922 Ministries - The CORE & St. Peter Lutheran

Well, good morning. Welcome to week number one of our brand new series, objections to Jesus.

One of the biggest objections that people have to Jesus, to the christian faith, and to the existence of God himself is the existence of evil. If you ask ten of your friends who aren't church going people, not religious people, not christian people, why they don't believe. They might talk about some of the teachings of the Bible. They don't agree with Jesus when he said this or that. They might wonder if there's any evidence that sets Christianity apart from other religions and philosophies and beliefs.

But I would bet perhaps a majority of the people that you know, and maybe you're one of these people that object to Jesus, and this is the problem of pain. It's personal and it's global suffering. We look around and there's so much brokenness and there's so much suffering that just doesn't seem to make sense. And when you see it up close, when you read the headlines and you personally experience the heartache, it becomes incredibly difficult to believe in the goodness of God.

I was thinking how personal this is for many of you. The other day when I printed out this a couple Sundays ago, we took all the prayer requests that were submitted at our church from just one Sunday, from just our congregation, and the requests were 4 plus pages long. You talked about a son who died suddenly, a mom who passed away, the loss of a father. Hereditary heart disease, stage four cancer. There was chemo.

Four funerals in just four weeks. Car accidents, side effects from medications. Feeling incredibly overwhelmed. Lyme's disease, joint pain, brain injuries. I'm homeless and hungry.

My partner is closed off to God. My daughter struggles with mental health. I feel disrespect for my boss. Pastor, would you pray for my mom? I can see the pain in her eyes.

Pray for my recovery. I'm in narcotics Anonymous. I have old resentments. Pray for my kids after my divorce. Pray against the obstacles.

The times of testing. My fiance has been lying and deceiving me. I'm trying to find peace after a divorce. I suffer from anxiety, depression. I struggle with insecurities.

My insurance is out. There's a car crash and now a coma. There's attorneys and judges involved. We're struggling with infertility. My anxiety is overwhelming.

That was one Sunday, and less than 3% of the people who were attending.

And when that kind of stuff happens to you, when you're anxious again, when you're depressed again, when he's still not back after the funeral, when you're dealing with trauma. When you just look at the madness and the wars and the starving children and the tsunamis and the hurricanes and the natural disasters, when you compile all of the pain that humans faced, this passion and belief in God, this love and trust in him, is sometimes hard to hold onto.

But you know what the real problem is? The real problem is God.

In the Bible, God claims three things about his own character that actually make all of that pain and suffering incredibly problematic. If you're taking notes, let me tell you what God says about himself in this book. God says that he is all knowing, that he is all powerful, and that he's entirely good. He knows all things, he can do all things, and he is good all the time. Can you see why those three things put together present a major problem for the christian faith?

I mean, if God was just entirely good and he was all powerful, but he wasn't all knowing, well, then we could say, well, God didn't know about the abuse I suffered as a kid. God didn't know that. That my marriage was falling apart. God didn't know how exhausted I was with the chemo and the cancer and the sickness. If he would have known, he would have used his power and his goodness to help.

But he didn't know that would be an easy out for God. But the Bible says that God actually does know. He did know. He's totally aware of every bit of suffering you've been through, and yet he, for some reason, didn't use his almighty power and his goodness to change it.

Or maybe if God was all knowing and entirely good, but he wasn't all powerful, we couldn't get mad at him. Maybe God knew about what you were going through and he loved you. He was compassionate and sympathetic, but he just didn't have the power to fix it. He's like the best friend who feels for you, but just wishes they could change things. The fact is, if God spoke and the universe existed, fixing your problem would be so simple for him.

So he doesn't just know about our pain, he could change it at any time. And if God was all knowing and all powerful, but never claimed to be good, never claimed to love you, never claimed to care, well, then he would just be doing what you would expect, keeping his distance from fixing your problems. Do you see, when God in the Bible claims that he knows about all of it, he could always change it. And yet at the same time, he claims to be the most loving, patient, compassionate, empathetic, good, powerful, trustworthy person in the universe. That's when hands start to raise.

And people say, I object. How can that be? If I was God and I saw this happening, I'd push the button, I'd flip the lever, I would use my almighty power to fix it. How could a God like that exist in a world like this?

