How does God use suffering for our good

0:00Well, hello, everyone, and welcome to the 1020 files. I'm your host, Dr. Sherry Tenpenny. The Tenpenny files isn't just another podcast. We hold daily conversations with guests whose research has discovered evidence that challenges the narratives that we can only see on the headlines. Topics span the spectrum from national government, history, astronomy, and travel to food and fitness, vaccines, health, and public policy. And we speak every week to authors who write about faith and biblical principles. I want to introduce you to topics that you've never heard of

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2:01about us. And we hope that you'll join us in support of the work that we do. So today's conversation is with Pastor Clay Jones and his lovely wife and co author, Jean Jones, to talk about their book. How does God use suffering for our good, living with hope and making sense of life? A guide through seven practical life-tested truths that can help you experience victory amid afflictions. Clay and Jean, thank you so much for joining me here today. It's such a pleasure to have you both. A pleasure to be with you today. Yes, our pleasure. Thank you. Thank you. I want to start out by saying that no one gets through this life without immense suffering. I frequently refer to being on this planet as Earth School, and we have suffering, and then we learn lessons from that. And hopefully that we learn the lessons we don't have to experience it again. How has suffering impacted your own life? And Clay will start with you. You know,

3:02everything that I've learned about the Lord has been impacted by my own suffering. I mean, you can read the Bible and we absolutely shouldn't. We should be abiding in God's word. But the real lessons of life and where my character's change is through suffering, it would be nice if we could learn to have godly character while sitting on the beach or eating it in a nice restaurant. That would be wonderful, wouldn't it? But really, that's occurred through suffering. And certainly the things that God has done in my life have come primarily through my suffering. And watching the suffering of those around us. And when it comes to suffering, you mentioned that everybody's going to go through suffering. One of the things I like to point out to people is only one thing is going to prevent you from watching every single person you know die from murder, accident, or disease. And that will be your own death

4:03from murder, accident, or disease. That's a hard truth. And I think so does Wow, I didn't know. Christian is so hard. Well, guess what? That's not that's not just a Christian truth. That's just a truth. You know, I mean, you can become an atheist and then end it with and then worms eat your body or you can be a Hindu or Buddhist and then die again and again and again. But either way, you're going to die. And so we are in this life of suffering, but suffering is good for us as much as that may be hard for some people to believe God uses it to develop Godly character in us. Well, Jean, I want to address that question to you in a little bit different fashion. You begin the book by telling an extremely heartfelt story about a missing and then you had a miscarriage. And then five. And then you struggled with the concept of am I mad at God? And the whole story that you tell about how you just

5:03finally felt like you could go up to had this this meditation where you could go up to God and just pounding on the chest, which I think that so many people struggle with that because they think they can't get mad at God. And I've always said, yes, you can. He's a big boy. He can handle it. But tell us about your story and your struggles that you've gone through with that. Yes, my second miscarriage was in the second trimester. So we had thought that the pregnancy was safe. And so we had told everybody about it and had announced it. We were celebrating. Everyone was congratulating us. And then I miscarried. And at initially, I thought, I'm fine. I'm fine. God works all things for good. And I thought I was fine. I was a little concerned because it seemed like I had no emotion toward God whatsoever. But I was getting angry at little things. And one day, a house guest moved a card. And I was just furious. I just blew up.

6:08Thankfully, she wasn't there. But I realized, you know, that was really out of place. I wonder if what's going on is that really I'm angry at God. So I put on my shoes and went for a walk and said, God, you know, I think I might be angry at you. And I realized if I am angry, the only one who doesn't know it is me, God knows it. And as I continued to walk and talk about the miscarriage, I realized, you know what, God, I am angry. I am angry. And then all this anger just flowed out. And I went through a list of everything that I was upset about that the people in my church were saying you didn't have enough faith. And that's why you lost this baby. The fear that I would never be able to enjoy a pregnancy again because I'd be afraid of of miscarrying again. And on and on, I went through all this list of things that I thought were

