Sin, Suffering, and the God Who Restores

This episode contains portions from the following programs:

"The Power of Christ's Comfort"

"The Beauty of the Gospel after Abortion"

"You Are Invited Back to a Garden"

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Dannah Gresh: Have you ever suffered suffocating guilt? If so, you’re not alone, and there is nothing you could ever do to make God love you less . . . and I do mean nothing.

Jean Wuebbles: I thought my sins were too much for Jesus to forgive. I don’t even want to think how many little babies I killed. I might not have wielded the knife, but I made the arrangements for it to be wielded.

There wasn’t one of the Ten Commandments I hadn’t broken—and most of them over and over again. How could Jesus possibly forgive this?

Dannah: Oh, friend! He surely can forgive “this”. . . and anything else that weighs you down today.

Pull up a chair. Let’s talk about sin, suffering, and the God who restores everything. I’m Dannah Gresh, and you’re listening to Revive Our Hearts Weekend. 

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You know, our pain comes in a lot of shapes and sizes. Today I want to focus in on the kind of suffering that comes from shame. Shame from sin, that we just can't overcome—sin that's in our past, and we haven't found all of the healing that God means for us to know, yet. 

But if you can meet Jesus in that pain! This is a promise I can give you from the hot pavement of life: God will use that suffering. The suffering that came because of your sin. 

Let me read to you 2 Corinthians 1, verse 3 and 4, two of my favorite verses in Scripture, 

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies, and God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction, with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God.

Oh friend, these two verses promise that when we meet Jesus in our pain, not only do we receive comfort, but we become conduits of His comfort. And what kind of pain? ALL of our affliction; that includes the suffering we bring on ourselves because of sin in our lives! And not just some of our sin . . . ALL of it.

Now, the meaning of this entire paragraph hinges on the word “comfort.” In fact, all major modern translations that I checked use the English word “comfort” here. But let's slow down a little. The Greek word here for comfort is parakaleō (pah-rah-kah-LAY-oh) I want to zoom in on it for a moment to learn something important. 

Parakaleō is a compound of two Greek words: para—“beside” or “alongside” and  kaleō—“to call”

Together, parakaleō literally means "to call alongside." It conveys the image of someone coming close beside you to help, comfort, guide, or strengthen.

And then there’s this amazing truth: (are you sitting down yet?) closely related to this Greek word for comfort is the noun form paraklētos, used for the Holy Spirit in John 14–16. Often translated as Helper, Advocate, Comforter, or Counselor, it describes the Spirit as the One who comes alongside to:

• Teach
• Remind
• Convict
• Encourage
• And remain with us.

Picture God coming near in your pain. He Himself is our comforter.

Now, it gets even better. You see, most often, this extremely common verb gets translated one of three other ways: encourage, exhort (which means to strongly encourage to do something), or urge (which means to give impulse to do something). 

So, let's think about this. Is it possible that the apostle Paul is communicating not only that we can be soothed by the Holy Spirit’s presence in our pain, but also that we'll be strengthened to do something with that soothing? 

I know what I'm talking about. I first discovered this when I was in my twenties. I was working through some deep pain. It was the kind that comes from sin. I was so ashamed of my past. I was aware that my teen sexual sin had done great damage to my marriage. I was working through the process of fully healing, fully receiving the soothing of God. 

Bob and I were working through the baggage that it caused in our relationship. During that time there was this great lie that kept surfacing. It was this: God can never use me. And me, a woman who at the age of eight was called to serve the Lord, a woman who at the age of eight had a desire to teach the Word. 

I was sitting in the back row. I thought maybe what I could do for God was, I don't know, clean up after a service or bake cookies for Bible school. Not that those things aren't great things to do. But they're not the right thing to do when God has called you to do something different. I scoured the Scriptures looking for comfort. “God, am I unusable? Will You never use me? Did my sin disqualify me? Does this grief and this hurt and this pain cripple me in a way that can never be repaired?” 

And I found my comfort right here, in 2 Corinthians 1:3–4. 

I have been so comforted by God’s Spirit! And every time I am comforted by Him, I become strengthened and urged and exhorted by the Holy Spirit to comfort others in the same way that Jesus has comforted me. 

Now, if you come to me, and you're someone who struggled with, I don't know, body image issues and an eating disorder, I'm going to love you. I'm going to pray over you. I'm going to encourage you. But I won't have the same magnificent way of doing that because I haven't known that pain in my life. 

