How Can I Trust God When I Don’t Understand What He Allows? | Therapy & Theology with Lysa TerKeurst

It can be so disillusioning to process things that are breaking our heart, especially when it seems like God is not intervening. Maybe you find yourself asking questions like: When is God going to right the wrongs and bring justice to this situation? How am I supposed to believe the Lord is good in light of this? How can I trust God when the person who hurt me got away with it?

In this episode, Lysa, Jim and Joel will meet you in these questions and help you begin to see that faith in God means being assured of His goodness even when what He allows doesn’t feel good, seem good or look good right now.

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Get your copy of Lysa TerKeurst’s new book, I Want to Trust You, but I Don’t: Moving Forward When You’re Skeptical of Others, Afraid of What God Will Allow, and Doubtful of Your Own Discernment, from the P31 Bookstore.

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when talking about broken trust I think one of the hardest things to process is what do I do when it feels like the person who hurt me just got away with it and even more so how do I continue to trust God when it feels like he allowed the person who hurt me to get away with it I want to go there today because I think this is really important okay Joel we’re going to turn to you first today I remember this moment where I was sitting on the beach and I was processing the long road of hurt and heartbreak that I had gone through and I

was I was just having a moment maybe even a little bit of a pity party but um just a real moment of asking God some really hard questions and it was all around the fact that I thought it was incredible unfair that the person who hurt me the one who left the marriage that I very much wanted to stay together um it just seemed like he was out there living his best life and it was being allowed for him to just continue to on the outside at least look like everything was so yippy skippy fun and I was left at home picking up the pieces

of a broken family I was carrying a really heavy heart not just heaviness for me but also looking at the landscape of my family and because I had a front row to the hurt that my kids had experienced I was seeing the ramifications of of his choices and it was being played out in all of our lives and it was so excruciatingly painful for me and I just remember sitting there and I was watching the tide come in and you know the the waves come in and EB and flow and go out and the because of the tide like the the water was getting closer and closer and

closer and I knew if I don’t get up and I if I don’t move my chair and my bag then everything that I have is going to get wet and if I continue to not move it it’s going to get washed out to see and I remember having this moment where I legitimately said fine wash it all out to sea because I was just at that level of hopelessness and I was overwhelmed with just the feeling of unfairness and that feeling of unfairness was just giving me hit after hit after hit opportunity after opportunity after opportunity for feeling incredibly

bitter and even though I was trying really hard to forgive for the facts of what happened recognizing that trauma is always two parts we’ve talked about this many times fact and impact so forgiveness needs to be two parts fact and impact we can forgive in a moment for the fact of what happened and that meets the requirement by God to forgive and and it’s a command to forgive but the impact part walking through the much longer process of forgiving for all that this cost me you know that’s where it’s going to be quite

a process and the bitterness was rolling in as consistently as that as those waves were rolling in and I was trying so hard to fight it but in that moment on the beach where I just said wash it all away I just thought this is never going to get better it’s always going to hurt this much and it feels so unfair and I don’t understand God I just don’t understand yeah um I think one it’s really important um for us to just acknowledge that everything that you just described is so on and God welcomes it all y you know and

and I want to be careful we’ve talked before about spiritual bypass I want to be careful about how we I try to even approach this this subject or this topic because I think sometimes it’s like we’ve heard the like I’m going say phrases like it even makes me feel uncomfortable saying it like this but like the religious responses you know um well just trust God well just just believe he’s got you know his best for you um well and it’s all these phrases and one of the things I think we’ve lost as

we’ve read the scriptures is that the fact is that the Bible is written in Story how many times if you just read through the Psalms um for the first time this year I’m reading the Bible chronologically it’s been such a joy um one of the things that is so fascinating is that the way the Psalms are inter interspersed inside of the narrative story of David’s rise and fall the kingdoms rise and fall we nor normally go to the Psalms it’s like read chapter read chapter read chapter um but so many

of what David write is his wrestling with his trust with God H that’s really what it is right God you anointed me you appointed me you’ve put the kingdom supposedly in my hands and yet I’m running for my life in the wilderness yeah and my enemies are just constant L nipping at me and threatening me I mean that’s a tough way to live that’s a tough way to live um so we have two ways of reading this one is like we read that Psalm are the many Psalms of David’s just flip the page and get to the next