7:10reasons why God shouldn't have allowed me to miscarry again. And a funny thing happened as I poured out all of these things. Instead of having one huge mountain that seemed insurmountable, it was like I had a race set before me with a lot of hurdles. And I could cross each one, jump over each one at a time. Sometime in that prayer, I said, God, it isn't fair. Everyone else can have children. Why can't I? And at that moment I realized, oh wow, that's not true. There are plenty of women, even women in the Bible who can't have children. And not only that, I had friends who weren't even married. So not only did they not have children, they didn't have a husband either. Somehow I'd gotten to the point where I felt entitled to have children. And that I realized absolutely needed to change. At eventually I had in all five miscarriages, at which point my

8:12gynecologist told me I would never be able to have children. And as I prayed about and I thought, God, why aren't you giving me the desire of my heart? This is a really big desire. And I felt I felt a sense of what is your biggest desire? And I said, oh, knowing you and walking with you and being like you. And then I understood all of a sudden it was just so clear. Ah, we have conflicting desires. We can't always have this desire fulfilled and that desire fulfilled. Sometimes one takes precedence and another one has to be let go. But it's still hurt a lot. And so I told the Lord, I said, you know, I'm going to give this to you as a gift. I'm a visual thinker. Always have been. And I imagined I figured God could see my pictures in my mind just as well as he could hear my inaudible words. I pictured a hill with a cross at the foot of the hill. And I took all the pain

9:16that I felt, all the grief, all my questions of why put them in a box, wrapped it in pale green wrapping paper, tied it with gold cord and placed it at the foot of the cross. And I said, God, this is my gift to you. And I may not understand why you allowed this to happen, but I'm going to trust you that you are going to work this out for my good. And I'm just going to hold on, even if I don't find out the reasons why until I get to heaven at which time I think there'll be more important things on my mind. I'm giving this to you as a gift. And every time a friend announced that they were pregnant and going to have a baby. And every time that I hurt and I yearned, I picture that image again of the gift at the foot of the cross. And I said, God, this is my gift for you. And that really, really helped me through it because I it was relinquishing any sense of entitlement. And it was saying, God, what you know best. And I'm giving this to you. This is my

10:20sacrifice of praise. Wow, that's beautiful. That's really, really beautiful. And I'm sure that every time you feel it feels some of those anger sensations coming back up again, you go over to that box and lift off the lid and put the anger in it and close the lid and put it back at the foot of the cross, you know, to just keep it like putting it in those perspectives. That's an incredible way to kind of place your anger at the foot of the cross where it needs to be. Clay, you write in your book, God's plan A for your life is to take you through regular periods of suffering. There is no plan B. Explain that. And why do you think he does that? Well, you know, ever since Eve ate of the fruit, Adam and Eve sinned, the sin is always ultimately by the way in the Bible blamed on Adam. Because when he ate, that's when their eyes were opened. And because his was just an overt act of rebellion. But we've been living in a fallen world. And the Lord wants to teach us here the horror of rebellion against him.

11:26And how does he do that? Well, he doesn't do that by giving us just an easy life. He does that by allowing us to experience the sorrow and the suffering that we go through here. And that's eternally valuable knowledge. And we can't, if we're going to be ready for heaven, we have to understand the horror of rebellion here. And that's what we're learning. And we're learning that through suffering. And so, as I said a minute ago, we're all going to die. And we're all going to watch everyone we know die. Well, we're going to watch everyone we know die until we die. And but that's eternally valuable knowledge. And there is the Lord wants us to learn it. And as I mentioned, Romans chapter 5 says, and we rejoice in our suffering, knowing that suffering produces endurance and endurance produces character and character produces hope. And so the way we get

12:28godly character is through suffering. Like I as I said, would be nice if we could get it while sitting on the beach, but that's not how it happens. We get character through because of the suffering that leads to endurance that leads to character. And by the way, nothing makes a convince me. I believe that Jesus was objectively raised from the dead. In fact, in Talbot School of Theology, I used to teach the course entitled in defense of the resurrection, where I gave the logical and evidential reasons that Jesus was raised from the dead. I believe Jesus was raised from the dead. And that makes Christianity objectively true. The biggest thing that makes me think the Christianity is subjectively true. And there's other things. But the biggest thing is, as I've gone through suffering, and I've gone through quite a bit, have bone cancer 22 years ago. I have bone cancer now. I had open heart surgery just nine weeks ago. As I've gone through these things and come through them, after I've come through them, I've

