Welcome to another episode of Struggling Well with Jimmy and Suzi Kallam. Guess who's who. Babe, how are you doing today?
I'm doing great, sweetheart. How are you?
Tim, how are you?
I'm great.
Okay, we all here. Tim answered. He was great. we were just laughing over some of the little escapades that happened in our little
recording sessions and how I wish. No, I don't actually want you to see what goes on here, but
Tim may write a tell- all book when
Oh my gosh, he is going to write a tell all. It won't be worth much, but it'll be it'll give you a few giggles, but we definitely enjoy being with one another we get to often here at the end of our time we like to spend time the three of us just talking about what God is doing in our hearts and you know ask each other questions maybe a little deeper than how are you and so this time for this podcast is not just to record this but it's also a sweet gift from the Lord for the three of us to connect and we really love that but this week one of the things that we want to talk about is a question that's been kind of burning in my heart and it's a question with no answer but I'm going to ask it anyway and hopefully we'll be able to unpack a little bit of this and this is a question that I hear a lot but also I wonder a lot and that is God are you for me or are you against me sometimes I feel that God when I'm in conversation with him God I feel like you're for me I read in your word the things that you say about me but sometimes the circumstances that I'm in the middle of or watch the people that I care about are in the middle of. I wonder about that question. Are or are you against me? So, I did a little searching, but hopefully my co- partner you're not a co-artner. What are you? Oh, my husband, I guess.
I'm your husband. That's true.
That's true. For a long time. Yes, it is. Long time.
hopefully you'll have some thoughts, too. Anything hit you right away?
yeah. So, let me ask you a question. Throw it back to you. When those that's a great question, God, are you for me or against me? When do you typically ask that question?
I would say typically when something feels really huge and it feels like I can't do anything about it.
So, so an event or circumstance in life that feels beyond your ability to control.
Yeah, absolutely. And that word comes up a lot. we've addressed that numerous times in our podcast and we certainly talk about it. a lot too. But it's something that comes up in conversation with other people that I meet with. they love God's word. They go to church. They're in Bible studies. They're doing all the right things. And they understand that God will loves them and will never leave them or forsake them. But then they ask the question, but is he really against me? Because why are these situations happening?
Let me just throw this out and see if this resonates at all for you. That question of are you for me or against me. I wonder if it oftenimes appears early on in the struggle that's huge or the circumstance that's big
and it's my face is so much in the struggle at that moment that's when it occurs. Does that resonate at all?
Yeah, it does. And because you and I talked about this the other day because then it seems like let's say you get a piece of bad news and really bad news. So there's that gut are you for me or against me in that initial intake of information. Then what happens is typically we sort of settle with it and we try to manage it and make it be okay somehow or we just don't think about it. So then that question is not as strong but then when the ending or the answer to that is not what we want then I think we go back to the struggle of are you for me or against me. And as I was pondering this question and it's been on my mind for a couple of weeks. I thought about a couple of scenarios in scripture.
Okay.
the first one that came up to me is the story of Adam and Eve in the garden. And I tend to go there a lot. And maybe it's because I see myself there so much. I see myself as Eve you know doing making a choice, being tempted and making a choice that ruined so much. So again, we've talked about this before, but here are Adam and Eve in the garden. They've been given everything. They have it's perfection. They're walking with God, total perfection. and God tells them, you know, the story, to not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. So, here's the thing is up to that point that Adam and Eve ate from that tree, they had not experienced evil. They didn't know what evil was. They didn't know what sin was. But because of giving into the temptation, and here's the other thing. Obviously, God created them. They didn't need to know evil. But he also created them with the ability to choose him, to honor him. So they eat of the apple and all of a sudden they experience evil and sin. And so God says some really hard things to all to Adam and Eve and the serpent and then banishes them from the garden. So my thought there is, God, are you for me or against me? Why didn't you just leave us in the garden? And I don't have a great answer to it other than the fact that they had rejected God's favor and they had chosen their own will and there were consequences to that and it was part of them choosing going from perfection to then having to provide for themselves in a way that they didn't know before. But that question popped up for me.
Yeah. And I would say and again did they fully understand this? Probably not. Absolutely not. There was one other tree in that garden that he removed them from in the garden so they couldn't eat from the tree of life.
Yes.
So he was he had a plan that was bigger than their plan that was overarching it all that he was trying to protect them although at the time it didn't feel like protection to them.
