Faithfullyliven:the podcast
Do you want to learn how to study the Bible? Do you wish you could understand the Bible better? Do you want to know how you can remain faithful to historic Christianity in our contemporary society? Let's take a journey to explore and learn how to be a faithful follower of Christ. Faithfullyliven, the podcast is here to uplift your soul and encourage you to live a life honoring to God
Faithfullyliven:the podcast
Should we defend our faith? With Amy Hall
Uncover the intellectual riches of Christian apologetics with our inspiring guest, Amy Hall, who shares how C.S. Lewis's "Mere Christianity" transformed her understanding of faith. Together, we journey through the foundational importance of apologetics, rooted in scriptures like 1 Peter 3:15 and Jude 3, and how it empowers believers to articulate their faith with conviction. Amy highlights the significance of being prepared to answer personal questions, build confidence, and engage with others meaningfully. We spotlight resources like William Lane Craig's "On Guard" and Nancy Pearcey's works to help navigate philosophical arguments and cultural issues, offering a compass for those seeking to deepen their understanding of apologetics.
Check out the resources Amy mentioned during our conversation below.
Articles
A Plan to Begin a Year of Learning by Amy Hall
https://www.str.org/w/a-plan-to-begin-a-year-of-learning?p_l_back_url=%2Fsearch%3Fq%3DA%2Bplan%2Bto%2Bbegan%2Ba%2Byear%2Bof%2Blearning
Tips for Memorizing a Book of the Bible by Amy Hall
https://www.str.org/w/tips-for-memorizing-a-book-of-the-bible?p_l_back_url=%2Fsearch%3Fp_l_back_url%3D%252Fsearch%253Fq%253DA%252Bplan%252Bto%252Bbegan%252Ba%252Byear%252Bof%252Blearning%26q%3DTips%2Bfor%2Bmemorizing%2Ba%2Bbook%2Bof%2Bthe%2BBible
Check out the Podcast #STR ask
https://www.str.org/podcasts
Also, check out the books Amy mentioned in the show
Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis
Tactics: A Game Plan for Discussing Your Christian Convictions, 10th Anniversary Edition
By: Gregory Koukl
If God Is Good: Faith in the Midst of Suffering and Evil By: Randy Alcorn
Philosophical
On Guard: Defending Your Faith with Reason and Precision by William Lane Craig
On Guard for Students: A Thinker's Guide to the Christian Faith by William Lane Craig
Science
An Easy-to-Understand Guide for Defeating Darwinism by Opening Minds by Philip E Johnson
Undeniable: How Biology Confirms Our Intuition That Life Is Designed by Douglas Axe
Signature in the Cell: DNA and the Evidence for Intelligent Design, by Stephen C. Meyer
History
The Case for the Resurrection of Jesus by Gary R. Habermas
Bible
Can We Trust the Gospels? by Peter J. Williams
Theology
The Holiness of God by R. C. Sproul
Other religions
Seeking Allah, Finding Jesus: A Devout Muslim Encounters Christianity by Nabeel Qureshi
Passport to Heaven: The True Story of a Zealous Mormon Missionary Who Discovers the Jesus He Never Knew by Micah Wilder
Christian worldview
Total Truth: Liberating Christianity from Its Cultural Captivity by Nancy Pearcey
Love Thy Body: Answering Hard Questions about Life and Sexuality by Nancy Pearcey
Do you want to learn more about apologetics? Check out the links below!
Stand to Reason https://www.str.org/home
Women in Apologetics https://womeninapologetics.com/
Cross Examined https://crossexamined.org/
Reasons to Believe https://reasons.org/
Do you want to learn how to study the Bible? Check out the YouTube channel Faithfullyliven youtube.com/@faithfullyliven
Do you want to read about how to live faithfully? Check out the blog http://lyfe102.org
Get a free Road Map to get started learning how to study the Bible https://mailchi.mp/88f9c9405da0/bible-study-road-map
Welcome to Faithfully Living, the podcast where we learn how to live for Christ in our daily lives. I am Dwan, your host, and I would like to invite you on a Podcast where we strive to encourage you to live for Christ faithfully by offering guidance on studying the Bible, how to understand the Bible better and how to remain faithful to historic Christianity in a contemporary society. In 1 Peter, the apostle encourages believers who are suffering to stand strong in their faith and to have an answer for why and who gave them the strength to stand. Gave them the strength to stand. It says in first peter 3, 15 if and if anyone asks about your hope as a believer, always be ready to explain it. And that's the nlt version.
