Hey, this is Patrick with Pure Life Ministries. When our hearts are truly transformed by God, significant changes should be occurring in our lifestyle. But this goes far beyond just stopping porn use or avoiding illicit scenes in movies. How we spend our time, where we go, what we pursue in life, everything, should be radically altered as we begin to walk on the narrow way. And many Christians just don't think deeply enough about the way they live, and it's not uncommon for those in the church to base their daily decisions off the media and the culture rather than on the moral principles of Scripture. We want to see that change. Please join us on Saturday, October 12th at 10am Eastern on our YouTube channel for another episode of Pure Life Live. I'll be sitting down with Pure Life's President and Founder, Steve Gallagher, and our Executive Director of Counseling Programs, Jordan Yoshimine, to discuss the influence of the media we ingest, the limits we should put on our devices, the impact of spiritual atmospheres in and out of the home, and much more. Our hope is that this will help you learn to lead a lifestyle that honors God and helps you get free or stay free from sexual sin. We'd also love to respond to your questions about this topic, so send those to live@purelifeministries.org. Hey, this is Nate with the Pure Life Ministries Podcast. We're just a week away from starting to release episodes from our new couple series. In the meantime, what you're about to hear was originally released June 28th, 2021 as part of our Victory Series. In this episode, we looked at why it's so important to have a firm conviction that God is completely and absolutely good. You just acknowledge that God, I'm wrong, I repent. You are good regardless of what I have experienced or understood. Or like Joseph said, even what others may have meant for evil, the Lord means it for good in our lives. I have this rock now that I stand on and cling to that God is good. I may not be able to see it right now or feel it right now, but I know that He's good and eventually I'll get through this and I'll be able to see it clearly. One of the most important aspects of living and victory is having a vibrant relationship with God, a relationship where you come to know Him personally and experientially, a relationship where you surrender all that you have to Him. But the truth is, we'll never surrender ourselves to someone unless we trust them. And we won't trust someone unless we know that they're good. Today we'll look at one of the most attacked attributes of God, His goodness. As the psalmist says, "O give thanks to the Lord for He is good, His mercy is forever. This is purity for life." [Music] In the Garden of Eden, Satan told Eve that God wasn't really good, that when God told them not to eat the fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, that God was holding out on them, that they wouldn't die. And for thousands of years, Satan has replicated this same lie in a million ways, leading vast numbers of people to believe that God is not good and that they cannot trust Him. Coming to believe in God's goodness was a long, hard road for me, mostly because of my childhood. When I was around four years old, several things happened that really deeply affected me and ultimately set the tone for my childhood and teenage years. The first thing I would say is that up until age four, I was the youngest of six children in my family, and I was old enough to be aware that I was my mom's favorite, just extra attention, extra affection, little perks, that's kind of thing. And when she asked me if I wanted a little baby brother, I was like, "Adam, no, absolutely not." I just somehow instinctively knew that he was going to displace me when he came along, and that's exactly what happened. And as I got older, I responded to all of that with anger and resentment, and that, of course, led to me getting punished pretty severely at times. And ultimately, the problem was I came to the conclusion that my parents didn't love me and didn't want me. And then around the same time my little brother was born, that's when I began to be sexually abused by an older male relative who would come and visit with us for extended periods and whenever he was there, the abuse would happen. That went on for at least 10, 12 years maybe. And part of the problem was like it was just really confusing for me as a young child because even though I hid it in everything, I knew it was wrong and I hated being a participant in it. I tried hard to prevent it, but at the same time, there was this other side of it where like I craved the attention and the acceptance that seemed to come with it, like he was the only one who made me feel special or feel wanted. You know, hand in hand with those two things, it was around the same time that my family quit going to church. So of course, it's only through hindsight that I can really recognize just how significant these things were in my life, but they really set the stage for the enemy to gain a real foothold in my life. I was angry, hateful, bitter, but I thought everyone else was the problem and cried