one the resolve is here oh there we go right yeah MH that wasn’t the Way It Was Written there could have been days years that passed while David was sitting in the tension of what he probably felt like was incredible Injustice and and his honest emotions that he’s dealing with God so I want to give us just a um theological principle to consider as we’re thinking about this issue um that is honest and true and and here’s the question what is it what what is it mean to God when we have been sinned against

we typically think that when we’ve been sinned against it’s an issue of Me Myself and I I’m the one left holding this I’m the one left dealing with these issues I’m the one who’s dealing the consequences of the Fall that is exactly where I was sitting in that moment okay um so I give you permission to speak Theology and truth let’s go the truth that will set me free Joel um Le um and Jim of all of created order what is the one unique thing that is said that um humanity is created they’re they’re

created in the image of God of God huh the specific words are like and image they’re created in the likeness Genesis 12627 they’re created in the likeness and image of God well we might have talked about this before in different therapy and theology episodes but those two Hebrew words shalam and deut shalm is spelled t-s e l m and deut is spelled D mut um were words used in the ancient near Eastern world world uh exclusively of children of royalty right well yeah um I’ve got four kids Liam Levi Lucas or my are my boys

um I used to say they’re little and now Liam the other day was putting on my shoes trying to convince me that he can fit into him and I was like dude he’s 13 what happened you know and but I still have MJ and MJ is four years old and and she’s a little princess and um and she came home one day and she came and she was crying sobbing and I remember she like came up and she’s like Daddy hold me I was like yes maybe I’ll hold you and I held her and she went on to tell me this long story of how one of her friends said

that her curly hair was ugly and it just devastated her she’s sitting there sobbing and and she’s crying she’s like like I could tell like this personally deeply hurt her and you know what I felt I was so angry how bad I was so frustrated and I’m like God gave you that curly hair and that curly hair is actually exactly what my mom’s hair used to look like when she was a little girl and if you put pictures up of M and my mom they look almost identical and here I am her dad and I’ve got this like a righteous anger in this

moment okay we were made in the likeness of image of God and if we’re sinned against and if we bear the image of God how does God feel as hurt as we do oh my goodness yeah as pained and as broken as we do and there’s a tension and and the tension is there’s a heart of God that is compassionate and loving that desires to see Humanity come into repentance the desires to see that the ones who sin against others would experience a contrite heart and an understanding of the devastation that they’ve caused that

they might turn away from their sin and turn towards God and if that doesn’t happen there’s going to be consequence for that yeah I love that thought it it rarely it rarely occurs to me to put the word broken and God together together like brokenhearted or broken like you know what I’m saying because I always picture God as like he’s steady he’s calm and so it’s it’s hard for me to wrap my brain around that yeah okay so this is called anthropomorphic language so I want to be careful in how I describe this but um if

Jesus is the exact embodiment of God himself in the flesh think about the iconic scene as Jesus is coming off of the Mount of Olives and as he looks over to uh to Jerusalem what does he do he weeps oh my gosh he weeps why does he weep all kinds of New Testament Scholars debate why he weeps I think it’s actually quite simple but as my um brilliant Theologian and therapeutic scholar friend Jim Crest says things can be uh simple but far from being simplistic simplistic yeah Jesus weeps why I don’t think it has

anything to do necessarily with um the cross and all this other stuff that’s coming there’s a part of it I actually think the connection to the Cross is actually the impact of sin upon Humanity Jesus is here and he’s seeing the devastation that sin has wed you can just go through the entire Old Testament how many times do it say that God is grieved by the sin of Israel why is God so adamant of the Holiness of Israel that they’re set apart for a purpose why why is he so adamant against um idols

and and false gods that the people God can be grieved he can be he can be um brokenhearted in the sense of which that if he wasn’t then then we would have to kind of logically ask this question then is he actually good H yeah this I’ve never asked this in so add moment maybe but maybe not ananas and Safara and the statement is made you have not lied under man but you’ve God and I do believe this is not a news flash for me I don’t go here too quickly with people but there is a line just like in this Bible this red ribbon

