"If That's Who God is, I Don't Want Him"

Porch, how are we doing? Are we doing okay tonight? Great to see you. Welcome back, if you've been here before. If it's your very first time, let me be one of hopefully very many people to say, "Welcome." We're really glad you're here at The Porch. Thanks for trusting us with your Tuesday. Special shout-out to everybody who's tuning in online.

We never want to lose sight of the fact that God is doing something great here, but he's doing something really great where you are also. We're firm believers God can meet with anybody in any place and at any time, and that includes those of you who are tuning in with us tonight. So thanks for being a part of this. Special shout-out to Porch.Live Indy, Fresno, and Midland.

Well, Porch, our Deconstructed series is coming to an official end. We are rounding the corner into what I think is going to be a really important topic. Our goal, as we've stepped into this series, has been to unpack the primary reasons that lead people to deconstruct from their faith. A series about deconstruction would not be complete if we didn't first talk about suffering.

So, let me lead off with a story. When I was in college ministry, I remember sitting down with one of the leaders who served in our weekly ministry because he needed to unpack a critical situation he was facing. You see, he was facing a plagiarism case in his senior year of college, which was a shock to me. This guy was the textbook example, the model of what you hope would be true of your kids one day when they go to school.

He was hardworking and smarter than most. He was loving the Lord and serving his people. He was doing so many good things, which is why it blew me away to hear that he was in a situation where his integrity was being questioned, where he may have, in fact, cheated on an assignment and used somebody else's work and claimed it as his own.

So we sat down. I looked at him, and I was like, "Dude, help me understand. How are we even in this spot?" He goes, "Well, it's interesting, because the person I'm being accused of plagiarizing is myself. It's not anybody else's work; it's work that I completed on a former assignment, but because it isn't original to this assignment…it's a reference to something I already authored…I'm being taken to task. My professor is threatening me with potential expulsion."

So, as we processed together, I was like, "Well, dude, you definitely have to take a stand. Right? You can't just let this go unchecked. You need to make sure to defend your honor. If you're not going to do it, I'm going to do it for you, because this is crazy. It's your work. It's not someone else's. This is not my understanding of plagiarism."

Yet, as we began to process through it, he told me, "Kylen, calm down. I'm in a little bit of a difficult spot, between a rock and a hard place, because the situation I'm in is one where my professor does not want me to call his reputation into question by pushing the issue, so much so that he's actually threatening to call every medical school I might apply to and raise character concerns with their admission board." That is being set between a rock and a hard place. That is a difficult situation.

As we began to process together what he would do, he looked at me and asked, "Kylen, why does stuff like this happen? I've done everything right. I've walked with God, and I've worked hard. I've served his people, I've invested in others, and I've made sure to utilize my gift and steward my time. Why is this happening to me?" What do you say to someone in a situation like that, when it feels like they've done everything and deserve to expect the best thing, yet their experience would say something different is happening altogether?

I remember, in that same college ministry, I met a young lady who had no interest in Jesus whatsoever. She was raised in a Muslim family, yet she had a friend…not just any friend, a best friend…who fiercely loved God and was super-intent on leading this young lady to Jesus. And she did it. She relentlessly pursued this girl, and in time, she came to place her faith in Christ. It wasn't just like, "I believe in Jesus." She believed in Jesus.

She was ferocious in asking questions and learning as much as she could. It was early on within the first couple of weeks of her declaration of faith where she looked at me and went, "Can you explain the Trinity?" She was that in. She was so into Christ. Then her family found out. As her family found out, that which gave her so much life began to take life from her, because the cost of her faith was that of her family. They pushed her away. They abandoned her entirely.

I remember looking at her as she was grieving the fact that this had all gone the way it was, where she was expecting the very best of things to happen yet the very worst of things had come, and thinking the same question the guy before her had asked me. "Why does stuff happen like this? I deserve to expect something, but it feels like something different has happened entirely."

Or I remember, not in college ministry, but when I moved to Houston, I started working in young adult ministry. I met this guy who actually came to saving faith in a room just like this. It was in a worship gathering where we preached onstage and worshiped all together. He came down front, and we were just talking. He decided, "Man, I'm going to go all in on Jesus. I'm pushing my chips forward. I don't want to be one foot in and one foot out. I want to be all in on Christ."

