“If your heart is broken, I assure you God is near”

If you’re like me, you’re ready to think about some good news this morning.

My wife and I, like so many others, have been living in grief since the news broke last Friday of the floods in Central Texas and the devastating loss of life. As of this morning, at least 111 have died; according to Gov. Greg Abbott, another 161 remain missing in Kerr County, including five campers and a counselor from Camp Mystic.

But in the midst of unspeakable tragedy, stories of survival and hope are emerging as well.

A family of thirty-three and a woman and her two dogs are among the survivors of one of the deadliest flood disasters in Texas history. Rev. Jasiel Hernandez Garcia, who was in charge of receiving survivors from Camp Mystic at the reunification center, witnessed children “being offloaded from the bus, missing shoes, having dirt all over them, being hungry, seeing their parents from a distance and their weeping out of joy.”

In addition, many who are grieving their losses are using their platform of suffering to share their hope in Christ with the world. Tavia Hunt, wife of Kansas City Chiefs CEO Clark Hunt, posted that their family lost a young cousin. She nonetheless wrote:

If your heart is broken, I assure you God is near, he is gentle with your wounds. And he is still worthy, even when your soul is struggling to believe it. Trust doesn’t mean you’re over the pain; it means you’re handing it to the only One who can hold it with love and restore what was lost. For we do not grieve as those without hope.

It was my privilege to be their family’s pastor for many years. Knowing them as I do, I am not surprised that they are using this tragedy to encourage others to trust in their Lord.

A new path for Palestinians?

Now let’s turn to other good news from a part of the world where it is often in short supply.

President Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had dinner at the White House Monday night and met again yesterday afternoon. Mr. Netanyahu met with House Speaker Mike Johnson yesterday and will meet with a bipartisan group of senators this afternoon. All of this to discuss the monumental changes in the Middle East that have occurred in recent weeks.

Among them is news that a group of leading Palestinian sheiks have signed a letter pledging peace and full recognition of Israel as a Jewish state. Their plan is for their city of Hebron, the West Bank’s largest city located south of Jerusalem, to break out of the Palestinian Authority (PA), establish an emirate of its own, and join the Abraham Accords.

The sheiks note the terrible exploitation of their people by their leaders (PA President Mahmoud Abbas is personally worth $100 million) and are seeking a new way forward that would guarantee the security of Israel and the Palestinians.

This could perhaps pave the way for normalizing relations between Israel and Saudi Arabia, which could lead other Arab nations to join the alliance and bring peace to the region.

If Christians must account for evil

Whatever comes of this possibility, it at least points to a fact relevant to the tragedies of recent days: If Christians must account for evil, skeptics must account for good.

When people use innocent suffering to claim that God cannot be all-knowing, all-powerful, and all-loving, they must then explain the altruistic, sacrificial good (apart from God) to be found in so many places, even in the midst of suffering. Evolutionary theories cannot account for the hundreds of volunteers who are risking so much to search for survivors and victims of the floods, or the financial and prayerful support being marshalled across the country.

For every good in the world, we can ask why there is evil; for every evil in the world, we can ask why there is good.

So, here’s a better approach: rather than interpreting the character of God by the circumstances of our broken world, let’s interpret our circumstances through the prism of his character.

“Though the fig should not blossom”

Habakkuk said to God, “You who are of purer eyes than to see evil and cannot look at wrong, why do you idly look at traitors and remain silent when the wicked swallows up the man more righteous than he?” (Habakkuk 1:13). And yet he closes his book:

Though the fig tree should not blossom, nor fruit be on the vines, the produce of the olive fail and the fields yield no food, the flock be cut off from the fold and there be no herd in the stalls, yet I will rejoice in the Lᴏʀᴅ; I will take joy in the God of my salvation. Gᴏᴅ, the Lord, is my strength (Habakkuk 3:17–19).

Paul pleaded three times with the Lord to remove his “thorn” in the flesh (2 Corinthians 12:7–8) before learning that God’s “power is made perfect in weakness” and trusting his pain to his Father’s providence (v. 9).