Speaker 1:So, as believers, we are ambassadors for christ. We are to shine the light of Christ to a world that is in need of hope and to be a light, we should know the giver of light, our Savior Jesus Christ. So it's important for believers to know what they believe and why. The Bible is God's revelation of himself to us. We should filter our thinking, our morals, through the Bible, but also know it for ourselves. So while we, as believers, should be able to discern false teachings, we should also have an answer about the truth, and apologetics can help us with having an answer. So apologetics are the defense of the faith, comes from the group word apologia. It's a legal term that literally means defense. Jude 3 tells us dear friends, I have been eagerly planning to write to you about the salvation we all share, but now I find that I must write about something else Earning you to defend the faith that God has entrusted once and for all to his holy people.
Speaker 1:So in this episode is a replay of a conversation that I had with Amy Hall about apologetics. What is it and why it's important. Hope you enjoy. So before I start my conversation with amy, let's learn a little bit more about amy. Amy hall has a ma in christian apologetics from Biola University and currently works as a writer, editor and podcaster for Stand to Reason, where she explores culture, ethics, philosophy and theology in light of the truth of the Christian worldview. Her goal is to help Christians truly grasp the fact that Christianity equals reality, giving them the confidence and ability to apply and live out this truth in every area of their lives so that they may know love and serve Christ as whole people in the fullest way possible. You can read her work at strorg, listen to her on Stand the Reasons hashtag str ask podcast, and follow her on Twitter at Amy underscore K underscore Hall. All right, here's my conversation with Amy Hall. Amy, welcome to the show. Thanks for coming on.
Speaker 2:Thank you so much for having me, Dwan. I'm really looking forward to this.
Speaker 1:All right. So before we get started into what is apologetics, tell us a little bit about how you became a follower of Christ.
Speaker 2:Well, I grew up going to church, but it really wasn't a central part of my life, and so when I got into high school, I kind of put it on the back burner. I stopped going to church and I was telling myself, well, how do I? I don't even really know if God exists. So I kind of just was uninterested kind of, and walked away. I would still have called myself a Christian, but I wasn't really living that way, I mean in terms of making God the center of my life.
Speaker 2:I was working at a Christian camp which I had been going to my whole life, and somebody gave me mere Christianity, and that was the first time I had ever seen that there were intellectual reasons to think Christianity was true. And I started thinking, wait, maybe this is actually true. So I started looking into it. I was looking into apologetics, I was looking at other religions and I was reading about all these different things, and then I became intellectually convinced that Christianity was true. And then, very soon after that, god, just, it was like he had opened my eyes, like I was asleep, and then I was awake, my whole being changed to be centered on God, to love him and to seek him. And so that's how it happened.
Speaker 1:Wow, that's great. Someone encouraged you to Were you a reader when you were growing up.
Speaker 2:I was. Yeah, it's always good to recommend a good book, you you know, to spur people on in the right direction if they can read and I know so many people who are now apologists who were affected by cs lewis's near christianity at the beginning of their discovery that christianity was true. So that's a great book to read for anyone who's interested yeah, yeah, all right.
Speaker 1:So let's kind of get into to learn more about what apologetics is. So let's kind of start from the beginning. What does apologetics not mean, and then what does it mean?
Speaker 2:So usually when I tell people that I work in apologetics, they'll make a joke about oh so you apologize to people, but a lot of people haven't heard this word, or sometimes it's out there in the culture for other things too. So if you listen for it, you will hear it out there, and basically it just means making a defense of something. So apologetics Christian apologetics is making a defense for the truthfulness of Christianity. But you'll also hear it used like businesses will have apologists or people who are making the case for their business or explaining things, and so it's kind of an unusual term, but it's out there. So it just means making a defense for something.
Speaker 1:And then, why is it important for us, as believers, to be in apologetics?
