Grace Thoughts

Intro Narrator: Hello friends, welcome to Grace Thoughts, the radio ministry of Grace Connection Church with Pastor Tim Kelley. Grace Thoughts has been dedicated to preaching the clear gospel of grace for over 20 years. Here is Pastor Kelley.

Tim Kelley: This is where it gets really personal with me, because I have the best illustrations that mean something to me. So I want to bring you into my journey through the sovereignty of God and how I've learned to think with God through these different places in my life. This was from the year 2001, August 20. My wife, the week before that, was diagnosed with a tumor in her right kidney. She was very upset; we were both very upset. We told no one. We had small children. Hannah was eight or nine at that point.

I preached on a Wednesday night service. Some of you were there, but you didn't know what was happening yet. As I was going back to the back office, my wife fell into my arms and just said, "I just feel death all around me. I feel like..." and she was crying. So we held each other and I prayed the wimpiest prayer of my life. Actually, probably when I pray for food when I'm hungry is the wimpiest prayer of my life, because that's really quick. But this was like, "God, I know you don't have the spirit of fear. I know fear is not of you. If you're going to take my wife, I know you'll give her grace and you'll give me grace. But God, we just don't want the spirit of fear. So please deliver us from anything demonic. Thank you for hearing our prayer. Amen." It was probably that long.

She looked at me and said, "It's gone." I said, "What's gone?" She said, "I felt it come off me." I asked, "What came off you? The tumor?" She said, "No, I don't know what it was. It just... I felt it leave." I said, "Really? What's that mean?" She said, "I don't know what it means." I asked, "Why are you asking me? It happened to you. What do you mean you don't know?" She said, "I don't know what that means."

And so that was on a Wednesday night. Now we go through Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, full with peace, filled with joy beyond anything we'd ever imagined before or since in our life. And then we go get a CAT scan that Monday to check out... they wanted to check the whole cavity. Here's the bottom line of the CAT scan: "Unremarkable CT scan of the abdomen, specifically no renal mass is identified at all." I put "at all" on there. There's a lot of other language there that I don't understand and I'm not going to try to make you understand it, because I don't understand it. But that's what it says: "Specifically, no renal mass is identified." In other words, what was there a week before and they were looking for wasn't there. They couldn't find it. It disappeared. The symptoms that brought us to the doctors in the first place disappeared the same time, which was a recurring symptom for months up into that point.

That was at noon time on that day. At 3:00 PM on that day, my mother-in-law, I called her Mom... I lost my mom when I was 20, so I called her Mom, Peg's mom. She called on the phone and she said, "The cancer is back." She was battling cancer. We thought she might be getting the upper hand on it. The next week... this was on a Tuesday... that Wednesday, the following day, I met her in my office before church, one week later after I prayed over my wife. But now I was so full of faith. I was full of fear before. Now I was full of faith. I prayed over Mom. I prayed for God's healing for her.

The glory of God descended probably as much as any time in my Christian life. The presence of God filled my office back then, and I sensed this incredible strength and this incredible power, and that God heard our prayer. She passed away December 11. She passed away; she never got healed. Why did my wife get healed and why didn't her mom? When I prayed for my wife, I didn't even pray for healing. I prayed for no fear and she was healed. When I prayed for Mom, it was a whopper. God was present everywhere, and God took her home.

Hannah Grace. How did that happen? Pardon the rawness of it. Somebody made a choice. They made a choice, it's a bad choice. We know that; he knows that. And because of that, that gun went off and it struck my daughter. We went to the hospital. There were hundreds of people that were in the hospital when we arrived or came shortly thereafter. For the next week, as she lingered between life and death, there was this room at Bayfront where people were there 24/7. They never left our side. We'd go in, people would be sleeping, and every half hour they'd wake up and pray for my daughter. Every throughout the day, there'd sometimes be 100, 130 people, 30 people, 50 people, whatever it was, but for seven days they never left our side.

Cheryl Peneau looked at me and said, "I won't eat until we know what's going to happen, until she either leaves here or is taken home." She fasted the whole week. Story after story like that. In Uganda, they were praying for my daughter. Chuck Smith prayed two times over national radio with how many millions of listeners. Rick Warren calls the office praying for our daughter. Tiffany started a Facebook page. It went from "Prayers for Hannah Grace"... it's still up and running today because you can't change the name on it. She started it on a Monday and by Wednesday, 5,000 people were following. There's still 4,300 that go there, praying for my daughter.

It wasn't a lack of faith that took her home. There was more faith than I've ever seen. I had people in our church, some here this morning, who said, "I know, I just sense this power that God's going to bring her back." I'm not saying that they didn't sense that power. They just didn't know the sovereign will of God, that's all. Passionate, fervent, repetitive, focused, full of faith prayer... and God took her home. You hear other stories where so many other things happened and they were spared. The things that took my daughter home were so intricate. The police and the attorney said they've never seen anything like it. Every part of what happened was unique, weird, like they've never seen anything like it, quote-unquote.

