What Do You Say To The Suffering?

Have you ever been in that situation where people just glibly give you stuff and say, you know, well, God obviously has a plan.

Thank you, Captain Obvious. You know, and just the other night, my wife was talking to me and she hates it when people say, you know, well, I had such and such, but God was good to me and I was okay. And she's like, you know, that implies that God wasn't good to me.

And I share her frustration with that. I think we can monitor our speech a little bit and not come across so glibly and understand that the goodness of God is not contingent on whether or not we feel good about things. God is good all the time, even in the midst of heartbreaking suffering and how we speak to those who are going through these things, how we minister to those, how we communicate the goodness of God to those. It is a real opportunity for us as believers to speak with clarity, with wisdom, with compassion.

I'll give you an example. I was at a national religious conference some years ago and I was just going around talking to folks and there was this big fella and he was, I got to talk with him. I said, well, what do you guys do? He said, we do apologetics. And I mean, he had me, he was, he stood at least a head taller than I am and I'm six feet tall, big fella. And he just kind of thundered out apologetics. And I asked him, I don't know what happened to my brain. I mean, I just, sometimes I just, I'm just goofy this way. And I said, well, what would you say to someone who suffers? And he just belted out, I'd tell them that God's suffering. And for whatever reason, you don't have to ask my wife why I do these things.

I'm a second degree black belt. Maybe that gave me a little extra courage. I don't know. But I looked at this guy right in the eye and I said, that must've been very comforting to Uriah's parents. Now, how many of you know who Uriah was? Uriah was the guy that his wife was there bathing on the roof and King David saw her, took her and got her pregnant. And when he found out about it, he tried to get Uriah to go sleep with her to cover his sin up. Uriah wouldn't do it cause he was an honorable man. David tried to get him drunk and he was an honorable man.

He wouldn't do it. And then David sent word to send him to the generals about how to put Uriah where it's hottest. And they, and they backed away from what I said, they just backed away and let him get killed. And then David married her and thought he'd gotten away with it. You know, think about the implications of that, of Uriah's parents. How much, his family, they must've grieved. And this King did this wicked thing.

This man after God's own heart at a wicked thing and caused enormous amount of carnage. So when we see people who suffer, who are going through grief and bereavement and loss, do we just, you know, growl out that God's sovereign or he obviously he's got a plan or, or, you know, one day you're going to be okay, you know, and we try to somehow make ourselves feel better in dealing with their suffering. Maybe we can just sit with them for a while. Maybe we can just be with them. And, and, and by the way, to let you know where Uriah stands, he is mentioned in the genealogy of Jesus in Matthew.

Just go check it out. Wasn't even blood kin to Jesus, but he's mentioned in the most important genealogy ever recorded, Uriah is mentioned. That's where God puts priorities. He sees the suffering.

He sees the brokenhearted. He is near to them. Are we near to them as well?

Are we engaged with them? I had a guy come into our clinic in West Africa. We work over there. Once my wife lost her legs, uh, she decided that she wanted to do an outreach to help her fellow amputees and, and, and use prosthetic limbs as a way of sharing the gospel.

And so that's what we've been doing for many years in the West African country of Ghana. We actually just sponsored a leg for a guy in Kenya just this week, but this was some years ago and this guy came in and all of our team were busy. And, and I, I saw this fellow and he had a prosthetic leg and he was a young man.

It looked like about 25. And I thought, what is he doing here? He's already got a leg, but I thought, well, we'll check him out.

But all, all our team was busy and it was late in the afternoon. And so I sat down in front of him and I said, okay, let's, let's see what's going on. Just do a kind of a, you know, an overview of what's going on with him. And he took off his prosthesis and he had a liner, a gel liner under which we provide a lot of those things. And he had found one somewhere and, um, everything seemed to be okay. And then he took that liner off and the smell that came off this man's leg was so putrid. I mean, it was, I mean, I couldn't hardly breathe.

And a friend of mine was, you know, about 10 feet away and he backed up, but I was sitting in a chair right over it. I mean, my eyes were watering. I thought, my goodness, this man has got a, an infection or something going on, abscess. And I kind of fought through the gag reflex and, and I was looking at his amputated limb. Uh, and there were no wounds. This was just body odor. He just hadn't washed his limb.

It just stunk. And I, and I tried to explain that he didn't speak the language from Nigeria, but he didn't speak the language. We were in Ghana and I didn't speak his language. And I was trying to communicate how to wash it. And finally, I just, I had somebody grab me a bowl, a basin and some soap. And I watched this man's amputated limb showing him how to do it. And the liner and sleeve gave him a new liner and sleeve and so forth.