Speaker 2:I think there are a few different reasons, and the first reason is and this goes back to my story the first reason is that it answers our questions. So we get our own questions about things. Obviously, we aren't born knowing everything about Christianity, so we have questions. We read something. It doesn't look like it makes sense or we're not sure it's true. So first and foremost, it answers our own questions and it gives us confidence. Confidence is so important for endurance. So we're facing a lot of things as Christians and a lot of opposition. So the more confidence we can have that what we think is true, the easier it will be for us to stand firm and to continue to do the things that God's called us to do. It's also really important when we go through a difficult time emotionally because we start to doubt, like if we're suffering, we start to doubt that maybe God is real, all these things. When we have an intellectual foundation for how we know with our minds that Christianity is true, then when the emotional doubts come and the suffering comes, we can depend on that. We can go over that in our minds and assure ourselves that we're doing the right thing. So that's the first thing.
Speaker 2:The second reason why it's important is that it helps us to answer the questions of others when we're seeking to make disciples. And this goes for either evangelism when you're talking to people who aren't Christians or people who are Christians. If you're discipling someone and you're trying to help them to know God better, if you can answer their questions, that's really helpful to them. Thirdly, by engaging in apologetics, we honor God with the truth, by speaking that truth before others, regardless of whether or not anyone ever is convinced by what you say.
Speaker 2:When you are speaking the truth about God, that in itself is honoring to him, and he wants us to proclaim him. He wants us to proclaim the truth. So when we're doing that, that is a good in itself, even if we never convince anybody else to change their minds. And then, finally, what I found is that with apologetics, especially if I'm looking at other religions or other ideas and I'm evaluating them, it really helps me to see and appreciate God much more clearly. So this happens to me especially. One topic I really enjoy thinking about and writing about talking about is Mormonism and, as I'm reading their work, when I see who their God is, because sometimes we forget that other people have different views and we start to take things for granted.
Speaker 2:But, when I look at their theology and their system. It helps me to see so much more clearly the beauty of God, of the true God, and His grace, and that just makes me worship. So it also helps us to see and appreciate God more clearly, and all those reasons I mean. Ultimately, our whole goal as Christians is to know God and to love him and to be in relationship with him. So thinking about him accurately and clearly and helping others to think about him accurately and clearly is a huge part of being a Christian, and apologetics can play a good part in this.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it kind of goes back to the commandments love God. So in order for us to love him, we have to get to know him better. Exactly, loving others is sharing the gospel with them about God and who he is. So it encompasses all of what he told us to do Mm-hmm, all right is to do All right. So, kind of there's multiple areas within apologetics, so could you kind of go through some of the specifics that people can go into specifically?
Speaker 2:Sure, and I what I'm going to do is also tell you, make a suggestion for a book that somebody can read in that area If they're interested in that particular area. I was going to do is also tell you, make a suggestion for a book that somebody can read in that area if they're interested in that particular area. I was trying to think of, you know, kind of the main different aspects, and I don't know if I got them all. So if you think of one I didn't think of, feel free to chime in here. But the first one I thought of was philosophy. So there are philosophical arguments for the existence of God. One of them is the Kalam cosmological argument, that's, everything that begins to exist has a cause. The universe has a beginning. Therefore the universe had a cause, things like that. So it's syllogistic logic and philosophical ideas and arguments for God. Another one would be the moral argument for God and that would be you know that only God can ground objective morality. So those are two examples of philosophical arguments. So if anyone wants to wade into that area, I would recommend William Lane Craig's On Guard, and I think there's a separate one that's for students, which he specifically made for skeptics, I believe so either. One of those would be a good place to step into that.
Speaker 2:Secondly, there's the area of science. So in that area we can learn all about evidence for design. So you have the design argument, the teleological argument, which is the design argument, but you have different arguments that relate to that. So you have, say, the evidence of DNA and DNA being information and information being something that comes from a mind. So we have other information about the universe. There's scientific information pointing to the beginning of the universe, which points to a beginner, and one book, someone who's written a lot, especially on the area of evolution, is Philip Johnson, philip E Johnson. He has a whole bunch of books, but one that they could start with is Defeating Darwinism by Opening Minds, and you get kind of an overview of Darwinism, the different aspects of the evolution question, and then there's one by Douglas Axe called Undeniable. That also makes a design argument. That one is also more on a beginner level and there's way more difficult ones. If people are scientists they want something more difficult. Signature in the Cell by Stephen Meyer is one that they could go for for that.