there’s there’s a line that goes through for all of us and it is all of us at some level who have been betrayed that runs right through me and how I have been betrayed I believe and it goes to the real one who has been sinned against ultimately God you don’t have a problem with that right so the idea of just to get that that vision of going you know they’ve betrayed me no doubt and standing behind me bigger the god of the universe the great Holy Trinity is who is ultimately really been sinned against

and I can Echo and hear David saying people like that’s that’s terrible that he would say against you and you only have I sinned and that’s where I hear the echo of that that certainly it is about me and it hurts but as I grow in my Christian Life and I have been betrayed too not by my spouse but by others and I want to sit and say you know they they’ve betrayed me but far bigger is they’ve sinned against God that has helped me at time to not just be so myopically focused on the abuse and betrayal that and Trauma that has

happened to me and it surely has happened but to get a bigger picture and say they have not sinned against just me but also against God and I think it’s actually even bigger than that because it’s like okay even if you and I had the human power to enact the Vengeance or the just see I think a lot of times we call it justice we don’t mean Justice what we’re actually talking about is Vengeance can I get a worde like like go say I want Justice hands raised right but it’s like really what I want what my

human heart wants is to execute Vengeance like I want you to hurt in the ways that I’ve hurt 100% and let’s just be honest I kind of want you to hurt a little bit more because the oldest people seem to be able to do I mean I’m reading back through the Old Testament third time in in very in a years and I’m going okay I mean there was some eye for eye and God seemed to he seemed to bless it go in there and just I mean kick you know what and take names I’m like okay I want some of that and yet and yet we

actually don’t yeah deeper in me is I don’t because that’s just again harming myself this this is spiritual maturity and this is becoming Christlike because for for a moment just take a step back and think okay if we could enact human Justice V um it’s limited right it it’s finite because our brains are finite and there’s an infinite God mm who is truly just and truly righteous and if he’s going to actually deal with sin at the full capacity that he needs to deal with it woed them that will experience the

justice of God Amen now if I reframe my thinking along these lines it actually shifts my perspective on how I think of these folks that have sin against me that is so good that’s therapeutically accurate too right like totally and and hopefully I’m just not just theorizing here let me take us to the text Romans 12 in verse 19 um Paul says friends do not avenge yourselves instead leave room for God’s Wrath because it is written Vengeance belongs to me I will replace repace as the Lord and then there’s a a but but

but this is the paradoxical upside down nature of the kingdom of God if your enemy is hungry feed him if he’s thirsty give him something to drink for in so doing you will be heaping fiery coals on his head do not be conquered by evil but conquer evil with good I want to just preface that this is a principle not a policy because in verse 18 says if possible which means sometimes it’s not possible as far as it depends on you live at peace with everyone so so what’s being played out here I think is this

principle that our proper response in these moments ought to enact the ethics of God’s kingdom which is compassion and Grace and love appropriately what do I mean by appropriately you might not be able to feed that person it it actually might be incredibly dangerous and inappropriately and unhealthy for you emotionally spiritually and physically for you to be in relationship with that person that’s what a tenis sing if possible as far as depends on you pursue peace right so what can you do it’s not possible

sometimes not possible what can you do you can always pray for him not like that’s a consolation prize no but you know what it’s going to it is it is a cost yeah mhm it is a cost to your heart to pray for your enemy cuz I don’t want to pray for that you know person and if you can’t pray for him again this is I’m stepping into dangerous territory because I’m acting like a therapist down you know um if you can’t pray for them maybe you prayed that like that’s the starting spot David

didn’t the imprecatory Psalms all 100% God I can’t I this is too hard like I don’t I don’t want to and yet I want you to give me the grace to be able to someday you know Joel I have sat with that before and I have thought to myself uh no thanks I I got a lot to pray about but I ain’t praying for them you know what I mean right right right um but then one day I had this thought that occurred anytime someone sins they experience the pleasure of getting what they want no matter the cost to other people okay so there is a

