Silence is scary. Let's make some noise about silence on this edition of Keylight. You kind of get tired of doctrine without application, religion without reality, and cliches without truth. If so, you come to the right place. The place, Keylight, the teacher, Steve Brown. Thanks a lot. If you have your Bible open in this, we bring to a close today and tomorrow are series on pain and suffering. I don't know about you, but I'm kind of glad to get there. Let me give you a great quote from Vance Evener. He wrote this. I've got a little weary of those dear souls who have all the dealing and doing of God's province cataloged and correlated and figured out and can give you glib little answers to your heartache. They haven't been far. God just doesn't operate our long-time table and some of his operations don't add up on our computers. A little boy who didn't understand why God puts so many vitamins in spinach didn't put more of them in ice cream had a pretty good idea that it just doesn't work out the way you'd think. That's great. The hard thing about it really hurting is the silence. The silence, man, that's kind of scary. Perhaps God is silent because he knows that when we go through pain and suffering, that we wouldn't understand the answers to the questions. Maybe the silence is a part of our growing, even the silence of the Creator fits into his purpose. Let me read you from Job 133 and then I'm going to drop down to verses 23-24. This is Job's cry, but I would speak to the Almighty and I desire to reason with God. Then call and I will answer, oh let me speak, then you respond to me. How many are my niceties and sins make me know my transgression and my sin? Why do you hide your face and regard me as your enemy? You've felt that way. And maybe that's the hardest part about it hurting really bad the silence of God. Of course we've got questions. If he loves me, why does he remain silent? Why does he tell me why I have to go through all of this? If I knew a reason I could bear it, why do I have to do to get him to speak? Have I offended him? Does my broken rope and my pain indicate I feel them out me? And then we wait for answers. But all we can hear is the sound of our questions. Let me say some things about silence. It's hard to bear the silence of God, but in that place and sometimes only in that place you really do meet God. You may meet him on the other side of the silence, but you do meet him. I've visited a man not too long ago who had jumped from the fifth floor of a hospital. You say, well, you have to say answer something. No, man, he lived. Fifth floor was the psychiatric ward and he was so depressed that he didn't see any reason to live. So he jumped. He lived. I don't know how he lived through it. He has so much pain and open wounds. He can't even get over to the window to do it again. He can't hold a pill or a knife or a gun. He just lies there. They say it'll take him at least a year to get well. Someone had been reading one of my books to him and asked him if he would like to talk to me. Well, I went to him and he was honest. He talked about his anger at God. I tried. He said that he was screaming. I tried to know God. I talked and he never answered. The silence of God, he indicated to me was the reason for his despair. I can never get him when I need him. Now all he can do is be still and because very few people visit because they don't know what to say. He's going to have to be silent. I told him he would finally meet God in the silence. He didn't believe me, but he did. You know, somebody told me, I don't know if this is true, but it's a good illustrate. You know how shepherd trains a disobedient or wandering sheep. He breaks his legs. And then while the leg is healing, the shepherd carries that sheep on his shoulders. The sheep who could never before find the shepherd finds nothing but the shepherd during the healing time. I have a friend who will not meet with me unless we meet in the bar. Some of you woke up, didn't you? No, I'm a detailer. I asked him, why don't we get together at some time? He told me he always met his friends in bars. If I wanted to meet him, that would have to be the place. He figured that he had gotten rid of the preacher until I showed up in the bar. We've been meeting in that bar ever since. I could have manipulated him and guided him to meet me some other place. I could have told him about the importance of religious professionals' reputation. I could have complained about the booze and suggested that a bar was not an appropriate place to carry on a serious discussion. I could have told him that my study was quieter and more comfortable, but I'd say those things. He would listen to what I said better I decided if I met him in a bar. God meets us in places we won't want to go sometimes because this is a fallen world. He meets us at the place where we all must live at one time or another, the place of pain. Perhaps you are there now. At first there will be nothing but the silence, but in this silence you'll speak. He won't answer all your questions. He's not a magician. He won't follow your agenda. But listen to me. When you're finally quiet enough, you'll come and he'll meet you there, the place of pain and hurt. And it will seem different just because he came. You think about that? I'm in. Well, I'm going to take some time as is my practice. And we're going to talk tomorrow's going to be the last day. The next week we're going to go back to Jeremiah on our Old Testament survey. But it's on Wednesday. I spend some time answering questions. And then