James MacDonald - When Life is Hard

A poll by the Barna Group once asked, If you could ask God one question, and you knew that He would give you an answer, what would you ask? The most common response was, Why is there pain and suffering in the world?

If you share the gospel with someone who does not yet know the Lord, it wont be long before they ask, How could a God of love allow tragedy, pain, and suffering? In fact, C. S. Lewis said that the problem of pain is atheisms most potent weapon against the Christian faith.

Perhaps you, or someone you know, have recently faced tragedy or received some really bad news and you are wondering, Why? When a tsunami or earthquake hits and thousands die, we wonder, Why? A child is born with a disability and we wonder, Why? A Christian friend gets cancer and we wonder, Why?

A young man is killed in an automobile accident and we wonder, Why? Our family had to face this very tragedy with the early departure to heaven of our oldest son, Christopher, in 2008.

Even Christians ask, Why? That is why I am so glad that my good friend James MacDonald has tackled this vital and gnawing subject in his new book When Life Is Hard.

Know thisJames is not offering pious platitudes from an ivory tower of mere theory. Rather, he is writing from the place of pain, as James himself was recently diagnosed with cancer in 2008. Thankfully, his treatments have been successful, but James has certainly suffered and is qualified to speak on this topic, not only as a powerful teacher of Gods Word but also as a fellow traveler on the road of pain.

While he was getting medical attention for his cancer in Southern California, James asked if he could preach a series of sermons at our church that could be taped and shown to his home congregation at Harvest Bible Chapel in Chicago. Of course, I agreed. As I listened to these messages, which were very well received, I told him, You must put these in a book! And you are now holding this result.

I am delighted to now encourage you to read what James has learned from both Scripture and life on the topic of pain and suffering, and find much needed hope.

G REG L AURIE
Senior Pastor, Harvest Christian Fellowship
Riverside, California

I n the midst of the storm its difficult to know when you heard the first thunderclap. For me, it was sometime during the summer of 2004.

Our church was growing rapidly toward and beyond the 10,000 attendance mark and we had undertaken a very ambitious ministry/facility expansion. More than twenty million dollars had been pledged, and we planned to spend almost double that amount building a camp and starting a new K-12 Christian school. We had also begun erecting a 300,000 square foot worship complex on our newest campus.

During this time our radio ministry, Walk in the Word, was growing into an exciting partnership with a popular out-of-state ministry, bringing explosive growth and impact. I was writing books, launching a revival ministry attended by thousands in arenas around the country, and my wife and I were enjoying our three teenage children.

Looking back, I should have checked into a mental hospital for allowing all that to go on at once. Its not like people didnt try to warn me, its just that I knew God was bigger than all the challenges and I was blindly intent on seizing the opportunity.

Im not sure when we heard the first rumble of thunder, but sometime during the summer of 2004 my wife and I sailed into a gale that became over three years a storm and finally a category 5 hurricane. Landfall for the hurricane would come in late 2007.

Our oldest son broke his neck in a serious car accident and came within a hairs width of death. For several months we would take Luke back and forth to doctors in his skull-piercing metal halo, continuing to pray that his blood supply would get to the remote area in his neck. For most people, such a condition seldom heals without surgerysurgery in the vocal region that would imperil his gift of leading worship.

At the same time, a wonderful treasure of a young man in our church was gone from this earth in a moment. The news of Mitchs tragic drowning came to his parents when my wife and I were with them. They are among our closest friends, and our shared grief was beyond description. I will neither forget that night nor the days, weeks, and months that followed such an earth-shattering loss.

Soon, one of the founding elders of our church died and two other elders faced cancer in their families, one with a son, another with his wife.

Due to circumstances outside my direct control, our construction budget was over by $20 million, staff had to be fired, and I was dragged into the middle of it all. Then irregularities in the structural steel halted work for seven months, requiring a multimillion dollar fix that was hard to configure and almost impossible to fund.

Millions of dollars of liens were placed on the stalled project, and dark clouds of bankruptcy loomed large over the entire ministry. Construction committee members resigned en masse