How do you see God when you face suffering, tragedies, and evil? Do you continue contemplating God’s goodness, or does your vision of the invisible God get distorted by trying to see him through life rather than in Jesus? Do you maintain an eager expectation of God’s goodness manifest in miracles when you go through the fire? Or do you get offended by what you don’t understand? This post shares a little bit of my experience of learning to walk as a heavenly person when everything around seems like hell!

In A War Zone!

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 I live outside of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Favelas surround us. Favelas are areas controlled by drug lords, where even the police are often afraid to enter.

The last few weeks have felt like we were in the middle of a war. We often hear of people dying. We and several neighbors have had bullets enter our houses. Our family has been threatened. These trials have brought a renewed focus on scriptural promises and truths about walking with God’s peace, love, joy, and forgiveness in every circumstance. I have been challenged to grow in the Lord, and I plan to share more about this in the upcoming weeks.

 Losing A Child To Kidnapping and Violence

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 A few months ago, I met a large family that runs a snack bar a few blocks from our house. Some of them received healing miracles and we became friends. I’ve gone back several times to hang out and drink their delicious soup, and the Lord has healed other family members on those visits.

Two weeks ago, I stopped by again. They told me the horrible news. A little girl in their family had been kidnapped and died the day before in the hospital from a bullet wound. There were no tears, just sadness.

I was a bit shocked. We hear of such disasters regularly in Rio De Janeiro, but now it happened to my friends! I didn’t know what to say. We had no words. They had already lost other family members in traumatic ways.

In the last few years, I’ve experienced so much stress and difficulty that sometimes I just have to keep going. I think my friends felt the same way. It hurt to lose a child. But they’d been struggling for survival for so long that it felt like there was little time for tears. We just have to keep going…

Keep Ministering Healing!

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 In the past, I faced times of great personal difficulty and loss and I found that laying hands on the sick and seeing them healed helped me tremendously. Seeing what the Holy Spirit did gave me joy and kept me from falling into despair and self-pity. And so I learned that no matter what happens, the Holy Spirit is always working. He is always looking for ways to express his love to people.

As I was about to leave the snack bar, I saw a young lady with a knee brace. She had a cyst in her knee and lots of pain. I spoke, and all the pain left. She was quite surprised. The cyst was smaller, and I told her I expected it to soon be completely gone. When I visited the snack bar again a week later, they told me of the girl’s healing. I hadn’t realized it, but she was also another extended family member.

Not long after the first publication of this blog post, I saw her again. She hadn’t had any pain since we prayed, but she still felt the cyst. We prayed a second time, and the cyst vanished.

What Is God’s Perspective On Suffering?

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I’ve seen how many people react in the face of such pain. Some people feel it would be disrespectful to pray for someone’s knee after hearing such horrible news. How could I worry about a knee when they lost a little girl?

Many people would be too overwhelmed by the pain to even think of ministering healing to someone. But the Father is always working. Tragedy breaks His heart as well. God is looking for ways to express his love, and he invites us to partner with him in loving people.

Such experiences have shown me how God’s perspective is often so different from ours. Many times, I’ve been so focused on my troubles and introspective that I wasn’t even considering what the Father wanted to do. When I saw God’s perspective, I was surprised. I was focused inward, on resolving my problems and dealing with life. God’s focus was outward, on blessing people regardless of the circumstances.

What Is Our View Of God When Experiencing Tragedies And Evil?

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 Many people have their view of God shattered in tragedies. They have trouble believing and understanding the Heavenly Father’s love.

“The Shack” is the story of a father whose little girl was brutally raped and murdered. The father came to understand that God is not the author of evil, but the Holy Spirit is constantly working redemptively. Evil is the result of men’s choices, not of God’s doing. C.S. Lewis wrote the following:

God created things which had free will. That means creatures which can go either wrong or right. Some people think they can imagine a creature which was free but had no possibility of going wrong; I cannot. If a thing is free to be good it is also free to be bad. And free will is what has made evil possible. Why, then, did God give them free will? Because free will, though it makes evil possible, is also the only thing that makes possible any love or goodness or joy worth having. A world of automata—of creatures that worked like machines—would hardly be worth creating. The happiness which God designs for His higher creatures is the happiness of being freely, voluntarily united to Him and to each other in an ecstasy of love and delight compared with which the most rapturous love between a man and a woman on this earth is mere milk and water. And for that they must be free. [1]

Listen to Jesus words:

Luke 12:6-7 (NRSV) Are not five sparrows sold for two pennies? Yet not one of them is forgotten in God’s sight. But even the hairs of your head are all counted. Do not be afraid; you are of more value than many sparrows.

God continues to care about the smallest details of our lives. We must not let tragedy rob us of understanding the Father’s love. God the Father had nothing to do with the kidnapping of the little girl, and he still cared about healing the cyst on the young lady’s knee.

In The Hiding Place Corrie Ten Boom wrote of miracles that showed the Father’s love and care in even little things, while they were in a concentration camp. There was suffering all around, caused by men’s evil. Yet the Lord multiplied vitamin drops for them so they didn’t run out! Just as Corrie and Betsie Ten Boom did, we can rejoice when we see the Lord’s hand even in things that might seem little in the face of great suffering.

I once saw a lady in a wheelchair receive ministry. She didn’t get out of the wheelchair and walk at that moment. I’m assured that Father’s God’s will was to heal her, since Jesus healed all who came to him. (Matthew 4:23) We as the church are growing in learning to partner with what the Father is doing. As Hebrews says, all things have been placed under our feet. Yet when we don’t see all things under our feet, we continue to look to Jesus. (Hebrews 2:6-9)

Even though she was still in a wheelchair, some fillings in her teeth turned into gold! This gift showed the Father’s love for her, and she wept as God’s goodness touched her! God’s care for us is intimate and personal. He has time for us. He isn’t bothered by even the smallest of our requests. But some people get caught up in the question, “Why didn’t she get out of her wheelchair?”

You may have experienced some things that you still can’t understand. I’ve learned that even if we don’t yet understand some situations, we must not let those situations keep us from understanding the Father’s love for us. I pray that the Holy Spirit would open the eyes of your heart so that you would begin to comprehend God’s love. His presence and goodness are constant!

Romans 8:35-39 (NRSV) Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will hardship, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?  As it is written,

“For your sake we are being killed all day long;
    we are accounted as sheep to be slaughtered.”

No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers,  nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

[1] C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (1952; Harper Collins: 2001) 47-48

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If you liked this post, you may want to check out my Heaven Now book trilogy. It contains many similar insights into understanding simple gospel truths and exercising heaven’s dominion on earth. It’s also filled with testimonies of what happened when I put these truths into practice. I’m sure these books will encourage you and help you learn to walk as a heavenly person. Not only that, but your purchase supports our missionary work in Brazil and in every other place we go!