myself to sleep, why me, why me, I'm the victim, life is just so unfair and I was in the suicidal depression for years. And eventually, I did get involved in a church, a friend led me to church and I thought I really did believe that God was good. Just like I accepted or believed everything else the pastor taught me about God. God was also love, but I had this very warped understanding of love. And it was kind of the same way with God's goodness. I couldn't see it, but there was a huge problem. My childhood experiences were like this filter in front of God and everything had to pass through that filter and it became like a roadblock that kept me from trusting the Lord with my whole heart. God-boog faced extremely difficult and painful experiences in His youth and it tainted His ability to see God as He truly is good and loving. The same may be true for many of you, but despite the fact that we sometimes mistrust Him, the Lord is willing to pursue us, to convince us of His goodness, and to help us to begin to truly trust Him. So Pastor Ed, you shared that your childhood was difficult in a lot of different ways and that those experiences helped foster this belief in you that God isn't good, although you wouldn't have said it at that time, in that way. But can you expand on that? What things were you believing about God that now you recognize as the belief that God isn't good? Yeah. Well, I'm sure that there were lies in there, you know, like thoughts like God doesn't care or He must want me to suffer. He's not answering my prayers or doesn't answer anyone's prayers, maybe. Maybe some of that was in there, but I was definitely not aware of any of that and that's what made it so difficult to recognize where I was wrong. Like, I didn't feel like I believed any horrendous lies or falsehoods about God. It was just that I had this really distorted picture of God and couldn't see that either. It was like I had a caricature of God really. So I minimized God's justice and grief over sin, you know, the fact that He's the man of sorrows who bears our griefs and carries our sorrows was just a tiny little part of my concept of God. And like I knew He cared for widows and orphans, but I wasn't a widow and orphan and I wasn't at all sure He cared enough to get involved in my personal pain and suffering. And I knew that God is love, but my definition of love was all emotional, just like a warm, fuzzy feeling of acceptance kind of thing. And I understood nothing about sacrificial love or the patience of love that holds out for a higher, greater good in someone's life. And I accented or magnified certain attributes like God's sovereignty and lordship, you know, so He's responsible for everything, His right to make laws and issue punishments, you know, was really large in my picture of God's. But that ended up turning Him into like a distant, cold, austere, demanding Father. And so I had allowed my experience to dictate my view of God rather than the Bible. And if I could just add this thought here, because I think I'm probably far from alone in doing this sort of thing, my particular picture or concept of God may be a little different, but many people I believe are doing this, the same thing, creating a caricature of God. Their image of God is just so distorted that He's really just a God of their imagination when it's all said and done. You know, the God they are worshiping doesn't really even exist. He's not the one true God who gave us the Bible to reveal Himself and expose His heart to us. Yeah. So one of the things that you mentioned in your story was that you didn't go to church as a child, but then you did begin going as an adult and that you just kind of mindlessly assented in a way to whatever the pastor said. Yeah. Of course God's good. Of course He's kind. Of course He's love. And yet there's all of this turmoil going on inside of your heart. What was that like? Yeah. Well, I definitely gave a cent to the notion that God is good and kind and so forth. I even actually believe it or not, I even gave a little sermon in church one Sunday on God's goodness, but I also lived with this very strong sense that nobody else really knew me or understood me. Nobody else knew what I needed, nobody else knew what was best for me. I could trust only myself. And so I didn't realize it back then, but that perspective kind of automatically was pushing God out, putting Him on the margins in my life. And I thought that I trusted Him, but in practice, I really didn't. But because I said I trusted Him, I could blame Him through things that weren't going my way or weren't working out the way I wanted them to. And then in the larger view of things, I would say I was essentially living a double life, saying one thing and doing another. And that duplicity only increased over time, especially when sexual sin gained a stronger foothold in my life. Yeah. Wow. What you're just saying, I trust in God, He's good and He's kind, but no one else knows what I need. No one cares for me like they should. It's like, wow, those are direct contradictions of what God tells us about Himself. Yeah. It's true. And it's hard to