But come to me with your marriage troubles, come to me with shame from your past sin, and I know that comfort and soothing of Jesus Christ, and He has strengthened me for a purpose in your life, in a way that's very unique and special, in a way that only He can do.

Think about it. That passage again is 2 Corinthians 1:3–4.

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God loves to take sin and suffering in your life and redeem it for the good of others. That’s what He did in the life of a woman Jean. Jean grew up in a Jewish home where her mother punished her anytime she asked questions about Jesus. Without Christ, her life spiraled into one of sin and shame. Well, Jean told our team her testimony. She explained how she had several abortions, and she helped many other women do the same:

Jean: I was the person to call. So if you were pregnant and wanted an abortion, you called me. I called my guy, and we arranged the abortion. Abortion was not legal at the time, so it had to be done behind closed doors in very unsanitary conditions. You never knew if you were going to lose your right to have children again in the future. That was the gamble you took. It didn't seem like such a big gamble to me. 

Dannah: But God wasn’t done writing Jean’s story. If you feel the weight of past sin and don’t know if you can be truly, fully forgiven, I hope you’ll keep listening and hear the good news of how you can be set free from all guilt. Here’s Jean with more of her testimony:

Jean: When Roe vs. Wade happened, that was my life dream—that was what I had been working for. It was so important to me that we have rights over our own bodies, and I did everything I could for Roe vs. Wade. I was right in the Women’s Lib movement.

I was super-active in the Women’s Lib movement. We used to have meetings every night in the dorm: We were women. We didn’t need men. We didn’t need to stay home. We needed careers, and we needed to be in charge of our own bodies.

When Roe vs. Wade was passed, I cheered!

I moved to Chicago, and I met my first husband. I met him in a bar; we were both drunk. He was a closet homosexual, and he needed a wife to get his parents off his back. He needed a wife and a child. So he married me and we had a baby, and that pretty much was the end of our marriage, although we did stay together for eight years.

It wasn’t until then that I really realized that he was a homosexual. As I look back, I think I missed a lot of signs—but, when we don’t want to see something, sometimes we don’t. So we got divorced. 

I had this baby, so I was a single mom, and I was trying to be a Jew again. I was going to synagogue. I had my son in a private Jewish school that my dad paid for. Then I met my current husband, and he was a Catholic.

He was going to be a priest at one time, and he left the seminary. So here we were—this Jew and this Catholic. We made a marriage, and we were really happy and we had everything we could want. We had a wonderful business, and we had this wonderful son. But there was this hole in me, and he couldn’t fill it—nothing could fill it.

Dannah: This empty feeling led Jean to seek out spiritual guidance.

Jean: I said, “Yeah. There’s a little Methodist church a few blocks away. Let’s go Sunday.” And we went to church. That week I went in and I talked to the pastor. I told him I was a Jew, my husband was a Catholic, and that’s how we came to be at this little Methodist church.

He asked me if I would be interested in doing a Bible study, and I said, “Sure!” So he came to our home once a week for one year. I read the New Testament over and over and over. Then I started reading the Old Testament again, and it kind of looked a little different to me than the way I used to read it.

And twenty years ago, I gave my life to the Lord. 

When I accepted Jesus as my Lord and Savior, I realized that there’s no hole anymore! It’s been gone for twenty years.

Dannah: Praise God! Jesus is mighty to save. Jean knew this to be true, but she still wrestled with the magnitude of her sins. Was God’s grace really enough to cover them all?

Jean: I thought my sins were too much for Jesus to forgive. I don’t even want to think how many little babies I killed. I might not have wielded the knife, but I made the arrangements for it to be wielded.

There wasn’t one of the Ten Commandments I hadn’t broken—and most of them over and over again. How could Jesus possibly forgive this? And it was because I really didn’t understand grace, and you have to understand grace.

My pastor once said to me, “Jean, you’ve already asked forgiveness for this. You don’t have to keep asking. That shows you don’t have faith that He’s forgiven you.” I sometimes slip back and say, “Oh, Jesus! How can You . . . when I see what’s going on in this world with the abortions and Planned Parenthood, how can You possibly have forgiven me?” But I realize that He has!

His blood ran for me, and I believe when He was on that cross with His arms out and He was taking in all of our sin—that was my sin, too. He knew me then, and He said, “Jean, I’m taking your sin!” He did! He’s forgiven me.

