If God Is Real, Why Do Bad Things Happen? 3 Stories of Faith Through Hard Times

And again, you come back to that question: if God is real, then why would he allow this to happen?

Why would he allow all this pain in the heart to happen?

How could he be real if this is what I'm going through?

Well, my friend, today I don't claim or even pretend like I have the answers.

But what I do have is a story, my story.

And matter of fact, inside of today's episode, I have a series of stories where I'm able to show where God has been real, even in the midst of the pain.

So, my friend, if you could use some hope, if you could use a reassurance that yes, God is real, then my friend, today is for you.

This is episode 386 of Grace and Inspiration.

And I am your host, Kevin Lowe.

So honored that you have chosen to be here today, cooking play on this specific episode.

So with that, I welcome you to the podcast.

SPEAKER_01: I got great, grace and inspiration on my mind.

I got great, grace and inspiration on my mind.

SPEAKER_00: What's going on, my friend, and welcome back to Grit Grace and Inspiration.

Today's episode is coming out just two days after the Easter holiday.

And I felt like that was such a fitting time for me to talk about a topic I've been wanting to discuss here on the podcast.

And well, finally the timing just felt right.

Now, I kind of made reference to it at the beginning of the episode of this kind of disclaimer of sorts that when tackling these big questions, like, if God is real, then why does he allow bad things to happen?

As I said, I do not pretend to have the answers.

I do not pretend to be somebody I'm not.

I'm just me, a dude who's been through some stuff in life.

And so I just bring my own perspective.

That is it.

And in that, I have some stories in my life where God has definitely been real, where he has shown up in a big way.

And I want to share those with you today, as I said, to just hopefully give you a little bit of hope.

Because maybe you clicked on today's episode because you're questioning your faith.

Maybe you're questioning everything that you've known because you have prayers that have gone unanswered.

Or maybe you've had some stuff happen in life that's been devastating.

And my friend, if anybody knows what you're feeling and what you're going through, it's me.

Because I've been there.

And well, we're all on this journey together.

Living in this world where nothing is perfect, things go wrong all the time.

There's way too much hurt, way too much pain.

To be honest, it's part of the reason why I do this podcast in the first place.

Is I just want to hopefully be one little piece trying to bring a smile to the world to make somebody's day a little bit brighter.

And that's what this is all about.

Now, today, as I said, I'm about to share with you three stories that have proven that yes, God is definitely real, even in the midst of the darkness, even in the midst of the pain.

The first story I want to share is a story that I've shared many times on the podcast, but today it's more relevant than ever before.

I went blind unexpectedly in 2003.

When I went into surgery to have the recently discovered brain tumor removed, we thought everything was going to go fine.

Nothing that happened after was expected.

Not at all.

Not me becoming blind, not me having all these medical complications, not me remaining in the ICU for two weeks.

No, none of that was expected.

And when I came home, life was completely different.

Everything I knew was gone.

It was destroyed.

I literally was trapped in a world of darkness.

And yet, there was one person who was always there with me.

Now, truth be told, I have no memory of this.

My memory doesn't pick up until quite some time after the day of surgery.

My memory stopped going into the operating room and doesn't pick up until weeks later, being back home.

And during this time in between, there was so much happening in amongst my family with me, them just trying to literally keep me alive, to then my mom bringing home her son in this whole new foreign world.

And she tells the story, and I've told it on the podcast before.

And when I've had her on the podcast, she actually told the story.

How she asked me finally one morning who it was that I talked to when I go to bed at night.

And she said that I said just so plainly, oh, Jesus, that he's always there with me.

And that, my friend, right there, I believe, encompasses everything that faith is about.

And it encompasses everything that I'm trying to show you today, that God is real and that God is there, and that God will show up when the time is right.

In this instance, it was just a boy, a teenage boy who had his life crumbled.

And every night, that boy would go to bed and he'd cry himself to sleep, begging and pleading that God would let him see in the morning.

And in amongst all of that, he would have a friend.

He would have his savior there with him, comforting him, reminding him that it was going to be okay.

Now, every morning I woke up, my prayers were unanswered.