So we saw him. He dove two feet all the way into the deep end of the pool. He got plugged into the church. He started serving on a weekly basis. He started serving within the outreach portion of his Community Group. He was a die-hard fanatic in the faith. Then the people he thought were his friends betrayed him by talking about him when he was not in the room and using him at the cost of some sort of cheap joke. They slandered him. They belittled him. They made fun of him when he wasn't around.

He looked at me and said, "Kylen, I thought the church was supposed to be a place where God is building a family, yet this place feels like it's only filled with foes. Why is this happening? This doesn't make sense. I'm selecting into what should be the best thing in life, yet it feels like the worst thing is happening to me. Help me understand."

What do you say to someone in a moment like that, when something genuinely truly beautiful has happened in their life… They have placed their faith in Jesus. They are walking with the Lord. They are openly confessing their sin. They are indulging the gift of community. They are seeking God's purposes in the world, yet the very thing we call beautiful for them is the very same thing that has cost them so dearly.

What do you say to someone like that? To someone who seemingly lost medical school, another who lost her family, and the last lost any confidence that the people of God would actually be the people of God. Why does stuff like that happen, and why would anyone follow a God who lets it? That's the question we're staring down the barrel of tonight.

You see, that's a question a lot of people have asked and some of you in this room have asked yourself, and it's a question a lot of people have answered that has led them to a place where they're no longer walking in the faith; they're actually walking away from the faith. We've heard it before, that age-old question, the problem of evil, that God is either not good enough or not powerful enough to solve the suffering in our world.

Yet, when it comes home and roosts within our lives, we know that question isn't so concerned with general suffering but personal suffering. Some of you have seen some things, heard some things, lived through some things where it has put you in a spot where you're looking at God and can't really defend the guy. Like, "It doesn't make sense, if he is who he says he is, that I would be living through the things I'm living through."

The Christian answers for the existence of evil and the tragedies of today and all the sufferings that surround pale in comparison and fall insufficient of what you actually need when suffering strikes. If that's you, then tonight is for you. If you have a Bible, we're going to look at a passage in John, chapter 16, together.

Tonight marks the official last talk in our series Deconstructed where our aim has been to help you rebuild your reality, to boost your belief whenever it feels like crisis strikes, whenever you're wrestling with spiritual insecurity, because contrary to popular belief, we believe you can actually question the faith without walking away from it since there are better answers than cultural conformity or blind belief for following Jesus.

Paul David Tripp said this when he was interviewed on the podcast The Rise & Fall of Mars Hill: "We should all be deconstructing our faith. We'd better do it, because our faith becomes a culture, a culture so webbed into the purity of truth it's hard to separate the two." There are some things within Christian culture that need to be challenged, that deserve to be reevaluated, but here's the thing: a Christ-honoring deconstruction revels in truth and beauty, not cynicism and arrogance. Let me illustrate it like this.

Several years ago, I decided to put together a desk that my wife needed for her home office. Of course, the desk we ordered came in a million pieces. When I say a "million," it actually felt like a million. I mean, we unboxed it, I pulled it all out, and it covered the living room floor. Yet I knew, "This is my job as a husband," so I went to work.

I applied myself to the task at hand, and I was proud of the progress I was making. This thing was coming along swimmingly…until I took the two tabletops and decided to bring them to a joining spot where they did not sit flush with one another. It occurred to me in that moment that something had grievously gone wrong.

So what did I do? Did I choose to think the instructions were misleading me the whole time? "This is crazy! They clearly don't want me to build this desk." No, that would have been a cynical response. Did I consider the situation at hand and think, "You know what? I know better than the manufacturer on how to build this desk. I don't need these instructions. I will assemble it on my own"? That would have been a proud response.

Instead, the right response, which was the response I took, was I worked backward through the instructions, disassembling the desk all along the way, until I identified the tiny critical mistake I made. After correcting that miss, I began to reconstruct the desk, and what I found was something beautiful and worthwhile to build in the end.

You see, the aim of deconstruction is to ultimately rebuild a faith that is beautiful, which is why deconstruction without reconstruction is a tragedy. Every crisis of faith carries with it the potential to clarify your vision for who God is. Do you want to know who God is? This is an opportunity to know who God is, to get greater clarity, eyes to see a wider vision to behold who, in fact, he is.

