God is Still Good Even in Tragic Situations (Part 1)

0:00 I Am Yours, I am yours, I am yours. Send Me, Lord. I am welcome to the Gospel Center pro life podcast and this episode we're going to talk about the goodness of God, as God really good in the midst of our suffering, and how can we help abortion minded women to see that God is good. Stay with us, Lord. I felt show passis touch your heart. Welcome to the Gospel Center pro life podcast. We appreciate you guys listening and, as always, we appreciate if you guys would share this podcast and the other episodes that we have. We put out a new episode every Thursday morning at five am. So if you're an early riser like Vicki is, she's the one who tells the sun it's time to rise, you'll be able to get it that early or anytime after that. So every Thursday morning these go out and this is really centered around helping people who are in pro life ministry or thinking about getting involved in pro life ministry, helping to equip you, helping to encourage you, helping to provoke thought.

1:12 So we deal with Biblical topics and light of abortion and an abortion clinic ministry, and we deal with practical stuff, just last week we put out one about signs, how to use signs effectively add an abortion center. Pretty practical, also very biblical. And then sometimes we deal with more like heart issues and things like that, and so this episode we're going to deal with the goodness of God. Yeah, I mean we can even think about it in light of sixty five million babies that have been killed in our country and the countless hundreds of millions, billions of children that have died in the womb and outside of the womb, just all of the the eels in the in the mess that we deal with as a in a fallen world. Yeah, man, is God still good in the midst of that? But, of course, again, bringing it home to the issue that we're dealing with, issue of abortion. Is God still good in the midst of that? Right, is God still good as we deal with Moms and dad's and these situations day in and day out, and we see just some of the real dire situations that these folks are in and they're coming to an abortion center and sometimes we have to look at those situations, look at those stories and encourage these moms and dads that God is still good in spite of this in spite of the stuff that you're dealing with. so that's just one facet of this thing.

2:34 But, Vicki, if you would, you've written an article like you do often times, and this is actually going to go on our sidewalks for life website and the blog. Are you there? Yeah, but kind of lay out what was behind this thought, because we talked about a little bit and you laid out an article here. What was your thinking in these? A few things. I know what kept me from God for many years, while I was still explore in whether God was real or not, was seeing all this suffering. It's very common question. There's so much suffering, there's so much evil. If God is good, why does he allow it or or even cause it? You know that I was struggling even with thinking through.

3:15 Does he cause if he allows it, he could prevent it. He doesn't. So, just at a personal level, that had been my experience, was questioning the goodness of God and having that be a stumbling block in coming to him. But then as a counselor out on the sidewalk, it seems increasingly God is bringing me people, women who tell me stories that just break my heart, that are suffering from early in life throughout to the point at which they arrive at the abortion center. And so many of them have asked me, how can God be good I don't see his goodness in my life.

4:01 Yeah, so I want to tell you the story of one that really brought this to a to ahead for me. Okay, it was a woman that I'm at not all that long ago at the abortion center, and she her story was probably the most tragic I've ever heard. She was raised in a socalled Christian home. At Age four she was raped by the father's best friend, but the parents did not follow through on prosecuting him or bringing him to justice because he was the father's best friend. Well, so, right away here's this four year old who is betrayed by those who are charged to protect her, her own parents, and she not only was she not protected, but her whole concept of justice and the Justice of God. This man was not brought to justice. So she now has learned two important truths in her little eyes, that her those who were supposed to protect her did not, and there is no justice for people who do evil, terrible things.