I never got to see again.

It's now been over 21 years.

The October of this year will be my 22nd anniversary of being blind.

But God has been there with me.

And that is one of the most important things that I want you to understand today is that God, He did not promise that we would have an easy life.

He never promised that this life would be without hurt.

He didn't.

Matter of fact, this world is a flawed world.

It is with sin.

But you know what he did promise?

He said if we accept him into our heart as our Lord and Savior, that he would be there with us.

And that just like Jesus rose from the dead, so will we.

And we can spend eternity in heaven with Jesus.

Now that was story number one.

Story number two, though, we fast forward in my story quite a few years.

We're coming way on up almost to present day.

I definitely have a good memory of this day, of this story, very well.

So I'm going to tell it to you from firsthand experience of how God shows up in the most unlikely of places, in the most unlikely of scenarios.

This was just an ordinary day.

I'm talking like a Tuesday when nothing much is going on.

I'm at home by myself, it's middle of the afternoon, and I decide that you know what?

I'm going to grab a grapefruit out of the refrigerator and have that as a snack.

And so there I stood with a cutting board, a knife, a grapefruit, dicing up that grapefruit into quarters so that I could eat.

And all of a sudden, tears started streaming down my face.

There was no warning.

There was no buildup.

Just all of a sudden, this overflowing of emotions came over me.

And then out of nowhere, I had the feeling come over me that I never expected I would feel.

And that was forgiveness.

Forgiveness for somebody who I had sworn I would never forgive.

Because this person, they had caused so much harm to my family that I swore I would never forgive them.

Not until the day I die.

And yet here I am standing in my kitchen, cutting up a grapefruit, and I have the most overwhelming feeling of forgiveness.

And literally I sat there saying out loud multiple times, I forgive you.

I forgive you.

I forgive you.

And do you know what?

All these years later, to this day, I cannot be angry at that person, even if I try.

That person, I used to have nightmares.

No longer do I have nightmares.

No longer can I even have the first ill thought towards that person.

I just can't.

And the only way I can explain that, my friend, is through God, through the Holy Spirit.

Completely took over me.

And in that day, I was set free.

I was able to forgive somebody who I swore I would never forgive.

Because to me, forgiving them, it meant saying that what they did to my family was okay.

And my gosh, it was not.

It still isn't okay.

But forgiveness, it's not about setting them free.

It's about setting yourself free.

And again, this is not something that I did on my own.

No.

It's something that was only made possible because of God.

And God knew that at some point I had to be set free of that burden that I carried.

And that day, God showed up in a big way, literally lifting a weight off of my shoulders that I didn't even know I was carrying until it was gone.

And so there it was on a Tuesday afternoon in my kitchen.

And the most profound thing happened is I was set free.

So sometimes when we can't do it for ourselves, well, God shows up for us.

When the timing is right, and my friend, timing, God's timing, that's a whole nother day's topic.

Only he knows when it's right.

But I encourage you, if maybe you've been holding on to something, if there's somebody who's done you or your family wrong that you've been holding on to, my friend, I'm not gonna begin to tell you that you should forgive them.

No.

All I am gonna tell you, though, is I want you to know there is hope and that through the power of the Holy Spirit, I was able to be set free.

And I'm here today to tell you that God is alive and well in all forms of God the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

That day, the Holy Spirit set me free of a burden that I had been carrying for way too long.

Then there's story number three, a story that I've shared on the podcast, but it's in quite some time.

And again, if you want to know if God is real, in the midst of the bad, in the midst of the stuff that has you asking if God is real, why does he allow this to happen?

He showed up in a big way.

My sister, she suffers from a complicated medical issue.

And at the time that this story takes place, she'd been going through a lot.

Trips to the ER, 911 calls, racing to the emergency room.

It became just part of our weekly routine.

In this day, though, it was the same situation.

We find ourselves back at the hospital in the ER.

She's not doing good.

She was doing really bad.

The doctors, they didn't know what to do.

They were calling in transport, saying that she needed to be sent to another hospital, a bigger hospital.

And at the same time, sitting before me was my sister, who literally I didn't think was going to make it that day.

