and say, Oh, that's why the past several months happened, because God was doing something in it.
SPEAKER_00: You don't always know.
SPEAKER_00: But sometimes you know.
SPEAKER_00: Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and lean not on your own understanding.
SPEAKER_00: In all your ways, acknowledge him, bring him into it, and he will make your path straight.
SPEAKER_00: Let me pray for us.