Latest / Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive / April 9, 2019 | Expresso - Aleda Berry

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April 9, 2019 | Expresso - Aleda Berry · Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: There is a small town about an hour and a half outside of Chicago called Tiskawa, Illinois.
• 0:07
  SPEAKER_00: And that's where my life began.
• 0:09
  SPEAKER_00: My dad was a young pastor, he was a recent grad from seminary, and I was their second daughter.
• 0:18
  SPEAKER_00: Some early early pictures from that time.
• 0:33
  SPEAKER_00: When I was a year old, we moved to Mountain Lake, Minnesota, where my dad pastored a Mennonite church for eight years.
• 0:40
  SPEAKER_00: Both of my parents grew up near Bluffton, Ohio, and that's where all my grandparents and my relatives were.
• 0:47
  SPEAKER_00: So I grew up without the benefit of extended family, unless you can count that one-month vacation dad got every year.
• 0:54
  SPEAKER_00: So the month of August was always spent in Ohio with relatives.
• 0:58
  SPEAKER_00: So for me, relatives were either feast or famine.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_00: We've corrected that in my generation because my children all live in Kansas City and the grandkids are all in Kansas City as well.
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_00: So I feel blessed.
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_00: During our time in Mountain Lake, we got another little sister, Lori, and our family of five was complete.
• 1:18
  SPEAKER_00: I have wonderful memories of my childhood.
• 1:21
  SPEAKER_00: Mountain Lake was a really small town, and it was back in the days when you could ride your bicycle to your friend's house, to the library, to the park.
• 1:31
  SPEAKER_00: We went to the church next door.
• 1:33
  SPEAKER_00: It was never locked, so we could go over and play as much as we wanted to.
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_00: When the noon whistle sounded, which it did every day, we came home for lunch, obviously.
• 1:41
  SPEAKER_00: We had lunch and we got to go back out and play again.
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_00: We had a lot of freedom growing up, and our parents didn't worry about us.
• 1:51
  SPEAKER_00: Here's a picture from our time in Mountain Lake.
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_00: That's Dad with his two older daughters, Mona and me.
• 2:01
  SPEAKER_00: And there's the bicycle brigade.
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_00: This was the uh the parsonage we lived in in Mountain Lake, and it apparently was the day that all the kids came to our house.
• 2:11
  SPEAKER_00: So the church was right next door.
• 2:13
  SPEAKER_00: So we all had a wonderful, we had good imaginations and we had good places to play, too.
• 2:19
  SPEAKER_00: We didn't always set the good example our parents would have liked for us to.
• 2:24
  SPEAKER_00: We laughed out loud in church sometimes.
• 2:26
  SPEAKER_00: We were totally not perfect kids, and we played the hymn book game.
• 2:31
  SPEAKER_00: Don't look for it anywhere at Target because you won't find it.
• 2:34
  SPEAKER_00: Mona and I made it up, and here's how we played it.
• 2:37
  SPEAKER_00: We each gathered about 10 hymn books and took them up to the balcony, and then we took turns throwing them off.
• 2:46
  SPEAKER_00: And if they stayed on the pew, you got a point.
• 2:49
  SPEAKER_00: If they didn't, no points.
• 2:52
  SPEAKER_00: We would play this game literally all morning or all afternoon, and we kept a running tally.
• 2:57
  SPEAKER_00: So I guess we were pretty competitive.
• 2:59
  SPEAKER_00: But it didn't occur to us that this was not a smart thing to do until the hymn book committee could not figure out why the spines on the new hymnals were not holding up well.
• 3:08
  SPEAKER_00: And they figured it out, and that was the end of the hymn book game.
• 3:13
  SPEAKER_00: Our parents loved and disciplined us, so we were very fortunate for that.
• 3:18
  SPEAKER_00: They were also very big on scripture memory.
• 3:21
  SPEAKER_00: So if any of you young moms have kids, help them, encourage them to learn Bible verses.