5:11 She's only four and this is her experience. Then, understandably, as she grows up, she turns to some pretty bad things. Drugs, promiscuity, rebellion, and her parents separated, I believe, divorce shortly after this rape. But she grew up a very troubled young lady, no wonder, and her parents, or her mom I guess, at that point sent her off to a Christian Rehab after she ran away. I think she ran away as a teenager. She sent her to a Christian Rehab where this young ladies said she really wanted to find God and she was very moved by a wonderful sermon and then an altar call and she said she was determined she was now going to fully submit her life to God. So she said she she asked Jesus to be her lord that that night, after this sermon, and within a week one of the camp counselors at this Rehab Facility, Christian Rehab Facility, raped her well, and she said that there were several people in that facility that reported having been sexually abused by this this man, but the facility apparently did nothing. So again repeat of what happened to her when she was for

6:43 and now here she has just submitted her life to God. So it's not only her heavenly father that didn't stand by our I'm sorry, her earthly father that she felt didn't stand by her, but now it's her heavenly father. Yeah, who, here she is, doing everything right in her eyes, and those were the words she used with me when she was recounting this story. I did everything right and did everything I was supposed to do at that point, repented, turn to God and my life fell into a deeper abyss. Yeah, so, following that she ended up just down a continuingly bad path. Yeah, and she was left, left home and out of the Rehab left home and ended up in working in the sex trade. Well, we're again understandable, given her background, that that's often what happens when you've been sexually abused at a young age. You end up in a promiscuous drug or addiction lifestyle. And she said what she knew it was dangerous. She knew that she was really kind of asking for trouble. But while entertaining in a private room one of the men, she was drugged by him and I think Babe went unconscious and was raped and became pregnant. Yeah, from that she kept the child. She she didn't want to abort. I guess there

8:18 was still that in her upbringing that she knew that that was a step too far for her. But she was still working in the sex trade when I met her with a young child, and so I spent a lot of time talking with her, ministering to her, kind of befriending her, sharing the Gospel with her. And when we would talk about God, her question kept coming back to is God really good? Yeah, I sure haven't seen it. She said that several times. I have not seen the goodness of God. Yeah, and so I I knew where I had been as an unbeliever and where I saw her in asking a question that I think we know the answer as believers. Yeah, the answer is well, Jesus loved loved us so much. God loved us so much that he sent his only son to die this horrific death, brutal torture, and to pay the penalty for sin that we deserve. So is God good? You only have to look at the cross to know how good God is. But I do believe I didn't receive that message when I was looking at a world filled with bad, not good. Yeah, and I felt like this young lady couldn't. She had heard the message of the Cross. She knew the message of the Cross and

9:50 that was not she was not at a place yet where she could hear that that demonstrated God's goodness. Yeah. So what prompted me as I started exploring and writing about this was, is there a path through the Bible, a biblical, Biblical example of how do we lead someone to an understanding where they'll end up at the cross? That's ultimately, that's where you have to end up. But are there things in the Bible that can help us as we're dealing with people who have really experienced very little goodness all? Now? Her own sins certainly entered into it at at certain points. Not as a four year old, right, and and not as not as a woman who has just given her life to the Lord and she's raped by a Christian, so called Christian counselor so. So that was kind of that's the premise. That's the background of what I was hoping we could explore, because we see it all the time at the abortion center. I hear this many times. God is not good. God allowed this, this, this to happen to me.

11:05 How can you call him good? Yeah, and I know one of the things that for you guys listening, one of the kind of wise or why are we touching on? This harkens back, I guess, to an episode we did months ago about trust in God. Yeah, helping women, helping abortion minded women trust the Lord, because that's what we want. They've put their trust in abortion. We've encountered them at the abortion center and we want to try to influence them to convey that, to take that trust out of abortion and put it in the Lord. Yeah, but when there's this big question of well, how can I trust God? Yeah, is he even good? I mean, look what he's allowed to happen in my life.

11:48 Look at the things that have happened in my life, and God didn't stop it. So, after all, if God didn't stop it, he must not be good. And so they really have a lack of trust in the Lord. Honestly, he meant there's two questions there. He must not be good or he's not powerful. Yeah, he was unable to stop it and of course we reject both of those. Yeah, but but those are really critical questions for someone to to be asking an answered. It's the big question, just not even having to do with abortion or dealing with abortion. Minded women it's the question that everybody's asking. Really, if you get down to it right and you're talking to people who are atheists or claimed to be atheists, as I've said before, I don't think there are any actual atheist.