Speaker 2:So you've got philosophy, you've got science, and next you've got history, and there are different things involved here. One would be the evidence for the resurrection, and for that case I would go to Gary Habermas. He's got a few different books on this. The case for the resurrection of Jesus would be a good place to start there. So you've got the resurrection, but you've also got archaeology. There's archaeological evidence for events in the Bible, and so I would kind of put that under the history section. So you've got those, and next you've got the Bible.
Speaker 2:So there's questions about the Bible. Is the text reliable? Was it passed down in a way that preserved the original text? That's one question, and that goes to something called textual criticism accurate. So historical accuracy and the transmission of the text are two areas that are related to the Bible, and a great book to start with this one is called Can we Trust the Gospels, by Peter J Williams, and he has all sorts of interesting things in there about why we can trust that the Bible is an accurate understanding of what happened and it was transmitted correctly and all that.
Speaker 2:So next, I mean you can see there are a lot of areas, whatever you're interested in. Just as an aside, when I was working on my degree in apologetics, I would always tell people. Yeah, it's philosophy and history and science, and that's the great thing about it. Whatever you're interested in, there's a way that Christianity plays out in that field, because Christianity is reality, so it affects every field and it helps us to understand every field. So the next field would be theology. I'm hearing a lot of this. More and more People have arguments against the goodness of God, or they don't understand how God could be good in light of certain things that happen in the Bible, or they don't understand how the Christian ideas fit together. So thinking clearly about theology is very helpful to explaining to people who God is and how Christianity works and why it isn't incoherent and why it makes sense and all those sorts of things.
Speaker 2:And then there's apologetics to responding to other religions. I forgot to give you a book for theology. So one book for theology, because what I found is that a lot of people, the difficulties they have with Christianity come down to two misunderstandings they have. One of them is they don't understand our sin. They don't understand the depth of our sin, and the other thing that they don't get is they don't understand the depth of God's holiness and righteousness. So that affects so many theological questions. So the book I recommend for this one is called the Holiness of God by RC Sproul.
Speaker 2:Okay, so now the next one. I only have a couple more here apologetics that are responding to other religions, and I mentioned this in terms of Mormonism. This is actually what people probably think of. First, because they've seen a lot of counter cult apologetics yeah, and I think you had Marsha Montenegro on your show, yeah. So there are a lot of apologetics that actually will focus on a certain idea, so a certain philosophy or a certain religion like Mormonism or Islam or whatever it is.
Speaker 2:So that's another area. And one book I think is really good in this area is by Nabeel Qureshi and it's called Seeking Allah, finding Jesus. So if you're interested in Islam, that is a great place to go for that. If you want one on Mormonism there's tons there One I just recently read was called Passport to Heaven, and there are different books with that title, so I'll give you the subtitle there the true story of a zealous Mormon missionary who discovers the Jesus he never knew.
Speaker 2:And that book doesn't go into a whole lot, if I remember right, of the historical problems with Mormonism, but it does talk a lot about the differences in our theology and how the grace that we experience as Christians is not what they go through and their understanding of Jesus is not our understanding of Jesus. So if that sounds interesting, that was a good one. So we've got philosophy, science, history, bible, theology, other religions, and then finally there's just the general category of Christian worldview, which is thinking clearly about Christianity and applying it to the world. So that would include things like ethics so maybe pro-life arguments would come under this category or cultural apologetics looking at the culture, examining what's going on in the culture, seeing how that relates to Christianity and whether it's wrong and why it's wrong, and all those different questions. So did I miss anything?
Speaker 1:I can't think of another category I can't think of anything. That was a good overview and I especially like the books to go along with it, to kind of dig into more if my audience wants to read more about it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I just realized I forgot to give a book for that last one. So for Christian worldview and kind of the culture, I recommend Nancy Piercy. She has a bunch of books. Total Truth might be a good. That's one of her main ones. To start with. Another one that's very related to situations now about the body, like transgenderism or different topics about the body and sexuality, is called Love Thy Body. So those are a couple books by her, but she's got a whole series of books that touch on the culture and cultural ideas.