13:34thought, I've looked at my life and I've gone, you know, I'm more like Jesus than I used to be. And that makes me go, you know, this Christian thing, and I'm being facetious here, but you know, this whole thing we talk about Christian, it's true. It's absolutely positively true. And the fact that I've gone through suffering, and at the end of that suffering been more Christ-like, makes me go, you know, this is true. And it gives me hope that one day we're going to all be in heaven. And that's going to be awesome. But suffering is what has enabled that. Jean, do you have something to add to that? I think one of the things about suffering is that it really, really grows our character. For instance, the miscarriages, I wasn't expecting to see anything good come of that in this life. But it was the first step in helping me to grow out of a dependency on seeking other people's

14:37approval. But having people in my church tell me, oh wow, it's all your fault because you didn't have enough faith. It was very difficult, but I had to hold on to you. You know what? God allowed this. I don't know why. I'm walking with the Lord, and what they're saying is just wrong, and I need to get through it. So that was like the first step of growing in that aspect of character building. But it did other things too. For instance, in later years, we ended up taking in foster children who could not be placed in homes that had other children. They had already failed foster care in homes. And we're now living in a group home for children that had more emotional and other problems. And we were able to take in three of those children and help them and offer them a heart. Pre-T and Teenage. Yes, very hard years, very hard years. But that was a

15:43really wonderful thing that we could not have done if we had had children of our own. And we bought the way we had the police at our house seven times in two and a half years. And boy, when you have the police at your house, it's always an event. It's serious. But we learned a lot about all of us as Christians. We don't come into the relationship with Christ as God's naturally born children. We're all adopted. And we learned a lot, Jeannie and I learned a lot about being brought into a new structure, a new situation for these kids. And I thought, you know, that's how it is with us as Christians. We're non-Christians in a sense where even the devil's kids, and we come into the God's family. And we're having to learn all this stuff about what it means to be in the family of God. And there's a lot of learning to do as you know. So just to follow up on that story, you had three foster children like sequentially. No, at the same time. All the time. I'm,

16:47you had all three of those troubled children at the time. Yes. Wow, that is a big heart. That was a lot. That was a lot. It was a lot. We went in a little bit naive thinking, well, love will find a way. And God's going to be there. And they're going to just change instantly and become untroubled. And we were wrong. But we learned a lot about people's relationship with God through that. We had one of the interesting stories right at the beginning. We worked with the two older ones first. We were taking them out on outings and such before they moved in with us. And then the third one moved in a little bit later. But when we went to take in the two older ones, the psychologists had the group home said, you need to know that this one doesn't need anything green. And I said, what do you mean? And they said she doesn't need anything green. What? Even broccoli? She doesn't need vegetables. She'll never be able to get her to eat

17:53vegetables. And so we took them on an all day outing and we were ready to go out for dinner. And we we tell them, okay, but let's get ready. We're going to go to the car and we're going to head over for dinner. And the little gal says, and she's nine at this time, I think. And she squints her eyes and balls up her fists and said, I want candy. And I said, oh, no, you can't have candy right now. That wouldn't be good for you. It would spoil your dinner. But if you eat all your dinner, you can have dessert afterwards. And now we base this on the proverb that says he who is sated, lows honey, but he who is that, oh, first thing to say, first thing to finish, anything bitter is sweet. And she looked at me and she was, she was not pleased. She said, I want candy now. And I said, no, you can't have candy. But you can have dessert if you finish your dinner.

18:57And she says, what if I don't finish my dinner? Oh, then you can't have dessert. What if I do finish dinner? Then you can have dessert. I don't want to finish my dinner. Well, then you can't have dessert. And it went on like this for a while. But here's the funny thing. She ate her whole dinner, including her vegetables. And she got dessert. And they, after a little while, they moved in with us. And when they'd been with us for some months, she said to me, you know, mom, I do you ever, do you want to know? I always asked for candy before dinner. I said, well, yes. And she said, all my other foster parents told me it was bad for me. But if I bug them enough, they gave in and gave me candy. So I knew they didn't love me. But you guys stuck it out and refused to give it to me. And so I knew you did. And I thought, oh, my goodness, what a lesson.

