If God is good, why does He allow suffering? And if He can end it anytime, why is He taking so long?
If God is good, why does He allow suffering? And if He can end it anytime, why is He taking so long? Everybody experiences suffering—and if you haven’t experienced it yet, you’re only a phone call away from a heavy season. Join us as we learn to make sense of it all together.
Do you have a question you'd like us to answer? Email us at podcast@austinstone.org
All right, hello, friends, and welcome back for another episode of Questioning God, a podcast series from the Austin Stone as we go through the book of Habakkuk.
This season, we are following the prophet Habakkuk as he asked hard, maybe even sometimes brazen questions to God, and we're considering how these honest prayers and difficult questions might actually build our faith and not tear it down.
My name is Val Hamilton, and I'm joined today with my co-host, co-labors, co-migos, co-habakkukians, Ross Lester and Tyler David.
Welcome back, guys.
Thank you, Val.
So glad to have you.
I know you're paid to be here, but it means a lot that you're here.
Are we paid to be here?
Yes.
It's in my writer.
Yeah.
Tyler is a super long writer.
It's got to be a certain number of degrees.
1,000%.
That sounds right.
Only glass bottles.
We had a whole thing about this.
Yes.
Yes.
Thank you for remembering.
Yes, it's important.
But as you guys remember, last episode, we talked about kind of the concept we're seeing in Habakkuk is responding to God, interpreting God in light of the circumstances and realities of the world.
We talked about can Christians have doubt?
And when they do have doubt, what do they do with those?
And this episode, we're taking a little bit of a shift, getting a little bit more specific about suffering and pain in particular.
And we're looking at Habakkuk's first complaint, which is, I'm going to read this from the text says, oh Lord, how long shall I cry for help and you will not hear?
Or cry to you violence and you will not save?
This idea, this question that we're going to consider first on our episode today is why does God allow his people to suffer?
And I know, again, these are questions Habakkuk is asking back then.
Yeah.
But they're questions that we still ask today.
And so I'm just curious for you guys, maybe you can resonate with that.
Maybe there was a time you have felt yourself ask that same question to God in your own faith.
What does that look like?
It's one of those questions that even as you say it, it sobers me, makes me a little somber because to really ask that question is to consider the deep pain that people are currently in.
Right.
And that's what these questions are so profound is because there's something about, I think it's before you even answer the question, why would God allow suffering?
I think something about suffering tells me that we matter because if suffering is just normal, natural, and just part of how this environment operates, the fact that it's, I know it's wrong does tell me something about, well, there must be some good that's not here.
Yeah.
Some value not being right.
There's something good that's not manifesting.
And I think suffering is that, because it's not just the physical pain and then the psychological sorrows that come with it of like, will this always be the way that it is?
Will I always feel this way?
So these are really big categorical questions that are very specific and very visceral.
So I think it's a right and good question to ask of why would God allow it?
But I think the first piece of it is to start like in the biblical narrative in Genesis of that's not how human beings start.
Right.
And how human beings start is without suffering.
So this tells you something about when God creates all things in his original design, there is no suffering in that world.
It wasn't a part of it.
So I think there's something about suffering.
I mean, C.S.
Lewis would phrase it as it's the megaphone that rouses a deaf world kind of idea.
Something about suffering and physical pain.
Yeah.
There's a unique way that God wakes us up through that.
But it still is.
It has to be said first and foremost.
It is such a personal question.
So if you're listening or even we're talking about it, if I ask this question and someone you love is going through cancer or going through difficulty, it's a very different question than if I'm just reading Habakkuk and he asked it.
So I'm asking it.
Right.
So I think it's probably worth saying that as we open it up to go, depending on where you are, these questions hit differently.
That's right.
And it's important that when you're having conversations with somebody, it's going to hit differently when you think about it personally.
When's been a time for you that it hit?
Like when it would hit in a way that you're like, okay, this feels different.
Yeah.
Because I'm going through it.
Well, so when Lauren and I went through a series of miscarriages, I had never probably to that point in my life ever had anything like that before.
Yeah.
But I think it's when your own pain and then someone else's pain, it's really hard to make sense of because we live in a faith that feels certain.
Right.
But then those times feel very uncertain and very like, wait, I don't know how to make sense of everything happening.
And pain has this way of being very loud.
And physical pain is very loud and it's disorienting and distracting.
Yeah.
So I think that season of miscarriages was really deeply painful.
I've gone through seasons of physical panic attacks that were very like disorienting and didn't know what to do.
And for me personally, I didn't start at why God would you allow this, but you eventually get there.
You eventually ask that question at some point.
Especially if it persists, right?
Especially if it persists.
And so I think there's a lot of like, again, us to talk about the story piece, but in our story, it just was learning me and Lauren in the miscarriage season.
