It’s a question every Christian who has ever lived has asked: “I’m a follower of Christ, yet I’m going through some terrible adversity. Where is God?”
Fundamentally, that question lurks behind the cover story for this issue of The Courier, what I like to call “uncomfortable grace” (a term borrowed from Paul David Tripp). What I mean by that phrase is simply this: Often, God will do difficult things in your life, allow things to flood into your life that you simply will never understand. And while you are perplexed about it, things will turn out for your good, and it will turn out to be uncomfortable grace.
Over the course of nearly five decades of walking with God, He has graced my life with numerous circumstances that hurt at the time, but He used the adversity to draw me closer to Him.
In 1999, my wife and I lost our first baby, a boy, in utero. It broke our hearts, but we learned to trust God more — way more. We learned compassion for others who’d been similarly afflicted; God has enabled us to comfort them with the comfort with which we had been comforted.
A few years ago, I pastored a congregation that, for lack of a more accurate description, nearly killed me. It was a dying and divided congregation that included a few members (sadly, mixed with some truly godly people as well) who’d eagerly chewed up new pastors as if they were prime rib. I was a new pastor prone to mistakes. I was also filled with ministerial hubris. Together, we were gasoline and fire; together, we were explosive. Out of the wreckage, God taught me how to shepherd people patiently, how to love those who set themselves against me, and gave me a ministry of encouraging other pastors amidst afflictions. He granted me repentance from my sinful hubris.
Those are merely two examples among many personal anecdotes I could offer. But in both, and at numerous other times along my pilgrimage to the Celestial City, the age-old question has arisen in my mind: Why? What is God’s alibi for my trouble?
And time and time again, I’ve found His answer in Romans 8.
A few years ago, as I was reflecting on Romans 8 during a difficult season, it hit me: Though He doesn’t owe us an alibi, God gives it in Romans 8:28 and unpacks it in the profound verses that follow in that vital chapter: “God causes all things to work together for those who love the Lord and are called according to his purposes.” That, friends, is a verse for rough weather, as are the breathtaking paragraphs that follow immediately after. Romans 8:28 and the verses that follow have stabilized me on hundreds of days when I had no stability left.
How? Because of what it tells me about God. Romans 8:28 communicates:
1. GOD IS BOTH SOVEREIGN AND GOOD.
As one of my ministry heroes memorably puts it, God is either sovereign over every molecule and atom and subatomic particle in all of creation, or He is not God. Look at Job’s story. Look at the account of the runaway prophet, Jonah. Look at the story of Christ’s rescue mission. If there is even one maverick molecule in all of creation, it might’ve been the molecule that kept Christ from the cross and the empty tomb and kept the world wrapped in Satan’s chains.
God is sovereign. He is also good — meaning everything He does is calculated to serve us well, to make us more like His Son. Psalm 145:17 says, “God is righteous in all his ways and kind in all his works.” In His ways, every single one of them, God is righteous and good. This means we can trust Him. God is never late. He never gets the wrong address.
When that awful thing happened to you, where was God? He was in the same place as He was when His Son hung on that judgment tree — on the throne of the universe. And He was with you every step of the way, causing it to work for your good.
2. GOD IS ALWAYS FOR YOU.
A question I’ve been asked often in ministry is a sub-specie of the one above: “Is God angry with me? Has He turned against me?” On the authority of Scripture, I can confidently tell a believer, “No.” Paul says as much in the verses that follow, particularly in Romans 8:31, where he asks the bottom-line rhetorical question: “If God is for us, who can be against us?” Nobody. And nothing. The apostle unpacks this in what is, to my mind, one of the most glorious paragraphs ever written in human language in verses 35–39.
This is true of every genuine follower of Jesus Christ, every sinner whom He saves. I love it that Paul wrote 2 Corinthians, which is a defense of his apostleship and manual for sufferers. I’ve found 2 Corinthians 4:8 particularly comforting: “We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair … .”
Ever been perplexed about the ways of God? You’re in good company: The same apostle who wrote Romans 8:28 admitted he was perplexed, too. But he also said it didn’t drive him to despair because he knew the God behind all the dark providences. Knowing that, we can sing, “When all around my soul gives way, he then is all my hope and stay.” In the furnace of affliction, Christ is with you, and you will not be consumed just as He accompanied Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego into Nebuchadnezzar’s furnace in Daniel 3, such that not even the smell of smoke was on them.
3. EVEN THE DARKEST NIGHT OF THE SOUL STILL WORKS FOR YOUR GOOD.
When life hits the fan, it’s all too easy to focus on our circumstances and not on God. Job — at least in the early chapters of his story — is the ultimate biblical illustration of how a believer meets affliction. In what might be described as a personal holocaust, Job loses all his children and all his worldly goods. His wife even abandons him. Job’s response? “The Lord gives, and the Lord takes away; blessed be the name of the Lord.” He worships God, not in spite of his suffering, but out of his suffering.
Knowing who God is and that He is doing something good in our lives — painful though it may be — that we may never fully understand will strengthen us when we need it most. Scripture tells us so in other places:
“More than that, we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope” (Rom. 5:3–4).
“Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds, for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness. And let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing” (James 1:2–4).
In one of my favorite of the old hymns — “God Moves in a Mysterious Way” — William Cowper says it in unforgettable prose:
You fearful saints fresh courage take, the clouds that you much dread, are big with mercy and will break in blessings on your head.
All this brings me to this conclusion: God’s work in you through adversity may remain invisible in this life, but He is at work for your good and His glory. Take heart, fellow sufferers. He is giving you uncomfortable grace, but it is marvelous grace nonetheless.