(upbeat music) - Being 828, it seems fitting that we record an episode on suffering in honor of the precious truth that we cling to in Romans 828. It's certainly not hard to find such an email. Thousands of people email us out of the most tragic pain they have ever experienced.

And one of my regrets with this podcast is that we can't reply to every one of those heartbreaking emails that you send to us. I wish we could, but we simply can't. But we can respond to this email from a podcast listener, a very broken woman. "Pastor John, I need your help.

"Tragically back in 2007, I backed over and killed "my 18 month old grandson with a car. "I was devastated. "I remain devastated. "That day changed me. "I was once a children's church director "and a Sunday school teacher. "I don't serve anymore. "13 years later, I can hardly drive without crying.

"The guilt I feel for my grandson is greater "than the guilt I feel for not serving God. "People say I should be happy, he's in a better place. "Or they say God spared him a bad life, "that he knew my grandson was going to go down a bad road.

"But what would you say? "What would make me happy again, serving God again "and at peace without my grandson? "After all these years, Pastor John, can you help me?" - Whether I can be of help after all this time, I think she said 13 years, will depend on whether the Holy Spirit is pleased to take what I say and do the miracle, the ongoing miracle, that in myself I certainly am not able to do.

So my words now that I'm going to speak that I've prayed about, come in the hopes that there will be a touch of God and a miracle wrought through them, which in and of themselves could never happen. Now before I point our friend to three biblical considerations, let me say a word about Romans 8, 28, here on the eighth month and on the 28th day of 2020.

The flow of thought in Romans 8 goes like this. We know that for those who love God and are called according to his purpose, all things work together for good. And then skip a few verses and you read, this is verse 35, "Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?

Shall tribulation or distress or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword," and you could add, "or running over your own grandchild?" "As it is written, for our sake, we are being killed all day long. We are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered." And Paul responds to that litany of horrors that happened to God's people, "No, no, we won't be separated from the love of Christ." And then he adds these words, "In all these things," not instead of, but "In all these things, we are more than conquerors through him who loved us." So it's absolutely crucial whenever we use sight, Romans 8:28, that we realize that verse does not spare us Christians, distress, famine, nakedness, danger, but rather makes us inseparable from Christ in these miseries, in them.

That's the clarification we must always keep before us. Romans 8:28 is not a promise of escape from misery, but a promise of being kept from delusion and unbelief and destruction in it, and that in due time, God works it out for our good. Now, here are three considerations that I would like our hurting friend, still hurting after 13 years, to consider.

Number one, when Jesus broke into Paul's life on the Damascus road, he said, "Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?" Acts 9, 4. Now, at first, Paul had no idea what this meant. Persecuting Jesus, the risen Lord of the universe? I don't even believe you exist. Luke had just said three verses earlier that Paul's persecution involved, quote, "Saul was still breathing threats and murder against the disciples of the Lord." Acts 9, 1.

Two words stand out, murder and still. And Noel and I just read devotions last night, by the way, in Acts 25, I believe, where Paul uses the plural for murders that he had been involved in. I had never noticed that plural before, but here he says he's still, he's still breathing out murder, meaning I was part of Stephen's killing, and I'm still doing the same thing on my way to Damascus.

He was a Christian killer. And on the Damascus road, Jesus told him that he was not merely a Christian killer, he was a Christ killer. You are persecuting me, Jesus. You touch my followers, you touch me. You imprison them, you imprison me. You kill them, you kill me. And it appears from 1 Timothy 1.15 and 1 Corinthians 15.9 that Paul never, never forgot it.

He never stopped feeling the sting, the horror of being a Christian killer and a Christ killer. He did not mean to be a Christ killer, but he did mean to be a Christian killer. And here he is now at the end of his life in 1 Timothy saying that he still feels it.

He feels like the foremost, he calls himself the foremost or the chief of sinners because according to 1 Corinthians 15.9, he persecuted and killed Christians and through them the Lord himself. Now, my point is not that running over your own grandchild is like killing Christians intentionally or killing Christ inadvertently.

