Whilst we all want to kick off this new year with a bang, with optimism, with great hope of good things to come, the reality is that sometimes – bad things do happen to good people. It’s simply a fact of life. So when they happen to you, what do you do? How can you cope?

Have you ever noticed how when life is going along just fine, cruising, all of a sudden trouble can hit without warning? It’s like we’re a ship on a calm ocean and then … bam! A storm hits and we think, where did that come from? What did I do to deserve that? This is not in the script! What the heck is going on here?

Bad things happen to good people, so then what? Have you ever noticed how we look at people who seem to be travelling really well and we think they’ve got a good life I wish I had a life like theirs? But we only ever see it from the outside, we don’t see it from the inside, we don’t see it from inside their homes or when they get home and they’re tired. So I’ve been looking at people whom I know and looking at their lives from an angle that we often don’t see.

Let me share a few of them with you. I had dinner recently with a couple in their early 50s they are lovely people. God really blessed them financially they are quite wealthy people, they have a beautiful home, an upmarket car, they own horses on their farm, they are just building a stable because they are into dressage. So they are very well off.

They took us to a lovely log cabin restaurant. The husband came to faith a few years ago and he is now serving in full-time ministry. Just the loveliest people. And I went away from that dinner and I thought you know something, they have got it all. They are really blessed. And the next day someone said to me, “Do you know one of their sons recently committed suicide?” Wow! I had no idea! Isn’t that the case sometimes we just have no idea.

Another couple they’ve been ministers for years and they’re a great family. They are really well-adjusted people, have a lovely home, they live in ‘normalsville’ in a lovely suburb. I stayed with them recently while I was travelling and I discovered the husband has a sickness where he has no saliva and he has no sweat to perspire. He constantly has to take tablets and his mouth is always dry. And you think, “Oh and that’s no big deal.” Live with that for a few months, live with that for the rest of your life.

And his wife, his wife is lovely. She has a sleep disorder. And I discovered that most nights she is up walking around for most of the night and she is lucky to get one or two hours sleep a night. Wow! I thought they had it all.

A couple in our church, you know, these people are the most humble, lovely people that you will ever meet. They’ve spent most of their lives doing stuff for the needy. I mean really practical, grassroots ministry for needy people in our area. Just a few months ago the wife died of cancer in her mid-fifties.

A good dear friend of mine, a wife and a mother and a businesswoman – and not only a businesswoman but she employs other women and mentors them and helps them to grow and develop. They’re really happily married, have lovely kids, a beautiful home. Every reason to enjoy life. A few years ago she went through a severe bout of depression over about a year and what made it worse is she had no idea why that was going on in her life.

And just the other day a woman, a listener to one of our radio programs rang our office she just needed somebody to talk to. Her mother has dementia and she’s looking after her mother and has done for years. Her mother is deteriorating and starting to get violent and obviously with dementia the whole thing gets very difficult to manage.

Can you see a pattern here? These five groups of people I’ve just talked about? If they were Attila the Hun, if they were horrible people you could kind of say well oh well they deserve it. But they are good people. These are good people who are doing good things, living good lives. And on the outside, they look really blessed and they are really blessed. But behind the scenes, some bad things are happening in their lives. They don’t deserve it in our eyes.

So what’s going on here? The reality of life is that bad things happen to good people and when it happens we think it’s just us. But talk to anybody you know, anybody, and say what’s going on in your life and they will give you a list of some good things. I’ve got a new job or a new car or I’m happy with this and I’ve just had a grandchild and life is going really well. You say ok, that’s great. But what about some of the harder things? I don’t know. There’s a kind of emptiness there. Or I’m lonely. Or I’ve just got so many problems at work. Or there’s a health problem. There are so many things going on in everybody’s life. Everybody that you would meet. That you would not expect these things to be going on.

We can have a whole bunch of good things going on in our lives. You know, things on the plus side of the register but one or two bad things can really throw our whole life out of balance. Imagine if your children committed suicide? I mean, doesn’t mean how you’ve been blessed financially, it doesn’t matter how many horses you’ve got, that would be really tough. Really hard to go through.

It is important for us to realise that this happens to everybody because when it happens to us, when we encounter adversity in our lives, we feel so alone. We look at all the other people and they seem to be going along so well. But the reality is that they have things in their life, they have losses and hurts and pains and stresses and difficulties too. This is a basic fact of life. Life is like that.

