Where Was God When – Blog Tour
This Post is a Part of the Where Was God When Blog Tour
Mike Calhoun and Ric Garland have put together an essential book for your ministry: Where Was God When. This book is developed from messages they spoke concerning tough times in life. When stuff goes wrong, our immediate reaction is often, “Where was God when that happened?” There’s no easy answer and no cliché will heal the hurt. But the pages of this book attempt to answer these questions by pointing students to the character of God Himself.
Take for instance this story:
I was only twenty years old when I watched the love of my life slip away. Josh was twenty-three. He loved God. We were engaged and deeply in love. He wanted to marry me and then we planned to serve God in youth ministry.
So why would God allow Josh to be diagnosed with such a rare form of leukemia that even the best hospitals had no treatment for the cancer? I watched as Josh lived through chemo treatments and was so sick he couldn’t even talk to me.
We had hundreds and even thousands of people praying for Josh’s healing. I thought for sure God would let him live, but God didn’t answer our prayers for healing. I sat with Josh for the last ten days of his life and watched the cancer literally eat away at him. Was this my Josh? Was this person laying in this hospital bed the same guy who loved me and with whom I had planned on serving God? Why would God let His faithful young follower suffer in such a way?
It’s difficult to imagine the place that this young girl was in. When I was a kid, my little brother began having violent seizures. No one knew why. For several weeks, I lived with my grandparents while my brother and parents went to the Mayo Clinic. Even there, the doctors were at a loss. But, thankfully the Lord spared my brother and in a few years, he grew out of the seizures. That was a tough situation and my brother lived. What if he had not lived? I can’t imagine.
I cannot say I’ve been through many great sufferings or have any great wisdom in this area. But what I do know is that God is the same no matter what. He is a God of love, a God of mercy, a God of justice, a God of good…. All that stays the same no matter what the experience. While sometimes it might be difficult to put my mind around that, I can trust that it’s true.
So when it comes down to it, that’s what it’s all about…. trust. It’s the same thing that lead us to God in the first place: trust. Trust that He is who He says He is no matter what the circumstances. That’s what is great about this book. They don’t offer cute stories or pretend they have all the answers. But they do always point you back to God and who He is. That’s the only thing any of us has anyway: whether things seem good or bad. Without the grace of God, we’re all doomed to hell.
No matter whether the sun is shining down on me or the road is marked with suffering, all I can do is bless the Lord. (Blessed Be Your Name – Matt Redman)
