ALL THINGS ARE WORKING FOR YOUR GOOD PT. 2
Mike Cunningham
December 1, 2013

Tim Keller says that, “We can often see how bad things “work together for good.” (Romans 8:28) The problem is that we can only get a glimpse of this in a limited number of cases. But why could it not be that God allowed evil because it will bring us all to a far greater joy than we would have had otherwise? Isn’t it possible that the eventual glory and joy we will know will be infinitely greater than it would have been had there been no evil? What if that future world will somehow be greater for having once been broken and lost? If such were the case, it would truly mean the utter defeat of evil. Evil would not be just an obstacle to our beauty and bliss, but it will only have made it better. Evil would have accomplished the very opposite of what it intended.”

“How might that come about? At the simplest level, we know that only if there is danger can there be courage. And apart from sin and evil, we would never have seen the courage of God, or the astonishing extent of His love, nor the glory of a deity who lays aside His glory and goes to the cross. For us here in this life, the thought of God’s glory is rather remote and abstract. But we must realize that the most rapturous delights you have ever had-in the beauty of a landscape, or in the pleasure of food, or in the fulfillment of a loving embrace-are like dewdrops compared to the bottomless ocean of joy that it will be to see God face-to-face (1 John 3:1-3). That is what we are in for, nothing less. And according to the Bible, that glorious beauty, and our enjoyment of it, has been immeasurably enhanced by Christ’s redemption of us from evil and death. We are told that the angels long to endlessly gaze into the gospel, into the wonder of what Jesus did in His incarnation and atonement.” (1Peter 1:12).

“Paul speaks mysteriously that we who know Christ and the power of His resurrection also know “the fellowship of sharing in His sufferings” (Phil. 3:10-11). Alvin Plantinga points to the teachings of older reformed theologians, such as Jonathan Edwards and Abraham Kuyper, who believed that because of our fall and redemption, we will receive a level of intimacy with God that cannot be received any other way. Therefor, the angels are envious of it. What if, in the future, we came to see that just as Jesus could not have displayed such glory and love any other way except through His sufferings, we would not have been able to experience such transcendent glory, joy, and love any other way except by going through a world of suffering?”

“And why could it not be that our future glory will actually “swallow” the evil of the past that in some unimaginable way even the memory of the evil won’t darken our hearts but only make us happier. C. S. Lewis’s fantasy story of Heaven and Hell-The Great Divorce-depicts hell and all the people within it as having become microscopically small. He writes that, when on earth, people say “no future bliss can make up” for a particular instance of suffering, “not knowing that Heaven, once attained, will work backwards and turn even that agony into a glory. This is an effort to convey the same idea that J. R. R. Tolkien does when he envisions a time in which “everything sad is going to become untrue.”

From Timothy Keller’s insightful book: “Walking With God Through Pain and Suffering,” Pgs. 117-118.

Now lets take a look at how, a remarkable Christian woman named Gigi is still discovering the truth of Romans 8:28. Gigi tells us that,

“Growing up in the inner city of Oakland, California, in a predominantly black community, I identified as brown, even though I was Brazilian and Amish. With time, I became very passionate about how the gospel engages social issues such as poverty, race, and socioeconomic problems, and I devoted my life to serving in low income areas for these very purposes while viewing such issues through the lens of color.”

“Then, in 2009, I moved to South Africa. Overnight, I became white.”

“I was well aware that South Africa continues to be one of the most racially polarized countries in the world. In 2010, I married an amazing black South African man, becoming one of very few interracial couples in this country. We instantly became a threat to the very fabric of a society built on racial hierarchy and separation, even post-Apartheid. Wherever we went, we felt the piercing stares of the masses.”

“Just before we met, my husband had planted a church in the largest township in South Africa: Soweto. Townships in South Africa, by definition, are exclusively black communities begun during the oppressive system of Apartheid. Today, they are vibrant communities full of life, culture, and beautiful people, as well as poverty, crime, and much suffering.”

“In short, overnight I became a “white” woman living in the largest all-black residential area in a country still hemorrhaging from its long legacy of racial distrust, hatred, and anger. I never could have expected what awaited me in this beautiful country among these beautiful and broken people. I longed to be an agent of healing among such devastation, and I continually prayed that God would make me more like Him to serve here. Little did I know how He intended to answer that prayer. It seems that some fruit comes only from suffering.”