Jesus said to his twelve disciples: “In this world you will have tribulation.” A 100%, it’s a promise almost. You will have tribulation and the word He uses there for tribulations means to have the life squeezed out of you. It’s like grapes in a wine-press having the juice squeezed out of them. Those stresses and strains happen. But He also says something else. The first time that He spoke publicly He said this. He quoted Isaiah which is a book from the Old Testament, He said:

The spirit of God is upon me, he sent me to bring good news to the oppressed, to bind up the broken-hearted. To proclaim liberty to the captives, release the prisoners; to proclaim the year of God’s favour, to provide for those who mourn, to give them a garland of flowers instead of ashes; the oil of gladness, instead of mourning, the mantle of praise instead of a faint spirit. They’ll be called oaks of righteousness the planting of God to display his glory. They will build up the ancient ruins, they will raise up the former devastations, they shall repair the ruined cities, the devastations of many generations.

That almost encapsulates why Jesus came as a man on this earth to be with us. You might say to me, “Berni, why am I going through this, why do I have to suffer? If there is a God what is he up to?” Maybe if I knew you I could give you an explanation, maybe. But more often than not there is just no answer. Suffering is a part of life. Bad things happen to good people.

Look at Jesus the Son of God, healed people, loved lepers but He wasn’t spared, He went to the cross. But I can tell you this from my own experience, anybody who’ll put their trust in Him and seek Him out and draw close, anyone who will take Him at His word will experience His love in the midst of this suffering; will experience healing and comfort and peace and joy and justice in the middle of difficult circumstances right there, right then. Jesus Christ is in that place with you.

Look, sometimes – bad things do happen to good people. It’s one thing when we bring them upon ourselves, which … we do sometimes, but when those things are completely outside our control, when life simply isn’t fair, man, that’s really tough. What do you do?

You have a plan for your life and it goes something like this … have a well-adjusted childhood, grow up, fall in love with the perfect mate, get married, have 2.4 children, be a fantastic parent, have a great career, balance work, family and enjoyment. And then watch the kids grow up, fall in love with the perfect mate, do it all over again.

Somewhere in our hearts, we each have a perfect plan for our lives. But for most of us, let me even say, for each one of us, some bad things happen along the way that we never planned. Sometimes it’s our own fault and we look back and see the consequences of bad choices and we regret those. But you can always live with that. Sometimes though it’s completely out of our control. It’s not my fault, it’s not fair! Now that’s tough.

Yesterday I spoke about some really good people who had things going on in their lives. There was a couple who’d been really blessed and not that long ago one of their sons’ committed suicide. Another couple had been in ministry for years, just wonderful people, he has a sickness where he has no saliva in his mouth and always has a dry mouth. And his wife has a sleep disorder and a friend of mine who has done so many good things for me and a whole bunch of other people who a few years back and a really major bout of depression for a year or so.

The list goes on. What about your life? What losses or tragedies or hurts or stresses or loneliness … we all have those things in our life. Interestingly I was listening to a young doctor, an Indian man, who was working as a locum where I used to live and the area where I used to live has some very big houses and a lot of wealthy people, views of the water. It’s a beautiful area. And he was speaking about church and he said, “You know, I go into these houses and almost every house I go to, there is hurt and there is pain.”

“There’s alcohol abuse or drug abuse or divorce. It really amazes me. I come from such a poor place myself where I used to live in India and I come to this really wealthy country and really wealthy suburb and I see all this hurt and all this pain. And on the outside when you drive past the houses everything looks beautiful. But I know when I go in through the front door and I meet these people, I’m going to find hurt nine times out of ten.”

I thought that was a really interesting comment. Sometimes adversity and hurt and pain come and it’s just not our fault. I was in India just recently and visiting one of our ministries there, a school for kids who otherwise get an education. Some of the children in the school come from the lowest class. We might know that class as the untouchables. Those children would have the opportunity of an education except for what our Indian ministry there does.

In India English is the language of opportunity. Tertiary education is mostly in English so if you don’t learn English when you are young, the chances are, you will never have the opportunity of an education like that. You think about those kids, I remember their faces, such beautiful kids, such lovely children. Through no fault of their own, millions and millions of these children, right across India will never have the opportunity. It’s not their fault.

So when something happens to us that’s not our fault, that’s completely outside our control we say, “why me? What did I do to deserve that? It’s not fair.” When bad things like that happen, grieving is natural, it’s natural for us in the coming weeks and months to go through a process of grieving. Sometimes people go on and wallow in self-pity and blame the world.

I read a book once called, ‘Seven habits of highly effective people”. Written by a man called Stephen Covey. He had a diagram that he wrote about which was like three concentric circles and he said life is like these three concentric circles. The inside circle is the stuff that you have under your control, the things that you can directly control in your life.

