I offer my point of view, I have often been so angry with God, I hated God, but I have come to understand I was actually angry and hating of my “view” of God and not God. In the quiet moments on the units late at night when a client / patient cried out God seemed to answer through the touch or a word from a person. Christians’ of all stripes when on the level ground of death seem to hope the same thing. I have been there fare to many times, my mother far more. I was not there when my mother drew her last breath but I had been there during her illness, the illness of my sister, my father and the death of my brother. I was there in the raising of my sister’s son. I remember it all, maybe that is not a good thing.

I remember my time on the burn unit and El Camino Hospital as a six year old, I remember the skin floating to the top of the bathtub as my eldest brother told me the story of the three bears. I remember the ride to the hospital, every single red light, I still have a thing about red lights, I remember my mother trying to put underwear on me after she put me out with a rug and the hall catching fire where she tossed the clothes. Her guilt, I remember that, I also remember trying to aswade that guilt, a pathetic trait I carried on in adulthood and I admit that. A real man would never, nevermind.

I remember my family looking through the glass as I was in isolation, being in a wheelchair and the guilt of my parents because of my injury. Dont you see the symmetry? This view of life allowed me the holy pleasure to be able to serve those I work with. Is this not God, God took my pain and made it a portrait to help others color their lives. I shudder thinking on such things, God is just so worthy of praise, God does not need praise God wants us to have the opportunity to praise God so we can see the puzzle pieces fit in the wonderful tapestry which is God’s creation. God takes all the pain and God will heal it.

I am not much of a disciple but I could not be an atheist, I am sympathetic with some of their concerns but when I watch Dawkins and Hitchens etc I cant help but chuckle and even pray for them. God is not found in the lofty apologetics of the truly reformed or any other such communion, God is found in the gutters and the day to day pains that most of us deal with. God always meets us where we are at, God always does. Yes God is holy but God is loving, Oh my we cant understand it, well duh. God is well God.

Where I find God it is in each of you, on PP, Spiritual sounding board, and above all, at Agnews God had a loud speaker there. unending love, of course a Father would do no less. God will do what God said, God will restore all. My Prayer God let me make a dent.

@Pastor Wade,

Thanks for putting together the E-Church service every week with Dee and Deb here at The Wartburg Watch. I appreciate it.

I was recently excommunicated and shunned from my independent Bible-believing church where I had been a member for 8+ years here in Silicon Valley (California). My “crime”? Accidently discovering, while doing legal research, that a fellow church member was a convicted sex offender on Megan’s List, whom the pastors/elders would not protect our children from or inform all adults of his presence; they insisted that he’s ‘harmless’. I am all for carrying The Gospel to people who have committed the vilest of sins; I am all for being prudent as well when doing that, having good boundaries in place, and not putting innocents at risk. They are not mutually exclusive responsibilities in my opinion.

My church’s pastors/elders also espoused patriarchy, all of this ‘submit’ and ‘obey’ stuff (and extra-Biblical nonsense), and they demanded blind obedience from their wives and from grown adults. Prior to my excommunication and shunning, a godly doctor (married for 40+ years) was ordered to be excommunicated and shunned. His “crime”? He had spoken to the pastors/elders about how they were leading the church and Biblical error. For giving generously of his time, talent and treasure to our church, that was the thanks he got from our pastors/elders.

I have gone back and apologized to all of the people that I know of that those pastors/elders have harmed, since they have not done it. Those surprised folks said I’m the only one to have reached out to them from that church and to have apologized. I told them that I always knew what was done to them was wrong, I knew they were good folks, and I had never seen this in a church before.

By the way, I just got a copy of your book Hardball Religion from amazon. Perhaps it will shed some light on the ‘car crash’ experience I just had at this church (a combination of 9 Marks/Mark Dever from Capitol Hill Baptist/John MacArthur at Grace Community Church/and other beliefs from the homeschooling movement).

Many thanks from Silicon Valley, California.

This wasn’t a sermon, yet it is so important. I live in a community where something awful happened. There was a wedding at a church. A woman involved in the wedding had an estranged boyfriend. The estranged boyfriend vowed to kill the young women and others in the wedding party at a church. The pastor called the police. The ex boyfriend was waiting outside the church. The police tried to apprehend the young man and he ran. He dropped an item and attempted to pick it up. He was shot. The item he dropped was a loaded automatic weapon. My community is in shock. There is so much to pray about in this situation. I wouldn’t even know where to begin. Some of it is the unanswered question of why?