No Sanity Required
No Sanity Required is a weekly podcast hosted by Brody Holloway and Snowbird Outfitters. Each week, we engage culture and personal stories with a Gospel-driven perspective. Our mission is to equip the Church to pierce the darkness with the light of Christ by sharing the vision, ideas, and passions God has used to carry us through 26 years of student ministry. Find more content at swoutfitters.com.
No Sanity Required
Where is God in the Midst of Injustice?
Listener discretion advised: This episode contains sensitive content, including discussions of abuse and assault.
In this weighty episode, Brody leans into one of the hardest questions we all face:
Where is God when bad things happen?
Whether it's the pain of abuse, the heartbreak of oppression, or the overwhelming brokenness we see in the world, Brody recognizes that these are not easy conversations.
He speaks directly to those wrestling with the problem of evil, the suffering of the innocent, and the seeming silence of God amid injustice. Drawing deeply from Scripture, Brody unpacks stories of pain and redemption, and offers tools to help believers—both strong and struggling—navigate these hard truths. He shares the hope we find in Christ. Jesus not only understands injustice but also endured it. His death and resurrection bring both freedom for the oppressed and justice for the oppressor.
- Ecclesiates 4
- Romans 2
- Romans 8
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One of the hardest things for me as a pastor, or even as a dad, to answer in people's lives, uh, or to speak into people's lives, I guess to add the questions that are hardest to answer. When people have questions and this comes up a lot about the problem of evil when is God in the midst of injustice? Why do bad things happen to good people? Something like that and it's a hard question to answer and it's even I want to say that even for a solid, mature believer it's something that you'll be shook.
Speaker 1:If you wrestle through that at any point in your life, it's not like you're going to get to a point where the injustice around you that you see in the world doesn't affect you anymore. You're just like, oh, God's got it. It's never like that. You're going to wrestle with this the rest of your life. But there are some, some tools in your kit, some weapons in your kit that I think you can use and utilize from scripture, from common sense, to help you at least be able to navigate that, that internal conversation or that conversation with somebody else when it comes up. That's what we're going to be talking about today when is God in the midst of injustice? Uh, thanks for listening. Welcome to no sanity required.
Speaker 2:Welcome to no Required from the Ministry of Snowbird Wilderness Outfitters. A podcast about the Bible culture and stories from around the globe.
Speaker 1:I want to start off with not a joke, but a funny scene. There's a movie and I don't remember what the movie is called and it's a 20-year-old movie, and it's one of those movies where you watch the trailer. The trailer's funny, the movie's stupid, the movie's not very good, um, but there's a scene in the movie where this guy is in a phone booth. Now, for younger folks, a phone booth is maybe obsolete now, but this is a place where you could make a phone call before people had cell phones. So maybe you're out and about, you need to call 911 or you need to call home. You would go into a little booth, little glass or metal tin booth outside of a gas station or something like that. There'd be a phone. If it's a local call, you could put 25 cents in it. That's a quarter. I'm being a little facetious, but you drop that in there. You make your call. If it's a long distance call, you would dial zero. An operator would pick up and then you would say I need to make a collect call and you would give her the number and uh, and then she would call that. Someone on the other end of the line would pick up and say hello and she would say I have a collect call from. She would say that Someone on the other end of the line would pick up and say hello, and she would say I have a collect call from. She would say the caller's name, that person, and she'd say will you accept the charges, because a call outside of your area costs money. It's crazy for young people to think about now, but that's how we used to have to make phone calls.
Speaker 1:So in this old movie there's a scene where a guy's in a phone booth. And old movie there's a scene where a guy's in a phone booth and he's caught and I don't remember the, I don't remember the storyline, it's kind of like a spoof comedy, but it's about organized crime. And he's calling and he's going to make a threat, uh, to this mob boss. And this, this little asian guy with a thick accent, answers the phone and the guy on the phone and the phone booth says at the end of the call he says tell him, justice will be waiting. And the little guy goes okay, thank you Justin, I tell him bye. And he hangs up. And I always thought it was so funny, cause as he hangs up, the guy in the phone booth goes no, no, no, I said justice. And it's like the whole, the whole spoof of the thing is in my mind is like, oh, you can't even get your point across. That justice is coming, you know like, and I feel like that's kind of.
Speaker 1:That scene is stupid and funny as it is. It sort of encapsulates how a lot of us feel when it comes to where's, where's the justice in crazy situations and circumstances, and so I want to talk about that today. I want to talk about justice, injustice. Where's God when bad things happen? Why do bad things happen to seemingly good people? And I want to drill into just a few places in Scripture where we can find hope. That'll help us navigate those waters.
Speaker 1:And let me say, before I start and get into this, I know that percentage wise, um, the stats tell us that one in eight people are the victim of some sort of abuse. My experience in 30 years of ministry is that that that number is much closer to one and four. I know that in in the County that I live in, cherokee County, north Carolina, uh, we just had meetings with our sheriff's department, um to discuss um operating procedures for any event that we have crime being committed at SWO, active shooter scenarios, stuff like that. But in a sidebar conversation I'm sitting talking with the narcotics officers for our county department and we ended up talking for an hour and a half and I was shocked to find that the county I live in, cherokee County, north Carolina, which is a rural county, it's a massive county. It takes an hour plus to drive from one end to the other. If you drive from corner to corner and in that county there's 30,000 people so you could take, you, move into a suburb of Atlanta. You got 30,000 people in just a few subdivisions. That you cover really quick.
Speaker 1:This massive land area county, 30,000 people, it's not a lot. Just east of us is a county called Buncombe County. The seat of that county is the city of Asheville. Asheville is 100,000 people in the greater Asheville area. Buncombe County is many more people than that.
