Suffering & God's Response
Pt. 3 Why Am I Suffering?
By Louie Marsh, 3-23-2025
Last slide – Don't know what he died of.
1) God ALLOWS us to experience the consequences of Free Will.
"15And if it is evil in your eyes to serve the Lord, choose this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your fathers served in the region beyond the River, or the gods of the Amorites in whose land you dwell. But as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord."" (Joshua 24:15, ESV)
2) Why doesn't God DESTROY evil & suffering?
· The Argument Against God.
¨ If a good, eternal and all-powerful God exists, He could annihilate evil at will, and thus end all pain and suffering.
¨ A Being who had the power to do this, is cruel and unjust not to exercise this power and thus end all evil and its consequences.
¨ Theism (the belief in one God – Christianity is Theistic) affirms the all-powerful, loving God we have just described; Who never the less does not annihilate evil.
¨ Therefore: He is cruel and unjust, or He does not exist!
· What's Wrong with the Argument?
¨ It places a restriction on the nature of God, something you can NEVER do!
"35all the inhabitants of the earth are accounted as nothing, and he does according to his will among the host of heaven and among the inhabitants of the earth; and none can stay his hand or say to him, "What have you done?"" (Daniel 4:35, ESV)
¨ It presupposes that our reasoning processes are equal or superior to God's, and that our solution must be the right one!
"My thoughts are completely different from yours," says the Lord. "And my ways are far beyond anything you could imagine. For just as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts higher than your thoughts. Isaiah 55:8-9 (NLT)
¨ It doesn't work when you try and apply it practically.
Tell Dr. Walter Martin Story of being on the radio with an atheist challenging him to do this as a philosophical experiment.
3) How Then Should I Respond to Suffering?
· I need to ACCEPT that suffering will happen to me and mine.
18 "If the world hates you, know that it has hated me before it hated you. 19 If you were of the world, the world would love you as its own; but because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you. John 15:18-19 (ESV)
· I need to REMEMBER that God is active in my suffering.
20 As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good, to bring it about that many people should be kept alive, as they are today. Genesis 50:20 (ESV)
· I need to EMBRACE suffering as part of my spiritual growth.
8 Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ …10 that I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, Philippians 3:8, 10 (ESV)
