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Ask Pastor John

How Do I Recover from an Unbearable Tragedy?

Ask Pastor John

Desiring God

John Piper, Unknown, 163859, Pastor, Ask, Theology, Desiring God, Religion & Spirituality/christianity, Christianity, Religion & Spirituality, Questions

4.83.8K Ratings

🗓️ 28 August 2020

⏱️ 15 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Some tragedies make life feel barely worth living anymore. So is there any hope that we could one day be happy and at peace again?

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

Being 828, it seems fitting that we record an episode on suffering in honor of the precious

0:11.0

truth that we cling to in Romans 828 is certainly not hard to find such an email. Thousands

0:17.4

of people email us out of the most tragic pain they have ever experienced. And one of

0:23.1

my regrets with this podcast is that we can't reply to every one of those heartbreaking

0:27.8

emails that you send to us. I wish we could. But we simply can't. But we can respond

0:33.3

to this email from a podcast listener, a very broken woman. Pastor John, I need your

0:40.7

help. Tragically back in 2007, I backed over and killed my 18 month old grandson with

0:50.7

a car. I was devastated. I remain devastated. That day changed me. I was once a children's

1:00.0

church director and a Sunday school teacher. I don't serve anymore. 13 years later I

1:05.2

can hardly drive without crying. The guilt I feel for my grandson is greater than the guilt

1:12.4

I feel for not serving God. People say I should be happy. He's in a better place. Or they

1:18.5

say God spared him a bad life that he knew my grandson was going to go down a bad road.

1:25.8

But what would you say? What would make me happy again serving God again and at peace

1:33.7

without my grandson after all these years, Pastor John, can you help me? Whether I can

1:41.9

be of help after all this time, I think she said 13 years. We'll depend on whether the

1:49.6

Holy Spirit is pleased to take what I say and do the miracle, the ongoing miracle that

1:58.0

in myself I certainly am not able to do. So my words now that I'm going to speak that

2:04.1

I've prayed about, come in the hopes that there will be a touch of God and a miracle

2:12.2

wrought through them, which in and of themselves could never happen. Now, before I point our

2:19.9

friend to three biblical considerations, let me say a word about Romans 828 here on the

2:30.1

8th month and on the 28th day of 2020. The flow of thought in Romans 8 goes like this.

2:39.8

We know that for those who love God and are called according to his purpose, all things

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