Speaker 1:Our county last year had more murders than any county in western North Carolina. On the last day of the year there was a double homicide in Asheville that either tied them with us or bumped them one ahead of us. So in a rural county we had nine homicides last year. It's a pretty staggering number, but the more staggering number that came out of that conversation that I had yesterday was that one in four people in this county are victims of some sort of abuse or violent crime. Abuse or violent crime. That's staggering. And then take into account that we have, on average, three to five officers on patrol in the county trying to cover all that area and all those people, and real quick you realize that if you live in a healthy household where people are nice to each other, nobody gets hit, nobody gets sexually touched or assaulted, nobody gets yelled at. If you live in a subdivision where you don't see crime in the street, you don't hear people being harmed or hurt, you are in the minority in history and even in the minority today.
Speaker 1:I believe that the majority of our listeners live in a very safe upper middle class probably environment. And the reality is that even in those environments the same types of things happen, but they often happen in the dark or in silence. So, saying all that to say, we live in a world regardless of where you live. But for me, even just put it in the context of my local community we live in a world where bad things happen to people I'm careful to say good people, because the scripture says no one's good. Romans 3, verse 10 says nobody's good. Romans 3, 12 no one's good. Romans 3, verse 10 says nobody's good. Romans 3, verse 12 says nobody's righteous. The next verse says humans, our throats are like open graves just consuming death. So that's the natural state or condition of a man's heart, a woman's heart. So we can say bad things happen to people, but I do think we can say bad things happen to people. But I do think we can. We can say bad things happen to good or innocent people. When we're talking about the strong hurting the weak, the strong oppressing the weak and I could tell stories.
Speaker 1:I thought about this. I could literally tell stories for sure for hours on, hours on hours on end, if not for days on end, of, in 30 years of ministry, the conversations I've had with law enforcement, with counselors, with fathers, husbands, mothers, daughters, brothers, like people that have been hurt by people close to them, as well as people that have been been victimized by strangers. We had a girl on staff here, um, and she, while she was serving here, we had to work through her coming to terms with being raped in a scenario that was a crime of opportunity, where she was a teenage girl with her friends at the beach and they're walking down the beach on kind of this boardwalk area and she gets literally grabbed and pulled into a dark room in an abandoned building that used to be a restaurant or something. Somebody grabs her, pulls her in there, sexually assaults and rapes her and then they just leave. She has no idea who it was.
Speaker 1:There's another scenario where a close friend of the ministry this lady has brought students and she was on I don't remember if it was like a cruise or a mission trip, but she was in an international context. She was in another country. They had a day where they were going to go on an excursion and I think they went. It was something like they went snorkeling or they went riding around in a boat doing something. Anyway, she ends up there's not enough people to all get in one boat to get transported back to where they were staying. They'd gone out, maybe to an island. I think they'd gone out to an island or something to just do some exploration. So she's like I'll hang back. She hangs back. There's there's two or three guys that are guiding this outing and they rape her.
Speaker 1:This is a woman that's that brings students to SWO and um, and then they say, if you tell anybody, they're not going to believe you, cause nobody even knows who we are, cause these are just some obscure dudes in a third world context that like. And so what I learned from talking with her and other ladies is a lot of times women that get assaulted like that, they don't end up even telling anybody because they think who's going to listen? Who am I going to tell? I'm ashamed, I'm scared, I'm for it's so traumatizing that for me. I think. Tell your dad, tell your husband, tell your brother, tell me, like, if it's one of my girls or one of my sisters or any girl that works at SWO or as a part of Red Oak, tell me, we'll go deal with it, you know we'll it. Whether that's, we physically deal with it or we'll get the law enforcement that needs to be involved involved.
Speaker 1:But typically in many of you that have been sexually or physically assaulted, you know it's so traumatizes you psychologically and emotionally. It confuses and disrupts everything about the way you even process what happened. A lot of times it doesn't get reported and so then a person is left to carry this the rest of their life and as they internalize it they end up saying, well, I got nobody else to blame. I blame God, or why did God let this happen? It's really difficult, and so what will end up happening is we'll end up in conversations with people at SWO because they get away from home, they get to an event here and I think there's something to be said for oftentimes the longevity of our ministry SWO has been faithful for three decades.
Speaker 1:I had someone call me two weeks ago and say can I talk to you? And this was a 60-something-year-old lady who sits on a board of directors for a nonprofit Christian ministry and there's some stuff going on there and she's reaching out to me. And I was having a conversation with Rob Conte about it and I said it's crazy, people like that will call us. And he said it's crazy, people like that will call us. And he said it's because we've proven faithful and I'm really grateful for that and I want to steward that and manage that Well. People feel like they can trust us enough to tell us things. But what gets difficult is I'm not a counselor, I'm not a psychiatrist, I'm not a psychologist. I have no certifications or licenses. My degree was in government. You know, I've got a ministry experience, but what I've learned is the wisdom and the wisdom that the scripture provides, along with the common sense of working through things with people.
Speaker 1:A lot of times, what people need to hear is just it's, it's okay, we can work through this and help you kind of land on some solid footing, and that's what I'm hoping this episode today will do. This may turn into multiple episodes, because I'm sure we're going to get feedback from this. I want to tell a couple more stories because I really want to set this up. I want to hopefully get a hold of your heart and your mind and your emotions. This is a weightier than normal episode. There was a girl We'll call your emotions. This is a weightier than normal episode. There was a girl. We'll call her Lauren. That is not her name. We'll call her Lauren.