12:31 I think most atheists take the attitude of there is no god and I hate him. You know, they're angry at God. And really, if you get down to the nitty gritty of people that say there is no God and they tell you initially, well, it's because of scientific evidence and because Blah Blah, blah, Blah Blah. But really, and you know this, once you get into the conversations, they're going to start talking about the goodness of God, they're going to start talking about the things that God has allowed in their lives. are going to start talking about hypocrites and church that they were raised in and all of this, or the wars in the Bible and the slaughtering by God. Yeah, are telling you him to slaughter other groups. That doesn't sound good. You know those kinds of question. Yeah, so a lot of it it's relational. It's not scientific or or any of that. It's just relational. They don't trust the Lord because of things that they've seen, and mostly it's really things that they've seen in other people.

13:22 I want. I mean it's often times it's the hypocrisy in the church, and certainly understand that. I've seen hypocrisy. But the reality is in any system that we deal with, there's going to be some hypocrisy there, right, there's going to be people. Anything that's been touched by human beings is going to have components of sin in it. Right, it's going to be off track in some way. But we have to trust God's word, and God's word tells us that God is good. As a matter of fact, he is the very standard of what it is to be goods matter of fact, without God we would have no standard of measure what is good, what is moral, what is what is correct right, what is in line with truth? Yeah, if without God, without the one who is the truth, truth doesn't really matter. It's kind of irrelevant. Yeah, but yeah, that's not really the topic of this podcast. It's really helping folks sort through we have to sort through these things. You can't give what you don't have. If you don't understand, have your mind wrapped around that God is good, how are you going to help a mom at an abortion center see that God is good in spite of her difficult situation and that he can see them through. It's ultimate again, an issue of trust. If you don't think someone is good, if they if they aren't good as far as morally trustworthy, then they're not going to be trustworthy at all. Right, right, and if that's who you're depending on to get you out of this mess and you don't feel you can depend on them, then you're going to

14:56 take matters into your own hands, which is subortion. Yeah, it's what they choose. Yes, so I I went through the Bible. Will Not through the whole Bible, but I was. I was trying to come up with biblical examples of lives that endured constant suffering. Yeah, and there are. There's there's lots of them. Sure, there's lots of lots of examples at least, of people who certainly suffered an entire life of suffering, like the life I just described in that young woman, not so much, but there are some. I actually did find some. But the first one I thought of was Jeremiah. Happens to me. I've been working through the book of Jeremiah. Okay, time so, so Jeremiah was. He certainly endured a great deal of suffering during his forty years of ministry. Yeah, absolutely so. God called him to speak to the he jeremiah five is one of the scriptures that many pro life folks use. I've used it before, right where God calls Jeremiah. Before I formed you, I knew you and set you apart as the as a prophet to the nations. Yeah, and Jeremiah is on to talk about how he's a youth and how can he fulfill this call? And God says, don't say you're a youth if I've called you before I formed you. I knew you and set your part as a prophet to the nation's. So that's the call of God early in Jeremiah's life.

16:22 But God warned Jeremiah that you're gonna be rejected in Jeremiah, some refer to him as the weeping prophet. Right, and rightly so, because he had a pretty sorrowful life. He did he, I mean he he acted out some of God's judgments in in very painful ways. He was told not to marry, he was told he could not go to celebrations, he could not go to parties. Yeah, he was supposed to be mournful and suffering and sorrowful because he's coming to the Israelites with the message that they are going to go into the Babylonian the Babylonians are going to capture them and they're going to be in captivity for what was it? A Long Time? Yes, seventy years. Seventy years. And there were plenty of prophets at the time, false prophets, yeah, who were saying, Oh, Jeremiah's full of it, he the he's just prophesying lies, this is not going to happen, and that's what they want. That's what the people wanted to believe. No one wanted to believe that they're going to be going into captivity, captivity with the brutal Babylonians. But Jeremiah remained remained truthful and despite the ridicule and the persecution, he continued to give God's message to people that did want to hear him. So you said, first of all, he was rejected. I mean, that's a great verse. Yeah, about doesn't this sound like a Fun Gig? I'm going to give you. This is God talking to in Jeremiah Twenty seven. Okay, Yep, I'll read it. You shall speak