19:57What a lesson in following God's ways of doing what's right for a child instead of what they're demanding. And that's how God is with us. He does what's right for us and what we need instead of what we demand. Wow. Those are great stories. Were these three children were they biological siblings? Two of the girls siblings. Wow. And the other one was unrelated. Wow. That's a big heart, you guys. That's really, really big heart to be able to do that. And you know, you could see from that answer that gave you the suffering that she's had, you know, to fail, you know, to have nobody love her that she's just she's living in their homes. How does embracing the truth about everyone's suffering? How does that eventually bring you peace? Well, as I said earlier, to me, the biggest thing is our suffering here because we realize as we realize is because humans have

20:59rebuilt against God is eternally valuable knowledge. We're going to take that into eternity and go, you know what? I believe I argue in all of my books and my book on suffering and then the one on why God allows evil that we're going to have free will in heaven, but not sin. Well, how are we going to have free will in heaven, but not sin? See, there's already been free will in heaven. We know read Revelation chapter 12, it talks about the rebellion in heaven. We know there's already been free will in heaven. I think we're going to have free will again. Well, what's going to keep us from sinning? Well, I think the biggest thing is is we're learning here that the rebellion is a stupid thing to do. And I ask my students sometimes, I say, would you like me to see me or when I'm talking to audiences, I'll say, would you like to see me stick this pen in my eye? And I can just jab it right in my eye. Would you like to see that? Nobody does, of course. Say, well, nobody does.

22:00It would make an interesting evening. I tell them if I jabbed it into my eye. But why don't I jab it into my eye? Because I'm too smart for that. But you don't give pens to little babies. Why? Because they jab it right in their eye. JP Moreland is always a little apologist who's always a little more delicate than me. He says, how many of you would like to take a spoon and go out on a lawn somewhere and chow down on a steaming pile of dog poop? The point of the matter is, but we don't let little babies out next to steaming piles of dog poop. Why? They crawl right into it. They don't know better. And we're learning here that sin is stupid. And the rebellion, the God is right, and rebellion is a stupid, stupid thing to do. And that's eternally valuable knowledge. Wow. That's really, really good. In your book, in your book, how does God use suffering for good?

23:00You have you outlined seven different pillars and seven different truths that give us a victory during these times. Can you go through them? Sure. Well, the first one is the God loves us. And that's an obvious one. But Jean and I personalize it with each other. And so I, and this may sound a little corny to some people. It's a little frankly mentioned. It's a little slightly embarrassing. But I will say to Jean, the Lord loves genie Jones and claybie Jones. And then Jean will say, the Lord does love genie Jones and claybie Jones. See, this is, go ahead. That's really important. This personalizing really helps us. When we got the news three years ago, the clay had metastasized cancer. And this time there, there wasn't a cure for it. It couldn't be removed. That was really heart-rending. But we needed to repeat to ourselves certain truths. And

24:05one of them is despite this hardship, God loves us and repeating it and putting it in personalizing it and using our names. God does love genie Jones and claybie Jones helped drive it into our hearts. The second truth is everyone's going to go through this. I was walking down when I was first diagnosed as having a tumor on my spine 22 years ago. I'm walking down this hallway waiting to get an MRI. It was early. It was dark. It was cold. And I thought, I said to the Lord, I said, why am I going through this? Why are you, why is this happening to me? And I want everybody to know, and then you can believe it or not, I was not complaining. I just wanted to know why. And immediately the words came to mind, everyone's going to go through this. And that actually was comforting to me. That we're all going to in one way or another suffer. And that was very comforting to me. And so

25:07genie and I will say to each other, everyone's going to go through this. And we all are. Now may not be cancer. It may not be bone cancer like I have, which thankfully my immune system's keeping it largely at bay. But anyway, it may not be bone cancer, but you're going to go through something unless you die very suddenly. You're going to go through something that's going to take your life. The third one is at God will work everything out for our good. And indeed, that's huge. And I'll say, tell Genie, I say, the Lord always works every hard thing out for our good. Every hard thing. And that's how Genie will reply every hard thing. And always every hard thing. You know, in Romans where it says all things work together for those who love the Lord. And I've often said, you know, we classify things as good or bad. It's a human thing to say this was a good