Speaker 1:Lauren came to SWO as a young lady, probably, I think, 14. And Little and I had the opportunity to minister to her over the next few years. She came to SWO several years in a row, I believe. She ended up serving on our element team, which at the time was called servant team, and she had been, uh, repeatedly sexually assaulted by her stepfather, a guy that we'll call, uh, bob that's a pretty generic name, no offense to the Bobs out there, but we'll call him Bob, also not his name, um, and he had. He had sexually assaulted her repeatedly and she had um. She had finally had the courage to tell somebody and things went to litigation, went to her prosecution and Bob went to prison. Now I want to address a terrible injustice that happens to people like Lauren by explaining something that happened when Bob went to prison. Bob goes to prison.
Speaker 1:Lauren gets, I think, one or two sessions of counseling with probably a dime store counselor. No offense to good counselors out there, but there's some idiots in the counseling world, some complete idiots who just want their $150 an hour fee. And the reason I trust our counseling so much is because we don't get paid to do it and we're doing it out of the calling God's placed on our lives. The reason I trust Nikki Smith to sit down with a girl and help her navigate this is because Nikki's heart is proven for the Lord and for people and she doesn't get paid bonus hours to counsel. Nikki Smith earned her master's degree in biblical counseling on her own time and partially on her own dime, and we helped her with that. But she put in the blood, sweat, tears, money, money and equity, to sit across from girls and help them navigate this, and part of it was because of lauren's story, because nikki walked through this with lauren as well. Nikki's uh, someone that if you, if you're a person, you know, nikki smith, she's, she's incredible, oversees our element program and is our in-house sort of our in-house counselor. But, but a lot of counselors again, I'm not throwing everybody under the bus here. There's some good counselors out there, but good counselors are not doing it for the money, um, and that's why I really trust pastoral counseling more than anything. So that's another conversation. Maybe that needs to be an episode where we talk about biblical counseling. That being said, lauren was sent to a counselor. I think two sessions is what she got.
Speaker 1:When it was over, everyone assumed Lauren's going to be fine. The stepdad's gone to prison, she got some counseling. Let's leave it be. Well, she's like this 16 year old broken kid. So when she gets to us, by God's grace, we start to help her navigate how to deal with her emotions, how to deal with the feelings of of, you know, resentment towards people and distrust.
Speaker 1:I mean it's just so cognitively it disrupts even a person's development. It's very statistically proven, scientifically proven, medically proven in the world of psychology and psychiatry Because there is some credence and credibility there that when a person is sexually abused at a young age, there's a cognitive arrest in their development. They sort of freeze up in that stage in their life and so you'll have 30, 40, 50 year old women that will. There'll be parts of them, and I'm not being scientific here because I don't even know the terminology for this. I'm just telling you I've observed it. Science, by the way, is part observation, observation of fact. And so I've observed that people will sort of have this, they'll be sort of cognitively arrested in in this 16 year old moment, even though they're a 35 year old mom, and they'll have these. They'll revert back to this moment. That's where a lot of the struggle will be.
Speaker 1:So she's wrestling with things that had happened and and and is graphically described. This to little enough, and so we're trying to help her, we're trying to counsel her through this, help her navigate this. Well then, the guy only does like three years. I don't know how many times I've had this happen, where a sex offender only does three years. I don't. I don't know who's in charge of that. I don't know who's in charge of that we had another gal that served on full-time.
Speaker 1:It's a story in a story here. Real quick Side note a very faithful lady that has been on NSR. If you go back and you listen to the Courtney Seifert episode um, now Courtney Williams, she married, she married and and, uh, her last name's Williams you go back and listen to that episode uh think season two, I don't remember now, but you can look it up and the story of her dad who brutalized little boys in a Boy Scout troop for several years and did, I think, three years in prison. Like I don't understand the system, and so it's infuriating and you end up very pissed off most days if you let yourself think about this stuff. And so how did this guy only serve three years in prison? I don't know, but that's what he got, so he's getting out.
Speaker 1:So we've walked through with this young lady. Hey, we're going to go sit down. You're going to sit down and we're going to support you and you're going to confront him over this, but you're going to tell him you forgive him, that was what she wanted to do. She needed for her closure. She needed to say to him I forgive him, that was what she wanted to do she needed for her closure. She needed to say to him I forgive you, but I don't ever want to see you again, and that was how she was going to deal with it. And the dude gets out of prison and hangs himself in his closet at his house, so she doesn't get that closure. He does that before she can go sit down and talk with him, and so we watched her life kind of go off the rails over the next few years. She ended up in a really unhealthy relationship.
Speaker 1:Stories like that are the stories I could literally tell for if not hours, maybe days. There's a girl named Tara that came here with an FBI agent that escorted her and her counselor to SWO for a week because she was at the center of a sex trafficking investigation not investigation, it was a trial. They already had a case file on the on the Kingpin of this operation. It was about that thick. And this 15 year old girl comes to camp from 12 to 14. She was pimped out. Sit and talk with this girl and realize she's she's so confused about just reality. You know why did that happen to her? She's so confused about just reality. You know why did that happen to her? That's the question you wrestle with.
Speaker 1:I've had so many conversations like that on the other sort of sort of a different side to this coin, a different side to the Rubik's cube. You know so many sides to this would be talking to combat veterans of you. Uh, listen to episodes with gar bozeman, who we're going to have. Uh, gar will be featured in the no sanity book, that no sanity stories book that's coming out in 2026. But part of gar's testimony is wrestling with the atrocities of war things not that he saw but that he and then dealing with his own conscience over. I remember talking with a veteran who had killed a man with his bare hands that they were interrogating. He picked the guy up and dropped him on his head on a stone floor and the guy died from it. I remember this guy was an alcoholic, he was suicidal, he was using pills to medicate because he couldn't cope with the fact that he had done this.