pleasure side to sin usually yeah but sin always comes as a package deal it always comes as a package deal sin comes with the the pleasure of getting what we want but it also comes with the pain of the consequences that are naturally built into that sin that’s right like sin is not void of natural consequences sin has built within it the consequences and depending on like what those consequences are there could be a serious level of severity to those consequences and maybe they haven’t Unleashed maybe you haven’t seen the

consequences of those Unleashed in that person’s life that day or that week or that year or even five years but here’s what scripture says Proverbs 131 they will eat the fruit of their ways and will be filled with the fruit of their schemes yes and so I almost wonder if it’s the reality that God will not be mocked and the consequences of sin the minute we sin that starts the process of unleashing those consequences even if we don’t see it right then even if they don’t experience it right then

but eventually they will eat the the fruit of their schemes right and so I wonder if praying for them is recognizing yes they have hurt me but they have also Unleashed in their life the pain of consequences that this sin will eventually catch up to them yeah in the absence of repentance in the absence of repentance and I almost wonder if the prayer is more like God help them yeah just God help them okay so I’m going to I’m going to tell a story and I don’t want to tell the story right now because

I’m like the Theologian and I’m supposed to like be calm cool and collected at all times but you can practice humility right now there’s a good book on that and tell the story um I this was some months ago I love going to the gym and working out playing basketball that’s like a jam one of the things that is the most therapeutic for me is actually sitting in the sauna and the sauna is like my safe place and I’ll put my headphones on and it’s steamy in there so people can’t really see me and I can

just like be by myself with my own thoughts listening to nerdy podcast about the history of Rome so um I get in there and you know there’s these stools that are there to put your stuff on and I wear glasses and I’ve got my phone and um I can’t bring my glasses into the steam room because they’re going to crack like you know so I really put my glasses and my phone there when I walk in I walked in and there’re towels like dirty towels like wet towels all over the place and y’all I’m not even joking

with you there are hooks like hangers all over the walls of this gym for you to put your towels on right I’m not saying what I did was appropriate or good but I’m am going to confess what I did I got a little annoyed and so I and I don’t want to touch it cuz it’s all wet so I picked up my foot and the place was kind of empty there was a person who sitting in the corner but like far away and I was like surely that can’t be this person’s TOs and I had picked up my foot and I knocked them off and then I realized my

water bottle was empty and I need my water to be so I walked back in to fill up my water jug really quick and then I came back out and the towels were back on the stool at which point I’m like what is happening and I’ve got my headphones in L I walk out and there is a gentleman um older gentleman and he looked at me and he said why would you do that and I looked at him and I have my headphones on and I clicked the thing off and I said um excuse me sorry and there was another guy who was like an innocent bystander right there and he

was kind of looking at me being like don’t you know and I was like sorry excuse me what did you say he says why would you do that so rude and I was like oh the the towels are yeah yeah why would you do that here comes and I said um well actually those stools I’m trying to be very calm and collected actually those stools are for you to put your phone or your glasses on um there’s a lot of hooks here that you could put your towels on he goes he goes yeah but what you don’t like there’s no sign up

there there’s no sign up there that says the towels have to go on on the hooks and I responded and this was not right of me I react I reacted and I said you don’t need a sign it’s common sense so you got hooked by his lack of using the hooks listen he got heated he then said you I’m much older than you that’s so disrespect don’t disrespect me he went biblical on you he did and he’s going at and something happened and I can’t explain it other than I heard my mom Oh I thought going to be the Holy Spirit

but no was and my mom had instilled into me like from the moment I can remember you always respect your elders it does not matter you always respect your elders and when he said I’m older than you and you disrespected me I was like I said sir sir sir sir sir sir I said I’m sorry man I disrespected you and my mom raised me better than that and I ended the conversation I took my glass I found a different spot to put it and I went into the steam room right and I’m in the steam room and I am having a

war with myself in my brain steam up in the Ste I’m like I can’t believe I let him off the hook like that that was the most ridiculous thing and then s I’m like and then right then the door opened up guess who came in the guy came in and he came in and he went right next to me and he said excuse me young man I said and I’m like can’t really see I got my glasses off and then I was like oh my gosh this is the same guy is he gonna try to fight with me inside of the you know and he said I apologize

