Warren W. Wiersbe - Looking Up When Life Gets You Down

T his book was originally published in 1984 at a time when some people were promoting process theology and its collateral idea of a limited God. Their argument was that things are bad because God is too weak to do better. When He gets stronger, things will improve, and we help Him get stronger as we overcome our trials.

Today, neither of these ideas takes up much space on the theological agenda, but the major question is still with us: Why do bad things happen to seemingly innocent people? Other questions stem from this one, including: Why is there so much suffering in this world? Is God limited in what He can do? Doesnt He know our pains and disappointments? If He does know, does He really care? Dedicated Christians who seek to please and glorify the Lord ask these questions, and also children who dont even understand whats happening. Costly natural disasters like floods, fires, and oil spills are still in the news, along with wretched economic conditions that wipe out savings, threaten retirements, and destroy jobs. These calamities touch the lives of millions of hardworking people who, from a human point of view, dont seem to deserve them. Even the most devout Christian people occasionally wonder what the Lord is doing.

Helen Keller wrote in her book Optimism : Although the world is full of suffering, it is full also with the overcoming of it. Blind and deaf since childhood, she became an overcomer and encouraged others to overcome. Man is born broken, says one of the characters in Eugene ONeills play The Great God Brown . He lives by mending. The grace of God is glue.

The grace of God! Thats the answer God gave the apostle Paul when three times he asked God to remove his pain. My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness (2 Cor. 12:9). In his poem The Light of the Stars, Longfellow wrote, Know how sublime a thing it is to suffer and be strong. If we experience more suffering, James 4:6 assures us that God gives us more grace.

It is also by the grace of God that I hold to the orthodox Christian position that God is sovereign. For reasons known only to Him, He is using the difficulties of life to accomplish His purposes. The Lord has not abandoned us. He has provided in His Word truths that can strengthen and encourage us, and it is these truths I have tried to share in this book.

During our years of ministry, my wife and I have prayed, wept, and counseled with many hurting people and have had our own share of painful disappointments. But we have always found the Lord to be a caring and comforting heavenly Father who gives us what we need just when we need it. From my reading of the Bible, biography and autobiography, and my personal contacts with many of Gods finest servants, I have learned that the most exemplary and effective people of faith have suffered greatly and yet have triumphed to the glory of the Lord. Their burdens and battles havent ruined them; they have made them what they are.

The aims of this book are to answer some questions about God and suffering in this world and to point to faith in the grace and power of God as our greatest help when we hurt. In short, it aims to help you look up when life gets you down. If you dont think you need Gods help today, perhaps you will tomorrow, or perhaps you can help someone else. Compassionate Christians minimize their own pain as they emphasize encouraging others who suffer and need Gods help. To receive a blessing from God is wonderful; but to be a blessing from God is even greater. May sharing the truths in this book help us all to be a blessing to hurting people.

I dont send out this book from an isolated ivory tower but from the trenches where the battle still goes on. May what I share encourage you to be happy with the will of God and strengthened to do His will and minister to others. The best is yet to come!

Warren W. Wiersbe

B e kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a battle.

Im not certain who first made that statement, but it gives wise counsel indeed. All of us are fighting battles and carrying burdens, and we desperately need all the help we can get. The last thing any of us needs is for somebody to add to our problems.

It isnt the normal demands of life that break us; its the painful surprises. We find ourselves fighting battles in a war we never declared, and carrying burdens for reasons we dont understand. Im not talking about reaping what we sow, because most of us are smart enough to know when and why that happens. If we break the rules, we have to accept the consequences; but sometimes things happen even when we dont break the rules.

When life hands us these painful surprises, we start to ask questions. We wonder if perhaps weve been cheated. We begin to doubt that life makes any sense at all. Bad things do happen to Gods people; and when these bad things happen, our normal response is to ask, Why us?

This book is one mans effort to try to help the many people who are hurting, people who, in their pain, are asking fundamental questions that get down to the foundations of life. Is there a God? If there is, what kind of God is He? By what rules is He running the game of life? Is He free, or is He handcuffed by His own universe? Is He working out a plan, or is He so limited that He cant intervene in the affairs of life? Does it do any good to pray? Do we have any authoritative information from God and about God, or must we settle for our own limited conclusions, based on bits and pieces collected from the shattered experiences of life?

These are important questions and they must be answered.

This book is part of what Mortimer Adler would call the Great Conversation, that fascinating discussion that has been going on for centuries, wherever men and women have pondered the problem of evil in this world. My hope is to help people who hurt and who are perplexed by the problems of life.

For more than sixty years, I have been involved in Christian ministry, trying to help people draw upon the vast spiritual resources God makes available to us. I have had to ask some fundamental questions. Have I been applying the right medicine to the right maladies? Has my diagnosis of the situation been correct? How much do I really know about the God Ive been preaching and writing about all these years? Do I have the kind of faith that works in the battlefield of life?

As I wrestled with these and other questions, I came to some conclusions that will be elaborated on in the chapters of this book. But, just so you know where we are heading, here they are.

1. Our answers to the problem of suffering must have intellectual integrity . We are made in the image of God, and this means we must think. We must ask the right questions if we hope to get the right answers. This means we must all become philosophers and question our questions. We cant avoid this, because the minute you try to answer a question about life, you become a philosopher.

2. People live by promises, not by explanations . This is the balance to number one. Nobody can fully answer all the questions; but, even if we could, the answers are not guaranteed to make life easier or suffering more bearable. God is not standing at the end of a syllogism, nor is peace of mind found at the conclusion of an argument. In every area of life there must always be an element of faithmarriage, business, science, and ordinary everyday decisions. What you believe determines how you behave, but you cant always explain what you believe and why you believe it. Faith is one of the forces by which men live, wrote Henry James, and the total absence of it means collapse.