Speaker 1:So now you've got this clouded view of justice, injustice, where you're like well, we fight in a just war. I was there in service to my country but I went too far. But it was the fog of war and it's just confusing. I've had a lot of those kinds of conversations. I had conversations with repentant abusers, men that say, yeah, I was abusive, maybe it's physical abuse, maybe it's sexual abuse. Um, can God forgive me? I now have put my faith and trust in Jesus. Can the Lord forgive me for this? And I can tell you, it's hard as a dad and a and a, as a pastor, a dad, a protector, a provider. It's hard to talk to a dude like that and try to help him navigate grace Cause I don't want to give it to him, you know.
Speaker 1:And so these are things that I think every Christian has to wrestle through, has to, has to wrestle with. And you've got to land on solid footing. Because if you haven't had to deal with this, if you've lived in a really sterile, safe environment, good for you, good on you. But it ain't always going to be like that. You're going to have a granddaughter or a or a nephew or somebody that's going to have some atrocity committed against them and you're going to have to wrestle with that. And it's not like you don't just, you don't just tell a person that's been abused oh, god is enough. The Lord will heal you, the Lord will get you through this. It doesn't, it's not like that I remember.
Speaker 1:I remember, uh, my brother-in-law getting killed and my mom well-intentioned I love my mom so much, she's such an amazing lady. But I remember she's talking to my nephew and she's trying to help him understand why his father died in this horrible accident and she said Jesus wanted your dad to come be with him. And I saw this switch flip in this little boy where he started immediately to go. I could see, oh, he's going to go down a path of hating Jesus because he said, well, but he's my dad, he's not Jesus' dad. Why did Jesus take my dad away from me? So now we've dug the hole deeper Again. I'm not blaming. I mean, my mom meant well, and the Lord let me hear that and I jumped in and intervened and said well, let's back up, this is not Jesus' fault.
Speaker 1:We live in a fallen, broken world and so we're able to then unpack. Death is real, catastrophe, calamity, atrocity is real. What Jesus has done is give us hope so that when bad things happen, we can rest in and fall back into the promises of Jesus. So I want to look at some things to help navigate specifically what happens when injustice occurs, when the strong harm the weak, when the powerful and evil do damage and harm to the innocent and the weak. I want to look at that, okay, and I want to go to Ecclesiastes, where questions are asked.
Speaker 1:And Ecclesiastes is a book that will spin you out, by the way, because it asks these questions and you got and it asks them in like high volume, but you got to really drill into the to the book to find the answers, cause there's only a couple of answers. He asks a million questions in the book and only gives you a couple answers. The beauty is we'll get to the answers. One answer is enough, like when Jesus answers and he gives one answer. It's enough. But the guy in Ecclesiastes is wrestling with this. So anyway, this is Ecclesiastes 4. He says this, just three verses Again.
Speaker 1:I saw all the oppressions that are done under the sun and behold the tears of the oppressed, and they had no one to comfort them. On the side of their oppressors, there was power and there was no one to comfort them. And I thought the dead, who are already dead, more fortunate than the living who are still alive, but better than both is he who has not yet been and has not seen the evil deeds that are done under the sun. So he's he's. He's in verse one. He's saying I saw oppressions done under the sun and the people that were oppressed had no one to comfort them. On the side of the oppressors, there was power and there was no one to comfort them. So the picture he's painting is very much the picture that we're describing here, which is the oppressed being weak and powerless against the oppressor.
Speaker 1:And what ends up happening oftentimes and maybe you, as a listener, this has happened and you've wrestled with this If you're watching this or listening to it is that it causes you to question one of two things you either question the goodness of the Lord or you question the power of the Lord, like the might and the strength of the Lord. Because, okay, when we say God is sovereign, we say that he is all. What we're saying is he's all powerful and he has complete and total freedom to do as he pleases Psalm 115.3,. The Lord is in his heavens, he does whatever he pleases, so he has the power and the freedom to do what he pleases. So when we wrestle with this and we go, you know, on behalf of the oppressed, or if you are the oppressed, you go where is God when this happens? Why didn't he stop it? We then question is he just not good enough? Because if he's powerful enough and he has the freedom and the power to do it because I think he's sovereign but he doesn't do it, it must mean he's not good, he's not completely benevolent, or maybe he's benevolent but he's out of touch because he's God and he can't be oppressed. So he can't understand. Listen, this is where the gospel gets so real. In this, in this subject. We wrestle with this and we go God. Maybe God is not good enough or he can't identify with this because he's never felt oppression.
Speaker 1:No one can hurt him, no one can beat him, no one can abuse him. No one can beat him. No one can abuse him. No one can sexually assault him. Nobody can can demoralize or demean him. He's God, he's sovereign, he's all powerful.
Speaker 1:But the thing is, when Jesus humbled himself and endured the cross, not only in his life but in his death, he endured abuse. He endured injustice like no one will ever endure injustice. Because he didn't only endure injustice in the beating that he took, he didn't only endure injustice in the, in the wrong that was done against him or the illegal trials where he was stood before people and wrongly accused and unjustly condemned, but when he was actually on the cross and he was hanging there with the sin of the world, that that he was atoning for is laid on his back, laid on his shoulders. He's dying under the sin of sexual abuse, physical abuse, emotional abuse. He's dying under the sin of sexual abuse, physical abuse, emotional abuse. He's dying for those and it's not just he's dying for people that would be abusers who would then, through repentance, cry out to him for salvation. But he's dying not just as a propitiation for our sin, which means he's dying in our place. He's also dying as an expiation for our sin, which means he's dying in our place. He's also dying as an expiation for our sin. In other words, he'll take the sin that's been committed against you and he'll take that unto himself and put it to death on the cross.