None of us did.

And there she laid in her hospital bed.

I was in the room with my mom, my dad.

And I can remember all of a sudden saying to my mom, and it was late one night.

By this point, I'm gonna say it was probably around about nine o'clock at night.

And I asked her if she had the phone number for our pastor.

Thank goodness she did.

And I asked her to please call, and she started to hesitate.

And I said, No, mom, please, please call.

She did, and she handed the phone to me and our pastor, praise Jesus.

He answered the phone.

And I told him what was going on.

And I literally was just calling because I wanted to tell him and ask him if he could start praying and if he could start spreading the word about what was happening to get a prayer chain going, because my friend, I know the power in prayer.

But what happened next was incredible.

Because right before we were about to hang up, my pastor, he said, Well, let me go ahead and pray with you right now.

And so there I was in a chair at the foot of the bed.

And holding the phone to my ear, I started praying with my pastor.

Now, what I didn't realize, being blind, of course, my head bowed, was that while I was praying, my sister was starting to move.

She was starting to recover.

And my friend, by the time that I said amen, my sister sat up in bed.

She was ready to go home.

Literally, in the time that we prayed, God healed my sister.

Now, what was amazing was in that room that day was somebody who didn't believe in God, isn't a Christian.

And yet they saw what happened right before their very eyes.

They saw, they heard me on the phone.

They heard me say amen.

And they witnessed my sister sit up in bed, completely well, ready to go home.

My friend, I share these stories again, reminding you that in this life and in this world, we're going to go through hard times.

It's just part of life.

But we don't have to go through them alone.

And I also remind you that a lot of times it feels like God isn't answering our prayers.

Because times will go by where nothing is happening.

Remember, this year, October of 2025, will be 22 years that I've been completely blind.

But that doesn't mean that God isn't there.

Because what we have to understand, as hard as it is to understand, is that God's plans are bigger than our own.

I believe they're better than our own.

But when heartache is involved, it doesn't make them easy.

I never would have chosen to become blind.

I never would have chosen that my sister had to have this complicated medical issue.

But you know what?

To see us through it has been God.

It's been my amazing faith in Jesus Christ, who died on the cross that day, for me, for you, and proved to the world that in fact he would rise again on Sunday, two days later.

We celebrate Good Friday, the day that Jesus died on the cross for us, for our sins, so that we can have everlasting eternity in heaven with him.

And just as he promised, he would rise again.

The tomb would be left empty.

My friend, I can't make it in this life without Jesus Christ.

I don't know how anybody does, because I know I couldn't.

My faith, my relationship with Jesus is the only way that I'm here today.

And it's the only way that I'll be able to continue on with this life because, my gosh, my friend, this life is way too tough for me to dare think that I could try to walk it without Jesus by my side.

My friend, I encourage you that if you don't already have a relationship with your creator, I encourage you to really explore it and understand that it doesn't take anything special.

It doesn't mean that you have to be some perfect person.

No, it doesn't mean that at all.

It just simply means that you want to have a relationship with your creator, accepting and understanding that Jesus is the Son of Christ and that he died on the cross but rose again.

And whoever should believe in him can have everlasting eternity in heaven with him.

I understand today's episode was different than most, but here we are, the week of Easter, and it just felt right.

And if anything, if you're still here, I just hope and pray that something I said today can bring you the hope and the comfort and the peace that you were looking for.

Now, my friend, before I end, I will let you know that if you would love to have an extra dose of encouragement to start out your week, in addition to the podcast, I also write a weekly newsletter called Where Grit Meets Grace.

It's available to you for free.

It lands in your inbox each Monday morning just to be that little bit of extra help you need to make the week possible.

So if you would love to start receiving this free newsletter, please be sure to click the link at the top of today's show notes where you can get signed up, or you can also just head on over to the website gritgraceinspiration.com, and you will find a sign-up form right there on the website to sign up for the weekly newsletter called Where Grit Meets Grace.

Until next time, my friend, I'm your host, Kevin Little.

And this, of course, was another episode of Grit, Grace, and Inspiration.

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SPEAKER_02: Observe the North American Dad.

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