• 3:28
  SPEAKER_00: Even if they don't understand everything those verses are saying, help them to learn the verses anyway, because you get to be my age and you really can remember them a whole lot better than when you try to learn them at this age.
• 3:40
  SPEAKER_00: So scripture memory is a very important part of my life.
• 3:43
  SPEAKER_00: When we were young, we learned that all people were sinful, including us.
• 3:47
  SPEAKER_00: We learned Romans 3.23 that all have sinned and come short of God's glory.
• 3:52
  SPEAKER_00: And we also learned that God loved the world so much that he sent his only son to die for us and he forgave us of our sins, and we could be in heaven with him forever if we chose him, which we did.
• 4:05
  SPEAKER_00: I remember being really impressed that this life here on earth was only temporary, and life in heaven would be eternal.
• 4:13
  SPEAKER_00: That made an impression on me as a kid.
• 4:16
  SPEAKER_00: When I was eight, we moved to Whitewater, Kansas, which is about 45 miles north of Wichita, where my dad was the pastor of a large country church, and he was there for almost 20 years.
• 4:29
  SPEAKER_00: Let me tell you, that was a huge culture shock, going from living in a town to living out in the country where our friends weren't close by, and it was a bit of an adjustment.
• 4:43
  SPEAKER_00: There's a picture from the time we were living in Whitewater, Kansas.
• 4:47
  SPEAKER_00: We had a lovely creek that went through our backyard with lots of trees, and we spent hours playing down there.
• 4:54
  SPEAKER_00: We would wade in the creek, we climbed trees and read books, and we we really did end up having a pretty good time.
• 4:59
  SPEAKER_00: It was a good place to be, in spite of the fact that we didn't have friends over all the time.
• 5:04
  SPEAKER_00: But that bridge was over the creek and it was right outside our front door.
• 5:08
  SPEAKER_00: So we girls would climb up on top there.
• 5:10
  SPEAKER_00: Lori was up there with us too, and it's only lucky that social services weren't next door.
• 5:16
  SPEAKER_00: I'm sure we would have been taken away and placed in foster homes.
• 5:20
  SPEAKER_00: But this is mild because what we actually did that was the most fun is Mona and I dared each other, and we got up on that beam and we walked all the way across, one foot in front of the other.
• 5:31
  SPEAKER_00: Because you had to be careful.
• 5:33
  SPEAKER_00: If we had fallen off on the roadside, it would have been about a 10 or 12 foot drop to the highway, to the road.
• 5:39
  SPEAKER_00: But if we had fallen on the other side, we would have gone into a creek a long, long ways below, and neither of us were good swimmers.
• 5:48
  SPEAKER_00: I think God saved us from ourselves.
• 5:54
  SPEAKER_00: I grew up going to Christian schools, and it was in high school that I met Merle Jost at Burian Academy.
• 6:01
  SPEAKER_00: He was tall and blonde and good looking and had a very good sense of humor.
• 6:05
  SPEAKER_00: He probably would have enjoyed the hymn book game with us.
• 6:09
  SPEAKER_00: Those were really good years.
• 6:11
  SPEAKER_00: He played basketball.
• 6:12
  SPEAKER_00: I was a cheerleader, we went steady.
• 6:14
  SPEAKER_00: For those of you who are too young to know what that means, a few of you, it's when the senior boy takes his senior ring and gives it to his girlfriend, and it means that you are now exclusive.
• 6:25
  SPEAKER_00: And because the ring is too big, you take dental floss, and you dental floss, wrap it all the way around until it starts to fit, and then you put nail polish over the top, and after it dries, you can wear it.
• 6:38
  SPEAKER_00: So that's what we did.
• 6:40
  SPEAKER_00: One of my best friends was Kathy, and her best friend was Manley, and Manley and Merle were very close friends too.
• 6:47
  SPEAKER_00: So we did everything together.
• 6:49
  SPEAKER_00: We had a wonderful time for two years, junior and senior year, and it was during Manley's senior year that he was involved in a car accident where he had some serious brain injuries, and he died shortly after.
