Where Is God When It Hurts? QUOTES

1 " We feel pain as an outrage; Jesus did too, which is why he performed miracles of healing. In Gethsemane, he did not pray, “Thank you for this opportunity to suffer,” but rather pled desperately for an escape. And yet he was willing to undergo suffering in service of a higher goal. In the end he left the hard questions (“if there be any other way . . .”) to the will of the Father, and trusted that God could use even the outrage of his death for good. "

― Philip Yancey , Where Is God When It Hurts?

2 " Bear one another’s burdens, the Bible says. It is a lesson about pain that we all can agree on. Some of us will not see pain as a gift; some will always accuse God of being unfair for allowing it. But, the fact is, pain and suffering are here among us, and we need to respond in some way. The response Jesus gave was to bear the burdens of those he touched. To live in the world as his body, his emotional incarnation, we must follow his example. The image of the body accurately portrays how God is working in the world. Sometimes he does enter in, occasionally by performing miracles, and often by giving supernatural strength to those in need. But mainly he relies on us, his agents, to do his work in the world.We are asked to live out the life of Christ in the world, not just to refer back to it or describe it.We announce his message, work for justice, pray for mercy . . . and suffer with the sufferers. "

― Philip Yancey , Where Is God When It Hurts?

3 " As we rely on God, and trust his Spirit to mold us in his image, true hope takes shape within us, “a hope that does not disappoint.”We can literally become better persons because of suffering. Pain, however meaningless it may seem at the time, can be transformed. Where is God when it hurts? He is in us—not in the things that hurt—helping to transform bad into good.We can safely say that God can bring good out of evil; we cannot say that God brings about the evil in hopes of producing good. "

― Philip Yancey , Where Is God When It Hurts?

4 " As I have said, the Bible consistently changes the questions we bring to the problem of pain. It rarely, or ambiguously, answers the backward-looking question “Why?” Instead, it raises the very different, forward-looking question, “To what end?”We are not put on earth merely to satisfy our desires, to pursue life, liberty, and happiness.We are here to be changed, to be made more like God in order to prepare us for a lifetime with him. And that process may be served by the mysterious pattern of all creation: pleasure sometimes emerges against a background of pain, evil may be transformed into good, and suffering may produce something of value. "

― Philip Yancey , Where Is God When It Hurts?

5 " The first step in helping a suffering person is to acknowledge that the pain is valid, and worthy of a sympathetic response. "

― Philip Yancey , Where Is God When It Hurts?

6 " C. S. Lewis introduced the phrase “pain, the megaphone of God.” “God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pains,” he said; “it is His megaphone to rouse a deaf world.”3 The word megaphone is apropos, because by its nature pain shouts. When I stub my toe or twist an ankle, pain loudly announces to my brain that something is wrong. Similarly, the existence of suffering on this earth is, I believe, a scream to all of us that something is wrong. It halts us in our tracks and forces us to consider other values. "

― Philip Yancey , Where Is God When It Hurts?

7 " Faith in God offers no insurance against tragedy. Nor does it offer insurance against feelings of doubt and betrayal. If anything, being a Christian complicates the issue. If you believe in a world of pure chance, what difference does it make whether a bus from Yuba City or one from Salina crashes? But if you believe in a world ruled by a powerful God who loves you tenderly, then it makes an awful difference. "

― Philip Yancey , Where Is God When It Hurts?

8 " The fact that Jesus came to earth where he suffered and died does not remove pain from our lives. But it does show that God did not sit idly by and watch us suffer in isolation. He became one of us. Thus, in Jesus, God gives us an up-close and personal look at his response to human suffering. All our questions about God and suffering should, in fact, be filtered through what we know about Jesus. "

― Philip Yancey , Where Is God When It Hurts?

9 " Is God somehow responsible for the suffering of this world? In this indirect way, yes. But giving a child a pair of ice skates, knowing that he may fall, is a very different matter from knocking him down on the ice. "

― Philip Yancey , Where Is God When It Hurts?

10 " Maybe God isn’t trying to tell us anything specific each time we hurt. Pain and suffering are part and parcel of our planet, and Christians are not exempt. "

― Philip Yancey , Where Is God When It Hurts?

11 " I believe Christians walk a mental tightrope and are in constant danger of falling in one of two directions. On this subject, errors in thinking can have tragic results. The first error comes when we attribute all suffering to God, seeing it as his punishment for human mistakes; the second error does just the opposite, assuming that life with God will never include suffering. "

― Philip Yancey , Where Is God When It Hurts?

12 " I have mentioned that no one offers the name of a philosopher when I ask the question, “Who helped you most?” Most often they answer by describing a quiet, unassuming person. Someone who was there whenever needed, who listened more than talked, who didn’t keep glancing down at a watch, who hugged and touched, and cried. In short, someone who was available, and came on the sufferer’s terms and not their own. "

― Philip Yancey , Where Is God When It Hurts?

13 " a sick person is not a sick person, but rather a person of worth and value who happens to have some bodily parts that are not functioning well. "

― Philip Yancey , Where Is God When It Hurts?

14 " Because of Jesus, I can never say about a person, “She must be suffering because of some sin she committed”; Jesus, who did not sin, also felt pain. "

― Philip Yancey , Where Is God When It Hurts?

15 " The phrase “the body of Christ,” expresses well what we are called to do: to represent in flesh what Christ is like, especially to those in need. The "

― Philip Yancey , Where Is God When It Hurts?

16 " the healthiest body is the one that feels the pain of its weakest parts. In "

― Philip Yancey , Where Is God When It Hurts?

17 " suffering can serve as instruments to teach us the value of dependence, and unless we learn dependence we will never experience grace. The apostle Paul gave the Corinthians an "

― Philip Yancey , Where Is God When It Hurts?

18 " But those of us who follow his conducting through early movements will, with renewed strength, someday burst into song. "

― Philip Yancey , Where Is God When It Hurts?

19 " Everywhere a greater joy is preceded by a greater suffering, "

― Philip Yancey , Where Is God When It Hurts?

20 " The suffering person faces choices. She can recoil in anger and despair against God. Or she can accept the trial as an opportunity for joy. I do not mean to imply that God loves one type of sufferer and rejects the other, or even that one is more “spiritual” than the other. I believe God understands those people who kick and struggle and scream as well as those who learn that suffering can be a means of grace, of transformation. (Remember, God had far more sympathy for Job’s honest ravings than for his friends’ pieties.) God does not need our good responses for himself, to satisfy some jealous parental hunger. He directs attention from cause to response for our sakes, not his. Indeed, the path of joyful acceptance is self-healing: an attitude of joy and gratitude will reduce stress, calm nerves, allay fears, help mobilize bodily defenses. "

― Philip Yancey , Where Is God When It Hurts?