26:10and, you know, happy thing. This was a bad thing and a suffering thing. But God just classifies them as things, you know, all things of things of what we're going to do and how we respond to those things. That's right. To him for advice and for care and clarity and wisdom and all those things. So I think this would be a good place. We've been through three. We're going to come back and go through the other four. But this is a good place for us to take a short break to hear from our sponsors for America out loud. News. America out radio plays the 10 penny files on the I heart radio network daily at 3 p.m. Eastern time Monday through Friday. You can also listen from anywhere in the world by going to America out loud. News and logging into their media player. If you've missed any of the great conversations that we've had on the 10 penny files, you can go to Spotify, Pandora, Apple, tune in. I heart viewed virtual studio. And on any of my platforms, which are dr10penny.com, dr10penny.substack.com. And we also play them on rumble X and Instagram at busy doctor T. Because

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33:34living with hope while making sense of life? Let me tell you just a little bit more about our guests, Clay and Jean Jones. Pastor Clay Jones holds a doctor of ministry from Trinity Evangelical Divinity School. He was a professor in the Christian apologetics program at Talbot School of Theology and Massachusetts for 16 years. He was the chairman of the board at Ratio Christi, a university apologetics ministry and executive director of Simon Greenleaf University, which is now Trinity Law School. He has also served as a pastoral staff on two large churches. Jean Jones is co-author of How Does God Use Suffering for Your Good and co-author on many of his additional books. She is a member of a woman in apologetics and a Bible teacher and we're so delighted to have both of you here today. Welcome back to the show. When Christian is suffering, why is it important to remember in the past, what times in the past that God has delivered you

34:37and that you can actually see the hand of God and pulling you through that suffering? That is essential. The Bible talks so much about how it's important to remember the good things that God has done before. And so one of the things that we do is we keep a, each keep what we call a truth journal and one of the sections in the truth journal is remembrances and it's a list of hardships that we've gone through in the past and along with the good that God has worked in those times. When we remember and the Psalms talk a lot about how it's important to remember when the Psalmists pray, they strengthen their faith by looking back and remembering the things that God did before. And so when we go through hard times like this current battle with cancer, we go back through this list of the good things that God worked through past hardships and that

35:40strengthens our hope and encourages us and reminds us that this time too, God is going to work good through this hardship. Yeah, indeed, there's very few things that are more helpful than to remember, you know, when I'm suffering is to go, wow, the Lord has used my suffering in the past again and again and again and again. For my good, of course, my eternal good because he's developing God with character in me, but he's used it again and again and again, care for my far just regular existence on planet earth. And that's a huge blessing to remember that. And the Lord is constantly tidying Israel and the desert. He'd say, don't you remember when I parted the Red Sea, hello, and you walked on dry ground, and then I brought water out of a rock, and I brought down here. Remember, remember, remember, remember. And, you know, and then it's like, you forgot,

36:40you forgot that I, you know, I mean, the Lord wants us to remember the hard things that we've gone through that he's delivered us from, and that's extremely helpful to us. You know, you mentioned, Jean, just briefly about using a truth journal. How do you use it, and why is it helpful? Right. Well, my very, when it was a very young Christian, what I would do is I'd come across a scripture that was helpful and that I wanted to remember, and I would write it out, put it on an index card, and keep it in my pocket so I could look at it during the day, and that was kind of the start of it for me. Clay did something similar. Now, when Clay had cancer 23 years ago, I expanded it quite a bit. I have a section for remembrances, I have a section for truths, we both have this, and the truths are just truth statements that are based on scripture and that pertain to the current hardship. A section on helpful encouraging

37:44scriptures, and for me, I also have a list of prayer requests and their answers, and I have scriptures that I like to pray. For instance, I like to pray Psalm 71, which is about having hope in times of great difficulty, and I personalize that, personalize that Psalm and write it out, so that I can have a passage to pray whenever I'm feeling particularly downer or scared. I can turn to that and read it and pray it to God, and it lifts my heart. So those are all things that we put into these truth journals, and it's a big help when we're having a particularly hard day. Do you have one too, Clay? Oh, yes, absolutely. Mine's a little different. Jeans is in a notebook. Mine's in a word document, but yes, I absolutely have one, and it's important to

38:45it's very helpful to go back through and go, yes, and I will very often be down, and if I open the truth journal, frankly, it's probably because I've gotten some bad news or something hard has happened, and by the time I'm done, I feel better. I mean, period, I feel better. That's great. How does sharing your difficulty with others help to lift the burden of your suffering? Well, we all need each other. The scripture, I think 73 times, uses the expression one another, pray for one another, encourage one another. I mean, bear one another's burdens and so on, and it's helpful to me to have other people come alongside, and the first time we got cancer, we had somebody that brought us meals. That was hugely helpful. So anyway, the body of Christ needs each other, and it's helpful to be a part of the body of Christ. And I see some people

