In November of 1873, a Chicago lawyer named Horatio Spafford put his wife and four daughters on a ship bound for Europe. The ship collided with another vessel in the middle of the Atlantic and went down. His wife survived but all four of his daughters drowned. When the telegram finally reached him, it read only two words, saved alone.
Spafford boarded the next ship out, sailing over the same stretch of water where his daughters had died, and somewhere in the middle of that grief he wrote the words to a hymn the church still sings today.
When peace like a river attendeth my way,
when sorrows like sea billows roll,
whatever my lot,
thou hast taught me to say,
it is well, it is well with my soul.
He never received an explanation for why it happened. What he received instead was the presence of God, and that helped him through.
This week at Lakewood Family Church, we continued or "Defending the Faith Series" with a question almost everyone carries at some point, even if they never say it out loud.
How can a good God allow so much sickness, so much starvation, so much heartbreak?
Job asked it. David asked it. Mary and Martha asked it standing outside their brother's tomb. It is not a new question, and it is not proof of weak faith either.
An honest question is not a sign of unbelief. Unbelief is walking away from the only one who can hold you when the answer never comes. Dr. Vorce began this message by explaining why defending what you believe was never supposed to feel like winning an argument. He reminded us that some questions were never meant to be answered. They were meant to bring us to God.
God is not the author of evil. He never has been. He is the redeemer of what evil has broken. Genesis describes a world God made good, complete, with nothing missing and nothing broken. No war, no betrayal, no famine. The rupture came later, in the garden, when Adam and Eve reached for the one thing that was never theirs to take.
God will never force anyone to love Him. In this present age of grace, He knocks, and we are the ones who choose whether to open the door. Revelation 3:20 puts it plainly, Jesus standing at the door and knocking, waiting to be let in rather than kicking it down. If God canceled every wrong choice the moment someone made it, we would stop being sons and daughters and become puppets instead. Scripture is honest about what people do with that freedom.
Wars, abuse, abandonment, and betrayal are not proof that God is unkind. They are proof that some people are evil and all are free. Freedom, left in fallen hands, sometimes wounds the people closest to it.
Think about Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. A furnace heated seven times hotter than normal, three men thrown in, guards who died from the heat before the men ever hit the flames. Then King Nebuchadnezzar looked in and saw four figures walking around unharmed, and said the fourth looked like the Son of God. When they came out, the only thing that had burned off them was whatever had bound their hands. Maybe that is closer to what a hard season is actually doing in your life than you have been able to see, burning off what was binding you rather than punishing you for something you did.
Job never got a tidy explanation for what he lost either. What he got was a closer look at God himself. I have heard of you by the hearing of the ear, he said, but now my eye sees you. If you are still waiting on an answer that has not come, delayed has never meant denied, and the waiting itself is not evidence God has stopped listening to you.
If you’re going through a season that feels unexplainable, maybe it’s time to shift your focus. Instead of trying to argue with God, try to find His presence instead. Ask God to show you His hand, even in the smallest things. You might not get the explanation you’re hoping for, but what you can have, just like Horatio Spafford had on that ship, or the three men inside that furnace built to kill them, is Him. He's always been the better option.
If you want to go deeper into what it actually looks like to live in God's presence through a season you cannot explain, get your free copy of Dr. Vorce's ebook at jonathanvorce.com.
Remember..."The Word Will Work, If You Work the Word."
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