That is the simple tension that is at the heart of so many people's atheistic, agnostic and unbelieving worldviews. Just doesn't make sense. How can there be a good God in a world where there's so many bad things? How can bad things happen to good people sometimes? Why do worse things happen to relatively better people?

And people get stuck with that tension, and they find it hard to trust in God or believe in God or want to be religious for any amount of time.

But here's the crazy thing.

All these prayers that I just read to you, all the death and mental health and the funerals and the struggles, the adultery and divorce, do you know where all these came from?

From people who don't object to Jesus.

I didn't copy and paste this off of, like, the former christian website. I didn't interview people who are totally done with religion and the Bible. These came from some of the most faithful, passionate, religious, Jesus loving people.

Which makes you think that maybe pain in itself isn't the problem. To put it another way, there's someone, probably someone in this church right now, likely someone sitting in your very row in church right now who. Who's gone through the same thing that you've gone through. And yet they didn't doubt God, and they didn't deny God, and they didn't give up on God. In fact, some of them would say, it actually makes me appreciate God and trust in God and lean on God even more.

You follow my logic. It's not the thing itself that is the objection to Jesus. It's the way you think about the thing.

You see every one of us, whether you're a Christian or not, passionate or struggling, every one of us has what I want to call a theology of suffering. A theology is like a way you think about God and suffering. All of us kind of have in our mind this little scale based on intensity and duration, that we'll believe in God and trust in God up to a certain intensity of pain and for a certain duration of pain. But for a lot of people, once the overall suffering passes the threshold, or once pain becomes chronic and the surgery doesn't fix it and the doctors are out of options, the family doesn't get fixed. For most people, there's some theology they never really put into words that I will love God until here or as long as that.

The existence of pain isn't the real problem to christian faith, it's your view of it. Can you trust God when it gets to be like this, when it lasts like this? Will you get to that spot in your life where you can say, like one man did years ago? If God gives or if he takes, either way, his name be praised.

Today, as you and I ponder our personal theology of suffering, I want to give to you some of the best reasons that christians over the centuries and millennia have turned to to believe in God. Now, I so wish that we had 2 hours for this sermon. There are a lot of good, logical, compelling reasons to hold on to Jesus when you're suffering. I was trying to convince myself I'm about to have knee surgery in two days, so I'm gonna have a couple Sundays off. Can I bank all of my sermon minutes from the next Sundays and just handle them?

Now?

I'm gonna interpret your laughter as a no, so I'm gonna keep it to the regular length. But I just wish I had time to tell you things like, God didn't create the world with pain right in the beginning, what he made was very good. It was actually human free will that messed it all up. So if you're gonna be mad at sickness, suffering, death, or trauma, be mad at Adam, Eve, and the enemy, not the one who created all things good, or I wish I had 20 minutes to tell you, why would you get mad at the God who's gonna fix it, the God who promised? Like there's an ultimate answer.

There's a new earth, there's a heaven, and there's no more suffering or triggers or trauma, anxiety, depression, mourning, death or pain. Why would you give up on the God who's eventually going to give you the solution? Or why would you get mad at the God who's the most faithful, reliable thing in your life? When health comes and goes, when family is strong or she wants a separation, God is just unchanging, and he never fails. Whether you look back or forward or right now to the presence of God, there's so many good reasons to hold on to trust and faith in God.

But I ain't got time for all that. So today I just want to give you my top three reasons that even when life is hard, even when things fall apart, even when we pass the threshold of pain, we still can hold on to our trust and our loving God. So I hope your brain is functioning. Today we're going to move fast. Here are three reasons, three answers.

I printed two of them in your programs and one I'm going to give you as a bonus to believe in God when life hurts. All right, grab your pens. Here's the first one. The first reason you should believe in God when life is hard is the principle of the greater good.

The principle of the greater good basically states that you are actually totally okay with pain as long as it leads to a greater good. That you don't get bitter. And even if you wince and it's difficult, you don't turn on someone or something as long as you know in your head and in your heart, that's leading to something better than before. For example, how many of you work out or run? How many go to the gym?

Oh, there's not many hands that go up. All right, we have something to work on. My wife has this really amazing gym that, like, pushes her really hard, like, five ish days a week. I'm convinced that my wife, Kim, spends about 8% of her life groaning because it was leg day in the past 48 hours. Now, is she bitter at the gym?

No, she actually loves it. Why would she love something that puts. Why would she pay money to be put through pain? The answer that you know is the principle of the greater good. Because a little pain now is going to give me a stronger, healthier, better body for years, if not decades, to come.

