Hidden Treasures: Good Redeemer

It’s so easy to pick up culture’s language, if not beliefs, without realizing it. We can be at lunch with our friends right after church on a Sunday and scoff together over karma’s justice for a mutual acquaintance who got her due. We laugh. We nod. And part of us believes karma to be true – because we like to think that good people receive blessings, and bad people get what’s coming to them. 

Do good, get good. Do bad, get bad. 

Sounds good, right? But if we put thought into how life actually works, karma falls apart. Bad things happen to good people everyday. And bad people often prosper. The ancient Hindu idea of karma holds no truth as we watch actual life play out.

Yet, something in us longs to know the reasons for suffering. It’s why we spend so much time and energy going to God with one ‘Why???’ after another. 

God knows this about us. It’s why He has Peter address our responses to suffering, “Dear friends, don’t be surprised at the fiery trials you are going through, as if something strange were happening to you” (1 Peter 4:12-13 NLT). God wants every believer to be ready for suffering – because it’s part of life. Pain and trials are to be expected because we live in a fallen, broken world where nature destroys, diseases decimate, people make poor choices, and evil looms large. It’s just the way it is.

So. If pain and suffering are part of life, what are we as followers of Christ meant to do when it strikes us and those we love? 

Very simply, we’re meant to believe, despite all we face and feel, that God is good – that He is with us through it all and will redeem us in the end. 

Doubt

When we’re slogging through a season of suffering, we feel such pain that we know deep in our souls this isn’t how it’s supposed to be. So we search for reasons. Have I messed up? Is God mad at me? What purpose could He have in this?

Ultimately, when our pain is so overwhelming, we doubt God can be good. We’re tempted to believe that God can’t be good or we wouldn’t suffer so.

Dig 

If 1989 was the year pain and darkness helped me discover that God only and ever cares about my good, then 1992 was the year I learned that God’s goodness remains even in the depths of loss and sorrow. It was the year I came face-to-face with the fact that I cannot control my body or this fallen world.

It was the year we miscarried one baby and lost another to an ectopic pregnancy.

I had not known the depths of personal pain that only grief can bring until these losses. So, learning how to enter into the hurt and confusion and sadness took time – and lots of conversations with the Father. Looking back, I wonder (marvel) how my young self chose faith over all the other feelings… 

• Maybe because I’d watched people close to me get swallowed by the bitterness of grief-avoidance, I allowed myself to step into the suffering. 
• Maybe because I’d already learned that I could lean on God for strength and hope in a previous season of pain, I could name my feelings and my propensity for doubting God’s goodness.

And what I discovered is that by entering into the grief with God, I was able to move through it. The pain didn’t lessen automatically, but knowing He was with me helped me trust I wouldn’t be overtaken by the grief. Over and over, I kept telling God that I trusted Him, that I didn’t know why these losses happened but it helped knowing that He did. And little by little healing came.

At the core of all I clung to in those days and months of gut-wrenching sorrow was a belief in God’s goodness. And that alone kept me afloat.

Dig Deeper 

The verse God had given me in 1989 once again became my lifeline in 1992:

“Don’t be afraid, for I am with you.
    Don’t be discouraged, for I am your God.
I will strengthen you and help you.
    I will hold you up with my victorious right hand.”

Isaiah 41:10 NLT

Over the years, I kept running into the truth that had already been put on my heart:

“God is good, a hiding place in tough times.”

Nahum 1:7 MSG

And, as I’ve gotten to know God and His character better by watching and listening to Jesus in Scripture, I’ve been even more convinced of His goodness. Jesus spoke:

“No one is good—except God alone.”

Mark 10:18

The Bible, which is the story of God, consistently illustrates the goodness of God. 

• Joseph – who endured great pains of betrayal and brutality – looked upon his brothers who’d sold him into slavery and said with conviction, “You meant evil against me, but God meant it for good” (Genesis 50:20). Joseph demonstrates the way of enduring pain with a trust that God is present, strengthening us and working things out for good (Romans 5:3-5, 8:28). Even when we cannot see it.