• 7:04
  SPEAKER_00: That was really a traumatic loss for a lot of us.
• 7:07
  SPEAKER_00: It was extremely life-shaking, and it was my first experience with the death of a young person.
• 7:14
  SPEAKER_00: Merle and I had experienced some bumps in the road along the way, too.
• 7:18
  SPEAKER_00: I broke up with him after high school because I was totally not ready to commit to a long-distance relationship when we were both at different colleges.
• 7:27
  SPEAKER_00: He was at Tabor College and I was in Omaha, Nebraska.
• 7:30
  SPEAKER_00: And there were some hard feelings there, but it actually turned out to be a good thing for me because I needed time to grow up to figure out what I wanted.
• 7:39
  SPEAKER_00: I needed some freedom.
• 7:40
  SPEAKER_00: I had dated him for two years.
• 7:42
  SPEAKER_00: It was all a good thing.
• 7:43
  SPEAKER_00: And after two years, we were back together again.
• 7:46
  SPEAKER_00: I had transferred to Emporia State after my freshman year, and he then transferred to Emporia State too.
• 7:52
  SPEAKER_00: A few months.
• 7:54
  SPEAKER_00: Um picture.
• 7:57
  SPEAKER_00: There's me with Merle.
• 7:58
  SPEAKER_00: Most of you, a few of you remember him from Topeka Bible Church.
• 8:03
  SPEAKER_00: He used to sing at TBC.
• 8:05
  SPEAKER_00: If you if you remember Merle, would you raise your hand?
• 8:08
  SPEAKER_00: I want to know how many of you actually knew him.
• 8:10
  SPEAKER_00: Wow.
• 8:11
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 8:15
  SPEAKER_00: A few months before our wedding, I was riding in a car with some friends on the way to Omaha, and we were hit by a drunk driver.
• 8:23
  SPEAKER_00: It was before seat belts, and so all three of us were thrown out of the car.
• 8:28
  SPEAKER_00: It's totally amazing that none of us were killed.
• 8:31
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, we the car rolled over a creek, and I still don't know how we got out of that car.
• 8:36
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know if I went through the window or the door opened, or I don't know what happened.
• 8:39
  SPEAKER_00: But none of us were killed.
• 8:41
  SPEAKER_00: One person needed to be hospitalized.
• 8:43
  SPEAKER_00: We were all three taken in and checked out.
• 8:46
  SPEAKER_00: But I had a black eye that swelled shut and lots of blood, which turned out to be nothing but superficial bruises and scrapes and that kind of thing.
• 8:56
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I really wasn't overly traumatized by this.
• 9:00
  SPEAKER_00: After all, I was still alive and I really wasn't hurt that badly.
• 9:03
  SPEAKER_00: True, I realized I'd escaped death, but I was young.
• 9:07
  SPEAKER_00: And I think when you're young, you don't realize sometimes.
• 9:10
  SPEAKER_00: And so I really didn't think too much about it.
• 9:12
  SPEAKER_00: I was okay, and so I moved on.
• 9:14
  SPEAKER_00: And I look back now and I feel like God really protected me that day.
• 9:20
  SPEAKER_00: After college, we moved to Topeka where Merle took a job at the Boys' Industrial School, and I got my first job teaching English at Washburn Rural High School.
• 9:29
  SPEAKER_00: We started to attend Topeka Bible Church, and life was really good.
• 9:33
  SPEAKER_00: We were married less than five years when Merle was diagnosed with osteogenic sarcoma, which is a kind of bone cancer.
• 9:41
  SPEAKER_00: He had a tumor in the calf of his leg.
• 9:43
  SPEAKER_00: And then we found out a short time later that his leg would need to be amputated above the knee.
• 9:49
  SPEAKER_00: We were both 25, which is pretty young.
• 9:55
  SPEAKER_00: And I do this.
• 9:58
  SPEAKER_00: Forgive me.
• 10:00
  SPEAKER_00: It was a joke that totally rocked my world.