Speaker 1:So, first off, theologically, where your freedom from this abuse lies is recognizing that Jesus will put the sin that's been committed against you. He'll put that to death on your behalf, so that it no longer controls you and hold you in bondage. And so, where you know, when we wrestle with that question of where's God is, is there no goodness? Oh, no, jesus is on the cross, dying to free you from this pain, and he'll do it. Now I know we need to go a few more layers because that sounds theologically so good and it is good for me because I'm there, I accept it and see it. But maybe you're wrestling to see how, how that's a reality and how that's good, jesus as your expiation, setting you free from the sin that's been committed against you. That's one of the greatest facets of the cross of Christ. We've just recently celebrated the resurrection of Jesus on Easter Sunday, and we celebrate the fact that he died in our place.
Speaker 1:But I want you, if you're one of those who's been oppressed or victimized or abused, to see he also died to set you free from your abuser. That's a deep, powerful truth of the cross and where that scene in the Old Testament was, when they would take the scapegoat. If you know this story, you find it in Leviticus, I think Leviticus 16 and they would take this animal and they would lay the sins on that animal that had been committed against people. And they kill the one goat and it's like hey, here we're going to take this animal, we're going to slay this animal, we're going to take its blood and cover your sin. They would take the other one and they would take that animal out in the wilderness and release it, and and the picture is it's taken the wrong that's been done to you and it's removing that from you. So you're free from that. So your oppressors don't control you anymore. So Jesus, he's the scapegoat, he takes that away from us, and that's very important. So, as Solomon's asking this question in Ecclesiastes 4, I've seen the oppressed and I've seen the oppressor, and there's no one to hear the cries of the oppressed. Jesus hears the cry of the oppressed. There are those of us that Jesus has put in this world that hear the cries of the oppressed. Some of us were the oppressed and we've been set free from that, and so that's the first sort of message of hope.
Speaker 1:Um, I've, I've often said that the you know, you talk to people that work in law enforcement and a lot of times they have sort of a warped sense of humor. Um, same with people that work in, uh, like paramedics, because I think it's like a coping mechanism. They'll, they'll laugh at things that make you a little uncomfortable, you know. Um same with police officers, and I get it. I think it's partially, because if you live in that world where you're dealing with trauma or crime or death, you almost got to come up with a way to sort of like cope with that. You know, and so you see that a lot. But I've often said, the two vocations or jobs that will completely distort your view of humanity more than anything else are law enforcement or ministry.
Speaker 1:By being in full-time ministry ministry I become so cynical towards people. I have to fight, not looking at people and thinking I wonder what that dude's doing at home. I wonder how he treats his daughter, I wonder how he? You know, like I did it yesterday, literally yesterday I saw a guy interacting with some people and I know, and I and this guy's got a kid interacting with some people. And I know, and I and this guy's got a kid, um, I don't know the guy. I spoke to him. I was actually, um, he was in his yard. I was walking, I was on a long walk. It was two days ago. I was on a long walk.
Speaker 1:This guy's out in his yard, I think he's drunk, he's got a beer in his hand and he yells at me and his speech is pretty slurred. He's got a beer in his hand and he yells at me and his speech is pretty slurred and, uh, I mean he got a. He looked like Joe dirt, which that's my people. So I'm trying to be judgmental. But my man's out there, it's rebel flags for curtains in two of the bedrooms on the trailer and then he's, he's got a beer and there's two little girls in the yard. And I'm sorry, man, I know this is wrong, but I listened to him yell at those kids and I thought I wonder, you know, I just wonder what goes on there and and I like that's probably super condescending but I can't help it, like I've been, because it just so happens that I've been into that same exact trailer to intervene. The previous people that rented that trailer, we went into that trailer to intervene in a domestic abuse situation.
Speaker 1:I want to tell that story, but I'll come back to it Because I want you to hear that there are people who will fight for you and who will do what's right by you. So anyway, the point I'm making is I walk around and I see a guy just in the yard with his kids. I don't have any right to judge that dude, but I've just had so many of these situations that I've been confronted with that, I've become very jaded and just assumed the worst and people you know a lot of times. So I have to. Not, I don't just live there and dwell there, I take that to the Lord. I ask God to give me sensitivity and mercy and grace towards people, and he does, but it's. It gives you sort of like this skewed view when you start to face this stuff. And so a lot of people who are the victims, who are what Solomon and Ecclesiastes is calling the oppressed, they just don't look at anybody trustingly. You know if that's a word.
Speaker 1:So I want to give you I'm only going to look at two passages. There's a lot in scripture we could look at. I mean, this is spoken to a lot. But to wrap our time up here, I'm at 36 minutes. I think we're over half an hour, so I want to. I want to spend the rest of our time, cause this has been heavy. I want to.
Speaker 1:I want to give you a couple of things to point out in scripture that you can look to. The first one is I want to go to Romans, chapter two. Let me back up, let me go. Chapter two, 2, verse 4. Verse 4. Or do you presume on the riches of his kindness and forbearance and patience, not knowing that God's kindness is meant to lead you to repentance, but because of your hard and impenitent heart, you're storing up wrath for yourself.
Speaker 1:On the day of wrath, when God's righteous judgment will be revealed, he will render to each one according to his works. Now it's a statement. You'll see in scripture a lot. Jesus speaks to it, I think Psalm one. Uh, let's see Psalm 62, 12, I think I think it's in Psalm 62 that that uh, same phrase is used. Uh, job, it's spoken of in Job. So you'll see throughout scripture this idea that God's going to render according to each one of us. He's going to render judgment according to our works. And so here he says he will render to each one according to his works. And he say it in the context of God's wrath and judgment being revealed. So God's righteous that word righteous means just. We're talking about injustice. Injustice God's just or righteous wrath is going to be revealed as he renders judgment according to people's works.