Jesus cried from the cross, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Matthew 27:46) before praying as he died, “Father, into your hands I commit my spirit!” (Luke 23:46).

They each chose “to know and to believe the love that God has for us” (1 John 4:16). “To know” in the Greek means to understand intellectually; “to believe” means to trust fully and personally. I can know that my surgeon is eminently qualified to operate on my back; it is only when I trust myself to his skill that I experience it for myself.

When faith “receives the impossible”

This is why Tavia Hunt is so right in encouraging us to give our pain to “the only One who can hold it with love and restore what was lost.”

Corrie ten Boom, who lost her parents to the Nazis and had to watch her sister starve to death in their Holocaust camp, nonetheless testified,

“Faith sees the invisible, believes the unbelievable, and receives the impossible.”

Will you take your next step into such faith today?

Quote for the day:

“Little faith will bring your soul to heaven; great faith will bring heaven to your soul.” —Charles Spurgeon

Our latest website resources:

• Why does God allow disasters like the Texas Hill Country floods?
• How do the arts and sciences reveal the genius of God?
• Why Michael Madsen’s death gave me pause: A reflection on simplification in life and preparation for eternity
• “Alligator Alcatraz” and the power of deterrence
• Abraham Lincoln and Ronald Reagan explain the uniqueness of America

Denison Forum

Shortly after I published yesterday’s Daily Article, Camp Mystic confirmed that at least twenty-seven campers and counselors were killed in flash floods last Friday, with ten children and one counselor still missing. As of this morning, the death toll across the area has now climbed to at least 104 people. The massive search continues for survivors and victims.

We are continuing to see tragic stories of those lost, such as Chloe Childress, a recent high school graduate who was set to attend the University of Texas at Austin this fall. She was co-president of her school’s honor council, ran varsity cross country, and founded a club devoted to helping senior citizens. Her death is a devastating loss to all who knew her and to the world she would have served so well.

In other heartbreaking news, the bodies of two sisters from Dallas, ages thirteen and eleven, were found fifteen miles from where their cabin was swept into the river. Their hands were locked together. They are just two of so many stories so grievous that our minds and hearts feel overwhelmed with unspeakable sorrow.

At the same time, heroic stories are emerging as well.

• Emma Foltz of Alexandria, Louisiana, has been a counselor at Camp Mystic for three years and helped evacuate fourteen of her campers to safety.
• Jonathan McComb, who lost his wife and children in a 2015 flood in Wimberly, Texas, is one of hundreds of volunteers helping search for victims.
• Petty Officer Scott Ruskan, a Coast Guard swimmer, rescued 165 people at Camp Mystic.

So, here’s the question: If they did all they could do to rescue victims, why didn’t our omnipotent God do all his power enables him to do to prevent this tragedy from happening?

“Deceive yourself no longer”

The Bible says of our Lord, “You make springs gush forth in the valleys; they flow between the hills” (Psalm 104:10). Not only does God make the waters, but he can still control them today. The Savior who calmed the stormy Sea of Galilee could have done the same on the Guadalupe River last Friday (Mark 4:39).

Christians believe our Father to be all-loving, all-knowing, and all-powerful. When tragedy strikes, we need ways to trust him when we don’t understand his ways.

Here’s what we must not do: we must not settle for easy answers to innocent suffering. They are not only the wrong answers—they are the opposite of the hope we need today.

Secularists who consider faith in God irrelevant or outdated will obviously dismiss the question. Others will reject Christianity or deny God’s omniscience or his omnipotence.

However, in the face of tragedy, most of us do not question God’s existence, knowledge, or power, so we are left to question his love.

We love people enough to do all we can to help them, especially at times like this. If God does not follow suit, it must be because he does not love them enough to do so—or so we fear. We would never say this out loud, but it is the whispered doubt at the back of our grieving hearts.