The next circle a little bit further out, is the circle of influence. They are the things you can influence but not directly control. I can influence my wife and my children but I can’t control them. In fact, I believe that is one of the big mistakes a lot of men make. They think that it is their job to control their family rather than to love them and influence them. Do you understand what influence is about?

Then there is this big circle right on the outside, which is the area outside your control or influence. There is stuff out there that you can do absolutely nothing about. For instance, a company reorganises and people are retrenched. If you or I are one of the people that gets retrenched. There is nothing we can do about that. There is nothing we could have done to avoid it, it’s completely outside of our control.

The past is out there, there is nothing that you and I can do can change to change the past. The past is the past, that’s what it is. It is outside our control. Yet, when bad things happen to good people, most people, spend their time worrying about the things that outside their control.

Let me give you a tip. If it is out of our control, worrying about it, blaming it, shouting out at it, complaining about it, round and round day after day week after week, year after year, it’s not going to make it better. Trust me, it’s not. In fact which one of us by worrying can add a single hour to our lives? So what’s the good of worrying about the rest? Let’s get a revelation here. The stuff that’s out of our control is out of our control. When we are in trouble the place we need to focus is the stuff within our control or within our influence.

Yesterday I shared with you one thing that Jesus said. He said, “In this world you will have tribulation.” That’s part one of what he said. Today let me give you part two. He said, “But don’t worry, because I have overcome the world.” What did he mean by that? Just after He said this, he was crucified, brutally. How did he overcome the world?

Well, when he was crucified He paid the price for all the things that we’ve ever done wrong. All the consequences of everything that you and I have ever done wrong and will ever do wrong are on Jesus on the cross. He paid for them so can we stop blaming ourselves, stop worrying about the past.

Jesus came to set us free from the past to set us free from our failures, to set us free from our selfishness but will we accept that? Whether you are someone who never accepted Jesus as their saviour and the forgiveness that comes with that or whether you’ve been believing in Jesus for years but never in your heart accepted His gift of freedom and forgiveness.

I would encourage you today in your heart to accept and experience the forgiveness and the freedom that Jesus gives us through the cross. That’s the first part of overcoming but then He rose again. When He died he paid the price, when He came back to life through the resurrection He gave us hope. Hope of an eternal life, a hope that starts here and now and goes on forever.

Have you ever done something really dumb, said something, done something, hurt someone – and then woken up the next morning? The pain of regret is like a dagger in your chest because you just can’t undo what’s been done.

It’s the morning after the night before. You know, you wake up bleary-eyed, a dull ache between your ears. And you think, what’s all that’s about? And then it hits you. It’s like a knife in the chest. You remember, “How could I have been so stupid? How could I have done that, or said that?” Whatever it was, you know it was wrong. It’s the pain of regret. What’s done can’t be undone. It’s happened and there are always consequences. It’s just the way it is.

We’ve all heard it said that we should learn from our mistakes. Well that’s easy to say – but when we’re living with the consequences, learning is the last thing on our minds. And yet how we deal with our mistakes can either make us bitter, or better.

I don’t know if you’ve noticed but bad things happen to good people. It’s just a fact of life. This week we’ve been looking at that from a different perspective. Most of us had the experience of going through some difficult times, some form of an adversity and looking back at on it with the realisation that we’ve grown through this period. The school of hard knocks. As much we wouldn’t wish it on our worst enemy, it’s changed us for the better. But not everyone does. Some people let adversity diminish them instead of develop them. So how do we make sure that doesn’t happen to us?

You know when you see a great athlete at the peak of their career and they break down through injury and then they come back in a few years to win the gold medal. We all admire that. We say, “Wow, they’ve been through adversity and they’ve toughed it out and they’ve come back. Isn’t that fantastic?”

But it’s easier said than done. Because when bad things happen to us, when something happens where I make a mistake and I live through the consequences or something completely out of our control, the company reorganises you get retrenched. When those bad things happen, they cause pain and when we’re in pain our focus is on getting on rid of the pain. We you have a headache and it’s it really sore. What do you do? You take a couple of painkillers because we want to get rid of the pain.

When we are going through tough times it’s never fun. Often the last thing on our minds is to learn something out of it. But here’s how it works. Adversity hurts. Real adversity, when your kid commits suicide, or you fall out of relationship or a marriage breaks down or you get retrenched. Those things hurt and often they break our hearts.