We were really learning how do you not even ask the big theological questions.
How do you just pray during seasons like this?
Yeah.
How do you keep doing the small, basic, faithful things?
Because there's a time, I think John Piper said, like there's a time to weep and there's a time for truth.
Like at some point you will need the truth kind of answers.
But at the beginning of it, it's just, it's so sad and disorienting.
Yeah.
Disorienting.
So I, again, I think it's those two seasons of panic attacks and miscarriages have worth the most.
But like even watching like someone we love pass away a couple of years ago, they were missionaries and he was young and a young family and you're like, I just don't get it.
I don't understand it.
And yet knowing God's sovereign over all of it.
So that, that would be the personal experience that drives you up to theological questions and back down to practical sort of explanations.
But it's that constant sort of back and forth.
At least me and Lauren have walked through.
Yeah.
Yeah.
What about you, Ross?
Yeah.
I mean, there's been, here's the thing.
Suffering is very particular as Tyler rightly says.
And so we've got, we've got to be so posteriorly nuanced and careful.
But the other thing about suffering is, is that it's absolutely universal.
So everyone suffers.
And so everyone has their own story.
And again, it's, it's part of why I find the scriptures compelling because it's, it's the worldview that makes the most sense of our suffering to me, which we'll talk about in a second.
I'm like, oh, there's a reason that I can see why the system is this way.
Right.
Whether I like it or not is a different story.
Right.
But I can see that there's a storyline that explains this because everyone has to confront this, their own weakness.
No one can buttress their life against suffering.
That's right.
Right.
You can try stoicism and not care about it.
You can try massive wealth and try to protect yourself.
It comes for everybody.
And so, yeah, I mean, there's been profound seasons of suffering in our life.
I think probably in, in, in two categories, one is the purely personal and then the other is just posturally.
Yeah.
You get kind of a front row seat to other people's suffering.
And, and I think for me, that's been very profoundly shaping for me over pastoral career.
You know, I was looking back through my notes.
I did a, I did a funeral, um, a couple of months ago and some very well-meaning lady came and said, was this your first one?
Like you did very well.
Was this your first one?
Um, and so I went back and looked through my notes and I've done over 50 of them.
Right.
And you saw it.
Okay.
That's 50.
Some of them extremely profound losses, young people, suicides, terminal illness, you know, car wrecks, so much suffering.
And I think just in my life, I found myself asking in many of those situations, Habakkuk's question, how, how long?
Oh Lord.
Yes.
It's not, uh, for me, it's not even necessarily why.
Yeah.
It's like, how long shall I cry for help?
Mm-hmm.
And you will not hear.
Mm-hmm.
And that was very stark for us personally a couple of years ago when Sue lost her, my wife Sue lost her sister and then her dad within a few months of each other.
And, um, her dad's, um, decline and terminal illness over the last year of his life being, you know, 8,000 miles away from us.
Um, just watching that happen from, um, from afar and not being able to have anything to do.
Mm-hmm.
You can't fix it.
Right.
And so just in that weakness crying, but how long shall I cry for help?
We need help, Lord.
Why won't you help?
And of course he does.
Mm-hmm.
Um, but just not in the ways that we wanted him to help.
So I think that's probably personally the most profound season of adult suffering that, that, that we've experienced on a, on a personal level in the last little while.
Yeah.
I think as you guys are talking, I think one of the things, the word that keeps coming to mind for me with suffering is it's, it's so interrupting.
Mm-hmm.
I think especially as we're kind of a young church with young people who are kind of getting into middle age and we're starting to have parents who are, who are getting older and passing away.
We're starting to, our bodies are breaking down and not, I'm living it right now in this moment.
Right.
But it, it does feel to me like you go, you're going about your everyday life and you kind of just get into rhythms of this is what my day looks like.
This is who my people are.
This is what I do.
And then all of a sudden the phone rings or something happens.
And it's just such what feels like an interruption, but also this smelling salt of like, oh yeah, that is what it's like here sometimes.
Like that is, in some ways it's more shocking that we don't have more moments of suffering in such a fallen and broken world.
But, but I think in our youth and in our kind of young, our, we're coming up and we're aging, we're probably going to experience more and more of the realities of decay and decline than we have maybe earlier on.
But it does feel like it is, it's a smelling salt to like things aren't as they should be.
Like you said, Tyler, like it's not quite right.
There's something that's off about suffering that wasn't the way it should be in the beginning.
Well, I think that there's a, there's a pragmatic way of looking at it where it's like, this is the way that it is.
I think that the Habakkuk and the sort of theological question is like, but when you stare at God, it's, that's why I think suffering is hard to make sense of because you stare at God and he's good and he's all powerful.
So he could stop it.
Right.
Why doesn't he?
Exactly.