I have often quoted C. S. Lewis’s response to the death of his wife from cancer:

Not that I am (I think) in much danger of ceasing to believe in God. The real danger is of coming to believe such dreadful things about him. The conclusion I dread is not “So there’s no God after all,” but “So this is what God’s really like. Deceive yourself no longer.”

Three pathways to faith

If we deny God’s love, power, or knowledge, we “solve” our problem by creating a greater problem. Rather than settling for easy answers that offer no hope, let’s consider three pathways to faith today.

The first is rational:

• If God is the Supreme Being (cf. Revelation 4:8), circumstances cannot make him less or more than he is; in either case, he would no longer be unchangingly supreme (Malachi 3:6). Therefore, nothing that happened last Friday can make him any less the omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent King of the universe.
• If we are finite and fallen, our minds by definition cannot understand his mind and ways (Isaiah 55:8–9).
• Because he is all-loving, all-knowing, and all-powerful, his character requires him to redeem all he allows (cf. Romans 8:28). We may never understand such redemption on this side of eternity, but one day we will “fully know” what we only know in part today (1 Corinthians 13:12).
• If we allow the question of innocent suffering to drive us from God, we turn from the Source we need when we need him most. The greater our pain, the more we need our Great Physician.

The second is practical: The Bible does not always tell us all we want to know, but it does tell us what we need to know. For those who are suffering, understanding why last Friday’s tragedy occurred may be less relevant than responding to it in practical ways. By praying for them and helping financially and in other ways, we become an instrument of the grace they need. And the more we serve God, the closer we draw to him and find the hope and help of his Spirit.

The third is intuitive: All relationships require a commitment that transcends the evidence and becomes self-validating. If we choose to believe that God is who we hope him to be and trust him with our questions, doubts, and pain, we experience his presence in such a transforming way that “the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus” (Philippians 4:7).

(For more, please see the podcast I recorded yesterday with Dr. Mark Turman, “Why does God allow disasters like the Texas Hill Country floods?”)

“Beauty for brokenness, hope for despair”

Let’s close with this: Many of you have your own stories of unexplained suffering, as do I. If you have chosen to continue believing in the God who believes in you, you can now “comfort those who are in any affliction, with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God” (2 Corinthians 1:4).

If you live where the floods have devastated so many, you know your mission field. If you do not, you nonetheless know someone who needs the sustaining grace you have experienced. You can now be the hands and feet of Jesus in the broken world he died to save.

The British songwriter Graham Kendrick prayed:

Beauty for brokenness
Hope for despair
Lord, in your suffering world
This is our prayer
Bread for the children
Justice, joy, peace
Sunrise to sunset
Your kingdom increase!

Will you help answer his prayer today?

Quote for the day:

“Peace isn’t a place to arrive at but a person to abide in.” —Ann Voskamp

Our latest website resources:

• Why does God allow disasters like the Texas Hill Country floods?
• Why Michael Madsen’s death gave me pause: A reflection on simplification in life and preparation for eternity
• “Alligator Alcatraz” and the power of deterrence
• Abraham Lincoln and Ronald Reagan explain the uniqueness of America
• One thing church members have never asked me to do

Denison Forum

My family and I visited Alcatraz Island off the California coast a number of years ago while on vacation. One of the reasons the prison there was considered impervious to escape was that the guards told inmates that the waters surrounding the island were filled with man-eating sharks. (This turns out not to be true, but that’s another story.)

Here we find an example of the purported power of deterrence.

Another is “Alligator Alcatraz,” the immigration detention center built on an airstrip in the Florida Everglades. The center opened this week and was toured by President Trump. The $450 million, one-thousand-bed facility of trailers and tents is the largest of its kind.

Surrounded by the wetlands of the Big Cypress National Preserve next to Everglades National Park, the facility is almost dead center between the east and west coasts of Florida. The Trump administration sees the surrounding wildlife, including alligators and pythons, as a natural barrier stopping migrants from being able to escape.