17:56 all these words to them, but they will not listen to you, and you shall call to them, but they will not answer you. Sounds Great. Thanks for this called Lord. Thank you that you've called me to a people that are just going to outright reject me. Yeah, and and push me to the side. And if you guys have been on the sidewalk for any amount of time, you guys know what this is like. Exactly. One brother told me, brother Greg and Raleigh. He's just a good brother who reaches out of the abortion centers. There, said brother speaking to me, you've mastered the Ministry of rejection. That's right. It's like, wow, I've never heard of that way, the Ministry of rejection, because, let's face it, the majority of the women at the abortion centers are choosing to kill their children. That's right. We may see. We just saw today, praise God, three babies that were saying as prodortion center here on the trope drive, but there they were. But almost thirty thirty MOMS, something like that, between three five and thirty. There's maybe, in our natural mind, good reason to be discourage, because is the vast majority are killing their children. Yeah, and the vast majority are rejecting us and many, well, maybe not many, but maybe a good portion. That could be very discouraging. You're actually not just ignoring what we're saying that some even being very allowed about their opposition to what we're doing at right given given us all kinds of vile the finger and yelling terrible things and even threatening yet I

19:26 mean it is, it is an exercise and how to how to deal with ongoing and constant rejection. Yeah, and that was Jeremiah's life. He preached forty years. Unless I mistake him, but I believe that's that's how I can preach. Think that's right. No success. Yeah, no one listen to him, just like I'd warned him. Yeah, no one. He was never listened to. I just can't imagine. I've been out on the sidewalk eight years and that the rejection can really get to you at times. Yeah, absolutely, imagine doing that forty years with no visible yeah. Yeah, and what he was doing the entire time was he was obeying the Lord.

20:07 Yeah, it was in relationship with with the Lord, constantly getting the message from God. And so, because here's the thing. If we're constantly rejected, we certainly should examine ourselves and think, okay, maybe I'm off base some, maybe I'm doing something wrong. Yeah, maybe I'm doing something wrong right, but if you're doing what you're doing in line with God's word, then you don't need to worry about that. Yeah, but for Jeremiah, he was certainly doing in long with what he was supposed to do, in line with God's word. He was speaking the very word of God there, Yep. And yet was rejected. As a matter of fact, again, the Lord warned him, yeah, we'll be racket what will happen?

20:47 And along with that rejection he was outright mistreated. Yeah, so he was. I know at one point he was. He was beaten and left in the stocks. That's in Jeremiah twenty the religious leaders in Jeremiah Twenty Six said that because his message was so aberrant to him, to them, that he should receive the death penalty. He should be killed to get a death. Yea, when he went to the king with with the word of God, the king burned his scroll with the word of God, and then I think he came back. I think God said, well, here's another one and go try it again, right, and the King Burns it again. So no one would listen to him. And and then after that episode he was tossed in a cistern, which I guess is like a deep well, and it was. He said he sank deep into the mud. Can you imagine what kind of yeah, ikey creatures we're down there in the mud with him, king and left and left. When a fun place to be that?

21:52 Now, now, so you know, Jeremiah, it does foreshadow the suffering and torment of of Jesus. Yeah, but I can't imagine it was at all fun. And I do wonder how often he wondered God, are you really good? Yeah, because man, this doesn't feel like goodness. Yeah, yeah, and we think about the call of God and you, I'll tell people, oftentimes the best place to be is in the will of God. Right, we want to be in the will of God and almost like, I guess, in some sense in our American Christianity, we sort of think that Christianity is about us. We're even taught that it's about our comfort.