Not just that. You get a vision of what he's doing in the world. Like, "I know who God is. I know what he's doing, and (the cherry on top) I know how I fit into it all." That's the gift that deconstruction brings to the table so long as you're willing to do the work of reconstructing your faith in the end.

But what about those moments, those crises of faith that don't seem to clarify your vision of who God is but only seem to confuse it? What do you do when, one minute, following God is the unquestionable part of your life, but then the next moment, because of the things you endured, the suffering you faced, you're questioning why you would even follow him to begin with? How do you pick up and put back the pieces when you find yourself in a moment of suffering?

That's what we're going to talk about in our final lesson in the series. Coincidentally, it's the final lesson Jesus instructs his disciples on in John, chapter 16. Whenever you come to John 15 and 16, and you can include 17 in the mix, you learn that Jesus is giving an instruction to his disciples on what they can expect once he goes to the cross.

He knows he's about to be wrongly arrested, unjustly tried, and is going to be publicly executed. So, to prepare them for what's ahead, he looks at them and says in John 15, "Hey, you need to make sure you're abiding in God, that you're making your home with him, that you're dwelling with him, that you're depending on him, because persecution is going to come. But don't worry. In time, the Holy Spirit is going to come as well. I'm sending in backup.

You're going to get some reinforcements. It's power from on high that is going to come to you and help you here in the today. But it's not only that. You need to know, too, that though hardship is ahead, hope is as well, because though I am dying, rising, and returning to the Father, I will come back." It's into that context that we catch up to this conversation. The disciples look at him in John 16:29 and say in response to these things:

"'Now you are speaking clearly and without figures of speech. Now we can see that you know all things and that you do not even need to have anyone ask you questions. This makes us believe that you came from God.' 'Do you now believe?' Jesus replied. 'A time is coming and in fact has come when you will be scattered, each to your own home. You will leave me all alone.'"

We'll stop right there. We'll talk about this section, first and foremost, because it contains our first point. We know on this side of history that Jesus is about to walk into the teeth of the enemy. We know that. We've read the book. We've heard the stories. We've gone to Easter service. We know that's what Jesus is walking into. We're well aware of the fact that this is about to go seemingly horribly wrong for him, but the disciples do not know that.

They know and even believe that Jesus is the Son of God and has come to inaugurate his kingdom, to establish it here on the earth, yet some of the details of how that's all going to work out have not necessarily settled for them yet. So, what's going to happen is they're going to step out of this instruction and go to the garden, Jesus is going to be arrested, and all hell is going to break loose.

For these guys, the bottom is going to fall out. Their belief is going to break. They're going to worry and panic that all of this is not going according to schedule. They're going to feel a major crisis of faith. They're going to begin to experience suffering that comes in the darkness of his death, and it leaves them in a spot where they're unsure if this guy is who he said he was and if, in fact, their lives have amounted to nothing in the end.

They respond in a way that many of us respond in whenever crisis comes. They run, they hide, and they panic, because, first, suffering reveals what we truly believe about God. What we believe about him, not just what we think about him. There's a big distinction in those two ideas. To help you get clarity on the distinction, I asked Google AI. It said, "Thinking refers to the mental process of considering information, evaluating possibilities, and forming ideas, while believing signifies a stronger conviction where someone accepts something as true, often with a level of certainty and commitment."

To put that very simply, the difference in thinking versus believing is thinking is all about information whereas believing is all about conviction. The disciples don't say, "You know what, Jesus? We've evaluated the evidence, we have inspected all of the data, and we have decided that we think you're the Son of God." That's not what they say. They say in the text, "We believe you are the Son of God."

Like, "We're staking our faith on it. We genuinely think, in the core of our inner being, that you are who you say you are." Which is why it is so disorienting for them, and for ourselves, whenever suffering strikes and everything we believe starts to break down. We often do what they did. We scatter when crisis comes. We desert Jesus when difficulty develops. We abandon whenever the adversity strikes. The reason we do is we have an insufficient belief in God.

You see, rather than believing that God is intrinsically good, we instead believe he's only good when things go according to our plan. Rather than believing that God is intrinsically kind, we only believe he's kind if he looks out for us in the ways we need. Rather than believing that God is intrinsically loving, we question just how loving he is if he doesn't intervene in that situation and produce this sort of outcome.

