Welcome to another podcast of Struggling Well. We appreciate that you're here. Yeah, we have a couple of things on our mind today and so we may do a couple of things or we might do a short one. I don't know. It just is kind of exciting, isn't it, Jimmy?
It really is, Suzi, because I have no idea how much or where we're going with all this.
I know. I know. You would think that we sat down and didn't give this any thought, but we do give it thought. I don't you know, you all know from listening to us through the last year or so that we rarely speak about other pastors or teachers. Not because they're not excellent at what they do. It's just that we're not trying to promote anyone or any one particular book or way of thinking outside of biblical thinking. We're not trying to promote anything like that. But one of the people that I have well both of us have really respected and been somehow teaching through never having met the person is someone who has passed away a year ago and that is Tim Keller. And one of the things that I have enjoyed from afar with Tim Keller is he appeared to be a very humble struggler and loved the word of God and loved his family and loved New York City and the people that he was able to minister to. And recently I heard something. It made me sad to see him speaking and knowing that he's not here but rejoicing for him that he's out of the physical pain that he was in. But some of you may have heard this and I'm not this is 100% Tim Keller with a few of my own thoughts and few of Jimmy's thoughts, but he said something that just really hit me and I wanted to pass it on as a Tim Keller thought. but one that has really struck me and that he was talking about the question of pain and suffering. And if you've heard him talk about this, then you'll know what I'm about to say. But he said he has said through the years in his ministry that many many times people have said to him, why does God allow pain and suffering? And what hit me is when he was speaking about this is he said, "We struggle with it because we cannot think of a good reason why God would allow something." So I know for myself when something difficult comes up, I try to figure out why it might happen like the benefit might be this or this. And so I try to in my little finite brain try to figure out and what I do and what we often do as believers is we argue with God about what we think it should be. Again, we referred to Job last week and I think it's important to speak about him again as his friends argued also with him and ultimately with God is that I have In my brain, I have some options that it could be the reason why God might allow suffering in this person's life, usually born out of my own arrogance about why I think they're suffering. But the thing that Tim Keller said, and that just blew me away, is that we think that we if we can't think it, then there's not a good reason. And he said, did we ever perhaps think that God is thinking about something else deeper, more meaningful, more full story of the Bible than what we're thinking right at that moment. I just struck me like in my arrogance. I'm like, God, why did you allow this person to suffer in this way? Why has this come into our life or someone that we love? Here's some options, God. Maybe you might want to take me up on them. As if I think that God, like maybe, you know, like God, you haven't thought of this. Well, it's you use the word it's the arrogance to think that I can come up with every possible reason why. Yes.
And then I can explain it as opposed to going, "No, you're he's God." And is it ever crossed my mind that there may be things that he's thought of or ways that he sees a situation that are beyond my ability to understand? You know, it's in scripture where it says his ways are not my ways and his thoughts are not my thoughts. but we in our arrogance of advanced civilization
ah
think that we that there's not a possible reason or if we can't think of a possible reason then there's no way that God could
and so what we do and this is the other thing that Tim Keller said is that then we toss out God
right
and he said but the ancients when difficulty came they never doubted God. They didn't doubt the existence of God. But we do because we think we can outmaneuver, figure out, stabilize, strategize, do, plan, have a committee meeting, whatever to figure out a solution. Whereas the ancient mind and scripture is clear too that we should follow the ancient ways, the ancient mindset of, hey, God is God. They didn't question whether God existed. You look through all the old test there wasn't a question about did God exist? but what we do is because we have so much knowledge that we don't even know what to do with. it's really a lot of it is useless because we don't have power to do anything with this vast knowledge. Then we throw God out.
Yeah. And I probably have used this at some point in time over the last 80some podcasts, but
I thought you're gonna say 80 years. No, like a babe. No, I'm not. Happy birthday.
Happy birthday. No. It's one of my favorite quotes from a Dutch theologian by the name of Peter Creef where Creef says this, "Life is a mis a mystery to be lived, not a problem to be solved."
And I think that's a huge reminder that there are going to be things that come into my life, into your life, into our friends lives, people's lives that I can't explain.
Yeah.
But rather than thinking that I will come up with the reason why, I'll leave it as a mystery and trust that God has the ability to think way beyond anything I do. I
I sometimes I like to imagine what it would have been like had I been alive back in the Old Testament days or even New Testament days and the conversations that I would have had with God about what was happening. We know throughout the Old Testament that from David to the prophets, the minor prophets to people in leadership, Moses, Abraham, they cried out to God to deliver them. There was no doubt that he was there. They asked him to deliver them. In our day and age, we're not crying out to God. We just want deliverance somehow. And let me read to you this prayer that I picked off of a something I read and it's this give, oh Lord, give us the benefit of believing that your hand is leading us and accept the anxiety of feeling ourselves in suspense and incomplete. Like, no, I have to be complete. It has to have a period at the end of the sentence. And so, we want everything to be nicely tied up with a bow. and I just don't think that's how it works.
No. Scripture,
that's right. You know, again, this is an often used illustr It's like whatever your favorite TV show is or your favorite movie is, you know that in your TV shows the if it's a crime drama, it'll be wrapped up in an hour.
Mhm.
Because that's how it has to happen to fit within the program. And so we can think that life needs to be the same way,
right?
And when it's not, we get frustrated. if you talk to people who are in the law enforcement field or if you talk to people in the medical field or whatever field is portrayed in a TV drama and ask them how close to reality that is, they typically laugh.
Yeah.
Because that's not reality.
And so the reality of life as Keller said is that God may have an idea or two that is actually beyond my ability to understand or comprehend.
And that phrase again, accept the anxiety of feeling yourself in suspense and incomplete. That
that's going to stay with me for a long while.
Yeah. And so maybe we've stirred in your minds and your hearts something to give thought to this coming week. We hope and pray that the spirit of God takes that and enlightens that. Have a great week.