explain how you can actually live like with that kind of duplicity, but I did. Yeah. Yeah. So praise God, because obviously He dealt very kindly with you on those misconceptions about who He was. And I want to ask you, what was the turning point where it became not intellectual assent and duplicity inside, but now a real genuine belief and trust that He is who He says He is. Yeah. And man, when I look back over my life, I have to give God credit for being so patient and so gentle with me because the change didn't really take place until I was in my late thirties and ended up at Pure Life Ministries, honestly, you know, even though I was about to graduate from a rather conservative Orthodox seminary with excellent grades, you know. I also understood that something was off. You know, God is omnipotent. That's the theological statement of truth. But in my life, it seemed that He was impotent. He'd been unable to protect me, unable to bring me lasting happiness that I expected. And worst of all, He'd been unable to deliver me from the bondage of sexual sin. And so, you know, then I arrive at Pure Life Ministries and coming here was really the last step before I was going to throw in the towel on life. You know, if God doesn't come through for me here at Pure Life, then I'm done with everything, marriage, Christianity, life, just everything. So early on, when I was here as a student in the residential program, I, and I give the Lord credit more than me when I say it this way, but I made a conscious decision to set aside everything I thought I knew about God. Whatever I knew before had only left me ultimately in misery and despair and, you know, just no victory over sin in my life. So I had none of the love and the joy and the peace or any of the other fruits of the Spirit in my life. So I recognized that there was this vast gap between my experience and what the Bible portrayed. So for the first time, it's like I decided that the problem just might be my experience and that I had to let go of that filter between me and God. And I determined to read the Bible and let the Lord reveal himself to me. And I just made up my mind, you know, whatever I read, God, that's what I'm going to believe. That's who you are. You are who you say you are, not who I've imagined you to be. And there was just one particular morning where God really met me when I was reading his word in my personal devotion time. And, you know, I'd been taught when you come to certain things where the Bible's, you know, maybe stating God is good or something like that, you pause and you pray and you give thanks and you worship him at that moment. And I was doing that and I was just thanking him for how good he was. And it was like I sensed this little quiet voice in my heart and it was him and he said to me, but you don't believe that. And I knew it was him because there was such a sadness and a yearning in the words when I heard them in my heart and I instantly knew it was true, you know, my whole life, I had been proclaiming his goodness, but not really believing it, never making it like personal, like God is good to me. And I repented in that very moment, like I just, I did what I had been taught to do. And I'm wrong, you just acknowledge it, God, I'm wrong, I repent. You are good, regardless of what I have experienced or thought or understood. You know, from there, it's like his word just really became more alive and I could really see like Romans 8, 28 is true. He really does work all things out for good for those who love him. Or like Joseph said in Genesis 50, 20, even what others may have meant for evil, the Lord means it for good in our lives. And now God's goodness is one of those foundational truths that I hold on to. And it gets tested at times in my life, you know, I assure you, but there are times when everything can seem out of control or just hard or painful. But I have this rock now that I stand on and cling to that God is good. You know, I may not be able to see it right now or feel it right now or prove it right now, but I know that he's good and eventually I'll get through this and I'll be able to see it clearly. Wow. You didn't say this explicitly in your answer, but I want to point this out because this is one of the ideas that this whole show is based on, which is that we have to surrender. And that's what happened. I can hear that you surrendered your opinions, your experiences, your ideas, your emotions. And now it was going to be God who was in control, not things the other way around. Absolutely. And it changed my life and in the way it needed to be changed. It started to get good at that point, you know. I want to broaden things out a little bit and talk now more about things that are difficult for us to understand about God that are outside of our own experience because there are things about what God does that are just difficult for us to understand. And there are things that in the Bible, it makes God at times seem like he's an angry tyrant. There's things in our world that seem like there's just so much pointless suffering. Now obviously I know we're not going to solve all of these issues