too I was like huh and he was like um it shows what kind of man you are to have apologized the way that you did and your mother raised you repaired a rip yeah and I was just like but I mean that’s that that’s that Romans passage right like like don’t rep don’t don’t repay Vengeance with vengeance um repay with forgiveness and kindness and it will be like heaping coals right and so simultaneously this interaction took place and and the thing that I didn’t think I want and and then she it’s like

man that’s the goal the goal you know and then but some sometimes that doesn’t happen that’s right I was going to say I I love that story because I feel like it’s such a beautiful example of you humbling yourself and we reap what we sow and so you SED peace and humility and you were able to reap then the peace and humility and it affected him too but the same is true if he would have never come back and said anything to you see I think it’s also a really beautiful principle that if we want peace in our life then we have to

set up ourselves to experience peace we have to walk into a room bringing peace and if we walk into a room and we bring bitterness and we bring resentments and we bring this sense that God’s never going to address their issues and so you know it’s better for me just to retaliate you know with my words with my thoughts with my actions whatever then that all of that breeds such chaos yes and I want more than seeing that other person punished for what they did I want peace in my life because even if I were

to see the punishment even if I were to see quote the Justice even if I were to see how God addresses the Vengeance with equal measures of justice and mercy I may not like it I may not agree with it but it it just seeing that is not going to give me the satisfaction and ultimately the peace that I want in my life what will give me the peace is for me to yes be responsible like if someone has abused me I need to bring the it to the attention of the right people I need to make my therapist aware I need to make other people aware I need to you

know there are responsible things that you can do but in terms of making sure that person learned the lesson and in terms of trying to control the situation so that person never does it again those are things that are so outside of my control and so I have to realize that God will address this with equal measures of mercy and Justice God will will not be mocked I don’t have to see it to know that it is true because like I said sin comes as a packaged deal and the consequences for that sin are built in sometimes you just got to give it a

little bit of time but I know that even if I saw this other person getting punished it’s not going to give me the peaceful satisfaction that what I’m really longing for I have to make sure that the hurt that that person Unleashed upon me doesn’t then become multip supped by me now taking that hurt and unleashing it onto other people and so it’s almost this thought of like okay I’m not going to give the power of self-control I’m not going to give that away to the person who hurt me I’m going

to exercise the power of self-control so that the hurt stops with me so that the abuse stops with me so that the pain stops with me and also in so many times throughout the Bible the very choices that they the other person is making are the very choices that will eventually be the consequences so like in the story of Esther you know the story of Esther is fascinating but hmon was going to come after the Jewish people and he built Gallows to murder morai one of the Jewish leaders and the way that the story plays out is layered and nuanced

and everything but eventually hmon hung on the very Gallows that that he built to hang morai on God will not be mocked and Only God Can address their sin with equal measures of justice and mercy and if we want the mercy of God when he exercises the Justice against us we can’t ask God to then have no mercy when he exercises Justice against someone else right yeah and the unique part of that Esther story is that when you’re studying the Book of Esther um the irony of it is that God’s name is ever mentioned

in that entire book so here we are thinking Where’s God Where’s God Where’s God he’s kind of hiding in plain sight yeah and sometimes God does his best work in the Unseen places and the last thing I’ll say is this now enough time has gone by and time doesn’t heal all wounds it’s what we plant in the soil of time that determines whether we’re headed toward healing or toward bitterness right but what time does allow is you to see how things play out that’s so good and truly I have seen that what we plant it

will grow something and so what we seow we do eventually reap I choose to sew wise choices I choose to seow forgiveness I choose to seow responsibility I choose to seow love for my family those are the things that I have I choose and I have chosen for many many years and I am reaping the beautiful fruit of all of that another person has chosen very differently and as time goes on the crop does grow and it may grow slowly but eventually the crop reveals a lot and you will reap whatever it is that you sew you don’t

have to know or hope that that’s true it you can know it because it is true that and that is something that you can count on Joel thank you for your wisdom today and the reminder that um we do need to pray for our enemies and sometimes I think if we pray even as far as praying blessings into our enemy life that’s us asking God to position them to receive blessings and often it’s in that positioning that that if they’re going to receive a blessing and they have to be positioned for it that that’s really