And God allowed her to go home. I'm not saying it was God's will. Don't make that mistake, because I made that mistake. I misspoke early on because I was in shock. Evil is never God's will, but evil is permitted. I am not calling anyone evil. I'm not calling a person evil. Someone who goes into a school and shoots innocent children, that's evil. That's an evil person. That's not the case here. But evil takes place because evil is present in the world, because the world has been... the world is fallen because of the free volition of Adam and Eve. We live in a fallen world, so evil takes place. The unintentionalness of the things of God... God didn't want my daughter necessarily to go home at 20 years old. Do I understand how that all works? No. He could have bumped her out of the way. He could have bumped the hand. He could have done a bunch of different things that easily and randomly could have made a much different result take place. He chose not to do that. He's the captain of that ship that's going across the ocean.

So how do you process this in closing? You have your stories. There are people that I see and people in the first service that have lost children. Some of you grew up in homes with abusive parents. Some of you grew up without parents. Some of you have been traumatized by events that happened. Some of you have been forsaken in relationships. You've said goodbye to loved ones before their time. Normally, we expect to say goodbye to folks in the course of our life, but before their time. Or maybe it's, "How come no one wants me? How come I never have Prince Charming or Princess Charming coming into my life? Am I destined to loneliness the rest of my life? God, how come? Am I different? Am I wrong? Why doesn't anyone find me becoming or lovely or attractive? Why, God? I don't understand why it's so simple. Just give me that little purple pill."

We have these questions and they're real questions, and they're true questions, and they're not wrong to ask them, believe me. I've asked plenty. This is what we do: we drink that sovereignty smoothie. Because inside that sovereignty smoothie is the goodness of God, the love of God, the mercy of God, the kindness of God, the power of God, the wisdom of God, the transcendence of God, the immanence of God. All those attributes of God are right inside that smoothie. We put them inside there and we blend it all together and we drink, and we understand the sovereignty of God cannot be separate out from those other attributes.

Do I see the love of God? Not necessarily. But is God love? Yes. Do I see the goodness of God? Not in my situation. I don't see it. But does that mean God is not good? No, God is still good. He's part of the smoothie. I don't see the power of God. Could he have intervened in a different way? Does that mean somehow God lacked power in my particular situation? No, God was all-powerful. In other words, what my circumstances are can't redefine who God is. What has happened in my life cannot dictate to me how I will think about God. God is good whether I have my children or not. God is good whether it goes right for me or not. God is still good.

Norman Geisler says this: "There is a difference between knowing the purposes for evil and God having purpose for it." So when I go through great loss or I go through great confusion or I go through great amazement of why things have happened in my life this way, I do my best to filter my thoughts through his true attributes, not just one of them or two of them or three of them, but his true attributes. I don't take bad events and say, "This must be something I'm doing wrong. This must be punishment." No. This is part of the sovereignty of God where God, the ruler of the universe, who's absolutely free to choose, who knows no evil, who loves me with perfect love and wants my highest good, who's perfectly good, who's perfectly merciful, who's perfectly kind, who's perfectly just, who's perfectly righteous, who's perfectly transcendent, who lacks nothing at all... that God has allowed these things to happen to me for something that I do not have the answer for and probably never will have the answer for.

Does that mean it gets easier? No. He made us human. He made us long for relationship. He made us love people that we love. It doesn't mean it gets easier. But I learn how to process it, maybe a little bit more. When we look at the sovereignty of God detached from the rest of his attributes, we will doubt the rest of his attributes. If I look at what happens to me and I filter God through the events of my life, then I will redefine who God is. What happens to me does not change God at all. He is all that he ever said that he was. Do I like his plan? Sometimes. Of late, not so much. Will I embrace his plan and put on a plastic smile and say, "I'm just happy"? No.

But will I think with God? "God, I don't know. I don't know. I don't know why you did this. I don't know why you couldn't intervene. I don't know." But to quote Hebrews 10:35 and 36: "Do not cast away this confident trust you have in me, knowing the great reward that it'll bring you. Patience and endurance is what you need now, so you continue to do my will, and then you'll receive all that I promised." Use this sovereignty smoothie as your filter when life happens, and it will. Not to the degree maybe it's happened to me or others, but it'll happen. There'll be loss, there'll be grief, there'll be heartache, there'll be confusion, unanswered questions. You may even take some time and shake your fist at God because you're just so angry. But when you stop shaking your fist... "Okay, God, this is who you are. Your Bible tells me so, and this is how I'm going to think." God, despite our pain, will be greatly glorified through our life.