Speaker 1:To those who, by patience and well-doing, seek for glory and honor and immortality, he will give eternal life. So it takes me to Romans eight one. There's therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, for those of us that seek the Lord, notice he doesn't say for those who live perfectly. He says let me read it again. He says um to those who buy patience. So, as you live your life, you're going to make mistakes, you're going to mess up. You got to be patient with the process of pursuing Christ because you're going to make mistakes, you're going to falter, you're going to fail, but God is going to grow us in who, by patience and well-doing, seek for glory, honor, immortality. So if the if, the desire of your heart and what you fix your eyes on, what you put your hand to, what you pursue after, is glory, honor, immortality, think of the doxology in Jude where he says to the only true God, to him who is able to keep you from stumbling, in that doxology, where God's going to keep me from stumbling, he's going to carry me through. He says to him belong um, glory, honor, majesty, dominion, for now and for all time, forevermore. So if my if, the goal and the pursuit of my life is to seek Christ, to pursue Christ, when bad things happen to me or whatever, I'm going to continue to pursue him, knowing there's coming a day where all pain is going to be gone. Tears are going to be wiped away. Jesus reveals to us this in the book of Revelation. He says I'm going to wipe your tears away. Those tears will never return and separate you from the pain that's been caused to you. So in this life we got to wrestle with the trauma, the PTSD, the past. You know the feeling of. You know you're around that person that was your abuser, the feeling you get. We got to wrestle with that. But when we're with Christ, eternally, we won't have to wrestle with that anymore. There's coming a day when you're not going to have to deal with this anymore, but right now the Lord will use it to refine and grow you, but also to to to fix your eyes on that which is immortal. This is mortal. One day, that which is mortal is going to give way to that which is immortal. We're going to be eternal. And so he says for those of us that are seeking the glory of the Lord, seeking the honor of the Lord, judgment is going to be found in Christ. He will have received our judgment for our sin, and what we'll receive and inherit is not only his righteousness but eternal life. There's therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, but for those who are self-seeking. An abuser is self-seeking Someone who uses a child or a woman for sexual pleasure against their will. A woman against her will a child doesn't even have the option of having a will. That's just sheer aggression, oppression and abuse.
Speaker 1:I remember talking to a girl one time who and I don't remember her name but I do remember her face and she had been so sexually abused. This girl was one of the one of the success stories of the gospel. She had come out of it and found her hope in Christ and she was living a victorious life. She went on, she got married, um, they're plugged into their church like. I'm really thankful for her testimony. I can can't remember her name, but I've seen her from time to time at camp.
Speaker 1:But when she was a kid, mom's boyfriend was sexually abusing her, raping her. It started off when she was 12 or 13. When she was about 16, she started to consent to having sexual relations with him so that he would be satisfied to not mess with her younger sister. So when they would get off the bus and come through the door, cause the guy was a sucker and a deadbeat who didn't work. So he's at home in the afternoon cause he's a complete piece of trash and doesn't work. So while their mom's off working and he's bumming living in their government housing apartment, the two girls would get off the bus. When they would come in, the 16 year old would take him and go into the bedroom and have sexual acts with him so that the younger sister wouldn't be exposed to it, and she would say go to the neighbor's house and play so, so, wrestling through that, that, that man, what he's doing is what it says.
Speaker 1:Uh, in verse seven, eight he's self-seeking. He's for those who are self-seeking, he's purely pleasing his twisted, perverted, disgusting flesh. That is as disgusting a story as I've ever heard or told, and I've only ever told it right here, right now. It's not one I bring up, even with our staff. I don't bring that up in staff training because it'll our staff would be so shook if we walk through that in our training and a lot of them will listen to this. But in the when we're training we're talking about hard situations that you might face. I don't want to freak them out any. They're already freaked out, knowing they're going to be having conversations with students that are dealing with stuff. That young lady, we got her help, we got him prosecuted. We got her plugged into discipleship. She experienced healing and grace and God has used her in other people's lives. But that dude was self-seeking.
Speaker 1:And so he says for those who are self-seeking and do not obey the truth but obey unrighteousness, what does that mean? They obey the demands and desires of the flesh and the devil. Like Romans 8, if you put to death the deeds of the flesh, you will live. But those who live according to the flesh cannot please God, they're hostile to God and they will die. So you're going to die in your sin if you live according to the flesh. So he obeys unrighteousness. There will be listen to this and I am perfectly content and satisfied that it's okay to feel this way, to take joy in knowing this. There will be wrath and fury.
Speaker 1:Do I pray for men like the guy I just described that did that? I will be completely transparent. I have a hard time praying for that guy, for his soul, for his salvation, and I wrestle. I'm not preaching a sermon right now. It's the beauty of a podcast. I can say things here that I might be scared to say in the pulpit, to make sure it's not. I don't know if that makes sense to you, but but but I'm just being transparent. I think one of the things that's made NSR effective is people feel the transparency and the real and raw nature of how we communicate with you.
Speaker 1:I have a hard time, as a dad and a pastor who's dealt with abuse victims, praying for a guy like that. I just want him, I just want him to get what's coming. But here's, here's where I hide, here's where I bury that thought and that emotion. I bury it in confidence that God can handle that. If God chooses to save that man, I trust the Lord with that and how he's going to deal with that. But if he doesn't save him, then I take hope in Romans 2.7.
Speaker 1:What awaits him Romans 2.7, romans 2.8, is wrath and fury, the fury of a righteous God who is capable of judging that kind of evil. I trust that. I trust that wrath, vengeance is mine. The scripture says later in Romans Vengeance is mine, I will repay. That's what the Lord says. I'm going to trust God to deal with that.