Speaker 1:She's fantastic so I recommend her someone get into apologetics and tell us a little bit about how you got into it? I know you kind of got to it when you became a Christian, but how did you pursue apologetics?
Speaker 2:Well, it was kind of a roundabout way. I never thought I would be doing what I'm doing now. It wasn't something I planned. What happened was I was working in the film industry. I was working for a visual effects company and we built miniatures, so you know, like spaceships and buildings and things, and we blow them up and all sorts of things and I basically, when I started working there, I was just driving around picking up materials all over Los Angeles and I would listen to the radio and I would listen to Christian radio and I heard about, I was listening to the Bible, answer man, and at one point they started advertising the Biola degree, the Masters in Apologetics. So what happened was I did that nights and weekends, just thinking this is just going to be for my own edification and because I'm having conversations with people at work and I love doing this, I love thinking about this. I was just doing it because I loved it. I never dreamed I would be doing this. So I eventually started volunteering at Stand to Reason and then they eventually hired me and I've been here for 15 years now almost 16.
Speaker 2:But I would encourage people. If they're interested, they don't even have to go to Biola directly. There is an online certificate program. They can do from their own homes and I think you have to go, maybe for a couple of weeks a year, I'm not sure, but it's something to look into if you want the degree. But they also have a certificate program. So they have the master's degree. You can do it online, you can do it in person and they have a certificate, which is which takes much less time, and they send you all the lectures and things and you listen to them. It is. I think that was. Was that your whole question? I can't remember now that's how I got into it.
Speaker 1:How did believers learn about apologetics?
Speaker 2:Oh, right, okay.
Speaker 1:Like if they can't go for certificate or Sure.
Speaker 2:I have some, definitely have some recommendations. So all those books I mentioned are great. The first thing you need to do is you need to learn to think clearly and how to make a case, and to do this, I recommend my boss. Greg Kokel, wrote a book called Tactics a game plan for discussing your Christian convictions, and what this book does is it helps you to think more clearly, but it also teaches you how to use questions when you're talking to people, and it's just very simple. You know you ask them what did you mean by that? How did you come to that conclusion? And have you considered and you would be surprised how those questions can help help anyone to have a good conversation about these things and keeping the conversation from becoming really heated or turning into some sort of a battle? So the book tactics can really help people to start putting the things that they're learning into practice and learning from the people they're talking to, because a lot of times, the best thing you can do is find out what their views are so you know how to interact with them. So that would be one thing I recommend Now if you want to get an idea of what all the different areas are and who the players are like, who the main academic people are or the main apologists are, one thing.
Speaker 2:This has been around for a long time, but you could still start with the Case for Christ. In the Case for Christ by Lee Strobel, he has a chapter on different subjects and you get to know the different apologists and from there you can find out. Oh, this guy sounds really interesting. I'm going to look into his work and then you can get deeper into his work, so that that's a great thing to do. But and this is perfect for your channel the most important thing you can do if you want to be a good apologist is to know the Bible backwards and forwards. You need to learn the Bible, you need to read it over and over, you need to read it over and over. You need to understand it, and so I all of these things, and I think we might come back to the Bible later. So I'll keep one thing for that.
Speaker 2:But I have a post on the Stand to Reason website which you can find at strorg, and it's called A Plan to Begin a Year of Learning A Plan to Begin a Year of Learning, and I've laid out a bunch of different books, articles and things like that to give you a good, solid beginning at apologetics. And if you go through each one, I think I can't remember how many pages it came out of reading a day, but I don't it wasn't too much. Anyone can do this If you really want to. That's a great place to start. And let's see, we're in July right now. Maybe it'll be August when this comes out. I'm not sure. But you got a few months to prepare. Get the book, start on January and go through that year. I mean you don't have to wait for January, but sometimes that helps to motivate you. So all those ideas, hopefully that will help people get started.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that is helpful. Yeah, Reading the Bible studying is most important, All right. So kind of, let's go over kind of like a scenario just to bring it home, and the one I thought of. You know, if you're talking to a friend, you know, and that friend asks you you know, why do? Why does God allow bad things to happen? So how should we respond to that or what would be the answer?
