God, Do You Really Care?

Introduction


On Monday, August 29, 2005, a hurricane named Katrina smashed and screamed her way into national history.

An extremely powerful category 4 storm, she barreled out of the Gulf of Mexico and tore her way through the Gulf Coast, laying waste to coastal cities in Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama, and virtually destroying the great historical city of New Orleans.

In her wake, the monster hurricane left mind-numbing destruction, death, and suffering. Over 1,100 people lost their lives, and several hundred thousand lost their homes—and everything else that had been a part of their lives before the storm.

It has been called the worst natural disaster in our nation’s history.

In addition to the pictures of death and destruction, news reports in the days and weeks following this horrific event showed a shocked world heartrending pictures of human pain and deprivation. People grieving over the loss of loved ones, people walking around in a confused stupor because they had nowhere to go, and people wondering what their futures held—these were just a few of the unforgettable images we saw on our television screens. On more than one occasion, victims and veteran journalists alike broke down in front of the camera over the horror of what was happening.

Most viewers responded to the storm with sadness and sympathy. It was difficult not to be moved, even to the point of tears, at the plight of the men, women, and children who survived Katrina. We knew their suffering wouldn’t end overnight, or even in a few weeks or months. We knew that the lives of many people caught up in the storm’s path of devastation would never be the same.

As a minister of the gospel of Jesus Christ, I’m often asked after events like this whether God really cares. Does He care when people are sick, injured, and dying? Does He care when they grieve over death—the death of loved ones, the death of their own goals and dreams? Does God concern Himself when people, even people who didn’t have much to begin with, lose everything? Is He moved when men and women are confused and lost, picking through the rubble and devastation of their lives?

Why would God allow such suffering? Could He really be the loving heavenly Father He’s been made out to be? Doesn’t He seem more like a passive bystander to our pain sometimes? Truth be told, it can sometimes look—within human reasoning anyway—as though God doesn’t really care all that much that people are suffering.

I can easily understand thoughts like these boiling to the surface in the hearts of those who don’t know God, and who are outside the faith. But I also hear variations of these same questions from the mouths of Bible-believing Christians. In fact, I would go so far as to say that any believer—even the most devoted—who tells you that he or she has never looked at life and its sorrows and wondered whether God cared isn’t being truthful.

Yes, we know the Bible says that God so loved the world that He sent His one and only Son so that we could have eternal life. We know that. But there are times, perhaps, when we question whether He’s really all that interested in our pain, suffering, and confusion in the here and now.

Of course none of this is new. As we will see, men and women have questioned God since the beginning of time, even asking Him point blank if He was even concerned about what was happening to them:

Arouse Yourself, why do You sleep, O Lord?
Awake, do not reject us forever.
Why do You hide Your face
And forget our affliction and our oppression?
For our soul has sunk down into the dust;
Our body cleaves to the earth.
P s a l m 4 4 : 2 3 – 2 5

It’s not known for sure who wrote this psalm or when, but a few things appear certain: First, the psalmist and his people were enduring some heartbreaking and difficult times, times when they suffered under the affliction and oppression of their enemies. Second, the psalmist himself wondered if God was paying attention to His people’s plight.

Hurricane Katrina was far from the first time people have had to endure disaster, hardship, and sorrow, and you can be sure it won’t be the last. We live in a fallen world where wars, storms, earthquakes, tsunamis, and other calamities will always be a part of the human landscape—at least until the promised return of Jesus.

Each of us at different points in our lives will find ourselves in a position where we’ll wonder if God cares personally about our situation. Sickness, fear, confusion, death, doubt, disappointment—all are common to men and women everywhere. In the midst of these events, we all need the answer to one key question: Does God care when we hurt? I’ve written this book to answer you unequivocally: Yes, He cares!

I want to show you that God is not only aware when we’re caught up in the difficulties of life, but that He also has a plan to meet us and speak to us in those times of trial, strengthening us and teaching us all along the way. But I also want to show you that although He cares, God doesn’t always resolve our difficulties in the way we expect Him to.

He will answer the heart-cries of His loved ones. But He will do it in His own time and His own way for His own good purposes.

I’ve based this book on a passage of Scripture that is very near and dear to me. John 11 tells the story of Jesus raising His friend Lazarus from the dead, as well as the events leading up to and following that event. You may be quite familiar with the fact that Jesus raised Lazarus, but in this book I want to take a closer look at these events and what they tell us about how much God cares, and how He may choose to intervene during seasons of difficulty in this life.

We will walk through this amazing story several times—rewinding the tape here and there to focus on some fascinating aspects you might not have considered before. So read on, and you will find your answer to the question, God, do you really care…?