The Mysterious Friend
Chris Seidman
Part of Faith and Doubt
May 29, 2025

Faith and Doubt

The Mysterious Friend
June 1, 2025
Chris Seidman, Preaching Pastor, The Branch

When it comes to pain and suffering, faith and doubt …

  • Pain/Suffering may not be the “Airtight Case” against the reality of God and His goodness that many think it is.

Genesis 50:19-20 (NIV)
But Joseph said to them, “Don’t be afraid. Am I in the place of God? You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good to accomplish what is now being done, the saving of many lives.”

Tim Keller Quote
Many people have admitted that most of what they really needed for success in life came to them through their most difficult and painful experiences. I have survived a bout with cancer and my wife has suffered with Crohn’s disease for years, and we both would attest to this. I knew a man in my first parish who had lost most of his eye-sight after he was shot in the face during a drug deal gone bad. He told me that he had been an extremely selfish and cruel person, but he had always blamed his constant legal and relational problems on others. The loss of his sight had devastated him, but it had also profoundly humbled him. “As my physical eyes were closed, my spiritual eyes were opened, as it were. I finally saw how I’d been treating people. I changed, and now for the first time in my life I have friends, real friends. It was a terrible price to pay, though I finally have what makes life worthwhile.” If you have a God great and transcendent enough to be mad at because he hasn’t stopped evil and suffering in the world, then you have (at the same moment) a God great and transcendent enough to have good reasons for allowing it to continue that you can’t know. Indeed, you can’t have it both ways.

  • Pain/Suffering could actually be “Clues” to the reality of God’s presence and goodness.

Alvin Plantinga Quote
“If you are sure that this natural world is unjust and has evil within it, you are assuming the reality of some extra-natural (or supernatural) standard by which to make your judgment.”

Romans 2:15 (MSG)
When outsiders who have never heard of God’s law follow it more or less by instinct, they confirm its truth by their obedience. They show that God’s law is not something alien, imposed on us from without, but woven into the very fabric of our creation. There is something deep within them that echoes God’s yes and no, right and wrong.

  • While there may not be a sufficient answer for it right now, in Christ there are sufficient resources to face it.

Isaiah 53:3-4 (NIV)
… a man of suffering, and familiar with pain … one from whom people hid their faces … surely he took up our pain and bore our suffering … we considered him punished by God, stricken by him, and afflicted … .

Mark 14:33-34 (NIV)
… deeply distressed and troubled. “My soul is overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death.”

Matthew 27:46 (NIV)
“My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?”

William Willimon Quote
Christians do not believe that we have an answer to the tragedies of life, rather that what we have is a God who, in Jesus Christ, enters tragedy, stands with us and makes a way through. The cross of Christ is a sign. Not an answer or a reason for the hurt that happens in life – it is something even better. The cross is a sign that God is with us, particularly in the dark times. The cross says, wherever there is tragedy, injustice, pain there is God.

James Carroll Quote
The God of the Bible is the God who allows the most unimaginable things to happen, up to and including the crucifixion of Jesus. Biblical people often experience God as the enemy. At the end, if only for a moment, Jesus seemed to feel that way. But this is the very wall through which biblical faith pushes. God is not the enemy who causes evil. He’s the mysterious friend who stands with us in its midst.

Matthew 19:28 (NIV)
“Truly I tell you, at the renewal of all things … the Son of Man sits on his glorious throne … .

Tim Keller Quote
Just after the climax of the trilogy The Lord of the Rings, Sam Gamgee discovers that his friend Gandalf was not dead (as he thought) but alive. He cries, “I thought you were dead! But then I thought I was dead myself! Is everything sad going to come un-true?” The answer of Christianity to that question is – yes. Everything sad is going to come untrue and it will somehow be greater for having once been broken and lost.

Communion

  • Thank Jesus that He was willing to be a man of “suffering, familiar with pain.”

  • What is something difficult that you are facing or someone you know is facing right now? Pray for God to make His presence known to you or that person right now in a special way.

  • What do you look forward to be renewed once and for all at the renewal of all things?

  • If you struggling with faith right now, pray these words – “Lord, I do believe. Help me overcome my unbelief.” (Mark 9:24)