Speaker 2:The first thing, especially with a question like that, the first thing I would ask would be did you have something particular in mind, like some particular evil? And the reason why I would ask that is because sometimes people are asking this question because they're suffering and they're in a lot of pain and maybe they're questioning the existence of God because of that pain. And if that's why they're asking the question, you really need to be sensitive to that, because if you start giving really philosophical, intellectual answers and you're not addressing their pain, it could really not go over. Well, now, sometimes they just have an intellectual question Maybe an atheist has challenged them about this and they're confused, they don't know how to answer and that kind of will. You can adjust your answer based on where they're coming from. So you kind of want to find out what is going on with them and why they're asking the question.
Speaker 2:But there are a couple things to keep in mind for the answer to this question, and the first thing is that God's goal is not our comfort, and this is something that we as Christians, especially in this country, where things go pretty well for us, especially in this country where things go pretty well for us compared to other places and other times we start to think that if we do everything right, then everything's going to go right for us. God's going to look out for us. We can trust, and they think that trusting God means I trust that nothing bad's ever going to happen to me. Well, of course, when something bad happens, you're shattered because you weren't prepared, and I don't think I think we all have to go through that, because even if in our minds we think no, I know that's not true, you still kind of feel like it's true. And so when things start to go bad, the thing to remember is that God's goal is not our comfort. Now, we know this is the case because if you look in the Bible, what you're going to see is that God's people have suffered a lot from beginning to end. So we can't be surprised if we suddenly enter into some suffering or something bad happens to us. It's been happening all along.
Speaker 2:So what we need to understand is what is God's goal for us If it's not our comfort? There's something more important than our comfort, and I think we find this in. I'm just going to read this. We find this in Romans 8. Now, we all are very familiar with Romans 8, 28, which says and we know that God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to his purpose. And then we say, oh okay, yeah, see my good, everything's going to go right for me. Well, not exactly, because we need to know what God means by our good. What does it mean to do us good? And the next verse says for those whom he foreknew, he also predestined to become conformed to the image of his son. That is the good God is working towards. He's working to conform us to Jesus's image, inform us to Jesus's image. And to accomplish that, I think suffering often plays a part, because when we suffer, we learn a lot of things.
Speaker 2:We learn to trust God, we learn to be dependent on him, we learn about his character. Our character changes, we learn what's important changes, we learn what's important. There are a lot of different things that God uses to shape us through suffering. Now we can think about, we can all think of scenarios where a parent will intentionally cause pain to their child, like a shot or some sort of punishment or some you know. But even a shot obviously shot has nothing to do with punishing them. It's actually there to help them. And so I think we need to see suffering in that light, that because we know God's character and we know who he is and we know that he loves us we and we know that everything is working for our good, and we know that everything is working for our good and we know that good is making us like Christ, we can start to think about our suffering in that way. And that doesn't mean that we're going to know exactly why something happened, like I can't look back and say, okay, this terrible thing happened to me and now I know it was because of this. Well, sometimes you'll know and sometimes you won't know it. Just you won't know it, just you won't know every time you know.
Speaker 2:This reminds me of a story about Corrie Ten Boom. Are you familiar with Corrie Ten Boom? Okay, so, for anyone who hasn't heard of her, she was someone who lived in the Netherlands and she hid Jews during World War II and then she ended up in a concentration camp and she and her sister were in their barracks and they got there and there were tons of fleas and her sister said, okay, well, let's thank God and Corey's like what, there's no good reason for fleas. Are you crazy? That's, that's crazy. Thanked God for everything. Anyway, she thanked God for being in it. I don't think we have to thank God for evil that happens to us. I don't want people to get me wrong there but she assumed God had a purpose for it, and so she and her sister started having these worship services in the barracks, and the guards would never come in. Right, they didn't know why. They just kept having the services. The guards never came in and they're like, why isn't this happening? Well, I don't know. And then one day somebody tried to bring a guard in for another reason and the guard refused to come in because of the fleas. So that was a situation where, ultimately, she was able to see why something happened.