• 10:04
  SPEAKER_00: And Merle's, I'm sure, too.
• 10:06
  SPEAKER_00: Of course, Merle and I had prayed, and along with family and friends and folks at TBC, I think a lot of us totally believed that God would heal Merle.
• 10:17
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, we knew God was good, and we totally trusted him.
• 10:21
  SPEAKER_00: And I was totally devastated when that didn't happen.
• 10:25
  SPEAKER_00: A year later, Merle was doing well with an artificial leg.
• 10:28
  SPEAKER_00: He had learned to ride a bicycle, his sense of humor was intact, and things were looking up.
• 10:33
  SPEAKER_00: And then the cancer spread to his lung, and he had to have more surgery.
• 10:37
  SPEAKER_00: Well, he was young, like I said, and he healed pretty quickly, and we were optimistic that the worst of it was over.
• 10:43
  SPEAKER_00: We spent a week in the Bahamas, and when we got back the next week, he started chemotherapy at KUMed.
• 10:50
  SPEAKER_00: And those were some really bad times for us.
• 10:53
  SPEAKER_00: So to kind of lighten things up a little bit, I'll have to tell you this was his sense of humor.
• 10:58
  SPEAKER_00: When he was in the hospital and found out he was going to have to have his leg, or after the leg was amputated, he said to the doctor, Do you want to know how I know I'm going to heaven?
• 11:06
  SPEAKER_00: And the doctor said, Yeah, tell me.
• 11:09
  SPEAKER_00: He says, Well, I've already got one foot in the door.
• 11:17
  SPEAKER_00: I never knew what to expect out of him.
• 11:21
  SPEAKER_00: But you know, Merle was never angry with God either.
• 11:24
  SPEAKER_00: He never questioned God's goodness.
• 11:26
  SPEAKER_00: I read something in a book and later, and I think it really expressed the feelings that he had during this time, the attitude he had.
• 11:35
  SPEAKER_00: Here's what it says.
• 11:36
  SPEAKER_00: I have never thought that a Christian should be free from suffering, for our Lord suffered.
• 11:41
  SPEAKER_00: And I have come to believe that he suffered not to save us from suffering, but to show us how to bear suffering.
• 11:50
  SPEAKER_00: Merle died less than two years after his diagnosis, and my life was a real turmoil of talking to God, of questioning God, of being angry with God, choosing to trust him, but wondering about my future and why my prayers didn't seem to be answered when I thought they would be.
• 12:08
  SPEAKER_00: Jim said in one of his messages recently, we learn obedience from the things we suffer, not from getting what we want.
• 12:16
  SPEAKER_00: No obedience is necessary when you tell your kids to eat their favorite ice cream.
• 12:20
  SPEAKER_00: It is necessary when you tell them to eat their vegetables.
• 12:23
  SPEAKER_00: I'd also like to add that I think we learn trust through what we suffer.
• 12:28
  SPEAKER_00: And here's why I say that.
• 12:30
  SPEAKER_00: During this time, I began reading, of all things, the book of Job.
• 12:36
  SPEAKER_00: The Bible tells us that Job was blameless and upright.
• 12:39
  SPEAKER_00: He feared God and he shunned evil.
• 12:42
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm very sure he could not begin to understand why God took everything away from him.
• 12:47
  SPEAKER_00: Everything.
• 12:48
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, had God turned against him, and why?
• 12:51
  SPEAKER_00: Listen to the words that Job spoke in chapter 30.
• 12:56
  SPEAKER_00: When I hoped for good, evil came.
• 12:58
  SPEAKER_00: And when I looked for light, then came darkness.
• 13:02
  SPEAKER_00: I'm sure some of you can relate to those feelings.
• 13:05
  SPEAKER_00: I sure could.
• 13:07
  SPEAKER_00: Job argues with God, and in chapter 38, God answers him Who is this that darkens my counsel with words without understanding?
• 13:16
  SPEAKER_00: Where were you when I laid the earth's foundation?
• 13:19
  SPEAKER_00: Tell me if you understand.