Or think of a surgery if you've ever been through one of those before. I just got a bill from my upcoming ACL surgery. Holy cow. I'm about to let a man I've met once take a knife and cut open my body. Why would I do that?

Friends have told me it's going to be terrible. You're not going to sleep. The pain is horrendous. Why would I choose it? Simple.

It's the principle of the greater good. Because I'm right here now. And even though it's going to get worse, I hope and I pray that after the recovery, it gets better than where I am right now. How many of you have ever had a baby before? Hands nice and high.

Yes. Why did you do that?

Did no one tell you the morning sickness? I know women who, like, have thrown up multiple times a day for weeks. And, like, the labor pains. 19 hours of pushing and panting and sweating, and you don't sleep forever. You're like a zombie for the first two years of your life.

And they cry in the diapers. Like, did no one tell you about these things? I bet they did. But they also told you that having a son or a daughter, despite all the inconveniences and suffering, actually leads to a greater good, a greater joy, a greater family. So the fact is, you are not inherently against pain.

What you're against in your heart is pointless pain. And if the pain has a point, if you actually believe that you can get through, like, labor pains in life, if there's some greater plan. So here's my point. Is it possible that the stuff that you and I go through in life, is it possible that God is always working for a greater good?

Is it possible that God, if he's all knowing and all powerful, actually knows things about what this pain will produce in our life and other people's lives that we can't see from our human perspective?

You know, little kids, when their moms and dads try to do something good for them, they don't get it. They don't have enough knowledge or experience to know that vegetables are good for them. Getting a shot at the doctor is for their good. They just know about the poke and the pain. They don't understand it.

Is it possible that we are the children of God who don't always understand what our father does and what he allows, why he doesn't stop, even the stuff he hates, the sins that people commit against us? Does he somehow know that there is a greater good and a better plan and purpose for even the pain that you've been through? It's a really famous promise in the Bible. Romans, chapter eight. Some of you know these words.

The apostle Paul said, and we know that in all things, all the things, the best things and the worst things in all things, God works. Say these three words with me for the. For the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose. This is the promise of God. The Christians who believe the Bible believe that there's always a plan, there's always a purpose, that nothing is pointless.

We might not see it. We can't figure it out in the moment, but God has made us a promise, and we know it, and we believe it, that in all things, God works for the good. Now, if you've been through substantial pain, you might say, oh, okay, come on, pastor. Like, I've been on medication for a decade, trying to figure out the thoughts in my head. How could that possibly be for the good?

We wanted a baby so badly. All I just wanted to have was a happy family. And then how could that be for good? How was the accident? How was losing my father when I'm three years old, how was my parents divorced?

How was the trauma that I've been through? How could that possibly be good? That's not like a hard workout at the gym that makes you stronger down the road. This is bad. This is traumatic.

These are the things that I can't escape. How could that be for the good? Here's my answer. I don't know, but neither do you.

Would you just be humble enough today to admit that you know so little about so much compared to God?

I know how you are. Whenever I have to put in my password on something, I always hope that my computer remembers I don't know my own passwords. What do I know about the world? What do I know about the future? I'm not minimizing the pain that you've been through.

I would just ask you to ask, is it possible that the all knowing God knows things and has plans for things that you couldn't possibly see from your human point of view?

Now, I don't know specifically why that specific thing happened to you, but I do know that the Bible reminds us of many categories of things that God might be doing. Let me give you three of them really quickly. First of all, from the prophet Isaiah, the Old Testament, Isaiah 57. It says, the righteous perish, good people die, and no one takes it to heart. No one's thinking about what God is thinking.

The devout are taken away. Not the devious, diabolical ones. The devout, passionate people for God, they're taken away. And no one understands this. Here's the reason that the righteous are taken away.

To be spared from evil.

See, what often happens is like life is good, and then it goes bad. And we wonder why God let this happen. Is it possible that God let this happen? Because if this wouldn't have happened, this would have happened. The temporary pain was sparing us from something worse.

I call these detours in life. How many of you love seeing the orange barricades? Detours? Yes. Me neither.

Why did they do that? Why don't they just let you drive over the gravel, ripped up road? Why do they put up the. The orange cones when the bridge is out? So annoying, isn't it?