22:41 God has invested in our comfort, but the reality is God is not invested in our comfort. His commitment to you when you became a Christian was to make you more like his son, Jesus, and that could bring joy. Jesus seemed to me to be a very joyful man in his earthly ministry. Yeah, he was very joyful, but he also was very sorrowful. He wept over Jerusalem. He was rejected by the Pharisees and rejected by the majority of the people of his day. Right, is it cut a crowd out, crucify him? Right, rejected the son of God himself. So the the Ministry of rejection, is part of the Ministry of the Christian it is. I and I want to interrupt just for a second because just as you said the Word Comfort, I was writing the word comfort because one another discussion I had with a mom yesterday, as she was we were discussing belief and faith and Anne, and she said she didn't believe what I believed, but she understood that it was a comfort to me, and that's something that makes me Bristle. I hear that all the time and this is why I said so much of what God asks of Me Is the furthest thing from comfort that you could imagine. I'm not comfortable standing in, you know, ten degree whether in the middle of the winter, for three hours at a time in front of an abortion center. It is not the that it is comforting, but it is that I am so grateful for what God has done to

24:15 me that I am willing to do and want to do to serve him as he desires. Yeah, he to serve him. Yes, as believers we always have to come from the perspective that it's not about us. Right, what we do is about the Lord and it certainly God understands. If you read through the Psalms, you can see David crying out to the Lord, even in a sense, complaining to the Lord. Yeah, but it's a different type of complaining. It's different than if you look at the children of Israel coming through the Wilderness and Exodus, as their grumbling, grumbling and complaining against the Lord. It's more of this. It's a selfish grumbling and complaining that the Children Israe are doing, and God judges them for it. Yeah, but if you look at David, it's like an honest I don't know about I don't know if complaining is the right word, but crying out to the Lord, it's a broken heart. Yeah, that is it. That is crying before God. Yeah, and one preacher said it really helped me a lot. He said reading through the Psalms as helpful because it gives us an allowance to call out to the Lord, not in a complaining way, but in a relational way, to bring your petitions before the Lord, to bring your weakness. Psalms really help us to open up and show our weakness, because we can kind of, in one sense, hold back. We don't want to be reverent. That's good, we shouldn't be a reverent to the Lord, but sometimes we don't want to be honest with the Lord and the Lord sees our hearts. So like Jeremiah, he's calling out to the Lord throughout his ministry, before the Lord. And one point in Jeremiah Chapter

25:48 Twenty, this is Jeremiah crying out to the Lord and he says in Verse Eight, Verse Verse Eight and nine, it says, for when I spoke, I cried out, I shouted violence and plunder, because the word of the Lord has made me a reproach in a derision daily. So he's he's crying this out to the Lord, like your word has made me a reproach in a derision daily, he says. Then I said I will not make mention of him, nor speak any more in his name. But his word was in my heart like a fire burning shut up in my bad owns. I was weary of holding it back and I could not. So He's saying, I'm dealing with this struggle, I'm being rejected, but I can't help but speak your words. I tried not to and I could write, I couldn't mean not this sence. He can identify with that right. Can constantly reject it and you're constantly people are mocking you or whatever you could identify with.

26:40 Okay, I just I'm not going to speak anymore. I'm done. Yeah, I'm done, but Jeremiah Says No, your word in me is like a fire shut up in my bones as like I can't help it. I have to speak your word, I have to speak your truth. But there is this fight in Jeremiah and I like the humanness here, because we can sometimes in our minds as believers, disconnect these biblical figures like Jeremiah, like David, like the Apostle Paul and others, just kind of make them they're like these sort of speak holy priciful superheroes. There parts of stories that we read about we don't really connect with their humanity. Yeah, but Jeremiah certainly was a human being. He certainly knew what rejection rejection was not fun.