And I think that's where that, that tension point becomes because it becomes a matter of will.
He's deciding for some reason, some purpose.
And I think that's where, particularly for the Christian worldview, having a God who's sovereign over all things, even over the bad things is, is hard to make sense of.
But then back to like we were doing last podcast, the alternative is if there is suffering and evil that can come in, suffering in particular that can come into my life that is apart from him, who's to say it won't always get the last word.
If it could come in and be a part of it and he has no ability to have any say so, then how do I know in the future that there will be good that comes from this?
But I think it's when you stare at God's character and then you stare at your own physical pain and suffering.
Because think about suffering too, especially those who have like, like we know that have chronic illnesses.
It's a constant thing.
Right.
It's always on your mind.
It saps your energy.
It's hard to think about anything else.
And, and you're right, you have to, it can be smelling salts, but it is something that you have to interpret somehow.
Right.
Because it's too constant.
Yeah.
And it takes away your sense of like ability to be all focused in on somebody, present in a situation.
So I think that's where when we stare at God's character, it is that sort of, what does it mean that he has all power?
He is all good.
He has all knowledge.
And this is still going on.
Right.
I have to answer that.
And the truth is you are answering it even when you're not answering it.
Like I'm, I'm interpreting it in some way.
And Habakkuk is again, voicing the complaint in a way that helps me voice my own complaint.
I love that about the biblical writers is they're voicing for me how to talk to God when I have the same experience.
Yeah.
They give me language.
Because I think it's hard when you're suffering to even have language.
What do I say?
Do I just moan?
Do I like, what do I do?
Sometimes.
Sometimes.
Yeah.
And I think it helps to have this author and the psalmist again, or for me, that what I go back to again and again is they're teaching me how to talk to God when I'm suffering.
Because I don't know how.
I mean, there's a promise in Romans 8 where the spirit will intercede for me when I can't.
I don't know how.
But I just love that about the prophets and the psalms.
They're just going, do you know how to talk to God when you're, when you like all you feel is a searing pain?
I'm like, not really, you know?
So I think that is learning, again, how to make sense of a sovereign God over suffering.
What does that mean?
How does it look?
And again, that's where, for me and my own story, my own passion, because one thing about being a pastor, I tell people this all the time.
If in your own life and you're like maybe larger family friend group, there's usually a suffering once every couple of years, a big thing that happens.
Right.
As a pastor, every month, there is somebody's worst month of their life.
And there is like, we just get opened up to as church leaders, a lot of physical suffering.
You know, even, I mean, I lead downtown.
It's a really young congregation.
Every month, there's some awful thing that happens, you know?
And I think that's something about being in just a human, but being the larger community you're a part of, the more you're going to see suffering.
Right.
So the more you need to have to, and for whatever reason, I don't know why it is, certain moments of someone suffering will stick in your mind more so than other times.
Sure.
And it's hard to know why.
Mm-hmm.
But that's where it just, it, it, it, almost like the physical pain, that question kind of throbs in your heart.
Like, why?
God.
Why?
And how long is the, is the right thing of like, because at some level, you know, it's, it's going to happen.
Everyone suffers.
Mm-hmm.
But another level, there is a, there's a, there's a duration.
A duration, yeah.
But why this long?
Well, and I'll say in mine, it really, ours, the time I felt it most viscerally in my adult life was when Rex and I struggled with infertility really early in our marriage.
And I think there was this, this thing that I had come to think of in my mind where, you know, we, we were single into our thirties and I think we had both kind of enjoyed our singleness and like found great community, loved our church, our church.
I just loved that season of my life.
It wasn't something that I was fleeing from, but God brought us together and it felt like, oh, so we, we will have a family and it'll look like, you know, a husband and a wife.
And so then we'll, okay, we'll have our kids.
And it just felt like this is next.
And for me, that season of infertility was such a wake up call to, oh, I don't get to define my life in this way.
Like I'm not the author of life.
I can't force this no matter what I do.
Ultimately life only comes from God.
So it was this creature creator reality, but also this, but why not?
Like, I think we would be great parents.
I think we would seek to honor you with this great gift.
Like, and so why, why, why does it have to be a no?
And I think for me, the suffering was, was really the realization of, I know he can, but why won't he, and sitting with the disappointment, the sense of like the somewhat anger, the rejection, the sense of why not me, but all these other people who can have children.
Like what, well, it was just kind of sitting in that for the first time and feeling confronted with, I just want him to do it differently.
And I think what suffering does, you know, especially when you're a little bit more removed from it is it's asking you, will you still be able to believe me, to trust me, to love me, even when I don't give you these desires of your heart?
Even if I say no to things that I could easily say yes to.
And I think that is a really hard thing.
I think about that even with my own kids, like when they ask me for something, if I have the means to give it to them, if I want to.