You just want to get to work, and now you got to turn right, you got to drive around. Well, obviously, to spare you from something worse, to spare your car from breaking down, to spare you from falling into the river off the bridge. Is it just possible a little bit that God detours you, that you pray, God, lead me not into temptation, but deliver me from evil. And he says, okay. And he avoids the greater evil by allowing some lesser pain.

I'm not saying I know what that pain might have been, but I do know that God says this. No one remembers this. No one takes it to heart that sometimes I do things I take away instead of give to spare you from evil.

Or how about the apostle Paul in the book of two Corinthians? He was suffering as a missionary. He was a victim of so much injustice. They physically abused and verbally mocked him. The government and the church was unjust.

Here's how Paul processed that. He said in two Corinthians one, we felt that we had received the sentence of death. Like what we went through was bad. It wasn't a critique of the sermon in the comment section. Like we thought they were going to kill us for our faith in Jesus.

Why did it happen? Paul's belief. But this happened, that we might not rely on ourselves, but on God.

Did you know that sometimes going through bad things turns you into a better person?

Did you know that sometimes people who've never been through bad things can be worse people?

I heard of a church once that wouldn't hire anyone for, like, top level leadership unless they had significantly suffered in life.

Sometimes if everything's been easy, if you were born beautiful, if you've always had money, if you've never struggled, if you're inherently fast and smart, sometimes those kind of people end up being the kind of people who are not humble, who are not compassionate, who aren't patient when people go through problems, isn't it true that sometimes it's the pain and suffering you've been through that helps you relate, helps you connect, gives you compassion, gives you empathy, robs you of just throwing out trite, shallow advice as if problems are easy to fix? Isn't it possible that sometimes we receive the sentence of death so that we don't just rely on ourselves and become self obsessed, but instead rely on God and love other people?

Or how about this one? Hosea, chapter 13. God was reflecting and lamenting what happened to Old Testament Israel. He said this when I fed them, they were satisfied. And when they were satisfied, they loved me and never forgot to worship me.

Nope. When they were satisfied, they became proud. And then they forgot me.

You've experienced this, right? Do you pray more often when life is good or when life is bad?

I've been a pastor for 17 years. I'm trying to remember a single time that someone walked through the doors of a church and said, pastor, you know what? My life was perfect. I was on my yacht. I was drinking a pina colada.

My kids listened the first time to everything I said. My beautiful wife said, honey, can I give you a foot rub today? And I thought, in that moment, God's been so good to me. I should go to church.

No, no, no. Never. But can I think of a time when someone who wasn't thinking much about God, they went through something difficult? When the relationship fell apart, when the doctor said, it's terminal, when they made a choice that came with a consequence. When they're sitting in a prison cell after their sin, can I think of people who remembered God because life was hard?

Hundreds of them. Is it possible that God lets us suffer because he doesn't want to lose us forever?

That if we get too comfortable in this life, we'll forget that there's actually a life to come and a God who deserves to be worshipped? Now, there's so many other reasons in the Bible, but just think of those three. Is it possible that there is some greater good? Is it possible that God is saving you, sparing you from something worse? Is it possible that God wants you to be a better kind of person?

Is it possible that God wants to save you from the assumption that you don't even need him, church, his word, or his people? Once again, I don't know the exact reason for your pain, and neither do you. But it's not illogical to think that maybe God is working for the greater good.

Maybe some of you have heard that old tale about the poor traveling rabbi who only had four possessions. He had a bible. He had a lamp. He had a rooster, and he had a donkey. And after a long journey, the old rabbi was worn out.

His feet were throbbing. He just needed a bed to crash into. And he comes upon this little village, and he goes into the village looking for a place to stay. But the villagers, unfortunately, are cruel and unchristian. They reject him, slam their doors, lock them, and they drive him out into the forest next to the village to sleep.

On the cold, rainy night, the tired and exhausted rabbi tried to have faith in God, and he opened up his scriptures and he lit his lamp. But the rain picked up and the brutal breeze swept through the woods. It extinguished the lamp, and he couldn't relight it.

Then, as he was trying to fall asleep, some of the beasts of the woods came out. They saw and smelled the rooster. They chased after him. They chewed on the rope that was holding him to the tree, and the rooster ran off into the darkness. The rabbi would never see him again.