If you’ve ever been through that, a relationship is broken, it’s just like your heart is torn in two. When a heart is broken, sometimes it heals and it hardens. We all people with hard hearts. They’re people who have been through pain and adversity and they are bitter. Have you met the divorced person who talks about the ex and he or she talk about their former husband or wife in disparaging terms. The person who has been through pain and still wants revenge, who hasn’t let go, who is still living in the past. It’s why Jesus talks so much about forgiveness. Without forgiving the people that have been involved in causing the pain, our heart hardens.

Close your eyes. And see the faces of people in your life who fit that description. Question. Do you think they are enjoying their lives? Do you think they are living life to the full? Maybe this describes you. There is only one way to get beyond that. We’ll talk about that soon, but when our heart breaks, when it’s painful, there’s an opportunity there.

I was reading a story. Here’s a short part of it:

A rabbi was asked a question by a pupil referring to a passage of scripture, Deuteronomy 6:6. It says this:

And these words which I command you this day shall be upon your heart.

Why does it say that? Why aren’t we told to place them in our hearts? The rabbi answered, “It’s not within a person’s power to place God’s teaching, God’s words directly in their heart. All we can do is to place them on the surface so that when the heart breaks they’ll drop in.”

That really touched me. Sometimes we get so bound up in who we are and what we doing and what life’s about we end up with blind spots. We don’t see our own faults and weaknesses, we don’t see right and wrong. We kind of acknowledge these things but we rationalise them. “I know I should spend more time with my family but I can’t. There is so much to do at work.” Or “I know I should be nicer to my husband but he’s difficult to live with.” You know what I mean. We kind of argue them away in our minds.

Our lives are so noisy. We’re so bound up in the way that we’re doing things even the wrong things that we are doing. We just can’t hear God and then something bad happens and we experience the pain of adversity and it’s this pain of a broken heart sometimes it’s the only way that He can get through to us. It’s true in my life.

Ten years ago I went through some awful things, my whole world fell apart. Relationships broke down and it hurt so much. It was in the middle of that, that my heart was opened up to God’s story, to His voice. The only way I know to stop a broken heart from hardening is to open it up to Jesus Christ. None of us wants to have a hard heart because we if we live with a hard heart, we can’t enjoy life. We can’t experience all the beautiful and wonderful things that God had for us. And God’s Word, God’s story, God’s voice is about grace. It’s about understanding and forgiveness.

When we are struggling through difficult circumstances we need the only one who can meet that need. What other say when we are hurting doesn’t seem to make much difference. But when we are experiencing the pain of adversity, God’s Word makes a difference. God’s love makes a difference.

I remember how dark it was in that pain for me. I remember how lonely it is, I remember how I was struggling and a lot of well-meaning people tried to say encouraging things. But somehow none of them had any impact. But in that, I met Jesus and when Jesus spoke when God spoke when He touched me with His love, that made a difference. It was like a light. Not a fluorescent light, not a harsh light it was like a warm, gentle beautiful light that shone inside me.

The other thing that God does is that he touches us with His honesty. He puts his finger on the things that are ruining our life that we have to let go of. We need to ditch some things in our life to get on and live a full life.

I have a friend who has two failed marriages and is now is on his third relationship. He wants to believe in God but he’s never turned away from the things that have caused the failures in his marriages. He’s blamed his ex-wives, he rationalised things away but on each occasion and in each relationship he’s flirted at the office, he’s worked too long and too hard. He’s been unfaithful to his previous wives. He’s doomed to make the mistake again and again. Not until we leave those things behind that we can live a full, wonderful life that God has planned for us.

How do we learn from adversity? From my experience the only way that I know to share with you is that happens we open our hearts to the best teacher in the universe. Jesus. And we let His love in and He helps us to deal with the rubbish.

Sometimes – bad things do happen to good people. So far this week, we’ve been taking a look at coping, growing, when they happen to us. But when they happen to the people around us, family, at work, friends, people who really matter to us – what can we do? What’s our role?

These days we live in a pretty clinical world. We see images of war and poverty on TV so often we’re almost immune to them. We put our old people into nursing homes. We live very detached lives from our neighbours and instead as a society we chase luxury and comfort and entertainment. It’s sad but by and large, it’s true. So when people suffer so often they suffer alone.

Bad things happen to good people and when they happen to us and when they happen to us we expect others to get around us to support us. But what about when those bad things happen to the people around us? Where are we then? It’s so easy for us to detach ourselves from the suffering and the needs of other people. We all do it, me included.

Let me tell you a story. I have one sister her name is Corrie. When she was young she did a Bachelor of Music degree and then travelled to Europe to study music. She was a brilliant pianist, quite brilliant. She toured and studied as a concert pianist. But in her early twenties, she was diagnosed with schizophrenia. I don’t know if you have had any experience of that disease but it is the most debilitating mental disease. I mean her life has been plagued ever since.