And so you're trying to reconcile that with a God who has all power, all sovereignty, and this kid who's just crying in front of them for what's a reasonable gift.
And so it was, it was, that was the hardest season, I think, for seeing how suffering can impact faith and seeing, am I, am I unwilling to follow God if he says no to this?
And it was a big question.
It's also, and it's suffering almost more than anything.
It's so easy to have the right answers till it's your suffering.
That's right.
And then, I mean, there's something about your own personal suffering that just every answer that felt steady doesn't.
No, that's right.
Every answer that like in my Bible study I was reading and the sermon or whatever.
Yeah, amen to that.
And then your suffering comes and everything in you is like, the bottom just fell out.
That's right.
Yeah.
And that's where, again, it's, it's, there's no way out of that bottom if I don't learn how to pray like and say and talk to God the way Habakkuk does.
There's no way out of it.
Yeah.
The first wedding and the first funeral I did were for the same person in the same week.
Wow.
And so I developed a friendship with a guy who came to Christ in our church, the church I was in previously and his fiancee.
Sue and I walked them through pre-marriage.
I was a young, young pastor, celebrated with them on their wedding day and then got a call when in the morning he had been shot in their honeymoon suite and he didn't make it.
And so, yeah, wedding on Friday night and his funeral the next Thursday.
And I can remember just such a well-intended woman who cares for Sue and I so much and who loves us and who was right.
Texted us Genesis 50, 20, which is one of my favorite verses in the world.
You know, what you intended for evil, God intended for good and for the saving of many lives.
But at the time, Tyler, I just couldn't hear it.
I couldn't receive it.
I couldn't take it in.
Yeah.
But I did have to shelve it and come back to it later and go like, but it is true.
Yeah, that's right.
But the suffering in the moment created like a callous heart that was just like, I can't, I can't take that right now.
Yeah.
But thank you.
But I can't receive that.
Well, and to be a limited person, even the Genesis 50, 20, which is, again, we're banking, honestly, we're banking all of our hope on that reality.
What people and what the world means for evil and brokenness, God's going to use for good.
But I also think it's important, like Joseph doesn't come to that conclusion while he's in the prison.
He comes to that conclusion at the very end of it when he, but he got to see the redemption of it.
Right.
It wasn't like.
And it isn't even on the first meeting of his brother's.
No, he just cries.
Years have passed.
He just cries.
And so I do think part of this is, I think when we try to sit in God's seat without God's resource, we're always going to feel crushed.
If I try to sit in his seat and go, I'm going to understand why and all the ins and outs and what God's purpose, you're like, you're a little, you're a little person.
Yeah.
You can't do all that.
And in due time, God has a way of revealing things.
But like we preached on this forever ago, but it was talking about even healing in particular.
And the truth is every healing request is going to come true for the Christian at the resurrection of the dead.
So at some point it is always a how long, not a if it's just a matter of when.
Right.
But it is it.
But I do think, again, back to the sort of the alternatives.
There's a Christian view of this, that we have a resurrection coming and a new heavens, new earth and a more physical body.
But the alternative is it doesn't matter.
Like the alternative is your suffering is just physical pain.
There's no, there's meaningless.
And I think for us to go when we feel sad about and scared of that, what is God's intent or why is he delaying?
Why would he allow?
There is something mysterious.
Because I think what's good, I mean, again, back to the categories, we know and we don't know.
We know God has some purposes.
He's working out.
We know God is sovereign and doing things for good and revealing his character and things about himself through it.
But we also don't know why the specific ways it works out, why this person in that way at this time, like all the specifics.
And what happens is we collapse all in on itself.
And we want to say, no, no, we know some things for certain, but they are macro.
Right.
And they are massive.
Yeah.
I don't know why this specific thing is happening.
Right.
And I think we have, that makes us feel kind of as if I'm doubting God almost by not saying I know exactly what this is.
I can say God is good.
Yeah.
And he's still, he's still good, even though I can't see it.
But that doesn't mean that I have some now secret eye that can see behind the curtain and understand.
That's right.
Yeah.
It's hubristic of the highest nature to pretend that we would understand the mechanisms of God's sovereignty.
Right.
So us bound by time and space, trying to pretend that we understand one who by his very nature operates outside of time and space.
It's just so full of hubris.
We think it'll make us feel better if we can have a slam dunk answer.
Yes.
But we can't.
And that's why we've got to be careful with doctrines like God's sovereignty, which I hold to with everything in me.
Yeah.
It is a marvelous, soothing blanket that keeps me warm at night.
It is a terrible weapon to wield against someone.
That's right.
So it can inflict major pain or it can create major comfort depending on how you wield it, right?
In terms of your understanding.
So.
And attempting to speak for God before he has given that revelation to us.