Contrary to the typical arguments around this problem of evil, most people, when it comes to evil, pain, and suffering… They don't deconstruct because God is some genocidal maniac. "You'd better follow his rules or else." That's not why most people deconstruct. Now, that's an issue that there are really good answers for. In fact, a few weeks back, TA spent about 45 minutes teaching through that problem from this stage in Sunday service. You should totally go listen to it if you actually want the answers to why God would do those sorts of things.

Yet, that's not normally why people deconstruct from the faith. Instead, the answer to that question is what people use to substantiate their deconstruction from the faith. You see, most people deconstruct from the faith because their spiritual spiraling is not the product of the existence of evil that it's out there but from the experience of it. That's why people deconstruct. They experience evil, some suffering that has called God's character into question, so they've called him to the carpet, and they're wondering, "Hey, are you even actually true?"

If we want to consider some truth claims, the first thing we need to know is that God doesn't cause evil. That's the first truth you have to know if you're going to unpack this problem. First John 1:5 says, "This is the message we have heard from him and proclaim to you, that God is light, and in him is no darkness [no evil] at all." James 1:13 says, "Let no one say when he is tempted, 'I am being tempted by God,' for God cannot be tempted with evil, and he himself tempts no one."

"Okay, Kylen. I get that. I understand the fact that God doesn't cause evil, but that doesn't omit the fact that there is pain and suffering in this life. So, if it's not coming from God, then where, in fact, is it coming from?" I'm really glad you asked, because there are four good sources from which we can categorize evil.

The first would be moral evil. This is the evil that we perpetuate against one another as human beings. This is what we do when we act in a way that is not in accordance with God's will, things like murder, robbery, rape, racism, hatred, jealousy, adultery, and embezzlement…all of those things. Those are acts of moral evil, and we're typically responsible for those ourselves.

Next to moral evil there's natural evil. These are those calamitous events that come into our world yet are separate from any moral decision…tornadoes, floods, fires, congenital diseases. These are the things that natural disasters categorize. It's a product of the fall in Genesis 3, and it proliferates over the course of time as things grow worse and worse and worse.

The third category would be spiritual evil. We live in a world where spiritual warfare is very real. An unseen realm does, in fact, exist, and pain and suffering are induced by the demonic. Now, let me be abundantly clear. Not everything is the Devil, but some things are the Devil. Just because you hit a nail on the road and got a flat tire, it's not because the Devil is out to get you. "Oh, he did it again!" Calm down, brother. You probably just hit a nail.

Not everything is, but some things are, so it's good for us to consider what in life might be the product of a deep darkness. As you look into the halls of history and evaluate some of the circumstances in our day, while it's difficult to ascribe what source is at play, those atrocities you see that have an insidiousness to them may very well be caused by something spiritually dark.

The fourth one, the one that's most important for this room, is personal evil. The shortest answer to the problem of evil is you and me. If there was a world where there was no spiritual darkness and no natural disaster and you lived within it, evil would still exist, because you're there, because I'm there. A great case in point is Tom Hanks in the movie Cast Away. Tom Hanks is deserted on an island all by himself.

There's no one there for him to hurt, no one there for him to harm, yet Tom Hanks somehow finds a way to sin against Wilson, a volleyball. Within a vacuum, locked away all by himself, he still acts evil. This is a good example of personal evil. You see, it can be a combination of any of these things that explain the evil, pain, and suffering you experience in life, but the overarching point is there are credible explanations for the suffering we experience that don't condemn God's character.

So, why doesn't God do something about it? If he can, why won't he? He will. God will do something about evil. He might do something about it, the suffering that surrounds you, within your day, but often, God will not do something because he has a very good reason, and that reason is one we see in 2 Peter 3:9. "The Lord is not slow to fulfill his promise as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance."

You see, God will right every wrong, wipe every tear, mend every wound, and cure every hurt, just not yet. The reason is he is beckoning people to come to him. He wants deeply for people to come to him. It's so ironic. God is willing to suffer our sins a little bit longer so that you and I don't have to suffer our sins forever. Who's the one who's actually suffering here? It's God.

God deserves justice against all godlessness, and he could do it right now. It could be over, and he wouldn't be wrong for it. He would be right, because evil deserves to be judged, yet it is in his mercy that he slows the clock. He provides us time, because he's beckoning us to come home. That's not bad news; that is good news. That's not an evil God; that is a merciful God.