Right. Right. Because then they would have lived forever
right
in that state. So then my next person and these are probably not in order but the next person I thought about was Moses.
Right.
So Moses is raised in all this opulence and has everything you know that he could ever dream of. But he knows that he is not Egyptian. So he tries to interfere and save one of the Israelites that were being punished for something. And the interesting thing is then the Israelites get angry with him. And they're like, "Who do you think you are?" And he leaves there and gets banished from there cuz they reject him. So then it's not like he has this beautiful fairy tale story. He goes out and he lives far away, 10 sheep, you know, gets married, 10 sheep. And could he have asked a question, God, are you for me or against me? So then God calls him and that's remarkable how God speaks to him from the burning bush and says to him, I want you to go again and I want you to lead these people. He might have thought, huh, last time didn't work out so well. So he goes, he obeys. And there's so much in that story. So much. But he ends up leading the Israelites in the wilderness. He ends up leading all these people who do pretty much nothing but complain. question his leadership, bicker with one another, don't like what they're eating, or feeling like you should have left, God should have left us in Egypt where we had meat, which was not true. But so there's to me again another place. Did Moses go, God, are you for me or are you against me?
Yeah. And again, I think that we can get so caught up, Suzi, with looking at the circumstances of life, which is exactly what you're talking about that we get so focused and centered on looking at the circumstances that I'm in that we don't possibly understand that there's a bigger story that's being told and the need to realize that I can't control these things, but I can control whether I choose to answer that question, God, are you for me or against me by saying I believe you're for me. I
I think you hit a key point, Jimmy, and that is the idea of the larger story which is a phrase coined by our dear friend Larry Crab and his son kept his continuing a ministry of larger story with Larry's work right now. but I look at Joseph and Mary she gives birth to a beautiful baby and then watches her son die. Steven, Peter, Paul, all of them. But here's the thing is this is all for the sake of God's story. And as I think about this, have we as people who declare Jesus as our savior. Have we lost the essence of the story being God's story and not my own? Because there's so much emphasis on succeed and do your best and blah. But have we lost the fact that I am here not to live in a nice home, drive a decent car, have my kids well educated? That's part of the story, but that the story is for my life to bring others to know God and I think we have a tendency as followers of Christ that we call ourselves to forget that this is God's story because we've gotten so comfortable with it being all about us.
Yeah. And you know I you use Joseph as an example. So he goes through being threatened to being killed by his brothers to being sold into slavery to being thrown into prison down in Egypt. All those things happen to him. And when he finally gets to the place where he sees his brothers again, the ones who sought to harm him, he says to them, "You meant this for harm, but God meant this for good.
And I and I really do believe that when we get down to the end of the story and in his case, again, we're talking about his life, but for us as Christ followers, the end of the story cannot be separated from eternity,
right?
And what is it that and we've talked about this, what is it that God longs for in my life through even the difficulties of life? It's for my inner heart transformation.
Not that my life is going to go smoothly or easily.
You know, when I agree with that when Jesus was on the earth and the disciples were following him and they were all gung-ho that he was their savior and they didn't fully understand that either, but they were following him. Peter was vehemently opposed anybody who crossed Jesus in any way and said he would die for him, which obviously he couldn't. He could have died for him, but not the way Jesus died for Peter. But he Jesus tells them To follow me means you're not going to have a place to lie your head down, that you're going to suffer, that people are going to misunderstand you like they have me, and at some point you may die for what you believe. I wonder if so many so much of struggle occurs when I'm struggling to live in this world and make it all work and don't have any care or concern for God is weaving a story and that he takes everything and uses it to bring himself glory and people to himself. I think that's hard, super hard. That's not because it's hard means so don't worry about it. But I think it makes a difference the way we live.
I believe you're right. And that's why we have landed for years. I've landed you've landed on the idea that life is a struggle and I want to struggle. Well, And struggling well doesn't mean I don't ask the hard questions like you asked just a few minutes ago.
I think those questions are legitimate and necessary and struggling well doesn't mean that everything is going to in the end turn out the way I want it to turn out.
Struggling well I believe means I never stop pointing my face towards Jesus.
So the question that I want to leave you with and Jimmy wants to leave you with is search your heart and see if you are exchang changing God for your own free choice. Choices that make it easier for you to live here. search the scriptures. Allow God to search your heart and allow him to change you and change your path.
Yeah. And next week as we pick this up, we're going to talk about how remembering comes into play in all this struggle. Have a great week.