Resources by Topic: Suffering and Evil

In this clip from the Do Hard Things podcast with The Rebelution in 2022, Randy talks to teenagers about learning to expect suffering. He encourages listeners to ground themselves in the Word of God and live by faith so that this world’s evil and suffering don’t cause them to turn their back on Christ. God is sovereign, and He will carry out His will on Earth as it is in Heaven.

In this clip from the Do Hard Things podcast with The Rebelution in 2022, Randy explains that the hope of Heaven is not simply wishful thinking. He shares that we know more from the Bible about the future, post-resurrection Heaven, which will be on the New Earth, than we do about the present Heaven.

In this clip from the Do Hard Things podcast with The Rebelution in 2022, Randy shares how God worked in his wife Nanci’s life to draw her deeper into the Word. He talks about how her study of God impacted her cancer journey.

God is not unjust; one day, all will be made right. I pray you can trust Him through this pain, and know that He is with you, and that He sees and He knows all.

You’ve been through a lot of stuff, and searching for relief from the pain is totally understandable. The difficulty comes when you search in the wrong places. There isn’t a human on this planet who can remove your pain—not even you, because if you think about it, trading this life for a life in Hell means your pain is multiplied throughout eternity.

Sometimes we make the foolish assumption that our heavenly Father has no right to insist that we trust Him unless He makes His infinite wisdom completely understandable to us. But if God offered us constant explanations for the circumstances we face, our lives would not be free or normal, and would not allow for faith or trust.

God uses our suffering in this broken world, in many forms (including infertility and grief), to conform us to His image and to cause us to place our hope in Him alone. Only He can bring beauty out of such ashes.

We live in a time when we are defined as disabled, bipolar, alcoholic, ADHD, victims of lupus, cancer, Parkinson’s disease, and nearly everything else. Our condition easily becomes our primary reference point.

The news out of Texas has been so tragic, where the results of flash floods on July 4 have claimed more than 100 lives. There’s such heartbreak—I’ve been trying to imagine if it were one of our daughters now, and even more so when they were children.

As God demonstrated in giving Paul his thorn in the flesh, He sometimes has better things in mind than our health.

Anything that violates God’s nature is evil. Sin is not merely a minor deviation from a negotiable standard. It is, in the eyes of a holy God and the holy angels who serve Him, a despicable aberration from God’s nature.

In Randy’s conversation with Davey Blackburn from Nothing Is Wasted Ministries, they discuss what it will be like to live on the New Earth—finally free from the curse, in awe of God’s glory! Randy explains how looking forward to life on the New Earth shapes how we view this present life under the curse.

There is a great phrase many say: “God is good.“ That is certainly true and an appropriate thing to proclaim. However, many of us say it routinely only when life goes our way. 

Evangelist and author Greg Stier writes, “Behind every evil in this world there is a closely knit network of highly resourced influencers who are conspiring to take down evangelical Christians and destroy the global church.”