That's a God who's playing the long game, who's trying to pursue as many people as he can, and that should change things for you and me. Christian, if you're in the room tonight, and you're suffering through something, that should change your perspective. God has not solved your issue because he is trying to solve the world's issue. He's trying to bring people back home.

Now listen. As I say that, I know some of you instinctively feel like, "So, what? You're just telling me to suck it up? You just want me to grit it out? You want me to just suck my tear back up into its duct?" No, that's not what I'm saying, but I am saying this should shift our perspective when we consider suffering, which is exactly where Jesus goes next.

We'll look at verse 32 again. He says, "A time is coming and in fact has come when you will be scattered, each to your own home. You will leave me all alone. Yet I am not alone, for my Father is with me." You see, everyone in this story makes a decision about what direction they're going to run whenever suffering comes. The decision they make depends on their purpose in that suffering, because no one chooses what they suffer, but everyone chooses how they suffer. Here's the thing: how you suffer depends on your purpose in life.

Listen to me. If you think your purpose is your happiness, your comfort, your well-being, it's no surprise you're disappointed, because that is not Jesus' promise here. He looks at us and says, "Hey, you're going to have trouble. It's going to come." The world is not yet right in all of its wrong. God has not yet come back and fixed all things, so for you to expect that you're going to be happy means you're expecting something that will sorely disappoint you.

If you think that's your purpose, Jesus is pleading with you the way he's pleading with the disciples, and he's saying, "No, no, no. Listen to me. There's a better purpose for you than that." Your purpose isn't comfort. It isn't materialism. It isn't the gods of Dallas, Texas, in your life, or wherever it is you're listening from. Instead, your purpose is transcendent. It is to know God.

That's crazy! It's to know God, to actually know him, not just to ingest a bunch of facts, ascend intellectually, and then regurgitate that information for other people to learn. It's to learn as much about him as you can, that it might develop within your innermost man or woman deep love for him. The natural expression of knowing a God like that is you tell everybody.

Is anybody in the room watching a new show? Show of hands. Are you watching a new show, something on HBO or Amazon or Paramount or whatever your streaming service is? Okay. Leave your hand up if you've told someone about it. You clearly think that's worthy of worship. There is a purpose greater than making your favorite TV show known. It is to make God known. He is infinitely better. That feels weird that I even have to say it. He is infinitely better, and he's begging you to believe it.

He's hoping your suffering will be helping and moving you to the knowledge that maybe you've settled for a purpose too small. You see, your purpose has power over suffering. For reference, legend has it that famed Italian violinist Niccolò Paganini went before an audience just like you to perform. As he stepped out in front of the crowd, he realized he did not have his famed instrument with him, his trustworthy tool, the violin that had led him to such notoriety.

Instead, awaiting him onstage was a secondhand instrument, one that was old, decrepit, and not worthy of playing. So, as he looked at the audience, he said, "Please give me just a moment," and he snuck backstage and looked behind the curtain and inspected the rest of the auditorium for his violin. What he learned was his violin was stolen, and they had left this one instead, trying to sabotage his purpose.

As the report reads, Niccolò took that secondhand instrument, looked to the crowd, and said, "Ladies and gentlemen, I will show you that the music is not in the instrument; it's in the soul." He began to play that violin in such a way that enraptured enthusiasm gripped the crowd. As the music poured off the platform, descended across the seats, touched every heart, and captivated all attention, they actually write that it felt like the ceiling of the room would blow off the space because of the ruckus applause and accord that were coming from the people listening in. They said Niccolò had never played the way he played that day.

What is Niccolò trying to teach you and me? That a moment of crisis cannot confront someone, nor conflict them, if they are convinced of their purpose. You see, crisis is coming for us all. For some of us, it has come already. Either it will define your purpose or your purpose will define it. For the disciples, the crisis of Christ's crucifixion and the ensuing suffering they experienced in the darkness of his death redefined everything for them.

You read their stories, and what you learn is some of them ran for the hills, others went back to their old jobs, and Peter outright denied the fact that he followed Christ. Everything they had spent the last three years of their lives on, the new purpose they had received from God, they were willing to abandon the moment crisis struck and suffering ensued, yet you see Jesus has a very different response, because crisis didn't define his purpose; his purpose defined his crisis. It defined his suffering.