“One month before our wedding, my husband’s closest friend and his most trusted leader in the church was exposed in having multiple moral failures with vulnerable young women in our church. As it turned out, he’d been living a double life for quite some time and hid it from all of us. Having been an elder, he was removed from leadership to go through a restoration process. Though he appeared repentant with his words, it soon became apparent that he was out for vengeance.”

“On our wedding night, while we slept, there was a fire in our room, which quickly filled with smoke. I woke up feeling like I was choking. We were taken to the hospital and told by the doctors that we never should have survived. They said we both should have died that night.”

“As a result of the smoke inhalation, chest X-rays showed, I had gotten pneumonia very badly. I was barely conscious for those two weeks of our honeymoon and I don’t even remember most of it. We came home after two weeks to a divided church and vicious rumors circulating. The elder who had been living a double life had made appointments with each of our leaders alleging that we had grossly mistreated him after his sin was exposed. He told many of our trusted leaders and members that I, in particular, had refused to forgive him and wouldn’t even speak to him. Given the great mistrust of white people in this community-and seeing as how I was considered white-people readily accepted his story as truth. Within six months, we lost seventy-five percent of our church as a result of these lies. We lost most of our closest friends in this web of deceit, and many of them walked out of our lives with unashamed hatred toward us.”

“My health continued to decline. I found out that I had contacted a medically incurable tropical disease, which caused severe exhaustion and weakness most of the time.”

“By October of 2011, I was so sick that I struggled to live day to day. Living in a poor community in South Africa also meant that pollution was really bad where we lived. My doctor told us that if I continued to live in Soweto, I would likely die within two years.”

“This shook us to the core. After much prayer, however, we felt the Lord was saying that we were to stay and I would be restored.”

“As we neared the end of 2011, a momentum was finally building in the church again. We had been gutted by the countless trials and were still trying to recover, but the process of rebuilding had begun. We thought the church was over…only to find it was yet to come.”

“During these two years full of rejection and hatred and violent slander, there was only one person who stood with me through it all. One person who refused to listen to rumors, who was not afraid to speak the truth to those who lied, the only one who openly stood as a friend in a time when it was very unpopular to be associated with me, the one person I could say was like a sister to me.”

“On December 30, 2011-my thirty-fifth birthday-that one person, my closest friend in South Africa, drowned. And another close friend of ours also drowned trying to save her. Words cannot describe the force of this grief and loss. Loosing her was like loosing ten people. At that time, she was the sum total of true community for me. We spent about three full days driving around the city delivering the horrible news to her family and her closest friends.”

“One week after that, my husband and I were assaulted at gun-point by seven cops for no identifiable reason. It was a terrifying twenty-minute ordeal. I was left wondering, what kind of wilderness I had come to where those threatening my life are the very people I’m supposed to trust?”

“This is merely a “list” of events that we’ve suffered, but the internal turmoil and suffering is incalculable; immeasurable; indescribable. In one of the darkest moments, the Lord drew near. After months of crying out to Him and wondering why He seemed so far away in the darkest moments, He drew near in a way that I could sense and feel. I was reading Isaiah 53: “He was despised and forsaken of men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief, and like one from whom men hide their face He was despised…He poured out Himself to death, and was numbered with the transgressors.”

“In some sense, my God “left” the comfort and glory of Heaven to put Himself on earth in the weakness of human flesh. That, in and of its self is unbelievable. But that wasn’t all. He put Himself on earth, laying aside His privileges of being God (Phil 2) for the sake of saving fallen mankind, the single most selfless act in human history … only to be “despised and forsaken of men,” to become “a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief,” to be numbered with the transgressors. My holy, righteous, omnipresent, omnipotent God who spoke all of creation into being at the sound of His voice was regarded as a transgressor. For the first time in three years, I felt His nearness deeply. I, too, left everything, by coming to South Africa as a brown girl longing to love and to serve. I, too, was to be treated with hatred because of something that I am not, a white oppressor with scores of injustices perpetrated. Though I am far too fallible to be compared with our glorious Savior, I saw His story in mine. I somehow felt a sense of redemptive purpose in the midst of unspeakable suffering.”