my pastor, pastor Pete Alwinston comes in on Friday and we spend some time answering more questions and we get thousands of them. We love to get your questions, but you have to write them down. Send them to key life. Post office bots 5,000. Make them Florida 32794. Or in Canada, key life Canada. Post office bots 32150. Cambridge, Ontario in 3H5 in 3 or you can email us, Steve at keylife.org with your regular mailing address. And don't use the 1-800 key life number. That's open 24 hours a day. You can get the magazine free, the key life tapes free. You can get the booklets free. You can make a contribution, but you have to write your questions down. All right. Let's get to some of these. This is an email. I have a friend who told me that the best advice he ever got was, do whatever makes you happy. How can I dispel that advice? Well, that's really pagan advice. But you know something, I've got to be really careful how I say this. First I would ask you the person who asked this question, why are you so upset that he said that? Do you have this philosophy if I do sometimes that Christians must go through hell to get to heaven? In other words, this life's hard. We've got to give up a whole bunch of neat stuff. We can't be happy, but in the end we're going to get all these rewards in heaven. So we've got to go through hell to get to heaven. And we figured that pagans, like the person who said that was the best advice he ever got, that he gets to go through heaven, but he's going to get to hell. And so he gets to do whatever makes him happy and have a really cool time and party and stuff now, but he's going to get his. Is that your philosophy? Well, let me tell you something, that's not a good philosophy, because God would call us to go through heaven to get to heaven with some exceptions. I mean, we've been talking about pain and suffering for a lot of weeks. So we know it's not all that way, but God's not sitting in heaven and I'm going to make you miserable. And if it makes you miserable, it's my will. So I have some real problems with your friends advice, but let me tell you something else about your friend. If your friend is not a Christian and you thought that he was having fun sitting, let me give you a principle. I want you to remember it because it's a very good principle, with the exception of very hard hearts. There is a direct correlation between the degree of sin and the pain engendered by that sin. You say, Steve, say that again. There is a direct correlation between the degree of sin and the pain engendered by that sin. So all those people you think are happy probably aren't, to be perfectly honest with you at night they think, oh man, this hurts. This hurts really bad. So going back to your question, what would you say to somebody who said, do whatever makes you happy? I say to him, listen, there are a lot of things in life more important than happiness. Now God likes me to be happy, and that's cool, but if I make that my focus in life, I'm not going to be happy, and my life is going to be miserable, and I'm going to be lost for all of eternity. But if I turn to Jesus and do what I please, because I please, what he pleases, I'll find that maybe happiness like the tale of a dog comes wagging right behind. Good question. This is from Ohio. Why does God allow pain and suffering in our lives? Does he really love us? Haven't you been, I just spent like 18 bazillion weeks on this. Where were you? No, I'm kidding. He loves us. That's what the cross is about. He's giving you enough to know that he loves you even when it hurts. So you got enough to keep on trucking, and that's about all you need. You keep on doing that, and remember that God is good, and He is good all the time, even when it doesn't feel like. And it don't doubt, as Edmund said, in the dark what he taught you in the light. This is a question from Ohio. We get this all the time. I'm Pete and I dealt with it a number of times. What should I look for in a church? Well, a really good choir. Pretty stained glass windows, man. They have a big organ. You know your home. Maybe maybe really nice plus carpets on the floor. If you get there, that's a good church. Let me tell you a church is not a building. It's a people. And when you find a people where Christ is exalted, the scriptures are taught, then you have an indication you maybe have found a place where you're supposed to be. But let me tell you something. Find out whether they love each other. If you find that going on faithfulness to the truth, the purity of doctrine Christ being exalted, then put your shoulder to the wheel when you serve there, because you have found your place. This is an email. How can I find contentment as a single person? It's God's will that I remain single. How do I handle my disappointment? Don't deny it. I used to tell single people that once they put it on the altar and really gave it to God, then he would bring a marriage partner. And a friend of mine who wrote a book on single and said that's idiocy. You're saying if they give up what God's given them this desire with another person, then God will give what they no longer desire. That's crazy. So it's God given. You don't got to have anything. I tell him that it's hard. I have some brothers and sisters that you can say to whom you can say it. It's really hard and keep cracking. See what he does. If I may say more about that next Wednesday, but right now, I'm history. I've got to get out of here. But before I go, one other thing, key life is a listener's supported production of key life network.