When you read through Christ's arrest, you don't see him rally the boys together and prepare to present a defense. What you see is he actually heals a guy. He speaks and the soldiers fall backward, and he comes with hands together ready to be cuffed and taken away. As he stands before the Sanhedrin and they can't get two testimonial accounts together to convict him of a wrongful accusation, Jesus steps forward anyway, knowing the proceedings must carry forward if he is going to go to the cross, die for the sins of the world, rise forth from the grave, and lead us into everlasting life. He chooses to indict himself.

As he hangs on the cross, Jesus doesn't asphyxiate the way most men do and the way that instrument of execution was designed to kill. Instead, the way Mark recalls it, "And Jesus uttered a loud cry and breathed his last." If you're suffocating to death, you don't breathe a loud cry. You don't shout in a final breath of declaration that it's finished.

It says just a couple of verses down, "And when the centurion, who stood facing him, saw that in this way he breathed his last…" A guy who had seen many, many, many men breathe their last. "…he said, 'Truly this man was the Son of God!'" Jesus didn't let his sufferings define his purpose, and we don't have to let our sufferings define ours either.

But how do you do that? How do you actually endure suffering, encounter evil, and push through it in a way that looks like Christ? Well, you do what he did. You remember what he remembered, that his Father was with him. You must remember the same. God hasn't left you. He hasn't abandoned you. He hasn't lost sight of you. He hasn't run out on you.

So many of us, in a deconstructed phase, think God is nowhere to be found. He's right here! He's still close. He's with you. You've just lost sight. I know some of you. You're in chronic pain, yet he's right there with you. He's telling you, "Hey, even though it feels so hard, I will sustain you." Some of you feel betrayed because of what they said or what they did, yet he's looking and saying, "Hey, I'm never going to betray you. I will never leave you nor forsake you."

Some of you feel so lonely, and he is there with you in the loneliness simply saying, "Hey, your soul was not made for anyone else but me." Some of you look at the loss of a loved one, and you are gripped with such despair, yet he is telling you, "Hey, death doesn't get the last word over them." Some of you have been abused in your story at some point, mentally, emotionally, or sexually, and he is saying, "Hey, I can mend every wound, even the unseen scars. I'm with you."

He is with us in it. Whatever it is you suffer through now, he's with you in it. Listen. This might be the most important thing I say. It is not most loving of God to take our suffering away. It is most loving of God to enter our sufferings himself. Some of you want him to chopper over, pull you out, and rescue you to some other spot, yet his heart is one that sees you in the flame of fire and parachutes right in, and he stands beside you through it all.

This is his heart, and we see it in the person of Jesus. Jesus entered into our suffering. Listen. He had a pretty cushy existence before he showed up. He had no good reason to come from heaven down here below, yet he chose to anyway. Why? Because he wants to be with you, and he wants you to be with him, not just now but forever.

He has stepped into our sufferings, but not just to sit in them with us, but to lead us through them, which is where we'll finish. Verse 33: "I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world." Jesus doesn't promise a pain-free existence or an easygoing life. He tells us, "Hey, this world is anything but perfect, yet here's the thing you need to know: peace is possible."

"Wait. What did you say? Peace is actually possible for me?"

"Yeah, that's what I said."

"How is it possible?"

"It's possible in me."

That was really convicting for me to read, because as I was reading through that, I thought to myself, "How often do I look for peace in other places than Jesus?" He's often not the one I'm looking for peace in. In fact, I would rewrite that to say, "So that in your circumstances you may have peace," "So that in your future you may have peace," "So that in your job you may have peace," or "So that in your justice you may have peace."

I try to replace the fact that peace is only and solely found in him. How are you trying to replace the place where Jesus' peace is solely and only available? Are you looking elsewhere? Do you think it's going to come from a new job after you've faced a layoff? There's no peace in that. Justice against a person who hurt you? Cure for yours or someone else's illness? Relief from your past? There's no peace, true God-given peace, in those things.

Let me be clear. Wanting for an end to suffering is a desire worthy of wanting. God wants an end to suffering himself. He will accomplish that, in fact. Yet the only place peace is truly found is in Christ, because peace isn't found in suffering removed; it's found in suffering redeemed. So often, God will not change your situation because he is trying to use your situation to change you, since it's in the midst of suffering, not outside of it, that we are best able to decide what we want to be true of our lives once we get outside of suffering again.