Absolutely.
God's going to make it clear to his people what his intentions were.
But that may not be right now.
It may be.
Yeah.
An eternity future at some point in time.
And I think that's where it's like, I, instead of just trusting that God's promises are trustworthy, no matter how vague they may feel and just cling to that.
Like Jesus said, I'll be with you to the end.
I don't know what else is going to happen to you in the end.
Like he didn't tell me that.
Right.
I don't know what's going to happen, but I do know he's going to be with me in it.
Right.
And he'll strengthen me in it even when I feel like I can't.
And that's where I do think having older saints in this, in this particular regard is uniquely helpful.
Uniquely.
For sure.
Because I have told a couple of our downtown elders who are not on staff, who are men in their 60s who have followed.
I just like someone in their 70s, 60s, 70s, 80s who've been following Jesus, they can say the same truths about God in a way that has, it's the same sentence.
No.
They say anything different than what I just said, but it hits different because there's something about they've seen God through the ebbs and flows.
They've seen the like, I went to the depths.
I was so sorrowful.
I had this sickness.
I had this issue.
Someone died.
And it was all darkness.
No.
This path in the woods, there was no way out.
And I think that's where we, and even the church, honestly, the global church, which suffers much more than our current context.
I mean, that's one of the best things about the problem of pain is C.S. Lewis.
He's like, most of the world, for most of human history, hasn't had painkillers.
Yeah.
They just listen.
No way to remove yourself from any kind of suffering.
And so we're the unique ones in this story that has enough, has all the sort of resource to soothe ourselves physically when most of the world hasn't.
Yeah.
And so I think, again, having those different, those different pockets of the church, church history and older saints, there's just wisdom there that can't be read.
That's right.
You know, I mean, you read the truth, but it gets deepened in a way that I've, I over the years have just found so much solace in them just telling me, hey, you're going to be okay.
And it just, it's in a different way.
It's that seasoned saint faith.
Yeah.
We call that, some of my friends who are all women, we just want old lady faith.
It's just like that, that faith that carries you at the end and that is so comforting on the front.
But I will say we've talked a lot, we've kind of talked around some Christian principles about suffering just in this.
If you were to state kind of what is a simple Christian worldview as it relates to suffering, where it came from, what, how we exist in it today and what's going to happen in the future.
How would you just succinctly say that?
Summarize all of human suffering.
Yeah.
Just in a sentence, maybe, maybe it's just a few syllables, right?
I mean, I, I, I think the biblical narrative is the best way to think through it.
The creation, fall, redemption, restoration kind of frameworks.
I think that helps you.
We live in narratives and I think putting it in a narrative is helpful to know that the, the, by design, we're not, we weren't intended to suffer in this sort of original creation idea.
Yeah.
Sin and all of its consequences produces physical suffering in the world.
And then again, this is where the, I think following Jesus is utterly unique and we've talked about it and he is the linchpin of all that is, that God's doing in the world is the, the appointed ruler and mender of all things that God has put in place is the one who suffered the most.
I just, there's nothing, there's nothing that makes sense of human suffering to me more than God says that the one who's going to rule the world had to suffer the most for a world that is suffering.
And then eventually there's going to be an end to that suffering for God's people where there, there is no more physical pain.
Right.
And so I think that, that sort of very broad arc, I think because you experience suffering in a story form, like you experienced it in a, like, I had a, I feel good this day.
I feel bad this day.
I feel a little bit bad.
Like it's, it's a, it's an ebb and flow.
And it just, again, that narrative helps me understand the nuances of it instead of just, am I suffering because I sinned?
Am I suffering for, um, someone's, is God always out to get me?
Right.
Is God in control of this?
How does his, all those things are your amount of knowledge and any one of those things will, again.
Ebb and flow.
Ebb and flow.
Because sometimes I feel certain, sometimes I don't.
Yeah.
Sometimes I'm suffering because I did something stupid and I, you know, made a dumb mistake.
Sometimes there's genes that I didn't decide.
Just by genetics, I got this lottery of, you know, like it's really, and so when it was suffering, because it makes the future so uncertain, I will grasp for certainty.
And I feel this for people who get taken, most people who get taken advantage are in pain.
Yeah.
Because they want a solution.
They're so, yeah.
Give me certainty and give me a solution.
And that's where, again, our primary solution is the suffering, resurrected Messiah who's like, this is the, I'm creating a new world for you.
And I can know, I know what it means to suffer.
Well, and I think there's a lot of people who feel, the thing they, they, they feel in suffering is if, if God is wrong and I'm suffering and God is wrong.
But I think actually suffering proves that God was actually right from the beginning when he warned Adam and Eve not to eat from the fruit, right?
Like there's a sense in which there was consequence that would follow and the suffering that's in the world.
