Called "the best preacher in the family," by her father, Billy Graham, Anne Graham Lotz speaks around the globe with the wisdom and the authority of years spent studying God's Word. In her latest book, Anne shares her heart and God's teachings on the universal problem of suffering.
Drawing her characteristically keen insights from the familiar story of Lazarus in the ninth and eleventh chapters of the Gospel of John, Anne offers Jesus' reassuring answers to our heartfelt cries for understanding:
- Why doesn't God care?
- Why does He let these things happen?
- Why me?
- Why doesn't God answer my prayers?
- Why didn't He protect me?
- Why doesn't He perform a miracle?
Why? helps us understand and deal with suffering while guiding us to the ultimate answer-the Savior who shares our grief and our tears.
Why?
Trusting God When You Don't UnderstandBy ANNE GRAHAM LOTZW Publishing Group
Copyright © 2007 Anne Graham Lotz
All right reserved.ISBN: 978-0-8499-0845-3Contents
Foreword: In a Difficult Place, a Strange, Warm Peace ... by Joni Eareckson Tada........................ix... And a Word of Comfort and Hope......................................................................xiiiWhy? Trusting God When I Don't Understand..............................................................1Why Doesn't God Care? Trusting God's Heart.............................................................11Why Does God Let Bad Things Happen? Trusting God's Purpose.............................................19Why Me? Trusting God When It's My Heart That's Broken..................................................29Why Is God Silent? Trusting God's Goodness.............................................................39Why Did God Let the Worst Happen? Trusting God Beyond the Grave........................................47Why Did God Do That? Trusting God to Know Best.........................................................53Why Doesn't God Protect Those He Loves? Trusting God's Plan to Be Bigger Than Mine.....................65Why Hasn't God Answered My Prayer? Trusting God to Keep His Word.......................................75Why Didn't God Intervene? Trusting God to Be on Time...................................................89Why Hasn't God Met My Needs? Trusting God to Be Enough.................................................97Why Doesn't God Perform a Miracle? Trusting God Alone..................................................109Epilogue: Why Won't God Release Me from the Pain? Trusting God to Set Me Free..........................127Notes...................................................................................................135
Chapter One
Why? Trusting God When I Don't Understand
Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding. -PROVERBS 3:5
Why? why does God let bad things happen to good people? to innocent people? to helpless people? to defenseless people? to children? to me?
Sometimes His ways seem so hard to understand!
What I have to share in this small volume comes from what I have learned through experience as each lesson was hammered out on the anvil of God's Word. While I have not known suffering to the extent others have endured-I have not suffered the death of a child, the betrayal or abandonment of a spouse, or an illness that threatened my own life-my own problems, added to my interactions with hurting people around the globe and my intense study to understand how God works and what He has to say about suffering, give me courage to speak to those hurting ones who struggle to understand why.
Through all these avenues, realizing there are no pat answers to the age-old question of suffering, and no "new truth," I cling to the spiritual principle operating in the life of a child of God that ... gives meaning to our meaninglessness and hope to our hopelessness and reason to our senselessness and purpose to our aimlessness and strength to our weakness and courage to our faintheartedness and blessed deliverance from our bitterness. It's a principle ... that helps balance the pain, that can remove the sting from our suffering, that can prevent us from wasting our sorrows, that is worth our focused attention. This spiritual principle is seen when a single grain of wheat is crushed, buried, and, in a sense, dies-only to rise again into new life as the stalk of wheat grows from it, producing hundreds more grains. This principle emerged into sharp visibility when Jesus gave His life on the Cross, was buried, and on the third day arose from the dead to give eternal life to any and all who would place their faith in Him.
On a day still to come, this same principle will be thrillingly displayed when the intense suffering that characterizes the final generation in human history gives "birth" to the glorious return to earth of God's Son and our Savior, Jesus Christ.
The apostle Paul somewhat understated this principle in Romans 8:28, a passage he wrote to reassure believers who lived in a city dominated by Nero, a madman with absolute power. Paul wrote encouragingly, "We know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose."
Phrased another way, Paul was reminding the children of God they can be confident that ... all things work together for good, brokenness leads to blessing, death leads to life, and suffering leads to glory!
In our world today, God's children need that same reminder to trust Him when we don't understand and nothing seems to make sense.
