Feeling abandoned by God on this edition of Truth in Love.

I'm Dale Johnson and you're listening to Truth in Love,

a podcast of the Association of Certified Biblical Counselors,

where we seek to provide biblical solutions for the problems that people face.

And this week on the podcast, I am grateful to have with us lead pastor at Grace Fellowship in

Florence, Kentucky, that's in the Cincinnati area, Brad Bigney. And he has been an ACBC member

for quite some time. Many of our members know Brad very well. He's spoken at many

of our conferences and workshops, and he does some of our regional training. The work that they're

doing up at Grace Fellowship is really exciting. I always love when I had the chance to sit down

with Brad and to talk things over. And this time, we're going to be talking about maybe a deep, dark, difficult subject.

When we talk about the real feelings that we have, Brad, about feeling abandoned by God.

I'm so grateful that you're here to discuss this issue with us.

Thanks for being on the podcast.

Thanks, Dale.

I always enjoy time with you or ACBC.

Amen, man. It's always good and fun. We enjoy you being around and being on our team and speaking the truth in love to us all anytime you get a chance to minister the Word. Now, you and I've been talking. I noticed recently that you preached a sermon series through some really difficult passages, some of the darkest passages in the

Bible. So as I think about me preaching a sermon series, as a pastor, sometimes you want to

tend toward things that would be encouraging to your people, but you were drawn to wanting to preach

through a sermon series on some of the darker passages. I mean,

some people would argue that Psalm 88 is one of the darkest passages of the Bible. So why would

you as a pastor choose to go in that direction to use this to teach to your people? Well, I hope

some of it is just as I'm maturing and aging in the Lord in my own walk with the Lord that I'm becoming

...