It's like, it doesn't prove that God was wrong.
It actually proves from the beginning he was right.
This is, this is a reality we face as a consequence of sin.
And I, and, and even what you're talking about with Christ entering and experiencing this, I mean, God could have left us to lie in the bed that we made, right?
He could have said, I told you so and, and walked away, but he actually enters into that suffering.
And I, there's a scripture that talks about how Jesus learned obedience through what he suffered.
And something that has stuck to me just in personal study was that suffering kind of in that sense can move from being a sentence to a teacher, that there's a sense in which suffering can train us for what it's like to live in this world and learn to trust God and trust the voice that we didn't in the garden, that there's a way that suffering trains us, even in its difficulty, even in its pain to still believe God is good.
And it asks more of us to do that.
And I was thinking too, that in glory, I don't know what our glorified bodies are going to look like, but I know that the scriptures say that we're going to forget about the light momentary affliction when we're confronted with the eternal weight of glory.
But it struck, it strikes me that the suffering God wants us to always remember the scars that are still going to be there are on Jesus.
Yeah, that's right.
There is some suffering that is going to be, that we want to be reminded of often because of what it accomplished, but it won't likely be ours.
It will be Christ.
And this is a little bit more like theological and less like personal pastoral, but I've always thought about it in terms of when sin enters the world, so to suffering, and in some ways, God is showing us how much when he gets belittled and he gets put to the margins and he gets seen as not who he is, look at what happens naturally in the creation when he's not center.
Some ways suffering is a speaking to, it's so made for God to be center and for God to be seen rightly that for him not to be seen rightly and not to be center, it just erodes and folds in on itself.
And it is a testimony to there's something this world was made for that isn't currently here.
And I think that's where even back to the whole idea of we know suffering is wrong.
Why is it wrong?
It's because something of the echo of Eden in my own soul says, I'm not made for a world like this or a body like this.
And I think it creates that longing.
If you don't have anywhere to attach that longing like we do in Jesus and the new world, the new heavens and earth, it's really hard to not be just crushed by it or just try to avoid it at all possible costs, which at some level I understand who wants to physically suffer if they don't have to.
Right.
But that's how I've tried to understand of like there's just something so inherent about how God made the world when he's not center.
This is what happens.
Yeah.
Because that's how good and valuable he is and how everything's designed to fit around him.
Right.
And the restoration at the end is when suffering is removed forever.
Right.
So when it's set back right, that's when we can actually experience that reality of God's kingdom.
But so that brings us to this point where if suffering is removed when Jesus returns, when he establishes his kingdom, it's obviously that thing that we want now that we feel the tension with most, the already and not yet of his kingdom.
What's the delay?
I think that's kind of, again, back to Ross's question of how long, if we know it's all going to be fixed, why does God delay to return and make things the way they ought to be?
Yeah.
Right?
Yeah.
I mean, the simple theological answer is, you know, the scriptures tell us that it's his patience, that he's patiently forbearing with sinners coming to repentance.
And when that's the full number of those, then he returns.
And so it's a sign of his kindness, not of his apathy.
That is the simple answer.
That is harder to live out and to believe when you're waiting.
Yes.
And waiting patiently.
But that's been very helpful to me to just come back to the scriptures again and again to go like, oh no, this is his patience.
He wanted me in the kingdom and he wanted to sanctify me.
And he's doing that across billions of people in his patience and in his forbearance.
And hence the delay.
That makes it more palatable and more hopeful when we're full of faith.
I don't think it's an easy tonic for everyone in the midst of suffering, but that would be the theological answer.
Well, and it's spoken of even Peter.
You know, he's talking about a thousand days, his day kind of idea to the Lord.
And even, you know, when Jesus saw how to pray, when you want to give up and grow weary and praying because there's evil and sorrow in the world, what do you do?
Because, again, for the Christian, you're like, well, this is the objective, not the subjective answer.
But the objective answer is, relatively speaking, thousands of years to an eternity is very small.
That's right.
But I think that's, but again, that's a, back to Ross's point, that's pulling you out of your moment up into this massive macro story that usually when you're going through physical suffering, that may or may not feel helpful, but it is true.
And it does help you cling on to something to go, I have something bigger than me that I can hold on to.
Because even with the macro stories, it's always hard for me because you're like, but the individuals get lost.
So you can see how over time, like we, the human, humans are advancing and learning how to do this.
You're like, yeah, but what are all the individuals who didn't get that?
Like what, what happens to them?
So I, to your, your, I, that's an early church question too.
How long?
Oh my goodness.
You know, like when are you coming back, Jesus?
Right.
And everyone's like, he's just, and his, you know, I don't know if you've watched The Chosen yet, but there's a great like line of just how often he's, Jesus uses the word soon.