My point is this, here's something so horrible in Paul's life, in his background, that he did, he never, never stopped taking it into account. He never got beyond it. He never stopped thinking on it and its implications. It never stopped playing an emotional role in his life. So I'm suggesting that the way forward is not to be sought mainly in forgetting or God forbid, minimizing the horror, but in fact, remembering, owning, finding Paul's supernatural way of living with the grief and the wrong that was done in such a way that it does not paralyze ministry, but mysteriously, painfully, even beautifully deepens it.

Read the context of 1 Timothy 1:15 and meditate on that possibility. That's my first observation. Here's the second one, and it follows from the first. It may be that the Lord is calling you to think of this tragedy and its effect not as a wound to be healed, but as a disability to bear.

Some disabilities are physical. Jacob wrestled with God, God put his hip out of joint, and he walked with a limp for the rest of his life as an unavoidable reminder of his encounter with God. Some disabilities are mental, and some are emotional and spiritual, and it might help if your mindset shifts from getting beyond the pain, beyond the remorse, beyond the horrible, vivid memory, get beyond, it might help if your mindset shifts from getting beyond all that to acknowledging the ongoing presence of the pain, the remorse, the memory, as miraculously transformed from a ministry-paralyzing reality to a ministry-deepening, softening, empowering reality.

Think of the Christ-exalting people you know who have a profound disability. We could all probably think of one or two or three, and perhaps they have it because of this disability that they have. Perhaps they have it because of a mindless accident and by a miracle of sovereign grace, they have transformed that life-ruining disability into a life-giving, power-in-weakness ministry of grace.

That's my second observation, an alteration of mindset. And now finally, the third observation, which follows from that, in a sense, is an extension. Of the first two, surely one of the great hindrances to ministry after such an unspeakable calamity is the deep sense that if I rejoice, or if I delight in some ministry, I will, by that delight, by that joy, treat the death of my grandchild with disrespect.

I will, by that joy, minimize the horror of the deed and the loss to the family. So there hangs over you a sense that you dare not, you dare not return to any form of normalcy lest you make light of what feels infinitely heavy. And here's what I'm suggesting, that minimizing, that minimizing is not gonna happen after 13 years with you, it's not.

The voice of 13 years of sorrow and ministry paralysis is to show you that you have a disability which you never will leave behind. You will never become chipper about it. You'll never become frivolous about it. You'll never become callous about it. You'll never become indifferent to that awful moment and that immeasurable loss.

You won't, you won't. I'm suggesting that the grief and the loss are not a disease that heals, they're an amputation that produces a lifelong limp. You won't ever run the same. And that limp, I am suggesting, is the miraculous capacity to minister to other people with a kind of joy.

Mark that word, a kind of joy. And a kind of hope and a kind of peace that only a person can have who has drunk this bitter cup that you have drunk. It will be unique to you, your particular kind of joy, your hope, your peace. What did Paul mean when he said in 2 Corinthians 6:10 that he carried out his ministry as sorrowful, yet always rejoicing?

Could it be that part of the story that Paul carried with him all the time was the memory that he was a Christ killer? As indeed all of us are in one sense Christ killers. Whatever the sorrow was, and oh, how many reasons Paul had to be sorrowful. Whatever the sorrow was, what matters most is that Paul found a miracle of grace to transform the sorrowful, emotional weight of his past, transform it from a ministry paralyzing memory into a ministry deepening power, even with a kind of joy that was peculiar to this amazing man.

Not a superficial joy, but the kind of joy that only the chief of sinners can have in the grace of God. And that's my prayer for you. - Heavy topic, but no overstatement to say that Christ is relevant for our deepest tragedies. Thank you, Pastor John. And thank you for sending such personal emails into us.

It is no small thing that you are willing to open up your life and share with us the rawest wounds that you endure. I only wish we could answer every heartbreaking email that we get, but I pray that this episode will serve many of you who resonate with the pain.

Well, next up we're gonna ask, is a career in marketing vain? This is the type of question that comes in regularly to us from Christians who work in marketing, but also from those who work in retail clothing and in the fashion world. Does my work matter? Pushing luxury goods to people who don't need them.

It's an honest question, and it's up next time on Monday. I'm Tony Renke, we'll see you on the other side of the weekend. Thank you for listening, and we'll see you then. (upbeat music) (upbeat music)