• 13:21
  SPEAKER_00: And I realized that God is not being sarcastic to shame Job.
• 13:26
  SPEAKER_00: He makes the point that there are some things that an almighty and loving God knows that man will never be able to understand here on earth.
• 13:36
  SPEAKER_00: And in the end, Job says that he repents in sackcloth and ashes.
• 13:41
  SPEAKER_00: Hold it.
• 13:42
  SPEAKER_00: Job repents?
• 13:44
  SPEAKER_00: He tells us why.
• 13:46
  SPEAKER_00: Here's what he says Surely I spoke of things I did not understand, things too full of wonder for me to know.
• 13:53
  SPEAKER_00: My ears had heard of you, but now my eyes have seen you.
• 13:57
  SPEAKER_00: It wasn't just going through the suffering that brought him closer to God.
• 14:02
  SPEAKER_00: It was that he sought God while he was going through his suffering.
• 14:06
  SPEAKER_00: And these words really helped to set me back on track at this time.
• 14:10
  SPEAKER_00: Hope showed up for me when I gave up thinking I had to have all the answers.
• 14:15
  SPEAKER_00: Why did this happen?
• 14:16
  SPEAKER_00: Why was he not healed?
• 14:18
  SPEAKER_00: I realized that God wasn't asking me to understand.
• 14:22
  SPEAKER_00: Instead, he was asking me to learn the message in Proverbs 3:5.
• 14:27
  SPEAKER_00: Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not to your own understanding.
• 14:33
  SPEAKER_00: And most important, I began to hang on what I knew about God instead of fussing with all my uncertainties.
• 14:40
  SPEAKER_00: If he hadn't told me, I apparently didn't need to know.
• 14:44
  SPEAKER_00: What he does tell me, he expects me to cling to and to live by.
• 14:48
  SPEAKER_00: And here are some of the promises that really changed my attitude at this time.
• 14:52
  SPEAKER_00: Philippians 4.19 says, My God will supply all your needs.
• 14:57
  SPEAKER_00: Psalm 147.3, he heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds.
• 15:04
  SPEAKER_00: 2 Corinthians 12 9 says, His grace is sufficient for me, for his power is made perfect in my weakness.
• 15:13
  SPEAKER_00: And Psalm 9.10, you have never forsaken those who seek you.
• 15:17
  SPEAKER_00: And here's what Paul said when he was in prison.
• 15:20
  SPEAKER_00: What has happened to me will turn out for my deliverance.
• 15:24
  SPEAKER_00: Wow.
• 15:24
  SPEAKER_00: I realized I wasn't in this alone.
• 15:27
  SPEAKER_00: A few months after Merle's death, I enrolled in a master's degree program at K-State.
• 15:33
  SPEAKER_00: And I could take nine hours in the summer and then take evening classes while I was still teaching full time.
• 15:38
  SPEAKER_00: So that kept me busy.
• 15:39
  SPEAKER_00: And the following February, at a basketball game at Washburn Murrell, no less, I was introduced to Ken Barry, an outfielder for the Cleveland Indians.
• 15:51
  SPEAKER_00: There he is in his Cleveland cap.
• 15:54
  SPEAKER_00: I had to show you the hairstyle, but that is what he looked like when I met him.
• 15:59
  SPEAKER_00: It was his 15th year of playing professional baseball, and he left for spring training two weeks later in Tucson.
• 16:06
  SPEAKER_00: And somehow before he left, he had gotten a hold of my phone number.
• 16:09
  SPEAKER_00: So we got acquainted on the phone, and I knew in a very short time that he was absolutely not the right guy for me.
• 16:17
  SPEAKER_00: First of all, he was going through a divorce, and he had two young sons that really needed their father.
• 16:23
  SPEAKER_00: Secondly, he was at the end of a baseball career.
• 16:26
  SPEAKER_00: That was the only job he knew.
• 16:28
  SPEAKER_00: And lastly, he didn't know Jesus Christ at all.
• 16:31
  SPEAKER_00: I had already lost one husband.