And they're like, soon to Jesus means a lot of different things.
It's very different than what I think it means soon.
Yeah.
Well, we're going to wrap up pretty quick here, but I do know you guys sit in the seat of pastoring people who are, like you said, constantly experiencing these realities of suffering.
And so I wonder what encouragement would you give to weary saints who feel like maybe fair or not, they feel like they've got more than their fair share of suffering.
How, how, what words, what, what pastoral encouragements can we share with them?
Yeah.
I would just say it's okay to be weary and it's okay to be weak.
And it's okay to feel like you can't go forward.
You know, I think even of Habakkuk and the way he prays, it's okay to say these things to God.
How long?
Yeah.
Oh Lord, will I cry out for help when you will not hear?
But take them to God.
And so I think the direction of our complaint is important.
And the direction of our objection is important.
And he takes them to the source, to the Lord and to his people.
And I think, I think that's a key differentiator that keeps you from becoming, from going from weary to impited.
Yes.
It's just direct that with as much faith as you can master, which may be very little.
Direct it towards the God, even who you might think is not listening to you.
But take it to him.
But be honest.
This whole kind of, you know, stiff upper lip, chin up, stoicism thing doesn't, doesn't serve anybody.
Yeah.
And so if you're weak and if you're hurting, be honest and be weak and hurting, but be weak and hurting with God and with his people and let them carry you.
That's good.
The only thing I would add is just to help people know that weakness, weakness is not a sin.
Like I always use, Jesus couldn't carry his own cross.
Jesus needed someone to carry it for him.
It was the most, that is the moment of pinnacle of his glory.
And there's a physical weakness to him that's unable to do certain things.
Yeah.
And I think people tend to think weakness in me is necessarily sin.
I'm like, no, weakness in you means you're a creature.
That's exactly right.
And suffering is going to test that more than anything else.
And so learning how to bring your complaints to God and name your weaknesses.
And I think God has purposes in it.
I don't pretend to know what they are.
But I do think Jesus's life is a testimony of he didn't come down and just immediately die for sin.
He went through his own life and trials and sort of 30 plus years of not everything.
Some being mundane.
Some being quiet.
Some being secret suffering.
Some being public sufferings.
And God was using all of that to do something that no one could have imagined.
And I think we do have to come back to that eternal weight of glory of, but there is something God's going to do through this.
I do not pretend to know.
And it would, back to Ross's point, it would be hubris to pretend to know.
But it'd also be hubris to not bank on what Jesus said he will do, though.
That's right.
To say that, but he is going to resurrect you and you will get an answer.
That's a great Tim Keller thing.
If you knew all that God knew, you would believe that he was right in all that he did.
But I don't know all that he knows.
And in due time will show me.
But I do.
I think that's that.
That is what I would encourage him with of surround yourself with people who can help you, but also cling to those big promises of hope is on the way.
Hope is on the way.
And no day of suffering is wasted.
It's always doing something.
Well, thank you guys.
We're going to transition now to that recurring segment that we started in our first episode called In Good Faith.
And this is where we're just, again, talking through the kinds of things that we can do to water our faith, to grow it from a mustard seed, to keep our eyes fixed on Christ.
So what are those practical, simple, holy habits?
And so, Ross, you shared last episode, and I'm going to share what this looks like for me.
And there's so many things.
I've been so thankful, by the way, for the Holy Habits series our church has just gone through and kind of combing through each of those practices.
And really, honestly, seeing a lot of things that I've neglected, that I'm like rediscovering the benefit and the joy and the waterfall of grace that it is to do what God calls us to do in his scriptures.
But I think the thing that jumped out to me when I was thinking about some things that are just everyday and simple that have spurred my faith the most.
And just stay with me because it's so basic.
I can't wait.
It's so like...
Touch grass.
Honestly.
Is it?
It's going to be like that.
Oh, great.
It truly is.
I was a big cool Gen Z guy just now.
Yeah, cool Gen Z guy.
That's who I am.
But it's the idea of just being present in creation as a creature and using your imagination for worship.
That's something.
And when I say be present in creation as a creature, I think for me, at least what it looks like is looking up from my phone and around at the world that God has made that is screaming true realities about him and reinforcing, even in the physical world, some spiritual realities.
And this came up even this week because my daughter Ruth, she had a caterpillar project at her little school.
And she was telling me about it all week.
I didn't really understand what it was because she had a hard time telling me what's going to happen.
But ultimately what it is is you buy caterpillars and eventually they become butterflies.
That's the whole thing.
They did it.
They transitioned.
It was awesome.
But she's telling me, and I'm doing something on my phone.
I'm locked in on some terrible, probably tariff news.
I'm like, what's going on in this?
I don't know what's happening.
And I'm looking at it and she's trying to explain to me that the butterflies have come.