Speaker 2:Now I do think sometimes we do see why things happen, and so when that happens, we need to take note of that and remember it for the times when we don't we don't know why that something happened. And one other thing I like to keep in mind and I always bring up this easy thing to remember when we are suffering, because I think it really helps us to put things into perspective and what I think we need to do is look at Jesus on the cross. So obviously he was suffering. But there are things we learn about God by looking at the cross that can help us in our suffering. And the first thing is we see on the cross God's sovereignty and his wisdom, because he brought that about. He brought this cross, this whole situation about by moving history along, by bringing the Messiah. But you know, he go way back. He promised to bring him aside at the very beginning, after we fell right. He promised to bring him aside at the very beginning, after we fell right, and he created Israel. He brought all this, had all of this happen. He brought about the cross and he saved us.
Speaker 2:Now that takes sovereignty and that takes wisdom. So we know, okay, I'm going through suffering, but God knows that and God is sovereign. So it's not, things aren't out of control. So that's the first thing that helps. And secondly, we see God's love for us, because there is Jesus dying on the cross in horrible pain for us. So if there's, I don't know how else he could prove how much he loves us. Right, because that's the other thing.
Speaker 2:When we are suffering, when bad things happen, we think, okay, maybe God doesn't love me. No, look at the cross, you see God's love there. So we see his sovereignty and his wisdom and we see his love. We also see his power, because God raised Jesus from the dead.
Speaker 2:So when you put all of these things together and you're thinking about your own suffering and pain and evil things that happened to you and you think, okay, god's sovereign, so this situation's not out of his control.
Speaker 2:He loves me, so this is not. He hasn't forgotten me and he's powerful, so he could change this at any time, and he's not. So if he's not changing it and he loves me and he can change it, that means there's a reason and then we can trust. Okay, there's a reason for this. I don't know what it is and I won't, maybe until after I die, but I can trust God because he's proved himself to be sovereign and loving and wise and powerful. And what I always say at that point if we know that all these things are working for our good, there's nothing more evil can do to us, because everything that's happening is working towards our good. God is working everything towards our good to make us like Christ, and that's something that we can rest in, and so that just the cross and thinking about the cross is a really easy thing to remember when you're going through suffering.
Speaker 1:I like how you brought it back to, or you centered it around, the attributes of God. You talked about his power, his love. I think the more we learn about who God is, the more we can be comforted, you know, in our different life situations.
Speaker 2:And one more thing to add to that when we think about why we're going through suffering, you know it is to make us like Christ, but even above that, I think it's to help us to know God. And when we think, why is there a fallen world? Well, if the world had never fallen, we wouldn't have the cross, we wouldn't be able to see God's grace, we wouldn't understand what it means to get forgiveness and for God, we wouldn't see his love for enemies if there were no enemies. So all of these things are playing a part in helping us know God better. And if that's God's ultimate goal, he wants to show us his kindness for all eternity is what Ephesians says, and the better we know him now, the more we will enjoy him later. And so all of these things are working towards those beautiful things.
Speaker 2:Now there's a really good book by Randy Alcorn called If God is Good Faith in the Midst of Suffering and Evil, and when I read that book he has so many stories about people who suffered really difficult things. And then he talks about how the people say they're not sorry it happened, they're actually grateful that they went through it because of, and then they explain how they know God better now. That just overwhelmed me because that's when I realized, oh, this kind of the sheer number of stories kind of drummed it into my head finally oh okay, god is working through this, he really is working through this. Oh okay, god is working through this, he really is working through this. Now, if anyone gets that book, don't be scared. It's very long, don't be scared. The chapters are really short and it's very readable, and that's something I definitely recommend when you're thinking about suffering and evil.
Speaker 1:All right, well, that was a very helpful explanation of how we should look at different situations or bad situations that happen to our lives. All right, well, amy. Thank you for being on the show.
Speaker 2:You're so welcome. I really enjoyed it. Thank you so much.
Speaker 1:So I hope this episode was helpful to you. I pray this conversation inspired you to dig into God's word more. Please check out Amy's podcast hashtag S T R S. She is co-host with Greg Coco, so go check that out. And until next time, remember God is always good and he's always faithful. Thank you for listening to the podcast. Do me a favor by following the podcast and leaving a review to help spread the word. I look forward to hearing from you.