• 16:32
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't want to lose another, went through whatever, alienation in the household or whatever it was.
• 16:38
  SPEAKER_00: Guess what God used to draw kin to him?
• 16:41
  SPEAKER_00: It was the difficult times in his life.
• 16:44
  SPEAKER_00: It wasn't his two errorless years of play in the outfield, or his gold glove trophies, or his selection to the All-Star team.
• 16:53
  SPEAKER_00: Nope.
• 16:54
  SPEAKER_00: It was the hard times that initiated our conversation between us about my faith, which I was glad to share with him.
• 17:01
  SPEAKER_00: Ken was not raised with a knowledge of God, so everything was brand new to him.
• 17:06
  SPEAKER_00: And it was through our conversations, including John 3.16, and some verses in Romans, that Ken saw his need for God and responded.
• 17:16
  SPEAKER_00: That was Ken's last year of playing baseball.
• 17:18
  SPEAKER_00: When he came back to Topeka, we dated for a little over a year before we got married.
• 17:24
  SPEAKER_00: I think I had expected God to provide a nice young man out of seminary for me.
• 17:29
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not so sure that's what I wanted, but I think that's what I thought God was going to provide for me.
• 17:33
  SPEAKER_00: Not a professional baseball player at the end of his career.
• 17:37
  SPEAKER_00: I remember telling God, I'm willing to marry Ken and I'm willing to give him up.
• 17:43
  SPEAKER_00: I just want whatever you want from me.
• 17:45
  SPEAKER_00: And I truly meant that because I knew I could trust him.
• 17:49
  SPEAKER_00: We were married in 1976, and about a year and a half later, we had a new baby girl.
• 17:54
  SPEAKER_00: I'd quit my job.
• 17:55
  SPEAKER_00: We had just bought a new house, and I was fully into nesting and motherhood.
• 18:00
  SPEAKER_00: And then Ken got a job offer to coach in the minor leagues.
• 18:04
  SPEAKER_00: The pay wasn't great, and it meant lots of moving.
• 18:08
  SPEAKER_00: February took us to spring training and then to the team that he was assigned to coach.
• 18:13
  SPEAKER_00: Lots of road trips, lots of hotels, and all with a baby, a house back home to maintain while we were gone for seven months out of the year.
• 18:22
  SPEAKER_00: But I'd learned enough about God to know that I could trust him with the unknown.
• 18:27
  SPEAKER_00: And Ken had told me early on, we'll do this one year at a time, and we'll do it as long as it works for the family.
• 18:34
  SPEAKER_00: Those were wiser words than he had any idea because I needed to hear that.
• 18:38
  SPEAKER_00: I agreed to that first year, and after that, it was pretty easy.
• 18:43
  SPEAKER_00: After that first year of coaching baseball, our son was born.
• 18:46
  SPEAKER_00: So now we were doing rentals and hotels with two little ones.
• 18:50
  SPEAKER_00: I clearly remember telling God after Merle's death, I will go wherever you want me to go, and I'll do whatever you want me to do.
• 18:57
  SPEAKER_00: Just please don't give me a boring life.
• 19:01
  SPEAKER_00: He answered that prayer.
• 19:04
  SPEAKER_00: Ken coached professional baseball for 26 years during our marriage, and during that time we transferred our kids in school three times a year until Allie was in the seventh grade.
• 19:14
  SPEAKER_00: Some of the places we lived were Hollywood, Florida, St.
• 19:18
  SPEAKER_00: Petersburg, Sarasota, Fort Lauderdale, Oneanta, New York, Colonial Heights, Virginia, Greensboro, North Carolina.
• 19:25
  SPEAKER_00: And I do do have one short story to tell you about a memorable event in Greensboro.
• 19:30
  SPEAKER_00: Our step my stepsons were living with us that summer, and they and their father left on a week-long road trip.
• 19:36
  SPEAKER_00: And I was pregnant and had a two-year-old.
• 19:39
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, the same day they left, I started to notice a really bad smell in the house.