And I remember thinking, oh, I need to consciously decide to be present with my daughter in this moment because in my mind it was to be there with her.
But after I did it, I was like so taken aback because I was like this was actually God wanting to be with me because I was sitting there looking at this creature that before was so low to the ground and crawling around like a caterpillar.
And then God has just made a creature that goes from that into transformation and become something that is so not a crawling on the crown kind of thing, but a thing that flies in the air.
And I'm like, why would God create such a creature but to remind me that I am a new creation, that the old has passed away, that the new has come.
And there was just this moment of just looking at these little things God is just reinforcing through the things that he has made that just remind me of his goodness and what's true.
And it's all actually real.
And I even had a conversation with my sister.
She's pregnant.
And she said, when I'm praying, I'm praying to come to faith.
This is just something that I'm actively praying for her.
And as I was looking at her and I'm feeling the pressure of saying something about God that will break through, that she'll believe that new life will happen.
I'm looking at this baby being formed in her and she is not doing one thing.
Yeah, right.
That it is God, in fact, who is like making the central nervous system and knitting together the new life in my sister.
And in that moment, it was such a relief to be like, that is what, it relieved the pressure of me that like if new life will come, if spiritual new life will find my sister, it will be God who works this out ultimately.
But what a picture in the physical world that God has embedded for me if I just look.
And so I think that's something that I'm trying to practice just regularly looking around at creation, looking for things that God has made that just reinforce spiritual realities.
Do you think, I'm just curious, do you think that's because staring at, like reminding yourself there's still goodness in the world and staring at it and taking in goodness prepares you for whenever the other shoe drops and like darkness.
You know, I'm asking like, is that what it is?
Is it taking in goodness that's helping prepare as an antidote?
I think it's more just seeing the way God, even the new life thing, the way that God could have made new life.
He could have just had an egg over there and it just, you know, becomes a, but it's like, no, he, there's a participation that a woman has with new life being born.
That echoes what I read in scriptures about God inviting us into sharing the gospel and evangelism and seeing new life form too.
And so it was just, to me, there's just these things that I see in how God has written creation, even limits that he gives us.
Like I was thinking, you know, no matter how much I want to change, if I can fly or if I can breathe underwater, like I can't, like no matter what I want, there's something written into my DNA that decided that.
Yeah.
And there's something that's just so screaming.
There's a creator.
There's a center of this universe and it's not you.
And I just feel like he builds that message in all through the word, which like you're saying, it's always good to read the word.
But for my faith, it's been really encouraging to kind of look around and see like it's built in all throughout creation, these realities.
I think it was Peterson, Eugene, not Jordan, but who, of course, we spoke about paying attention to the reality of God.
Yes.
That like part of what we're doing through the disciplines is just paying attention to God's reality.
And in creation, that's really the reality is God is always working.
God is always regenerating.
Right.
We're just so distracted by the unrealities of doom scrolling and news media.
My agenda, where I have to go.
Which continually spark panic and a sense that God isn't working.
But that's an unreality.
In reality, he's turning caterpillars into butterflies.
Yeah.
You know, and changing seasons.
He's making trees create oxygen.
Yes.
And that's ultimate reality, but we don't stop to pay attention.
Right.
When it comes to, I think, the physical suffering, because you're talking, I was like, what it's doing, I think, is it's physical pain is like you're standing in a riverbed and there's no water and the river is rushing at you and it hits you.
Yes.
And what you're doing is I'm rooting myself in a world where God is here and it's good.
Yes.
So that when physical suffering comes, I'm sturdy to go, because if I'm not sturdy and I'm getting myself ready in that way of both the truths of God and the gospel and his creation, all that he's doing, when that hits, my roots will be shallow and I will get tossed.
Yeah.
God will still keep me.
Right.
But my experience of it will be very different.
So I think when you were talking, I was like, what is it?
Because I knew it intuitively.
I'm like, well, what is it about it?
It is the way physical suffering takes the ground up from underneath you.
And this is helping root back, like, I'm in a world that still has goodness.
Yes.
It's not all dark.
It's not all pain.
God is here.
He's here.
God is on the move.
Yes.
I'm also reading The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, so I think that's probably that too.
It's probably bleeding in to some of this for me that Aslan is on the move.
I want to tell you how it ends.
Yeah.
I'm looking for Tom Ness everywhere.
Yeah.
Okay, guys.
Well, that is going to wrap up our episode for today.
Thank you so much for being a part of this.
If you want to follow along more with the story of Habakkuk, you can join Austin Stone at any one of its six congregations that meet across Austin.
Be sure to like and subscribe this podcast so you can see our next episode where we're going to look at the problem of evil and how it forces us to question things about God.
We'll see you then.
Bye.
Bye.