Greetings from the Arctic tundra known as Dallas, Texas.

A major winter storm brought rain, freezing rain, ice, and snow to the middle section of the US yesterday. More than one hundred million people in twenty-five states have been under winter weather alerts. Thousands of flights have been canceled, schools and businesses are closed, and officials are urging us to stay off roads. I am writing this article inside a house covered in snow surrounded by roads covered in ice.

In my current circumstances, I found this story interesting: a homeowner in Connecticut accidentally set their house ablaze while trying to thaw their property with a flamethrower. The owner was attempting to melt ice and snow and “accidentally ignited” the side of the home, according to fire officials. Firefighters were able to extinguish the flames and save the house.

Let’s consider this story as a cultural metaphor.

Why trust God when trusting God doesn’t seem to help?

The social scientist Julian Rappaport defined “empowerment” as “the mechanism by which people, organizations, and communities gain mastery over their lives.” It is empowering to take proactive steps in dealing with a threat.

For example, the leader of the Islamic State was killed yesterday in Syria. He blew himself up along with members of his family as US special operations forces targeted his location. This news comes as evidence of a resurgence of ISIS in Syria and Iraq grows by the day. (For more, see “Should we fear radical Islam?”)

By contrast, when we face challenges for which we can find no solutions or take no apparent action, we feel impotent and frustrated. Like the Connecticut flamethrowing homeowner, we might take steps to solve the problem that only make it worse. Or we might retreat from the “storms” we face and abandon the struggle.

We are all facing such storms, from the ongoing pandemic to geopolitical threats to chasmic political divisions to ever more aggressive immorality. When you’re “stuck inside” as I am today, how is biblical hope relevant? If you’ve prayed for God to change your circumstances but your circumstances do not seem to change, what difference did praying make? If you feel trapped by your world, why should you keep trusting the God who made your world?

If my car broke down constantly, I wouldn’t keep buying cars from that manufacturer. If a restaurant’s food repeatedly gave me food poisoning, I wouldn’t keep eating in that restaurant. If my doctor’s advice and prescriptions were not helping my condition, I wouldn’t keep going back to that doctor.

It’s not surprising when skeptics ask, “Why trust God when trusting God doesn’t seem to help?” It’s only human for Christians to ask the same question.

Let’s consider two biblical responses.

One: Ask and keep on asking

For the first several years of my Christian life, I thought doubts were sins. I believed that if I had enough faith, I wouldn’t have faith questions. Then I found Jesus’ cry from the cross, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Matthew 27:46). I realized that if the sinless Son of God could ask hard questions, so could I.

I was also encouraged by God’s invitation in Isaiah 1:18: “Come now, let us reason together, says the Lᴏʀᴅ.” I learned that the Hebrew can be translated literally, “Come now, let us argue it out.” Asking hard faith questions is not just not sinful—it is encouraged by God.

So, let’s begin by defining our problem and asking our questions as specifically as possible. Name your suffering, disappointment, fear, guilt, or discouragement. Ask God to heal your pain, respond to your problem, or encourage your mind and heart.

Then take Jesus at his word: “Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and [the door] will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and the one who seeks finds, and to the one who knocks it will be opened” (Matthew 7:7–8, my emphasis).

But know this: Jesus’ invitation in the original Greek should be translated, “Ask and keep on asking . . . seek and keep on seeking . . . knock and keep on knocking.” Persist in prayer, not because your prayers change God but because they position you to be changed by his Spirit. They connect you to his presence and power. And they submit your spirit to his Spirit as he works in your life and circumstances according to his perfect will (Romans 12:2).

I believe many “unanswered” prayers were actually prayers we stopped praying before they could be answered. It is always too soon to give up on God.

Two: Be willing to do whatever God says in response

The New York Times reports that nasal vaccines may be the best way to prevent coronavirus infections long term because “they provide protection exactly where it is needed to fend off the virus: the mucosal linings of the airways, where the coronavirus first lands.” However, such vaccines will obviously need to be used to be effective.

We are often the answer to our prayers. If we are praying for spiritual awakening in our immoral culture, we should ask for that awakening to begin with us (2 Chronicles 7:13–14). If we are praying for God’s protection for the homeless in winter, we should ask him how we can help meet their needs (Matthew 25:35–36). If we are praying for reconciliation in a relationship, we should ask how we can take the first step (Matthew 18:15).

A skeptic once asked God, “Why don’t you do more about the suffering in your world?” 

God replied, “I was just about to ask you the same question.”

I believe many “unanswered” prayers were answered by God in ways that required our obedience in response. However, God cannot give what we will not receive or lead where we will not follow.

My decades of “wrestling with God”

I do not mean to suggest that these two factors explain all our apparently unanswered prayers or answer all our faith questions. I still do not understand my father’s early death or have complete explanations for much of the suffering of our fallen world.

But after decades of “wrestling with God” (cf. Genesis 32:22–32), I have learned that if I will “ask and keep on asking” from a heart that is willing to do whatever my Father asks and go wherever he leads, I often experience his presence, power, and peace in ways that respond to and even transcend my questions and struggles.

