View original post here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7qUqgOZdUoQ&ab_channel=MikeWinger

Transcript:

QUESTION: I’m the only Christian in my whole biological family. How do I not despair at the fact that they’re all headed to hell as it stands? It’s leading me to doubt the goodness of God.

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Wow, Sean, thank you for the sincerity of your question and just so you know, I’m not responding weird to it at all. It’s not totally unlike my situation growing up. I was the only Christian, the only person I would consider a genuine Christian that was part of my close family. And that was discouraging, but it didn’t stay that way, thank God.

There’s two issues here. One is just you feeling sorrowful about the fate of your family and the other is you actually thinking it’s making me doubt God’s goodness. That’s a struggle I think a lot of Christians have felt when they think of someone they love and care about and they think, “But that person is, I don’t think that person’s saved.” I think a lot of the viewers, people watching this, you feel that too.

And I can say a few things that, you know, do I have like the magic bullet that’s going to fix this? I doubt it, but maybe I’ll say a few things that I think help me and genuinely do help me. One of them is just the advice of wait. You don’t yet understand the goodness of God in relation to his judgment of sin and his punishment of sinners. You don’t yet understand that, but you will. You just have to wait. There’s this amazing passage in Revelation 19 where they’re actually praising God for his judgment on the great Babylon, right? And he’s punishing them and punishing the wicked and the saints are worshiping God because his judgments are good. In fact, this is what Psalm 119 says, “Your judgments are just and true and they’re pure.” God’s judgments are actually good. Well, Revelation, here’s why it’s so encouraging to me: this passage comes at a time when the saints are standing and beholding the judgment of God, but they’re also beholding the God who is judge. And when they see not just their mental image of a wrathful God beating up on people, but they see the true, righteous, pure, perfect, holy God, and they see perfect justice being meted out against humans, but they see this in the right context of God’s holiness, they’re actually praising God.

What I’m saying is you don’t maybe get it now, but there’s a day when you will get it and all you have to do is wait. All you have to do is wait and you just say, “Lord, I don’t understand this, but I trust you. I trust your character and I will choose to trust in your goodness and not try to make…” and catch the silliness of this, Sean, “…not try to make judgment calls on God’s judgments.” This is silly. We are setting ourselves up as the judge of God when we try to make judgment calls on God’s judgments. So I encourage you, please don’t do that. This is where you just have to simply look at yourself and say, “If I disagree with God, I’ve got to be wrong somewhere. Like I don’t know where yet, I’ll find out later, but I’ve got to be way off on, way off base somewhere.” It’s like if I came up to someone who’s building a wall and they’re a master mason and I look at them and I go, “What are you doing, man? That looks so weird.” In my brain, I cannot understand any reason why you’d do that. It doesn’t seem safe or why, but there’s a little part of me, a little voice in my head that says, “Mike, you don’t know anything about this wall or building walls. You just glanced at it and you made a judgment. This is the master mason. You should just let him do his job.” God is the ultimate righteous, perfect, pure judge. Let him do his job.

You share with your family when you can, preach the gospel to them as much as you’re able to, you know, with wisdom and knowing like strategy and tactic and about how to try to keep those doors open wherever possible and be invitational, be, when necessary, confrontational, never reactionary, always loving, but full of courage, all those things. But ultimately, trust God and just wait. He’s going to judge perfectly and righteously. And there’s a time coming where, as shocking as this may sound to somebody, I think it’ll be comforting to others, when they will look at the fact that God has judged even people they loved. They will look at it and go, “Wow, that was so hard for me to understand, but now I get it. Now I see your holiness, Lord, your goodness, your love. I see the love you have for them as well, but I also see their choices and their sin, and I see that you’ve judged perfectly.” And I say, “Praise you, Lord, for your righteousness.” That time is coming. All you got to do is wait. All you got to do is wait.

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