“I saw it was the gospel message. Although there are seasons of the Lord’s discipline, I saw that suffering is the inextricable base-color thread woven through the fabric of the gospel. It is the canvas upon which salvation has been painted. Some- how in modern-day Christian circles, we tend to see God’s faithfulness as saving us from suffering. And yes, sometimes, in His great mercy, He does save us from suffering. But that is not the only mark of His faithfulness. We see in Scripture that many of those He loved deeply are also those who suffered greatly.”

“This great moment of nearness with my Father didn’t remove the pain or the unspeakable grief, but it filled it with purpose and redemption. By the end of 2012, my health was steadily improving and my relationship with the Lord is steadily being restored. It has taken months of drawing near to Him but I am now standing on my feet again. Still healing, but definitely standing. I see the fruit of suffering. And I see His story as mine.” Ibid. Pgs. 181-189.

Here’s another example of how all things are working for the good of Frank Peretti, and through him, many other people, too. Frank is the Christian man who was born with Cystic Hygroma. I mentioned him in my first sermon about “The Bullied and Bullies.” By the grace of God, this man went on to become a highly successful novelist whose stories have sold more than nine million copies. He also participates in large conferences at which, concerning the issue of bullying, Frank advises that,

“From the outset, on the very first day of school, the principal should address the entire student body and let them know that teasing, harassment, bullying, and abuse will absolutely not be tolerated-and yes, that would include upperclassman picking on underclassmen. A senior razzing a freshman may seem cute and traditional, but all it really does is divide two human beings who could have been friends and helped each other. It also sets a “tradition” that opens wide the doors of cruelty, that tells the students it’s fun and okay to make someone’s life miserable.”

“Whatever attitude the school leadership displays will trickle down through the student body. If teasing a younger kid is okay, then having no regard for the feelings of others is okay. If the principal and teachers remain aloof and indifferent toward bullying, the kids will remain indifferent and simply watch as it goes on all around them. If the gym teacher is cruel, brutal, and unapproachable, the boys in his gym class will be the same way toward each other, equating brutality with manliness and depriving our world of many more true men.”

“Imagine a school that openly and directly enforces a zero-tolerance, anti-bullying policy, instructing and encouraging kids to call witnesses and to back each other up when a bullying incident occurs. Imagine students being instructed that they are responsible for their fellow human beings and that it is right and noble to get involved when someone is being hurt. Imagine a student being able to attend school knowing that his or her classmates, whether friend or stranger, are there for them if the need should ever arise.”

“If the school leadership, from the outset, establishes a policy of mutual respect at all levels and backs it up with rules, instruction, and procedures, and example, we just might have a safer, more ennobling school environment and a few more compassionate human beings walking our streets after graduation.”

“Please take this matter of bullying seriously. You were a kid once. Would you want your child to suffer the taunts you had to suffer? Have you really forgotten how it felt?”

“Imagine this situation: A loving husband approaches his wife from behind her back, puts his arms around her, and calls her a particular nickname just to be funny. Suddenly, she turns on him, lashes him up one side and down the other, and breaks into tears. When the smoke and shrapnel finally settle and he has prepared an ice pack to put over his black eye, she informs him that she was always called that name in grade school and she hated it, hated it, hated it!”

“Well, okay, he won’t call her that name again, but even so, the incident has smacked them both in the head with one realization: That kind of stuff comes back. When we’ve been hurt, tormented, abused, or teased as children, we still have raw spots that remain into our adulthood. We remember how it feels, and we don’t like it when people in the grown-up-world, such as a friend, a spouse, a traffic cop, or a crabby clerk, treat us the way we were treated years ago. Have you ever had a friend, spouse, or associate throw a little stinger your way? Perhaps they called you a name similar to the one you hated in grade school. Perhaps they called attention to a physical characteristic for which you paid dearly when you were young. Maybe, they made a snide comment about the clothes you were wearing or the way you combed your hair. Part of you feels as if you’re right back in that grade school playground or in that junior-high hallway all over again. That wounded child is still inside you.”

“So think twice, parents, before you shrug off your child’s suffering as something he or she will just have to go through and outgrow. Did you ever, really outgrow it?”

Gigi and Frank’s experiences are just a couple of examples of how, if you are a follower of Jesus, God will never give you a burden which is greater than you can handle. Furthermore, He will always make certain that “All Things Are Working For Your Good.” I can’t help wondering how many people God will bless through you. I do know that the time will come when you will be able to rejoice with each one of them.

Lord willing, next week….