• The apostle John – who persevered through much pain as he watched each of his dear friends die one at a time for Christ’s name – wrote to us words of promise and hope throughout his gospel and letters, truths like “God is light, and in him is no darkness at all” (1 John 1:5).

• Jesus Himself – who made the choice to walk through the worst life could throw at Him for our good – spoke words to give us courage, “In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world” (John 16:33). 

Discovery

Scripture is a gold mine of truths that we can dig into no matter what our circumstances. Whether we walk through grief, betrayal, illness, and any sort of loss, God knows. He sees (Genesis 16:13). And He suffers with us (Isaiah 63:9 NLT). 

He also stands at the ready to give us everything we need to walk through the dark valleys – for He is with us (Psalm 23:4). His lifelines are always anchored in the truths of His very character. He is present. He has overcome the world. He has all the comfort we need. He is our refuge and redeemer. 

He is good.

While it’s human nature to doubt God’s goodness when life takes a horrible turn, we are exhorted to remember everything we’ve been taught. To overcome doubt with truth. To stand firm on the character of Christ. Because therein lies our hope – God is good, and He’ll make a way. He’ll comfort. He’ll deliver. He’ll redeem. 

For instance, when Paul tells us that God “comforts us in all our troubles” (2 Corinthians 1:4), he uses the Greek word, parakaleo – para meaning “close beside” and kaleo meaning “to call.”¹ Combined, parakaleo speaks of exhortation that comforts. And Paul employs the word to point us to the Holy Spirit, the One close beside us, and His way of strengthening us.¹ Comfort from the Spirit is strength!

“The comfort of God does not diminish the weight of sadness. Instead, it builds the muscle needed to carry the very heavy sadness.”  

Amanda Held Opelt²

The world tells us we should have the strength to help ourselves, to get ourselves through the hard times, but God reminds us of the fallacy of such thinking. In God’s Kingdom, we stand not on our own feet but on God’s. Our sadness in seasons of suffering will still be sadness, but with God breathing for us when we can’t breathe on our own, we can know without a doubt that we’ll make it through the valley.² 

I’ve observed in myself and others that when life is spiraling, we reach for control. And, as such, we seek purpose for the pain. Such scrambling for reasons for our suffering opens us up to false beliefs that tell us our circumstances are “the sad sum of a simple cause-and-effect equation: God [is] balancing accounts.”³ Or, beliefs that tell us “God is an angry judge. If you do well, you will be blessed; if you sin, you will be punished.”³

This drive to believe that everything happens for a reason pushes us into places where prosperity can be seen as “a sign of God’s approval” and “pain can be misconstrued as a metric to measure His disdain.”² 

Instead of accepting our suffering as “it is what it is,” we push for purpose, which only “reveals our addiction to productivity” and “exposes our hunger for agency and control, our desperate longing to write our own ends to our stories.”² Rather than demanding reasons, we’re meant to find strength in the comfort of our Father.

This reminds me of the day my earthly father stood before our family at my cousin’s funeral to speak a word of hope – a task that must have seemed impossible at the time. He bravely named for us our desire to know why… And he encouraged us to cease such striving, telling us to let go of needing the why and, instead, lean into the Who – because only God can give us the comfort and strength we need to move through such devastating sorrow.

Friends, when we doggedly search for God’s purposes in the harrowing and hard, we’re attempting to assert control over our circumstances. There are no answers to our why’s that will ever satisfy. So, instead, we can choose to trust that our Father suffers with us, that He walks with us. In doing so, we embrace the mystery of His comfort; we receive His strength; we find our way forward. 

Similarly, we can spiral from angst to anger, blaming God for all our pain. And anger can become addicting, a preferred feeling of false control. Anger can motivate us to wrestle with God until we exhaust our fury and find comfort. But the opposite can happen if we get stuck in the grip of grief’s anger. Held captive by our belief that God hurts us on purpose or doesn’t care, we miss what He offers – deliverance. When we name our hurt, the source of our anger, God as our Deliverer will carry us in His “righteous right hand” to the other side of the pain (Isaiah 41:10). To freedom. And wholeness.