in one question, but I'm just wondering if your own experience with suffering and then seeing God's goodness has helped you to see through these difficult issues? Yes, for sure. It has done that. Nate, I really like Psalm 119 verse 68, which says simply, "You are good and you do good." And you know, the psalmist is exulting God there. You are good and you do good. And that's the simple truth we have to believe and hold on to. I've learned never to doubt God's goodness. My inability to see it or recognize it in a specific situation doesn't negate the fact that God is good and that he's actively doing good. That's why I like that verse because it adds that little element to it, that God does good. And I think it can be really helpful to keep that truth as the frame around our experiences of suffering. And it also I think helps to keep in mind that it isn't only humans that are suffering. God suffers too. Jesus is called a man of sorrows. He bears our griefs and carries our sorrows. He enters right into suffering and suffers alongside us, in other words. We're never alone in our suffering, but God also suffers in ways that we can't really comprehend. You know, the level of rejection he experiences or the degree to which he is misunderstood and gets blamed or falsely accused, the level of despising and hatred that he has to deal with is far beyond anything we humans ever experience. And God suffers it all without retaliating. He just keeps on loving. He remains kind and it says, right in scripture, he's kind even to the unthankful and the evil. He just keeps offering mercy and he's willing to forgive everyone who will repent. And Nate, if I could offer maybe one more insight that when we talk about suffering and something that helps, I think in the midst of it, you know, it's kind of hard to explain maybe, but I'll say it this way. We know from 1 John 4 that God is love. And in Romans 5, we read that God demonstrated his love for us by sending Jesus to the cross. Now, Jesus needed to die in order to serve as our perfect lamb and be the sacrifice for our sins, but he didn't have to die on the cross just to accomplish that. The cross was chosen specifically because of the extreme suffering involved in dying on the cross. God wanted us to see his heart, his willingness to suffer the cruelest death that man could inflict on him. That's what God wanted us to see. And what he has shown me over and over is that his love is most clearly revealed in suffering. And when we suffer as believers, we're actually able to better reveal Jesus to others than at any other time in our life. Our wounds that we have from suffering become the touch points for others to see and experience the love of God for themselves. And when people are able to praise him, thank him and trust him in the midst of suffering, that's one of the most important distinctions I think there is between Christians and those who don't know the Lord. Yeah, as you're talking about that, I'm just reflecting on the fact that we're finite and God is infinite. And it's like as I listen to you saying these things, which are so otherworldly and profound, you know, I'm just aware that even these things are just the fringes of his ways. You know, they're just the basic outline of who he really is. And we can do exactly what you said before. We can just look right in the face of things that we don't understand. And we can say, you are good and do good. That's right. And yeah, I just love the fact that God is bigger than my understanding, you know, bigger than I'm able to comprehend. I don't want him to be just a, you know, a bigger, slightly better version of me. He's infinitely wiser and infinitely better. And because of that, he's worthy of my trust. I hope you heard the confidence in Pastor Ed's voice as he was talking about the goodness of God. He doesn't have that confidence in God because his life was perfectly easy and everything was going the way he wanted it. He has that confidence in God because right in the midst of the struggle, he decided that he was going to believe what the word of God said instead of believing what he was feeling and thinking and seeing. Some of you are facing very difficult trials right now. And I want to encourage you, it's in this moment that God is giving you the opportunity to prove his goodness. In July of 2019, I went to the ER to get a lump exam and that was on the side of my neck. And after the initial assessment from the doctor there, she said, sure, yep, I feel that I could see it. Let's go get a CAT scan and see what we're dealing with here. She came back and with kind of a concerned look said, we're going to need to get an additional CAT scan. I want to scan your whole body now because we found not one lump. We found several lumps. And the results of the second CAT scan revealed that I had not only a cluster lumps on my neck and down my shoulder, but even towards the center of my chest and around my heart. And wow, that just changed a lot of things and I didn't know quite how to respond to all of that. I just remember coming home and saying, wow, I didn't see that one coming. Honestly, the