And then when the rabbi finally fell asleep for 42 minutes on that terrible evening, some thieves were creeping through the forest. They saw the silhouette of the donkey. They snuck up, untied the rope, and robbed the rabbi of one of his last possessions. He woke up without the rooster, without the donkey, with a lamp that didn't function, with only the Bible in his hands. And he was about to cry out in frustration to God, why?

How could this happen?

But then he discovered the answer. He stumbled, exhausted, back into the village. And that's when he heard the terrible news. That very village had actually been fighting with a neighboring village. And under the COVID of night, the army from the other village had invaded.

They attacked with swords drawn without pity or with mercy. If the rabbi had been sleeping in one of the village beds, he would have been dead.

And when that brutal, merciless army came out of the village and walked by that very forest, if they had seen the flicker of his lamp, if they had heard the call of the rooster, if they had seen the silhouette of his donkey, they might have seen him, arrested him, enslaved him, murdered him. And so the tired old rabbi, with only the scriptures in his hands, believed in all things. In all things. God works for the good.

But maybe that's not good enough for you.

I've been trying to persuade you for the last few minutes with logic. You're human. God knows more than you. So maybe God's doing this. Or this.

Or this. Maybe there's things in the future that you can't see, that God sees. And maybe that makes sense up here. But maybe right here, as you're thinking about your pain, it's not good enough.

I recently read an interesting book called Super Communicators. It's about the people who are best at communication at work or in relationships. And the first whole section of the book said that the best people at communication are always asking themselves this.

What kind of conversation is this example that you spouses might relate to? Every so often, my wife comes home from work after a really, really bad day, and she's telling me about all the kind of frustrating things that happened. And I forget to ask myself the question, what kind of conversation is this? And I assume, like many foolish husbands before me, that this is a problem solution kind of conversation. You know, honey, you tell me a problem and yo, I'll solve it.

But I find out very, very quickly, this is not one of those kind of conversations. This is not a fix it or fix me conversation. This is not Monday, your husband quarterback analyzing you. Here's what you should have done or done better. This is.

Man, I'm sorry. Conversation this is. That stinks. Conversation this is. I would be frustrated too.

Conversation. Some conversations are solutions for the head and others are just connecting with a heart.

Which is why I want to give you a second answer today that God, in his word, does not just say, well, here's what I'm doing. You can't see it, but you got to trust me. I'm God. You're not. I would also say this.

Write this down. The second answer to our pain is that God gets it, that God feels it, that the God we worship, Jesus, can relate to it.

You might not know this. 2000 years ago when Jesus, God himself, came down from heaven, he didn't stay distant from the pain and suffering that you and I experience. In fact, the most famous prophecy about the coming of Jesus is in Isaiah, chapter 53. And we find these words in verse three. That he, Jesus, was despised and rejected by mankind, a man of suffering and familiar with pain.

That's profound. The gods of all the other religions, the greek gods and the roman gods would have kept their distance from the messiness of humanity. But Jesus apparently suffered so much they called him a man of suffering. He hadn't just heard about pain from some angel up in heaven, he was so familiar with it. That means if you're suffering and weeping and wondering, Jesus doesn't just look down on you and say, I'm pushing the buttons.

There's a plan. It's like he sits in the dirt with you in the dust and in the ashes, and he doesn't speak for a good hour.

He just weeps with those who weep and he mourns with those who mourn. And after he hears your heart, he says, I get it.

If you've read the Bible, think about what Jesus gets.

Have you ever been in like a situation that was so dangerous when you were a kid you had to run for your life? Jesus gets it. Do you come from a family with some broken branches in the trees, scandals and sins? He gets it. Are you poor, scraping financially to get by?

He gets it. Have you had fights with your siblings? Been misunderstood by your own parents? He gets it. Have you been hurt by the church, abused by the church?

He gets that. Have you been to funerals, good people who seem to die so young? He gets it. Betrayed by someone you thought you could trust? He gets it.

Had people that you thought were friends until friendship got hard and they ran out the door? He gets it. Have you been physically abused? He gets it. Have you been mocked when you couldn't defend yourself?

Jesus, he suffered so much. The man of suffering who is familiar with pain, he would look you in the eye and say, it wasn't like this in the beginning, and it will not be like this in the end. But it is right now, and I get it.

In a profound truth. The Bible one says that Jesus is not unable to sympathize with our weaknesses. He faced it. He felt it. He's been tempted in every way, just like we are.