Another reaction to suffering is avoidance. We stuff the pain. We paste a smile on our faces and act like we’re fine. The lie of ignoring, of ‘grinning and bearing it,’ tells us to hide the truth. However, the feelings seep out, often exploding all over the ones we love most. The emotions we avoid steep and stew, doing unseen damage to our hearts, minds, and souls.  But, when we allow the Spirit to come close so we can name the pain, He helps us through it. Because with His strength in us, every trial builds our endurance, as well as character and a confident hope of salvation (Romans 5:3-5). In other words, we move through suffering with hope in our Redeemer, the One who makes everything right in the end.

Friends, few things in life can take us captive like unnamed grief and pain. All our attempts to cover, hide, and blame fail to actually deliver us from the sting of hurt and sorrow. Doubting God’s goodness sucks us into the vortices of self-pity, anger, bitterness, and soul-killing denial. But there’s another way! And with the strength of the Spirit in us, we can claim every truth of Scripture over ourselves and situations. We can choose to trust our Father in Heaven – in His goodness – to comfort, deliver, and redeem us at every turn. 

We can live trusting that God is good even when life is not.

Father God, we pause here to breathe. To take in the truths our hearts and minds so desperately need to hear. We confess that we’ve held onto doubts about your goodness because of the pain we’ve been carrying for so long. We’re believing your Word; we’re trusting You to be the One who is for us when all of life feels against us. Lord Jesus, we know that You have felt the pain that comes with betrayal and loss and suffering; we know that You suffer with us. We ask in your holy name to help us dig deep within ourselves to name what’s hurting, to peel back the layers of fear and shame and anger in order to pinpoint the source of our suffering – and bring it to You. We do this in faith, trusting in your goodness – believing that You are the only true source of healing and wholeness. Holy Spirit, we recognize our need of You in this process. So, we ask You to come alongside us, to draw near to us in such a way that we can absorb your comfort – the strength only You can give us to move through the dark valley and into God’s healing light. Help us to notice all our false beliefs and to bring them into God’s holy truth. Help us to trust, no matter how we feel, that God is for us and that God is good. We trust your presence and power in us for today and everyday to come. In Jesus’ name, amen. 
(inspired by John 8:31-32, 17:17; Romans 8:31; Isaiah 63:9, 53:3-5; 1 Peter 2:21-25; 2 Corinthians 1:4; Isaiah 40:29,31; Psalm 73:26, 23:4; Isaiah 58:8; Nahum 1:7)

Well, I must confess I could’ve kept writing. There were more quotes to share from amazing authors, more stories to tell from Scripture, more thoughts on this habit we have of doubting God’s goodness – almost like a reflexive instinct when bad things happen to us. I hear it in my friends’ woes and feel it creep into my own thoughts. It’s my sincere hope that we will dig our heels in and stand firm in the TRUTH that God. Is. Good. He doesn’t hurt us. Rather He sees us in our sorrow – just like He did Hagar – and offers help and hope so that we can move through it. Oh, that we would break this cycle of blaming and distrusting the One who is for us! XOXO 

Resources: I love sharing with you the books, podcasts, articles, and anything else that has inspired, encouraged, or taught me. These are humble offerings with no expectations.