Firstly she is one very, very strong drugs which make her tired. She can’t work. Sometimes she hears voices and she suffers from a chronically underfunded health system. There is no support system really there for people who are dealing with this horrible disease of schizophrenia. Just the other day she tried to take her own life again by cutting her wrists. Now, this is the second or third time that this has happened.

You know the thing with schizophrenia, sometimes a schizophrenic will hear these voices and it’s just so real and so painful and so dangerous because many end up committing suicide. Then when those voices are gone and the drugs are being taken the person knows that they are missing out on life. A schizophrenic hasn’t lost their marbles, she is all there, she is a wonderful person.

She is never done anything wrong in her life and since she was twenty now she is forty-eight she has struggled with this thing. She spends most of her time lying on the bed because the drugs are so debilitating. She lives about two hours away and right now she is in hospital and I’ve found myself thinking, “I’m so busy I don’t have time to go down there again, I‘ve got programs to write and I’ve got things to do.” God said to me, “Whoa, did you just hear your thought?” Good point God, a very good point.

How easy is it for us to be detached from the pain and the suffering. Not only those whom we love but for people we know whom aren’t part of our family. Jesus takes this very seriously. He explained how one day He would be coming back. Now Jesus often told stories about Himself in the third person and refers to Himself the Son of Man. Listen to what he said:

When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, then he will sit on the throne of glory. All the nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate people one from another as a shepherd separates sheep from the goats and he will put the sheep at this right hand and the goats at his left. Then the king will say to those on his right hand, ‘Come you that are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom that prepared for you from the foundation of the world; for I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and welcomed me. I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me. I was prison and you visited me.

Then those people will answer, ‘Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry and gave you food or thirsty and gave you something to drink? And when was it we saw you a stranger and welcomed you or naked and gave you clothing? And when was that we saw sick or in prison and visited you?’ And the king will answer them, ‘Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these you did it to me.’

And then he will say to the ones on his left hand, ‘You that are accursed, depart from me into the eternal fire prepare for the devil and his angels; for I was hungry and you gave me no food, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, I was a stranger and you didn’t welcome me, naked and you didn’t clothe me, sick and in prison and you didn’t visit me. And they will answer, ‘Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison and didn’t take care of you?’

And he will answer, ‘Truly I tell you just as you didn’t do it to one of the least of these, you didn’t to it to me. And these will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life. (Matthew 25:31-46).

Do you think he takes it seriously? He says when someone is hungry, feed them. When they are thirsty give them something to drink. When they are a stranger and feel on the outer, welcome them. When they need clothes, clothe them. When they are sick, care for them. When they are imprisoned, visit them. It’s so easy to over spiritualise this stuff. Anyone who says I believe in Jesus needs to have actions that match up with the belief.

It is so easy to be on one side of the world and say, “I’m going to meet the needs of the poor, I’m going to sponsor a child for $30 a month.” Now, don’t get me wrong I think that is a wonderful thing to do. But we can say right I’m sponsoring a child on the other side of the world for $30 a month, I have eased my conscious I am doing what I need to do.

Close your eyes for a minute. Who are the people in your life right now who have a need? Maybe in your family, maybe a parent from the local football club, maybe someone at work, maybe a neighbour. You see them every day or every week. Picture them. Who are the people right now in your life that need help?

The only reason that you are listening to my voice today is because, when something bad happened to me ten years ago a handful of Jesus follower’s people who had known me for years, they stepped forward into my life. They gave me somewhere to live. They gave me comfort. They welcomed me. They fed me. They cried with me. That stuff spoke more to me about the love of Jesus Christ than any sermon that anyone could preach any day of the week.

Wake up! When other people are hurting around us, when other people are hungry or thirsty, or alone or naked or sick or in prison. If we use Jesus name if we say I am a Christ-follower I am a Christian. Jesus says, “Look, go and meet their need.” There are no conditions on this there are no, “Well look if you have time, if you feel like it, if you feel motivated.”

Jesus said just do it. Just go and love them. When you go to that sick person and you visit them in the hospital, when you go to that neighbour who is in jail at the moment. do you notice he even talks about criminals? Go on love them.

You know that the people we have locked up ok they have done something wrong Jesus said if you know one go and visit them. It’s what I love about Jesus, He drags me out of my comfort zone, He challenges each one of us to live out the faith we have in Him. When we know someone who is in need, where are we? Are we on the right side or the left? Are we with the sheep or the goats? Do we touch Jesus and that person with our love or do we ignore them?