That’s what I say to you. If you’re living with these sins, just go to him on bended knee. Go to Him! He is there for you. He will forgive you. That’s what grace is! You don’t have to earn it; you don’t have to do anything. All you have to do is ask for it, and it’s yours! You can take it in every fiber of your being.

Now I live in a Christian marriage. God sent him to me—there’s just no question. The wonderful part is that he thinks that God sent me to him. I submit to him. He loves me as Christ loves the Church. I do not think I have a right over my own body. 

And this child that God put in there, and God saw fit to let me have one, even when the doctors told me that I wouldn’t ever be able to have one after the botched-up abortions. That little boy that I had with my homosexual husband came to know Jesus. He always says it just shows God has a sense of humor.

It’s just a wonderful thing. I’m so thankful that Jesus has forgiven me!

I was angry with Jesus for a while because I decided once He knew that He was going to take me, why did He let me go through all that junk? I have seven years of my life that I don’t remember, because of drugs and everything else.

I finally figured it out one day. I ran into my pastor’s office—interrupted him—and I said, “I got it. I understand. I’m not mad at God anymore! He did all this so I could teach women who are going through these things.”

I mentor young women who are addicts, who’ve had abortions—who can’t get over it . . . and I’m there for them because there’s nothing they can say that would shock me. I have been through it all!

I’ve been teaching women’s Bible studies now, I think, for six years. I’ve been teaching Sunday school for seven years. I did a college study for about five years. I want to tell everybody I can about Jesus. 

When I share the gospel with somebody who doesn’t know Jesus you’re just planting the seed. God’s gotta water it.

Evangelism is not succeeding. I’ve had to learn that the hard way. I had a woman I was mentoring commit suicide. My pastor called me—I think it was at five in the morning—because he wanted to be sure I heard it from him.

I started crying, and I said, “I’ve failed!”

And do you know what he said to me? “Jean, you’re not that powerful.”

And that was just what I needed to hear. I am not that powerful. It all rests in the hands of the Lord.

But I spread the Word, I spread the seeds, and I let Him water them. Evangelism is not the success of someone coming to Jesus. Evangelism is telling the story of Jesus, telling who Jesus is. 

I would like to go to 2 Peter chapter 3, verse 9: “The Lord is not slow to fulfill his promise as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance.” I didn’t used to believe that verse, because I didn’t think He was patient with me.

I thought He waited too long. But now I understand, and I am so thankful! Most of all, I am so thankful to Jesus Christ, that He waited patiently for me! And in His Name, as always, I say amen.

Dannah: Amen, indeed. Thank you, Jean, for sharing your story with our team. God heals. He restores. And it’s all because of the gospel. Before you go today, I hope you’ll listen to this sweet reflection from Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth from some years back, about the hope we have that some day all our shame will be completely gone.

Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth: I have a condo that has a patio area. One of my dear friends, her ministry to me over the years has been to plant beautiful flowers around the patio whenever I'm in town for me to enjoy. I look through the window and see that from my study. It's been such a blessing.

Last year when I came back to town in the springtime, I'd been gone quite a while, and I looked out at that patio and there were just beautiful flowers. They were gorgeous. I'm just admiring it. I have another friend who was with me in the condo at that moment. My friend had been around a week earlier. She said, "You should have seen what this looked like before Mary Ann got a hold of it!" Jean started to describe what this patio had looked like a week earlier. She said, "It was a mess! It was disgusting. One day I left and it was this mess, and the next day I came back and Mary Ann had done her magic and that place was transformed. I went out there and looked and my reaction was, 'Oh! This is beautiful!'"

As I heard that little account, I thought, That's what our lives are supposed to do. They are supposed to create a sense of . . . ohhh! . . . in this world as people see the beauty and order and reclamation and restoration taking place as the gospel does its work in every part of our lives and our culture.

I came across a note in my reading of the ESV Bible that captures this thought. It says:

The purpose of the redemptive covenants is to restore fallen, damaged creatures, mankind, to the proper functioning of their humanity. Therefore, obedience to the Lord's commands is the right way to enjoy the world that God made, and it also displays to the rest of the world how refreshingly attractive it is to know the true God. The fall of mankind damaged every aspect of human lives, and God's work of redemption aims to restore every aspect to its proper functioning.

That's the story. We have been redeemed to be players in God's redemptive story. We are called to be transformers, agents of transformation and grace in our world, to help the world experience glimpses here and now of what a fully redeemed world will look like someday for those who repent and believe the gospel.

That's where 2 Peter 3 says, "According to his promise, we are waiting for new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness dwells" (v. 13).