• 1 – more about this Greek word on biblehub.com
  2 – Amanda Held Opelt’s Holy Unhappiness^ is a book that sets out to help us recognize the false beliefs we’ve taken on as truth, especially in our lives of faith. It continues to be a book that speaks into my life and so much of what I’m learning about God, myself, and the world. (pp.181, 182; 173, 175) 
  3 – James Bryan Smith’s Good and Beautiful God^ absolutely helped lay the foundation of God’s character in me. Each chapter identifies a “false narrative” that we have about God (His character) and the corresponding “Jesus narratives” that set us on the path of truth. His chapter, “God is Good,” is one that has stuck with me after all these years! (pp.39, 40)
• Our Backpack of God’s Attributes is our virtual bag for collecting every characteristic of God we find in all our hunting. We’re loading up all we discover about Him. So far:
  • God is Worthy — He deserves all glory and honor and praise.**
  • God is Glorious — He displays His greatness and worth.**
  • God is Transcendent — He is not like humans. He is infinitely higher in being and action.**
  • God is Truthful — Whatever God speaks or does is truth and reality.**
  • God is Incomprehensible — God is beyond our understanding. We can comprehend Him in part but not in whole.**
  • God is Love — God feels and displays infinite, unconditional affection toward His children. His love for them does not depend on their worth, response, or merit.**
  • God is Gracious — The LORD is gracious and compassionate, slow to anger and rich in love (Psalm 145:8).
  • God is Good — God is what is best and gives us what is best. He is incapable of doing harm.**
  • God is Comforter — the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves receive from God (2 Corinthians 1:3-4).
  • God is Deliverer — God rescues and saves His children.**
  • God is Redeemer — Do not fear, for I have redeemed you; I have summoned you by name; you are mine (Isaiah 43:1-2).
  • **many thanks to Jen Wilkin and her list, “Attributes of God,” present at the back of every study
• Our playlist, “Hidden Treasures,” is absolutely packed with songs about God’s goodness because it’s a core tenet of our faith in Him. It’s my intention and sincere hope that the truths that come to us as lyrics and on the wings of tunes will anchor themselves in our hearts and minds so that we’ll actually BELIEVE that God is, indeed, good!
• If you want to hear just a little more about today’s topic, you can catch the “Teacup Video” on this topic on Wednesday — on my Facebook Author Page, Instagram or YouTube.
• I have a newsletter, The Abiding Life! The first week of each month I share a little more on one of the topics we’ve hit upon here in the blog. If you would like to know more about one of the traits of God’s character in July’s edition, please comment below or email me. You can subscribe for future newsletters here.

Rhythms: As my newsletter’s title infers, we seek to develop an abiding life in this space — a place where we can get informed but also be transformed as we learn to abide in God’s presence throughout our days. I like to think that developing rhythms is one way to aid us in our desire to become more Christlike.

Praise, our summer rhythm, is the speaking of truths about WHO GOD IS. It lifts our eyes off our circumstances and back onto the One who can walk us through them. And the Psalms are packed with poems that will lead us through this ritual of reflection and remembrance — until it becomes a rhythm that we fall into naturally.

• This week, let’s read Psalm 73 — I really like the NLT. If you’ve never read this Psalm from beginning to end before, you’ll be amazed at how perfectly Asaph captures our tendency to doubt God’s goodness. Verses 2-16 are his confessions of the way he saw the bad people get good things while he, the good person, suffers — and his doubts about God. Verse 17 is the pivotal point — make note of what changes his point of view, what gives him perspective of God’s true character. Then the rest of the Psalm is him seeing truth played out. Verses 23-26 are a section I memorized while in the throes of COVID (original) and its after-effects. “My health may fail…but God remains the strength of my heart.” Amen! Those words absolutely carried me through long days and weeks because they reminded me of God’s presence and goodness.
  • Yet I still belong to you;
        you hold my right hand.
    You guide me with your counsel,
        leading me to a glorious destiny.
    Whom have I in heaven but you?
        I desire you more than anything on earth.
    My health may fail, and my spirit may grow weak,
        but God remains the strength of my heart;
        he is mine forever.
    Psalm 73:23-26 NLT
• And while it’s not a spiritual practice or rhythm, I invite you to share this site. Summer is a great time to ask someone else to join us here — it is a shared journey of faith, for sure!

Featured Photo by planetMitch aunger on Unsplash. “All the Bits and Pieces” photo by Zrng N Gharib on Unsplash.
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