Speaker 1:So if you're a victim and you're the oppressed and you're asking the question that Solomon's asking in Ecclesiastes 4, where's like I've seen the oppressor have power over the oppressed and nothing comes of it. Oh, something's coming of it For those people Solomon saw doing that 3,000, 4,000 years ago, whenever that was. Oh, they got their wrath and fury and they got more coming. They got more coming. And I would have had wrath and fury coming but for the grace of Jesus and the cleansing of his blood and the atoning work that he did on the cross. I'm not. I ain't getting wrath and fury. I'm going to give an account. I'm going to be judged for my thoughts, words and deeds. Scripture's clear on that. But the wrath and fury of a just and righteous and holy God has already been satisfied for me in Christ. Righteous and holy God has already been satisfied for me in Christ. But not all of God's wrath and fury was satisfied at the cross.
Speaker 1:That which is not under the blood of Jesus will be judged and God's going to deal with it. There will be tribulation. Listen to how he describes it in verse 9. There will be tribulation and distress. This is Romans two. Now. There'll be tribulation and distress for every human being who does evil, the Jew first and also the Greek, but glory and honor and peace for everyone who does good.
Speaker 1:He's painting a contrast for the oppressed who then turns to Jesus for that expiation, that healing, that freedom from their. The oppressed who then turns to Jesus for that expiation, that healing, that freedom from their, the wrong has been done to them. Jesus frees you from that and then he promises you eternal peace. But for the one who does evil and locks into that evil and doesn't, doesn't, doesn't back out of that, there's going to be tribulation and distress. And that word tribulation means to squeeze something till the guts come out of that. There's going to be tribulation and distress. And that word tribulation means to squeeze something till the guts come out of it. It's a violent graphic. It's it's the Greek word thalipsis, and it means to squeeze something till everything on the inside squishes out of it. That's a violent picture. That's a violent picture of God squeezing and bringing distress and judgment on those who do this kind of evil.
Speaker 1:He says to the Jew first and also to the Greek God shows no partiality. God don't care if you're a pastor, a police officer, a school teacher, a daddy, a mama. If you do that which needs to be brought under wrath and fury, there's no partiality and God's going to deal with it. So I find hope in that. So I find hope in that.
Speaker 1:The last thing that I want to look at, then, is Ecclesiastes four. Solomon does, at the end of his life, come to a place where he sees, he sees this same kind of hope, and he says the end of the matter, all has been heard. So all of those questions you ask, god hears them. You might not get an immediate answer, but God hears them. All has been heard. Fear God and love his commandments, keep his commandments. For me, what I can do is fear the Lord and keep his commandments. I can. I can, I can worry about me, for this is the whole duty of man. My duty is not to go on a witch hunt for every guy Like I could never track down. Here's the thing.
Speaker 1:As a pastor and a friend pastor and a friend and someone who hears these stories, I could start a vigilante law. You know, I remember when I was in school, I remember studying about different vigilante groups where you know they take the law into their own hands, they're going to go and they're going to. You know, one that I think of was, uh, the this. There was an abolitionist name. I think his name was John Brown, but I might be wrong. There was a. There was an abolitionist during the time of American slavery and he set out to set slaves free, but in the process he ended up committing some pretty horrible crimes.
Speaker 1:It's like someone who goes to war and in the act of war they kill children on purpose. You know, like, like, like, maliciously, and I want to be careful even with that Cause. I remember having a conversation with a combat veteran where his unit had to shoot several eight, nine, 10 year old boys because they had suicide vests and RPGs and they were getting ready to wipe out an entire battalion, like, like, like part of the third infantry division and they had to shoot these kids. That's different. That's not what I'm talking about. I'm not saying it's good, that's another atrocity of war and humanity. But someone who kills and murders innocent people, that's what I'm talking about.
Speaker 1:When you think about that type or that level of depravity, wrestle with that stuff. I really wrestle with that stuff. I, I, I, I really wrestle with that stuff and I know that. That when I, when we think about, like, when I think about, I wish I could go practice vigilante law like these guys did. But what ended up happening is these guys in practicing vigilante.
Speaker 1:Vigilante just means take the law into your own hands, and in doing that they ended up not just attacking those slaveholders and slave traders, they ended up killing innocent people by association. They don't have the righteousness to handle bringing the law into their own hands, so you can't do that. There's a part of me I remember in school watching uh, we had to watch a movie. It came out in the eighties and I I forget the name of the movie, but it was this group of judges that said they were tired of seeing criminals walk because of little hiccups in the law. So they formed this sort of secret society where they would hire, hit men to go out and kill people that had gotten, you know, off the hook. And if I remember the twist in the, but you're watching the movie and you're like yeah, right on Heck.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we need some judges like that. You know you kind of. It kind of resonates with the Robin hood mentality, but then there's a point where they kill someone innocently. I think is how it went down. So you can never, we can never, take the law into our own hands. Even if we did, we could never eradicate the world of this kind of oppression, abuse and injustice. But what we can do is trust that God is going to do that one day and that we can fear God and keep his commandments, live just and upright lives, trusting the Lord. Now, here's, here's, here's the final thought. For God will bring every deed into judgment, with every secret thing, whether good or evil. God's going to bring every one of your good deeds into judgment, unto reward. He's going to bring every evil deed and wrongdoing of the oppressor, the abuser, into judgment, to wrath and fury and condemnation and justice. So we can rest knowing that when, when Paul writes in Romans, vengeance is mine, I will repay, and he says leave it in the hands of God. Sometimes it's not like, oh, just leave that in the hands of God. That doesn't mean don't pursue or seek justice.