39:49a genie, and I've seen some people withdraw from other Christians, and that's very bad. That's not, you know, I think they go, oh, well, I've got a problem here. I'm not going to share with anybody. That's bad. You need to share, be a part of their lives. And honestly, that encourages them when they get into trouble to share their problems with you, which we need, they need to do. You know, that's really good. Can you share with me some ways that are the best ways to share, share your difficulties with others that you just don't sound like you're just complaining, that you're just, and you're just dumping it on this person to just like you just need to dump their bucket. Or is that okay sometimes also? We don't complain to people about the various sufferings that the Lord has brought us through. We don't do that. We do share. But see, sharing, the reason we're not complaining is because we actually are believing that the God the Lord is going to use it for our good. We actually believe that. We know we also believe that God is working

40:55in everybody, that everybody's going to have to go through this. And so we don't share it in a sense of complaining, but we do share it in a sense of just pray for me. When I first found out three years ago that I had cancer, what the first things that I did is I sent an email to the senior pastor and I said, I want the elders of the church to pray for me and annoy me with oil, because you know, I've got cancer and they did that. And the Lord has largely kept my cancer at bay. And I'm very thankful for that. But yeah, yes, absolutely. We need to do this, but I don't I don't ever do it in a sense of complaining. We think it's frankly, we think it's sinful and a lack of faith to complain in the sense of, I can't believe God's doing this to me. No, that's you know, this is a part of life. You can't get away from it. And one of our points in our thing is other people have honored God through a lot harder suffering than we're going through. People have been tortured to death. People have been like in the Roman Empire. They've been burned

42:03over fires so slow that the victims would drive for hours in their agony. We're not going through that. And so and we know others have honored God through suffering. And all they had to do, by the way, to get out of that was say, okay, Caesar's a God. And they say, okay, you're free and you're done. And so yeah, no, we don't need to complain. And it's not that we want to complain. We don't want to complain because we believe that God indeed is working this out for our good that others have gone through harder things than we're going through. And they've honored God through it and we want to be in that. We want to be in the same place. We're both part of a smaller group ministry at our church. I'm active with the women's ministry and I lead a table group for women at my church. And so we have an opportunity to share per request every week with these

43:05smaller groups. And so we have regular prayer times and regular times where we can say, hey, this is our need for this week. And that's really helpful to then have people just check up on us and say, hey, how are you doing? Do you need anything? We're here for you. That's good. That's very helpful. You know, at the end of your book of the book, how does God use suffering for good? You have some really interesting section where you tackle some really difficult questions that people ask. And one, as I was reading through that, the one that's that stuck out of my mind, obviously as a physician, is hard questions about medical care. By turn to medical care for help, am I not trusting God to heal me? What are some of the answers that you give for those difficult questions that be addressed? Because I'm sure that's a stumbling block for a lot of people. Yeah, it is. And it shouldn't be. You know, what it is,

44:08it's like, am I, I'm either going to rely on God or I'm going to rely on medical science? That's crazy talk. And the scriptures, a couple of scriptures that we turn to, and I'm sure we mentioned them in that, uh, appendix, in appendix is, uh, the horse has made ready for the day of battle, but the victory belongs to the Lord. You don't just sit there and say, yeah, you know what, I'm not going to grab my sword and my shield and get the horse ready. I'm just going to let the Lord do it. That's crazy. Uh, another one is, unless the watchman watches over the city, uh, the watchman, unless the Lord watches over the city, the watchman labors in vain. Uh, you still have to have watchman you still have to do the precautions. So there's no problem in having medical science and prayer worked together. And thankfully, the Lord has said, Cedar Sinai here in Southern California, the Lord has brought some very good doctors in to help me. And, uh, I mean, I've gotten really good