The nearly twenty-five-thousand-acre site is not pristine wetlands—it’s a one-runway airplane facility called the Dade-Collier Training and Transition Airport. Environmentalists nonetheless oppose the project because of alleged impacts on wildlife such as the endangered Florida panther. Immigration advocates and Democrats similarly oppose Alligator Alcatraz because they claim it is deliberately cruel to detainees.

When deterrence doesn’t work

Deterrence is just one way societies attempt to prevent crime and respond to criminals. The others:

• Retribution: repaying a person’s bad deeds in kind
• Incapacitation: incarcerating them
• Rehabilitation: helping them to change.

Criminologists say deterrence is ineffective because most people don’t expect to be caught if they break the law, and don’t know what their punishment will be if they are caught. This, however, would not seem to be a problem with Alligator Alcatraz—the detainees are already “caught” and know the punishment, in the form of alligators and snakes, if they try to escape.

The swamp around the center would seem to function like a moat around a castle, but in reverse—rather than keeping people out, it is intended to keep people in.

Whatever comes of the Florida detention center, we can focus on a spiritual principle that transcends this debate and applies to all of us, all of the time.

Termites of the soul

The Bible emphatically teaches that “all wrongdoing is sin” (1 John 5:17) and that “sin when it is fully grown brings forth death.” (James 1:15) As Paul famously warned, “The wages of sin is death.” (Romans 6:23) If a lost person does not repent of their sin and turn to Christ as Savior, this death becomes eternal. (Revelation 20:15)

Like alligators and snakes we do not see until they attack, the consequences of sin are unseen until they manifest themselves in our lives. They are like termites that crawl into houses from the soil and damage them from within. By the time their presence is visible, the consequences are devastating.

Or consider cancer as another analogy: it always starts small and grows, eventually manifesting as tumors and otherwise disrupting our bodies. By that time, the disease is already far progressed.

This is why the old maxim bears repeating: Sin will always take you further than you wanted to go, keep you longer than you wanted to stay, and cost you more than you wanted to pay.

However, convincing a secularized culture that there are alligators and snakes waiting for their next sin is a tall order. Many do not believe “sin” exists to begin with. Others believe the lie that its consequences will not apply to them until they do. And then it is often too late to avoid the pain they inevitably bring.

Sinners in the hands of an angry God?

There was a day when preachers could warn sinners of their sins and gain a hearing. “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God” was one of the most powerful and persuasive sermons of the colonial era, in large part because Jonathan Edwards’ hearers believed both in sins and in an angry God who would punish them.

Today, such talk is dismissed as outdated, irrelevant, judgmental, and even dangerous to our “post-truth” culture.

How then are Bible-believing Christians to help our broken society avoid the swamps that surround our souls?

Paul taught, “The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned.” (1 Corinthians 2:14) Making things worse, “the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers, to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God.” (2 Corinthians 4:4)

This is why “we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.” (Ephesians 6:12) Consequently, “praying at all times in the Spirit” is vital. (v. 18, my emphasis) “In the Spirit” means “in connection with the Spirit” or under his leading.

He knows the spiritual condition of the person for whom we are praying far better than we can. He knows what they need to hear, see, feel, and experience to be led from the deception of sin to the joy of salvation. He is already working on their hearts right now, convicting them of sin and seeking to draw them to Christ. (cf. John 16:8)

No greater gift we can give

Our job is to pray for them as the Spirit leads us, then be ready to answer our prayers as he leads.

We are not on trial, seeking to win a verdict for ourselves. Rather, Jesus is on trial, and we are called by the Spirit to the witness stand to testify as he directs us. He alone can win the trial and the soul of the “jury.”

Our job is to be faithful and obedient.

So, let me ask you to pray right now by name for someone who, to your knowledge, is spiritually lost. Pray for the Spirit to lead your prayers, then intercede as you sense his direction. Ask him to use you to answer your prayers in any way he wishes.

And stay ready to be used.

You and I cannot give our lost friends a greater gift than to pray and work for their eternal salvation.

If they only knew the spiritual alligators and snakes threatening their souls, wouldn’t they agree?

Denison Forum