So, let me ask you so very graciously, because I know some of you are hurting here… If you're in a season of suffering, are you counting down the days until God changes your circumstance or are you making the days count that God has given you now? If you're in a season of suffering, are you complaining against God, raging against the heavens, or are you actually considering the fact that maybe he's trying to do something in you and through you today?

If you're in a season of suffering, are you looking at your situation with old eyes, tired eyes, or are you looking upon it and evaluating carefully with a new, God-given perspective of what suffering might actually accomplish? Listen. As hard as it is to believe, suffering circumstances are often the perfect condition for your growth and God's glory. They're the perfect condition for your growth and God's glory. Romans 5:3-5 says:

"Not only so, but we also glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope. And hope does not put us to shame, because God's love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us."

Does anybody in here follow viticulture, wine-making? I don't follow it very closely, but there is one common knowledge amongst all winemakers, and it's this: the hardest soil produces the greatest grapes. Why is that? Because it's in difficult ground that though you may not yield a great quantity of fruit, you yield the greatest quality of fruit, because it's in difficult soil that those grape clusters receive the most character, that the vine itself, as it draws nutrients through its roots, prioritizes what's most important, which is to produce a fruit that is filled with life.

That's what your suffering offers you the opportunity for: to produce something of great character, great flavor, and multifaceted experience the likes of which transcend other bland ways of living. Hebrews 12:11 says, "For the moment all discipline seems painful rather than pleasant, but later it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it." According to Jesus, success isn't suffering avoided; it is suffering endured.

I'll admit the world is right. So many Christians follow Jesus because they've never suffered anything, yet what the world will not admit to you is the very strongest of Christians are those who have suffered something. They have lived through hell, and they stand to tell the tale. God will produce something worthy, glorious, and beautiful in you by way of the suffering you're under.

We will all suffer, yet our sufferings are not final. They don't get the last laugh. They're not fatal. We have hope beyond the grave, and they're not futile, because our pain isn't purposeless. I started tonight with a story about three friends, yet I didn't finish their stories. While each of them found themselves in a moment of great crisis where they questioned their faith and doubted in God, God redeemed all their suffering.

For my friend who wanted to go to medical school, he actually went to medical school. He's a doctor today. He went under the endorsement of the very professor who threatened to withhold the opportunity from him. That professor looked at him and said, "There's something unique about this guy that he wouldn't defend himself but he would preserve his witness for the sake of Christ."

That young lady, though she has lost her family, began a new one. She married a Christian guy, and now their family is one that has produced generational change for those who will come after her. Her family will be a family unlike the family before. Her family will be a family of a people that follow God. The last guy, the one who was betrayed and slandered and gossiped about by his friends actually now, today, in his church, leads a Bible study, calling people to belong to a family that will accept them free of judgment and void of any criticism.

Friends, we will suffer. Some of us have already, yet that suffering can be redeemed. God is not evil for our hardships; he's good because he has made a way through them all. He redeems those sufferings now, yet we know he will remove those sufferings forever, for this is what he has promised in Christ. Suffering reveals what we truly believe about God, that in God we have a longsuffering Savior who endured our sin until he could send his Son. In God, we know that while we wouldn't choose to suffer, he would choose to suffer, suffer for the sins of people like you and me, even to the point of death.

We know that same God, in the person of Jesus, came to bring peace to our suffering, not only redeeming what we endure today but promising defeat for that which we suffer for all eternity. If you're here, and you're suffering, there's only one way to never suffer again, and it's in him. Will you place your faith in him and come to know him tonight? Let me pray for you.

God, I'm so grateful. I'm thankful for your Word. O God, I thank you for how sufficient it is, the fact, God, that from its pages, even to this day, right now, in a room like this, you still speak to us, and the words you speak to us are not words of condemnation, not words of judgment; they're words of love. They're words of relationship, invitation, a welcoming reception, that any person who would place their faith in Jesus for the forgiveness of their sins and call him Lord of their life might actually be united to you again.

O God, I want to spend a moment here now, but, Lord, you do not need me to do what you alone can do, which is work in the hearts of these friends, move amongst these seats, stir up our spirits, save our souls, and save us from our suffering, if not today, one day. It's in Christ's name we pray, amen.