Biblical scholar William Barclay observed, “If a man fights his way through his doubts to the conviction that Jesus Christ is Lord, he has attained to a certainty that the man who unthinkingly accepts things can never reach.”

Why do you need such certainty today?

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Dr. Tony Evans, senior pastor of Oak Cliff Bible Fellowship in Dallas, and his family went through a terrible ordeal. Over a period of two years, they experienced one tragedy after another.

His thirty-eight-year-old niece died unexpectedly. He also lost his brother, sister, brother-in-law, father, and wife. Finally, one of his daughters had part of a lung removed because of cancer, and the world went into lockdown because of the coronavirus pandemic.

But out of that dark time emerged a book full of spiritual lessons and practical advice Divine Disruption: Holding on to Faith When Life Breaks Your Heart.

Evans, who has written more than one hundred books, booklets, and Bible studies, collaborated with his children on Divine Disruption. All four of them—Chrystal Evans Hurst, Priscilla Shirer, Anthony Evans, and Jonathan Evans—work in ministry, and they took turns with their father in narrating the book.

“We have all been through hard seasons, times in life when it seems like the hits keep coming and you can barely catch your breath,” Priscilla wrote. “Sometimes we look at Christians in the spotlight of public ministry and think they have some secret measure of faith, like they’ve figured out how to stay above the struggles of life. But no one is above them.”

The death of her cousin Wynter Pitts, a wife and mother of four girls, because of a heart-related ailment in July 2018 came as a shock. (Note: Wynter’s husband, Jonathan Pitts, shares more in his podcast, The Journey with Jonathan Pitts).

The Evans family shared their grief with their church at its Wednesday night service.

Jonathan Evans asked, “Dad, how do you keep going?”

“Because I believe what I preach,” he responded. “Where would I be in a situation like this without an anchor? I believe Wynter is in a better place. I believe in the sovereignty and goodness of God. And because I believe, I keep going.”

“The Bible is full of questions, people asking why,” he explained in Divine Disruption. “Why do the righteous suffer? That’s the theme of the entire book of Job. How do I make sense of this? How could this happen? Why?

“I cannot answer that. Deuteronomy 29:29 says God has secret things, that He does not have to answer our every question. That is His prerogative. But I would tell Wynter’s children this: Your mother loved the Lord. And the Lord loved your mother. So, in some way beyond our understanding, He determined it was her time. I don’t like it, and you don’t like it. We pray, Let this cup pass from me. But we have to believe that God knows what He is doing when He’s not doing what we want Him to do.”

Dr. Evans also believes that it is OK to be angry.

“We can be angry but still respectful,” he wrote. “It’s okay to feel the pain of God disappointing us. God already knows how we feel. Hiding it doesn’t help. We can take our anger to Him.”

But an even greater test awaited. In March 2019, he had to tell his children that his wife, Lois, had been diagnosed with terminal cancer.

“We are still believing God for healing,” he said. “But medically, there’s nothing they can do.”

Everyone in the room was crying—except Lois. She asked everyone to gather around her.

“You do know what this is, don’t you?” she asked. “It’s called spiritual warfare. So much death and sickness has attacked our family lately.”

She urged her family to continue to serve God during her illness. “If you’re called to preach, you will preach,” she said. “If you’re called to write, you will write. If you’re called to sing, you will sing. Now, I have every expectation that you will love and care and pray for me and be there when I need you. But God has an expectation too.”

Jonathan asked her, “Mom, how can you be talking about ministry at a time like this?”

“Because that’s why you’re here, son,” she said. “It’s the reason you exist.”

She died in late December 2019. Her husband of forty-nine years, now a widower, preached the next day.

“Anyone who has answered God’s call knows that ministry does not stop when life gets hard,” he wrote. “People still need hope and help, and honestly, that calling kept me moving forward. In fact, it helped me stay afloat. I firmly believe that serving others is a key to enduring in difficult times. When we minister to the hurting and lost, God ministers to us. By blessing, we are blessed.”

A week after her mother’s memorial service, Priscilla underwent successful lung surgery. And then came other trials, including the pandemic.

Looking back on this difficult time, Dr. Evans acknowledged that God can be hard to understand. But he also wrote, “My passion is to see God in the things that I am able to understand. That’s where my comfort comes from in the midst of loss.”

That sort of wisdom makes Divine Disruption a blessing to any Christian dealing with grief.

Denison Forum

“Every technology is both a burden and a blessing; not either-or, but this-and-that.” 

That’s media theorist Neil Postman in his book Technopoly.

For example, a mother in Oregon is suing Meta (Facebook’s parent company) and Snap, arguing that their respective applications have caused her fourteen-year-old daughter to become so addicted to her phone that “she would get very physical, violent, verbal with me” when the mother attempted to take her daughter’s phone away.

And yet the team behind the YouVersion Bible app reported that 55.8 billion chapters of the Bible were read by its users over the course of 2021.

Our technology is a burden. 

Our technology is a blessing.

How do we ensure it’s more the latter than the former?

Denison Forum would like to thank pureHOPE for the following helpful, practical guidance.