And I watched this. And if you told me after nine 11 and this guy was a young Muslim man. And if you told me after nine 11 that I would be doing this in a clinic in West Africa, I'd have thought you were crazy, but that just lets you know how messed up I was. And as I, as I watched this man's smelly leg, I see the scar where the amputation was and everything else. You know, my eyes started watering for a different reason because I realized how much more putrid my sin, my life caused the eyes of Jesus to water and that he washed me. Who am I to withhold this from others? Who am I to withhold ministry of what I've received from Christ to others? And I had a moment there in that dusty clinic in West Africa where I saw the provision of God's faithfulness, the way he washes us, the way he weeps over us. You know, the Holy Spirit cries out in groaning for us. Jesus sits at the father's hand interceding for us. And yet when we go and see people suffering, when we see our neighbor suffering, when we see someone going through a terrible divorce, or when we see them struggling with their children or having sexual brokenness, do we just give glib phrases? Are we willing to weep with them?

Are we willing to plunge our hands into it with it and just be with them and minister to them? Or are we going to just, you know, tell them that God's sovereign and go on about our business? God is sovereign. I rest in the sovereignty of God. I'm grateful for the sovereignty of God.

I stake my life on the sovereignty of God. But I also don't glibly just say this to people who are hurting. When my wife had her car wreck, she was laying by the side of the road bleeding out and she was just 17. I didn't know her at the time.

I met her several years later, but the paramedics got there, but I've heard the story and I've helped her write her book with it. And the paramedics got there and none of them said God's sovereign to her. None of them said, what in the world were you doing out here?

They all said, you know, almost like they had a script. It's going to be okay. We're going to get you to safety. Hang in there.

It's going to be okay. We're here. We're here. We're here. We're here.

We're going to get you to safety. Is this the way we function as believers? Do we function like paramedics who somebody is bleeding out on the side of the road or do we want to somehow lecture them and point that? And I'm guilty of this and I, and I, to my shame, I cringe over it.

And I, I, one of the things I try to do on the show is not to tell people advice, not to say, well, you should be doing this. I don't know what you should be doing, but I'm going to tell you what God has done. I'm going to tell you about this great savior who bled out for us so that we are not condemned to the brokenness of this world.

If we are found in him, there are things that are not going to be fixed. This side of heaven, we know this yesterday, my guest was Johnny Erickson Tada. She knows this.

My wife knows this. We're okay with, with, with God healing right now, but we're trusting him when he doesn't. And I want to equip others as many as possible so that when you engage people who are suffering, when you engage people who are filled with resentment and rage, who are shaking their fist at God and everybody else, that you're not taken aback or that you want to throw some kind of a pablum at them or some kind of just standard hallmark card greeting, but you want to be able to clearly communicate the gospel. And if you don't have the words, sit with them, just be with them.

If you go back and look at Job 2 13 is one of my favorite passages of scripture. They came and sat with Job for seven days and didn't say a word. The Jewish world continues at the sitting shiva. They just sit with the bereaved.

And then when they started talking after that, that's when it all came off the rails, theologically speaking. But can we sit with people? Can we, can we weep with those who weep? Can we mourn with those who mourn?

And you, you know, you heard Johnny and I yesterday, those of you who listened to the show yesterday know that, I mean, we laugh and I made Gracie laugh and she cuts up and we do all kinds, we're just goofy. But when we encounter those who are grieving or they're so angry and they're, and they're filled with just deep, deep wounds, when the smell is so bad that it causes our eyes to water, can we remember what this great savior did for us? Can we remember that he washed us at his, with his own blood?

It's like the hymn said, I go over here to the keyboard, I have a keyboard hooked up there. What can wash away my sins? Nothing but the blood of Jesus.

What can make me whole again? Nothing, nothing, nothing but the blood of Jesus. All precious is the flow that makes me white as snow.

No other fount I know, nothing but the blood of Jesus. I'm not going to take for granted that those of you listening today are all believers. There are some of you who are not, and there's some of you who are going through some very, very painful things and you're watching those around you suffer. With 65 million caregivers, I know that many of you in this audience right now are watching this. You've got a loved one who has Alzheimer's. You've got a kid with autism.

You've got somebody who is strung out on drugs. Those things are all important to God and he would speak into those things, but can he use us to do it? Are we willing to do it? Are we willing to speak into that? Are we willing to forgive? Are we willing to let go?

Are we willing to wash somebody's stinky things? He did it for us. That's the gospel. That's the great news and that's why we can rejoice even in the midst of all these things. I'm Peter Rosenberger.

We will be right back. Have you ever struggled to trust God when lousy things happen to you? I have. I'm Gracie Rosenberger and in 1983, I experienced a horrific car accident leading to 80 surgeries and both legs amputated. I questioned why God allowed something so brutal to happen to me, but over time, my questions changed and I discovered courage to trust God. That understanding along with an appreciation for quality prosthetic limbs led me to establish Standing with Hope. For more than a dozen years, we've been working with the government of Ghana and West Africa, equipping and training local workers to build and maintain quality prosthetic limbs for their own people.

On a regular basis, we purchase and ship equipment and supplies and with the help of inmates in a Tennessee prison, we also recycle parts from donated limbs. All of this is to point others to Christ, the source of my hope and strength. Please visit standingwithhope.com to learn more and participate in lifting others up. That's standingwithhope.com. I'm Gracie and I am standing with hope.