27:23 He certainly knew what it felt like to be rejected and he cried out to the Lord. So I'll say, just to bring it home for us and again, you can't give what you don't have. So if we don't have that relationship with the Lord and we don't get honest before the Lord and crying out to God in our suffering and our frustration in our rejections, then we can't encourage abortion. Amount of women and men going into an abortion center to do that. So the point here is that God is relational. God knows our suffering, God knows the things that Jeremiah was going through and God had a relationship with him, and that sort of redeems it all. It does. But but God, despite his love for Jeremiah and the relationship, he didn't let Jeremiah off the hook. Yeah, he didn't say, you're right, you know, what you've endured is more than any human being should be asked to endure, and so go home and I'll find another prophet to speak speak my words. He sent Jeremiah back on on the same path.

28:23 He's a path of really a lot of suffering, and I actually find I know it's kind of a strange comfort to find, but I do because it makes me feel like if I am suffering in following God, it doesn't mean I'm on the wrong path or I'm sinful necessarily or anything like that. It could just be that is a road that many have traveled, including Jesus, and why should I be exampt maybe the path of suffering is, for whatever reason, a valuable and critical path, or God wouldn't set us on it.

29:07 Yeah, and I know not all suffering is the same and not all suffering is is like Jeremiah suffering, where God said this is what you will endure. But there's many other examples where suffering was the way of life and there was a purpose, which we're going to explore, I think, later in in why all of these biblical figures endured some of this suffering. Yeah, ultimately Jeremiah was proven right. Everything he said was going to happen indeed happened. Yeah, absolutely, and then ultimately we can say, when it's all said and done, Jeremiah's with the Lord probably turn ity. Yeah, right. So that's why we have and I think in speaking to abortion minded women, we have to for ourselves and then with them to help them see from an eternal perspective. Right. Yeah, because if always sees what happens here on this earth, we're going to miss a lot of what we are created for. Yeah, human beings were created for eternity. Yeah, and created to be relational to the Lord, to relate to him. Yeah.

30:14 And of course we're not going to in this podcast figure out all the the problem of evil, in the problem of suffering that men and women have grappled with since humanity began. We're not going to figure that out. Yeah, but one of the things that we are going to continually say, and one of the things, I think that as sidewall counselors and ministers of the Gospel, we need to point people to, is that God is bigger than it all. Yeah, that eternity. One preacher says, you're dead a whole lot longer than you're alive. You might stick been mind, you might spend eighty years and maybe ninety years, maybe a hundred years on this earth, but you're going to be dead. I mean, think about George Washington. He died when he was like, what in his s or something? Yeah, and he's been dead for what two Hundred Years Now? Maybe I'm not doing my math correctly. You've been dead for longer than he was alive.

31:03 Yeah, he's just one example. Everybody is is in that same state, right. So we need to be thinking from an eternal perspective and we need to help others to think from an eternal perspective. And Bible tells us God has put eternity in the heart of man. We know that there's something after this life. So helping abortion minded MOMS and dad's to help them to see from an eternal perspective really helps that. To look past, not to marginalize or mental minimalize the current suffering and the temporal suffering, but to say that the temporal suffering is just that. It's temporal. It doesn't last forever, right, and that's actually we're going to get into that, that idea a little bit later on and as we're going through this framework. But but also that even in the midst of suffering that we can't always find a purpose.

31:55 But I think in all the examples were going to go through there was a purpose revealed. Maybe not in that person's lifetime, although I think in most cases they were. And when, when you can see that there is a divine purpose, that is a positive purpose, it makes suffering much more endurable, like going through an operation that you know when you come out of it you will be healthier and there is a positive outcome. So I think I love what you said and I totally agree that an eternal perspective is absolutely necessary. But I think in every one of these cases we can also find something positive even in the midst of what they were going through, even in the midst of that suffering. For Jeremiah, he was proven right and he did get to see that day. Yeah, he did get to see that everything he had prophesied actually came to pass. Give me our love for love, give me our love for gratitude. I know it will cost me my love.

33:14 No things too precious in some you