Technology, in and of itself is a very good gift and resource we have been given. But, like many other good gifts, we can easily misuse it and even make an idol of it. I would make the argument that our greatest challenge, or danger, technology presents to us is the assault it makes on our time, our attention, and our relationships.

We only get one life and all of us have a limited amount of time and attention. Although the Bible doesn’t specifically mention social media and the gadgets that invade our modern lives, it does give us much instruction and guidance about making the most of the resources that God has given us and not squandering or misusing them.

Are you “making the most of your time”?

In the book of Ephesians, Chapter 5 there is a great passage that we can apply to so many areas of our lives. As we think about our devices and the devices that are occupying so much of our lives, this passage is extremely helpful!

“Therefore be careful how you walk, not as unwise men but as wise, making the most of your time, because the days are evil. So then do not be foolish, but understand what the will of the Lord is” (Ephesians 5:15–17 NASB).

Paul is encouraging the people of Ephesus, and for you and me today, to live as God desires us to live. That is to live carefully, wisely and making the most of our time or as another translation says, “redeeming the time.”

When we’re on our devices, so often we are doing the expedient or convenient thing rather than the wonderous or fulfilling thing. We don’t get to ponder and think and take quiet moments of reflection as we once did before the onslaught of technology. We don’t have to wait for anything. It is often in those moments of quiet reflection and stillness where God reveals His glory, and that revelation is what fuels our hope and our trust and our faith in Him.

Often, when we’re on our devices, we are mindlessly wasting our time in an effort to avoid unwanted feelings of boredom or loneliness. It’s what some call Digital Distraction. The average iPhone user touches their phone 2,617 times a day. The average 8-year-old spends 7 hours per day in front of screens. How often are we mindlessly scrolling when we could be engaging with others, engaging with God or simply enjoying a minute of solitude and stillness?

The Psalmist in Psalm 46 encourages us with words that I think can be so helpful for us when it comes to digital distraction. He says, “Be still and know that I am God.” That is so countercultural and so opposed to the natural pull of technology on our time and attention.

You and I gain a deeper awareness of God when we are still. His glory and majesty are best revealed to us in stillness, in silence and in solitude. Our devices, or better said, our tendency to turn to our devices, to avoid the feelings of loneliness and boredom, all too often robs us of that stillness that helps us know God. The ancient discipline of silence and solitude is so foreign to many of us as Christ Followers in the digital age. I truly believe that this lost discipline is one of the biggest barriers to knowing God and the feeling of being known by God in the 21st Century.

Dallas Willard once wrote, “The first and most basic thing we can and must do is to keep God before our minds.”

Is our use of technology helping us or hurting us from doing that?

Facetime vs. face-to-face time

But, it is not only our time and attention that is vulnerable to our use of technology, it is also our relationships. Primarily, I mean our key relationships. Those relationships like family and close friends where our character and compassion are fostered. The community of people God has given us to grow our faith and our joy with one another.

“I have much to write to you, but I do not want to use paper and ink. Instead, I hope to visit you and talk with you face to face, so that our joy may be complete” (2 John 12 NIV).

The technology that existed over two thousand years ago, that was available to the Apostle John, was paper and ink—or papyrus for you scholars out there. I am so thankful for that technology! Because of paper and ink, we have the Bible. Paul uses very similar language in his writings as well. However, John gives us a golden nugget of wisdom when it comes to how we are to live wisely and as God desires for us when it comes to technology. You see, the technology of John’s day also created challenges with relationships. He and other writers of the New Testament like Paul could have chosen to hole-up in some upper room in Jerusalem and spend all their time writing letters of instruction and encouragement to Christ Followers.

John’s words, inspired by the Holy Spirit, teach us technology is to be a supplement, it is to be secondary to human relationships and is never to be our primary way of interacting with one another. You and I were created by God for relationship, and the primary way for us to be in relationship with one another is face to face. Why face-to-face? So “that our joy may be complete.” While every one of us reading this are more connected than anyone else in the history of mankind, we are losing the intimacy, the joy, and the compassion that only a face-to-face conversation can cultivate.

God desires for us to live carefully, wisely, and to make the most of our time. He desires for us to seek out face-to-face conversation and connection. Because he created us and knows what is best for us.

What will your digital stewardship look like going forward?

The Bible tells us to think on things above (Colossians 3:2). Things that are true, honorable, just, pure, lovely, commendable, excellent, and worthy of praise. Am I using technology and all of my gadgets and devices to think on these things or are they detracting me from doing so? Is social media fostering these thoughts for me?

This year, let’s put a plan in place that allows us to be better stewards of the technology we have. Let’s model good stewardship for our family and friends. Let’s equip those in our lives we lead to thrive in the digital age so that our joy too may be complete!

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Dan Martin is the Director of Partnerships & Training for pureHOPE. His primary role is overseeing partnerships and training opportunities with churches, organizations, and both domestic and international leaders. He frequently speaks on topics addressing family, parenting, marriage, Christian leadership, and technology. Dan lives in the Dallas area with his wife, Kathie. They have three adult children and have now reached grandparent status.

Website: purehope.net
Facebook: facebook.com/findpurehope
Instagram: @findpurehope
Podcast: purehope.net/aworldfreepodcast/
Resources: resources.purehope.net

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