A new heaven, new earth . . . we don't know if that is an entirely new earth in creation, or if it is the old earth that will be renewed and transformed into something else. But one thing we do know for sure, and that is that this earth and heaven as we know it today will be fundamentally changed, different, redeemed, restored.

You see, salvation is not just about God rescuing sinners from hell and taking us to heaven. It is that, but it is about God renewing and restoring things back to what He intended them to be before there was ever the Fall in the first place.

To put this in a biblical context, let me just give you a two-minute overview of the Bible. Here’s how we do it. There are bookends of the Bible. The first three chapters of Genesis and the last three chapters of the book of Revelation—the first three chapters of the Bible, the last three chapters of the Bible—form bookends for the whole Bible and for the whole story of history.

Look with me at those bookends. Genesis 1 and 2 tell the story of paradise, the story of creation. This world was created to be God’s dwelling place. In Genesis 1 and 2, we see God present with His people there in the garden. His people are glorifying Him, enjoying Him. The word in Genesis 1 and 2 that stands out is blessing. This is the place of blessing. The presence of God. It’s paradise as God intended it to be.

Then in the third chapter of the Bible, Genesis 3, we have what we could call paradise lost. That’s where we have the story of the Fall, the entrance of Satan, God’s mortal enemy—sin, death, and the curse all enter the story in Genesis chapter 3. So the first two chapters of the Bible—paradise; third chapter—paradise lost. That’s the front bookend.

Now go to the last three chapters of the Bible—the last three chapters of Revelation—come to Revelation 20. This is the third to the last chapter of the Bible, and this is where you see God’s enemies that entered the world in Genesis 3. In Revelation 20 you see God’s enemies banished. Satan and death and evil—great chapter.

You see the dragon, that great serpent, the devil, and Satan being bound and thrown into a bottomless pit, shut and sealed it over him so he can deceive the nations no longer. Then you see him after a thousand years coming out of that pit and being thrown into the lake of fire and sulfur to be tormented day and night forever and ever. It’s the banishment of God’s enemy that entered the scene in Genesis 3.

Then you go to the last two chapters of Revelation, 21 and 22, and you see paradise restored. And here we have a world that is oriented around the throne of God, a world that exists for His pleasure and His glory. A world of eternal blessing. We had blessing in Genesis 1 and 2. We have blessing restored in Revelation 21 and 22.

Let me read you just a brief portion of the end of that story. Revelation 21:

Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away . . . I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, "Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be His people, and God himself will be with them as their God. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away." (vv. 1–4)

Remember in Genesis 3, the result of the fall was pain. Now there’s no more pain. Praise God! “The former things have passed away." And he who was seated on the throne [the sovereign ruler and Lord of the universe] said, "Behold, I am making all things new” (v. 5).

You’ve got the bookends. And what is the fulcrum, the hinge, the pivot point of those bookends? It’s the cross. That’s the middle of the story. That’s the focal point, the crux of the story. The cross. And that is the message that we take to our world.

That’s what takes us from the devastation of Genesis chapter 3, into that rescue and recovery program of God, that redemptive story, that story where He is renewing and making all things new. It’s the cross that makes all this possible.

• That's the message we take to our world.
• That’s the vision that electrifies and fills and impassions our hearts.
• That’s the message for which we live, and if need be, for which we are willing to lay down our lives.

Dannah: Friend, this really is the best news. We’re not just rescued from hell—the eternal consequence of our sin. We’re rescued from the unbearable burden of guilt and shame today! 

We’re able to share about the God who restores because listeners like you give generously to Revive Our Hearts. If today’s message of gospel hope ministered to you, would you consider making a donation? When you do, you’re helping us reach women all over the world with the message of freedom, fullness, and fruitfulness in Christ. To give, visit ReviveOurHearts.com/Donate. When you do, ask for this month’s resource for a gift of any amount—A Small Book for the Hurting Heart by Paul Tautges. We’d like to send that to you as our way of saying “thank you” for your gift. 

Well, next weekend is grandparents day, and we’re gonna celebrate here on Revive Our Hearts Weekend! We’ll spend some time encouraing women whom God has entrusted with precious grandbabies to love and point toward Jesus. 

Thanks for listening today. I’m Dannah Gresh. We’ll see you next time, for Revive Our Hearts Weekend.

This program is a listener-supported production of Revive Our Hearts in Niles, Michigan, calling women to freedom, fullness, and fruitfulness in Christ.

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