Speaker 1:I told you I'd tell you a story. I'll end with this story. We're we're, we're coming up on an hour here, so let me, let me wrap up with this story and come back to this thought Uh, we had a, we had a girl and I might've told this story here before. We had a lady. She worked at a couple local businesses. She worked cash register at a gas station and she worked at Subway, and so we would interact with her. The gas station that I go into it's like where I'll go, like if I need to run a store in the evening or whatever. It's right down from my house. She worked in there and she also lived on that road where that trailer is that I mentioned earlier, and she lived there with the guy that never showed himself. I never saw him outside, but I would see her from time to time.
Speaker 1:We'd speak to her and, uh, got to know her. She's working at this, this gas station, and then we went to subway one day. She's working in there and like, dang, you work, you quit the gas station and she said, no, I'm working both places, so she's keeping, you know, holding up this bum of a dude that's with her, and once in a while, you'd see she she'd have, like I remember one time she had a bruise on her cheekbone and I pressed her. When I see that, I'm gonna press it and I said, hey, who hit you? And uh, she's like, oh, nothing, nobody it was. You know. She had an excuse.
Speaker 1:Well, uh, mugs, matts, matt Jones, who everybody at SWO calls Muggs, who's one of my executive partners, hank and me, and Muggs, or the executive team, Muggs and his family, I think they went into Subway and saw her and she had a tooth missing in her face. She had been beat up and it was like no hiding it, you know. And he gets to talking to her and says we'll get you out of the situation. You know, we can help you. Come to Red Oak Church. This was on a Sunday afternoon. He's like come to Red Oak Church this evening and we'll talk.
Speaker 1:So she came to church, sat down with her, a lady at the time in our church named Barbara Bond, who has since moved back home to Tennessee. Barbara and Aaron bond, dear friends and partners in ministry, and Barbara had come from a pretty rough past and there was a lot of abuse in there. And and so, uh, barbara met with her, talked with her, barbara, super strong lady, and uh, and then me and a couple other pastors met with her. Anyway, we ended up. She said I'll, I'll, I want to be moved out, I want to get out of there. But I can't go back to that, to my house, or he'll. He'll beat me again If, if I tell him I'm going to leave, if I don't just go home and comply. She said, if I go home and comply, he's going to be real nice. This is how abusers are sorry. He'll beg me to forgive him, you know. So I'll go back tonight. That's what it's going to be. And she said but I don't want to go back.
Speaker 1:And so we said well, do you have somewhere you go? She's from Michigan. She said, yeah, I could go home. My family's actually pretty loving. She was an adopted girl, I think. She came through the foster system and had been adopted by this really loving family. When she got old enough, she left. She said I can go back to them. They're, they're, they're, they're kind and gracious and loving. So we said all right, uh, we make arrangements to get you to Michigan.
Speaker 1:And I'm telling you this story so you know that there are churches and people that will advocate for you, because me and three other dudes, I think, or four other dudes took her, went to that house, walked in that door. That dude was home, I didn't know. The guy Walked in the house and said we're moving her out and my man went in the back room and locked the door. You know, he hid. He never showed his face because he's a coward, because he beat up his girlfriend or a kid, and so we moved her out and sent her to Michigan to be with family.
Speaker 1:Um, just saying, there are people that will advocate, that will advocate, and so it's not just that we wait for God's judgment on this there. There are things that there are good people in this world that will help the victim and the oppressed, and so you need to believe that, and we've done that often in our ministry. But if you're wrestling with why did God let this happen? Where's the healing from this? The healing is in Christ. The freedom is in Christ. There's relationships that can be cultivated with people that are loving and trustworthy. That's why finding a church that you can trust, is going to handle things biblically and that has accountability for pastors and leaders there's not some dude that's just running roughshod over people who doesn't have accountability in his own life. Stay away from a church like that. You want a church where there's community, accountability and people love one another, and you'll feel that and you can find healing and peace in that.
Speaker 1:So where's the justice? The justice has already come, in one sense, for those that are in Christ Jesus, where condemnation is removed and healing is available to you. But justice is coming for those that are doing this kind of work, this kind of harm. Justice is coming. They may not go down in a law enforcement sting and go to prison, but they will one day stand in the ultimate court, the high court of King Jesus, and they'll give an account and wrath and fury is going to come down on their head. And you can rest knowing that if you're a victim, if you're the oppressed, god's going to deal with it and in the meantime, find some healing and know that the Lord loves you and he'll bring you through it.
Speaker 1:And if you're part of our church because I know most of the Red Oak community listens to this we reiterate what we talked about a few sundays ago you come see us and and we'll do what we need to do to get you healing, to get you whole, and maybe that means getting you out of a situation. And if you're a person that feels a propensity to harm others, um, you need. You need to come forward too. And if you're if you're part of our ministry, our church, you come, talk to us. We'll get you the healing and the help you need. But come forward too. And if you're part of our ministry, our church, you come talk to us. We'll get you the healing and the help you need. But we'll get you in a situation where you can't hurt anybody.
Speaker 1:And if you're a person that's done terrible things, you need to make amends. You need to first take it before the Lord and ask forgiveness, and then you need to face the consequences of your actions, whatever that looks like. And so we would call you to repent and to accept responsibility for your actions, whether that's before the church or a court of law, whatever. Do what's right, get this off your conscience and start your own journey towards peace and healing for the wrong you've done. Nobody's righteous in their own strength, nobody's perfect, but through the blood of Jesus there's healing for everybody and for those that refuse that. Wrath and fury is coming, and some days that makes me sleep real good at night, and I'm okay with that. So thanks for listening. It's heavy content and I hope it's encouragement to you this week and we'll see you next week on no Sanity Required.
Speaker 2:Thanks for listening to no Sanity Required. Please take a moment to subscribe and leave a rating. It really helps. Visit us at SWOutfitterscom to see all of our programming and resources, and we'll see you next week on no Sanity Required.