45:09medical care. And I don't, it's no, like I say, the horse has made ready for the day of battle, but the victory belongs to the Lord. So there's no conflict between, uh, medical science helping you and, uh, those, and praying and saying, Lord, please help me. There's no conflict there. What are some of the other, the other difficult questions that you address in that section of your book? Because that's, it's, when I got to that section, it was like, wow, these are really insightful. Well, one of them, we're talking about the appendix now. One of them is what to do if somebody cries. A lot of people do not know what to do if somebody cries. They, in fact, their, their reaction often is to try to shut it down. They want to just, how, how quickly can I shut down the fact that they're crying? Uh, it, it makes me uncomfortable. And, and so we use these spiritual bromides. God's got this. It's going to, I wouldn't tell somebody that's just suffered a major loss. Uh, you know, I mean, explain to him the, the, or her, the larger plan of God, the scripture says

46:13to weep with those who weep and, and, and we shouldn't be trying to shut it down, uh, saying, hey, it's all going to be fine. God's, you know, that, see, those are all attempts to say, your tears are illegitimate. Uh, you need to just trust God. Uh, that's another one. Just trust God. It's, it's going to be fine. Uh, that, that's saying, your tears are illegitimate. The scripture says, again, weep with those who weep and we need to just let people cry and be there with them and, and sooner or later, after they've gotten over the, uh, immediate shock of what they've experienced, you know, the loss of a child or spouse or they've gotten terrible news about their elder, whatever, there's going to come a time where they say, I now I'd like to understand what God's doing and why he's doing this. That's when you start explaining, uh, God's larger plan of what he's doing with suffering. Do you have anything to add to that? Um, I, I think that that is so important. The, the importance

47:17of just weeping and being there with somebody and just not trying to answer all the big questions or not the questions that they aren't even asking yet. Just, just being there with people. And I, I'll add to on the, uh, the, uh, other issue of medical care, I've heard so many women say, as it okay for me to get help, I've got breast cancer. Is it okay for me to go to a doctor? Um, people really, really need to know, yes, go to a doctor, God's the one that gave the information to medical science, uh, to know how to treat cancer. Uh, pray, absolutely pray, but yes, seek the medical care you need. And another thing too, I, I'll, I'll add in is that people need to take into consideration quality of life and not just quantity of life. Um, sometimes when somebody gets a diagnosis and they're told you have say three months to live,

48:24but we can do this treatment and it'll give you a year to live, for instance, but it's going to be a year that's very, very difficult. Uh, it, it's going to mean really, um, bad nausea, it's going to, your, your mind's going to be gone. Uh, you're going to lose the ability to walk. Uh, you've got to ask the questions to say, Hey, is this going to be worth it? Because quality of life is, uh, I think more important than length. Um, and people need to take that into consideration when they've got something, uh, some kind of diagnosis that's life-threatening. For sure, the difference about quantity of life, because even if we live to be a hundred, it's just a nanosecond in God's time. That's right. Yeah. It really is, you know, not, not, you know, it's amazing how we, and I think it's a cultural thing. I think it's, um, a cultural thing for sure in America, probably in other

49:25Western countries that they do everything to keep people alive for as long as they possibly can. And I've, uh, of a group of ones who said, No, please, let me go. Yeah, that's right. That's right. Yeah. And tell them, let me go home. That's right. My, my dad died, uh, last week, and he had a do not recessive take notice on his refrigerator. And, uh, the paramedics didn't see it right away, so they started working on him. Then they see it, take him to the hospital, and it's not handed over to the doctor right away, so they revive him. And then they see the DNR, so they stopped doing work on him, uh, and his heart slowed down and stopped. Yeah. But he didn't want to go on. He was, he knew his mind had, uh, he not dementia. He's, he was in a good deal of pain. And, uh, he did not want to be resuscitated, but sometimes people are so afraid of death and don't have a good view of what

50:28eternity is like that they want to stretch out life as long as possible, no matter the cost, no matter the pain. Yeah, no matter the, you know, the, as you said so succinctly, the difference between quality of life and quantity of life and quality of life is really where it's at. Well, we've got about five minutes left in our show today. Um, Clay, I want to circle back to where we, where we left off at the right before the break that you were going through the seventh stages of your book and you, of how people could grow and use suffering. You talked about three, quickly recap that and then quickly go through the next five or the next. God, God loves us. Everyone is going to go through this. You're not alone. Uh, God will work everything out for our good. I did also kind of work in the many of honored God, the fourth one, many of honored gods who's more harder suffering than we've got through. We're not being tortured to death. Uh, and, and I think that's just this, and people are not out trying, you know,

