Why Bad Things Happen To Good People

This morning I sat down and actually watched a two part podcast sermon on why bad things happen to good people by senior pastor Perry Noble from Newspring Church in Anderson, South Carolina.  For the past month Samantha has been urging me to watch these videos, but to be honest I was avoiding them because of the things that have happened in my life.  The bad things that I don't want to let go of, but rather hold onto for situations when I don’t like what God has to say about something.

For anyone who knows me, my road of a very short 20 years has been littered with some very challenging tragedies from being paralyzed twice to losing a grandma to brain cancer right in front of my eyes, to depression, to losing my grandpa last week, and now having to watch my great grandmother fight for her last few breaths to hopefully make it out of this weekend.  And so to me these two sermons where nothing I was looking forward to because I personally have no interest in hearing it.

However, I just finished watching these two podcasts, maybe the best 2 hour investment of my life, and have a little bit of a better realization of what tragedy actually looks like.  The one thing that was said in this sermon that struck me very close was that as humans we want to justify the wrong things that happen to people based on things they must have done, but we want our wrongs to be washed clean so as for us to not have anything bad happen to us.  What I realized to actually be reality was actually something totally different.

I want to share with you all the not so often told tragedy of a man named Jesus Christ, who died on the cross to save us from our own sins, whom never once sinned himself, but endured more tragedy than any of us ever will.  Here is the list;

1.      He was born in a barn because there wasn’t even a room for his family (Tragedy if it happens to your friend next week?)

2.      King Herod ordered the killing of all children under a certain age because he feared Jesus (Tragedy if you wake up tomorrow and see that every child in Ghana under the age of 3 was killed yesterday?)

3.      Jesus’ own father Joseph died when Jesus was between the age of 12-30 (Tragedy if your dad dies today?)

4.      After Jesus’ first sermon he was taken to a cliff in the town and was going to be thrown off of the cliff and killed (Tragedy if the head pastor of your church is thrown off the roof?)

5.      For the first 3 years of Jesus’ ministry there was a group of men who went around criticizing him and plotting to kill him (Tragedy if a countries leader is assassinated?) (Republicans don’t answer that question)

6.      Jesus was betrayed by one of his 12 disciples (Tragedy if your best friend backstabs you?)

7.      The night Jesus was captured his friends couldn’t even stay awake to support him (Tragedy if you need someone to be there and they fall asleep on you?)

8.      Jesus was so worried before he was captured that he was sweating blood (Tragedy if that is you?) (If you say no you are lying!)

9.      After Jesus was captured his closes friends betray him (Tragedy if you get taken to jail and use you one call to call a friend and they tell you they are at a Reds game and aren’t coming?)

10.  After Jesus was captured he was spit on, beard pulled out by hand, crown of thorns smashed onto his head by rocks, and whipped by cat of nine tails just while on trial (Tragedy?)

11.  Once sentenced Jesus was forced to carry his cross until he literally could not carry it anymore (Tragedy when an athlete dies from dehydration?)

12.  Jesus had nails pounded through his feet and wrists onto the cross and a pillow placed behind his back so his lungs would fill with blood (Tragedy?)

13.  For six hours Jesus hung on the cross and GAVE HIS LIFE FOR YOU!

Now just so this all comes back around, this is all to a man WHO NEVER SINNED, and we look at our lives and hold things against God.  Really?  But the best part of this story, and the part that has honestly changed the way I look at my life, is that these tragedies (which they are) where turned into triumph when Jesus rose from the dead. 

Isaiah 43: 1-3 reads : But now thus says the Lord, he who created you, O Jacob, he who formed you, O Israel: “Fear not, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by name, you are mine. When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you; when you walk through fire you shall not be burned, and the flame shall not consume you. For I am the Lord your God, the Holy One of Israel, your Savior.

The reason I share this with everyone today is because just as I have had tragedies in my life Jesus had tragedies in his, and just as his tragedies turned into triumph so will mine!