first three weeks of this whole process were the hardest struggle. I'm a planner, I like to respond to a crisis, look at the facts and create a plan that's going to get the job done as quickly and as effectively as possible. I remember in the beginning stages of the diagnosis, I began doing a lot of research on different treatment options, side effects, recovery timelines. I started reading medical journals and articles on all different kinds of cancers or lymphomas, and I wanted to know what was going on. But the more research I did, the more stressed out I became. I was finding it very difficult to trust the Lord in this situation. So after several weeks of just doing research, reading articles and really trying everything within my own strength to try to figure out what was going on here, I was not getting any better. I was actually getting worse in my anxiety and my fear. I had really an anxiety attack is what I would describe it at one point and it was just a kind of a terrifying time. And finally, I just went out on a prayer walk one day and just said, Lord, I can't do this anymore. And it was like at that point, let the Lord spoke to me and just said, that's what I've been trying to get at. You can't do this. So after that experience with the Lord, I finally laid down control of this entire process and began to trust that God would appoint the right doctors at the right time to treat me appropriately. I had to really pray and surrender my life to the Lord and ask the Lord to give the medical staff the wisdom on how to treat me and that I would just follow their recommendations. And after I repented of control and surrender to the Lord, it was then that I was able to trust God more and with that increased trust in the Lord and that increased surrender came more victory. So I certainly needed that initial breaking from the Lord because the next three months of chemo were filled with additional trials and testings and it was certainly a lot of challenging times. Toward the end of my chemo treatment several weeks before starting radiation, I became very sick and was admitted to the hospital for several days. Those were long dark and painful nights as the doctors tried to figure out what was going on. There were certainly times where the temptation to curse God and die crossed my mind. And I had to really hang on to the Word of God and Psalms 130 came to mind and I kept just repeating several verses, "Out of the depths I've cried to you O Lord, Lord, hear my voice, let your ears be attentive to the voice of my supplications." What really jumped out at me though was I wait for the Lord. My soul waits and in His Word I do hope. I had to wait for the Lord through this and His Word was the anchor that got me through that time. I am so grateful to the Lord for His faithfulness. At the end of each trial Jesus was there. Not only was He there but looking back I could see He was always with me. I couldn't see that very clearly when I was in the heat of the battle. But the truth was He never left me. And now when I'm going through a trial that seems to have no end I could wait on the Lord and trust in His Word for He will always prove Himself to be faithful. Let me remind you once again, there's no victory over sin without surrender to God. And we'll never surrender to God unless we believe that He's good. To be honest I found it a little difficult to know how to end this episode because when it comes to the hard questions in life there usually aren't any easy answers. God doesn't always deliver us immediately. He allows us to go through perplexing circumstances and painful trials. And at times our experience seems to contradict His character and His promises. But here's what I know for sure, God's Word is bedrock truth. And we can lean our whole weight on what He has said about Himself. Trust in the Lord with all of your heart and do not lean on your own understanding. In all of your ways acknowledge Him and He will make your path straight. Truth. He is a refuge for those who are oppressed, a stronghold in times of trouble, and those who know your name put their trust in you for you have not forsaken those who seek you. Truth. You will seek me and you will find me when you search for me with all of your heart. Truth. Truth. So what about you? Will you trust Him today? Will you look deep into His Word and believe what He has declared about Himself? Will you face your circumstances head on even if you don't understand them and say but God is good? May we all have the humility and the wisdom today to joyfully say oh give thanks to the Lord for He is good, His mercy is forever. Thanks for joining us, we'll see you next time. Purity for Life is a production of Pure Life Ministries. For over 30 years Pure Life Ministries has been the go-to for those whose lives have been devastated by sexual sin. Visit us on the web for more information about our life-changing counseling programs and powerful teaching materials. Also check out our video clips of men and women whose lives have been radically transformed. All that and more at PureLifeMinistries.org. [music] (upbeat music) (upbeat music)