• 19:44
  SPEAKER_00: And I looked everywhere and could not find the source of it.
• 19:48
  SPEAKER_00: By the next day, it was so bad we literally had to move out.
• 19:51
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, it took over the entire house.
• 19:53
  SPEAKER_00: It was a two-story house, mind you.
• 19:55
  SPEAKER_00: A week later, when everybody came home from the road trips, I had warned Ken on the phone, one of our stepsons discovered the source of the bad smell.
• 20:04
  SPEAKER_00: A very unfortunate and unhealthy dog had managed to crawl underneath the house where it breathed its last.
• 20:12
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know how long it had been there, but I do know it's been quite a while.
• 20:16
  SPEAKER_00: And it was a very hot summer.
• 20:18
  SPEAKER_00: I will not tell you the details of how we got the dog out, because you don't want to hear it.
• 20:24
  SPEAKER_00: On a more positive note, it seemed like every place we made Christian friends.
• 20:30
  SPEAKER_00: We got involved in some good Christian churches, and God was always faithful.
• 20:34
  SPEAKER_00: After all of Job's trials, listen to what he says, and he still didn't know why this all happened to him.
• 20:41
  SPEAKER_00: Job 37, 5, he says, God does great things beyond our understanding.
• 20:47
  SPEAKER_00: I was beginning to understand that.
• 20:49
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know why God spared my life in that car accident, or why Merle wasn't healed, or why my dad, who loved and served God with his whole heart, had to die of a heart attack at age 66 before my kids even got to know him.
• 21:03
  SPEAKER_00: There is a list of things I could go on with, but you get the idea.
• 21:07
  SPEAKER_00: I found out it's okay not to know, as long as you can trust the one who does know and is in charge.
• 21:15
  SPEAKER_00: And my challenge to you is hang on to what you know, God's promises, not what you don't know.
• 21:22
  SPEAKER_00: What you don't know will only make you anxious.
• 21:25
  SPEAKER_00: What you do know as a Christian will give you peace.
• 21:28
  SPEAKER_00: It won't make the problems go away, but you will have someone to go through it with you.
• 21:33
  SPEAKER_00: Some of you know that one of my ongoing prayer requests has been for our son, who seemed to put his spiritual life on hold after high school.
• 21:43
  SPEAKER_00: Now, many years later, I've seen God bring him back, and that's a real answer to my prayers.
• 21:48
  SPEAKER_00: Here are some of the words I've hung on to during this time.
• 21:52
  SPEAKER_00: In the book of 3 John, I have no greater joy than to hear that my children are walking in the truth.
• 21:59
  SPEAKER_00: John 6.37, Jesus says, He that comes to me, I will in no wise cast out.
• 22:05
  SPEAKER_00: And I had come to him many times.
• 22:08
  SPEAKER_00: Psalm 27, 14, wait for the Lord.
• 22:11
  SPEAKER_00: Be strong and take heart and wait for the Lord.
• 22:15
  SPEAKER_00: I've learned that if I don't hang on to God's promises, I will focus totally on my own worry.
• 22:22
  SPEAKER_00: I'd like to close with this profound thought.
• 22:24
  SPEAKER_00: I read this, it isn't original.
• 22:27
  SPEAKER_00: God has trusted each of us with our own set of unfair circumstances and unexplained experiences to deal with.
• 22:35
  SPEAKER_00: Can we trust him, even if he never tells us why here on earth?
• 22:40
  SPEAKER_00: Because that's what Christianity is all about.
• 22:43
  SPEAKER_00: It's about trusting Christ, not ourselves.
• 22:47
  SPEAKER_00: Psalm 116, verses 1 and 2.
• 22:49
  SPEAKER_00: It's a wonderful life verse.
• 22:51
  SPEAKER_00: I love the Lord, for he heard my voice.
• 22:54
  SPEAKER_00: He heard my cry for mercy, because he turned his ear to me.
• 22:58
  SPEAKER_00: I will call on him as long as I live.