And yet he did not sin. He trusted in his father in heaven.

And maybe that's less logical and more emotional, but, man, it's meaningful. I've learned in counseling when people are hurting my me. Rattling off the 17 Bible passages I've memorized rarely helps. But weeping with people in pain often does.

And we have a God who wept. We have a God who bled. We have a God who gets it.

But for me, the most compelling part about that statement is, really quickly, the third answer I want to give you today. Why does jesus get it?

This is the craziest thing to me. He gets it because he wanted to get you.

You know, I think in our heads, we say, well, if I was God, I would push the button and end all the pain. I would eliminate all the evil. I'd highlight it and delete it so goodness and joy and peace could get the last word. Do you know the problem, though, with that thinking?

Guess who sometimes brings pain into this world?

You.

Guess who makes people weep?

Me. We can shake a fist at God every time there's a natural disaster. But how much of the pain and suffering in this world, how much of the evil that we see is pure human choice, is impatience and selfishness trying to get my way? How many children cry not because they're starving, but because mom and dad won't give them their full attention? How many spouses run to court not because of some natural disaster, but because someone didn't keep their vow?

How often? How much of the pain in this world is simply caused by the choices that you and I freely make? If God pushed the button to fix it, he would have to condemn us, get rid of us, be done with us.

And to me, this is the best answer to the objection that the Jesus who knew all of it, he knew all of you and all of me who saw the worst of it, and he had all the power to. To fix it, to push the button and be done with us. He was so entirely good that instead of condemning us, he came to save us. That he walked into this world of suffering and brokenness and pain and climbed up on a cross to shed his blood to fix us. And not just it.

Get mad at God. The God who saved me. Shake a fist at heaven after he saved me from going to hell. Be mad at God for what's happening in life, the God who gave me eternal life. Now, the closer you get to the cross of Jesus and the gospel of God's one and only son, the more objecting to Jesus just doesn't make sense.

Why would I question the one who has been so good to me? How could I doubt the one who saved me? He was happy in heaven, and he gave it up to become familiar with pain so that I could go to paradise when I die. Sure, there might be a greater good in my future. Yes, it feels good to know that Jesus can relate to my pain.

But the best answer to the objection to Jesus is Jesus.

A couple months ago, I was in the back of an Uber in Houston, Texas, and my Uber driver, whose name was Atikula, he asked, well, what are you in town for? And I said, give a presentation. And he said, a presentation on what? And I said, a presentation on trusting God when life hurts. And he immediately said, I do.

I trust in God no matter what.

And the pastor in me said, tell me more. And he told me about Hurricane Harvey. Do you remember that? From years ago, when it descended with such tragedy and suffering on Texas. Told me that the flood waters were rising up to the precious home that he lived in.

He didn't know if his house was going to survive. In fact, it was so bad, the situation he was in, he honestly didn't know if he was going to survive the flood. But he said, at that moment, I said to God, you can take my house or give it back. You can take my life or give it back. And I trust in you.

And from the back of the uber, I said, tell me more about that. I said, hey, I know a lot of people get mad at God when he takes stuff away. I know people that deny the existence of God when suffering happens. How did you end up seeing God like that? I was curious.

How did you develop a theology of suffering where God could take not just the little things, but all the things, and you would still love him?

And Atikula told me another story when he was an interpreter in the war in Afghanistan and he got shot in the back. He didn't see the bullet coming. He's just walking. And he said, it felt like someone put two hands on my back and shoved me to the ground. The bullet smashed him right between the shoulder blades.

His friend, who was next to him, looked at him with open eyes and said, are you alive?

By the grace of God? He was wearing a vest that day, and the bullet that would have pierced his vital organs and said, stuck in the vest, it saved him.

And Atikula said, once God saved me, I knew I could trust him.

That's a theology of suffering. Once God saved me, I knew I could trust him.

Do you? And I know why it happens. The sickness, the torn ligaments, the heart problems, the mental health. We do not know. Is there a greater good?

For sure there is. God has promised it. But the reason we trust in God is that simple statement that that man made on that Uber ride that day. Once God saves us, we know that we can trust him. We can trust him to be with us.

We can trust him to grieve with us. We can trust him to use his power to work out all things for good. Object to Jesus. My objection to your objection is Jesus. If God saves you, you can trust him.

He's good all the time. And all the time, God is good.

Let's pray.