Nowhere is this principle taught more poignantly or powerfully than in the passage of Scripture on which this book is based, the Gospel of John, chapter 11. (Direct quotations from John 11 are inserted in the text; other Scripture references can be found in the Notes section.) In this passage, the apostle John gives his eyewitness account of the moving story of Lazarus, a beloved friend of Jesus who became seriously ill. It's also the story of Lazarus's two sisters, Mary and Martha, who struggled to understand why Jesus hadn't intervened and healed their brother. While both sisters sent word to Jesus, Mary's faith seemed to collapse when things got worse while Martha's small tendril of faith was developed until she saw the glory of God in her brother's life. Because I identify with Martha's struggle, I have chosen to focus primarily on her perspective in this book. Through the apostle John's eyes, as I see Martha's faith in God grow in the midst of her total helplessness until it becomes triumphant-even a model for my own-my desire is increased for that kind of faith.
Similarly, believers of every generation have triumphed over their suffering as they placed their faith in God, trusting Him even when they didn't understand why. And every generation has suffered to a greater or lesser degree.
My generation has not been exempt.
There has been unfathomable hopelessness and helplessness in the killing fields of Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge, in the massacres under the vicious anarchy of the Red Guard in China, in the senseless slaughter between tribes in Rwanda, in the torture chambers supervised by the Butcher of Baghdad, in the slave trade of the Sudan, in the systematic ethnic cleansing of Eastern Europe, and in countless acts of cruelty and sadism that never make it to the light of national or international attention. While writing this book, I have had in my heart and on my mind the millions of people today who are suffering personally in various ways and to varying degrees. Why? Sometimes it's just so hard to understand!
Yet God is bigger than our suffering. We can have hope as we place our trust in Him-in His faithfulness and in His ability to work out in our lives His purposes that will be for our ultimate good and His eternal glory.
Although Mary and Martha experienced suffering and prayers that were seemingly unanswered, in the end their faith was gloriously rewarded, teaching us just to trust Him when we don't understand.
The principle that suffering leads to glory is illustrated in Scripture by a vivid description of clay on the Potter's wheel-clay that was once cracked, shattered, and broken, clay that was totally useless and ugly. The Potter took the clay and broke it down even further, grinding it into dust then moistening it with water before He put it on His wheel and began to remake it into a vessel pleasing to Himself. The cracks and chips and broken pieces disappeared as the clay became soft and pliable to the Potter's touch. He firmly applied pressure on some areas, touched lightly on other areas, added more clay to a specific spot that needed filling, and removed clay that hindered the shape that would make it useful for His ultimate purpose. As He turned the wheel, His loving, gentle hands never left the clay as He molded and made it after His will.
Finally, the Potter finished remolding the clay and took it off the wheel. Under His skilled, gentle hands, the once-ugly clay had been transformed into a vessel that had shape and purpose. He added color, carefully painting on a unique design. But the clay was still soft and weak, the color dull and drab. So the Potter placed the vessel into the fiery kiln, carefully keeping His eye on it as He submitted it to the raging heat. At a time He alone determined was sufficient, the Potter withdrew the pot from the furnace. The blazing heat had radically transformed the clay into a vessel of strength and glorious, multicolored beauty. Then the Potter put it in His showcase so that others might see the revelation of His glory in the work of His hands.
Is the Potter molding-or remolding-you, using ... pressure or problems? stress or suffering? hurt or heartache? illness or injustice?
Has He now placed you in the fire so that circumstances are heating up with intensity in your life? Then would you just trust the Potter to know exactly what He is doing?
For the child of God, suffering is not wasted. It's not an end in itself. Scripture reminds us, "We have this treasure in jars of clay to show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us. We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed. We always carry around in our body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be revealed in our body.... For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all."
The spiritual principle is that in some way God uses suffering to transform ordinary, dust-clay people into ... vessels that are strong in faith ... vessels that are fit for His use ... vessels that display His glory to the watching world. This is the principle so powerfully illustrated in the story of Mary, Martha, and Lazarus in John 11. I also have seen this principle at work personally-in the lives of family members and friends. And I understand it to be true by my own experience.
When I don't understand why, I trust Him because ...
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Why?by ANNE GRAHAM LOTZ Copyright © 2007 by Anne Graham Lotz. Excerpted by permission.
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