51:32somebody in Afghanistan, uh, converts from Islam to Christianity. Uh, they're going to gang rape its daughter and force it, you know, and then try and set he in his wife on fire. We're not going through that. But, and there are these people, people of honored gods from more severe suffering than we have. That's encouraging to us. Then the fifth truth is we don't know what tomorrow will bring. It's so easy for us to worry about what is going to happen tomorrow. This, what have this happens? What have that happens is Mark Twain put it, I've had many troubles in my life. Most of which never happened. And, uh, that is so true. Is we can worry about this might happen in a mirror. That might have, don't do it. Now, this causes us, we need to learn, as it says, as Paul wrote in Corinthians, to take every thought captive. The Lord wants to teach us to be in control of our thoughts. And, uh, that's where suffering comes in. As you begin to go, you know what? I can't,

52:34I've, I've got to force myself not to think about these things. I need to force myself to think about the kingdom and about, and, and by the way, and that leads to truth six, which is focus on Jesus and the race that is set before us. In other words, you can't just not focus on suffering. Excuse me. You need to focus on the glory that awaits us in heaven. And we need to focus on Jesus. And the fact that we're going to be with Jesus and Genie and I'll call, I'll say to Genie, I'll say, hi, racer. See, that's how we personalize that one. And Genie will go, we respond immediately, hi, racer. And, uh, and sometimes I'll say hi, adventure girl. And, uh, she'll say hi, adventure boy. And see, again, see, we're personalizing these things because it's not good enough just to have them as sort of facts, uh, biblical facts. Uh, and so we're looking to Jesus and we have a race to run. Uh, and, uh, that's what it says in Hebrews 12, it says, looking to Jesus, who for the,

53:43joy that was said before him endure the cross, despising the shame and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God is we need to be like Jesus and just sit there and go, I've got this job to do in the kingdom. And the last one is perhaps, uh, the most important. And that is, uh, the seventh truth is we're going to be together forever. And Genie and I say that remind each other of that all the time. And I'll say to Genie, I'll say we're going to be together forever. And Genie will say, yes, we're going to be together forever. And ever, we're going to be together forever. Uh, and see, we may not be married, but we're going to know each other as G.K. Chester did put it, we're not going to be stupider in heaven than we are here. Uh, we're not, we're not going to, we're going to know each other. We're going to remember that we were married. Uh, and we're going to remember the

54:44things that we went through and that we learned together. Those thoughts are going to come with us. And, um, and so, uh, we're going to be together to get with each other and, and, and all of the other saints too. I mean, uh, all of our Christian family members and stuff, we're going to be with them together and, and friends. We're going to be with them forever and ever and ever and ever. And by the way, if he turned these true, and I'm just saying that, of course, I believe it is true, because Jesus really was raised from the dead. I'm just saying it is a form of argument, but if eternity is true, it will dwarf our suffering here to insignificance. And that's the big thing, you know, I mean, uh, as Paul says, this slight momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal way to glory beyond all comparison. Uh, and so it, you know, I mean, you can't compare finite suffering with eternity. They just don't compare. So when Paul says beyond all comparison, he's not being metaphorical. He's being literal. We're going to live forever and it will dwarf

55:49our suffering to insignificance. Well, amen to that. Well, we have one minute left. Tell us where the best place is to get your book. How does God use suffering for our good? And how can people follow your work if you're on social media? Wherever books are sold. Yeah, Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Christianbook.com, wherever books are sold. Uh, my website is geniejones.net, J-E-A-N-E, J-O-N-E-S. .net, places clayjones.net, C-L-A-Y, J-O-N-E-S.net. What could be simpler than clayjones.net, anyway? Really good. So that's how you get us. Well, I've been delightful to have the both of you here talking about suffering and what we when we're suffering to not look at is so terrible because we are, you know, it's earth school and God's using it for our good. So I thank you being with us today and I thank all of the rest of our audience for hanging in there with us and coming back here every single day and listening to these great conversations that we're having with people. So with

56:52that, I'll close out with my one of my favorite verses from the Bible. I close all my podcasts with whether they are live or pre-recorded, which is Romans 12-12. Rejoice in the hope, be patient in trouble and be persistent in prayer. Remember to lean into God, trust him for everything. We'll see you here tomorrow at 3 p.m. Eastern on americatloud.news at iHeartRadio or the next time on the 10th Petty Files. Have a great rest of your day. Goodbye and God bless.