Ep. 62: Can Suffering Be a Curse and a Blessing? w/ Nate Pickowicz

Andrew Marcus:

Hey, this is Andrew Marcus. Welcome to THE INDOUBT SHOW. We got a fantastic show for us today. We have Nate Pickowicz, who’s going to be joining us for an interview. Daniel Markin is going to be hosting the interview. You may remember him. He’s been a part of the INDOUBT Ministry for quite a few years, and he’s going to be talking with Nate about his new book that just came out, the Kindness of God. How do we define kindness? And why do us as believers need to embody this virtue? So important for us in a world that just seems a little bit chaotic. I can put it that way. And so it’s going to be a wonderful interview. We hope you are blessed by it and encouraged by God’s kindness today.

Daniel Markin:

Hey, welcome to INDOUBT. This is Daniel Markin. I’m filling in today for Andrew Marcus. He is out of commission, in a little bit of pain today. So last minute, just jumping in here. Happy to host and I’m joined today by Nate Pickowicz, and instead of me introducing him and giving him a bio, I figure, hey Nate, why don’t you tell the audience a little bit about who you are, what you do, where you’re from, and maybe where you are now?

Nate Pickowicz:

Sure. Yeah. So again, Nate Pickowicz. I’m a pastor of Harvest Bible Church in Gilmanton Ironworks, New Hampshire. Now, Gilman Ironworks is a pretty weird name for a town, I know, but that’s in the rural part of New Hampshire and kind of the southern central part of the state. And we planted a church that we’re in right now, 11 years ago. I was born and raised in this town, so this is my hometown. So a lot of people that are at my church I grew up with and I’ve known them for a long time. So that’s a pretty unique experience.

Married to my wife, Jess, we have three kids. And by God’s grace, he’s allowed me to write a couple of books and have a presence online and have a ministry to try to give people resources that will be helpful for their spiritual walks. So I feel very fortunate for that. I feel like the Lord has really demonstrated a lot of kindness to me, so it’s only appropriate that we’re talking about that topic today with the most recent thing. But yeah, just happy to be here. Happy to talk about how God has been good to me and good to us as a people.

Daniel Markin:

Yeah, absolutely. That’s got to be pretty interesting, growing up in a town where they would’ve known… I mean, I’m imagining some of your flock, remember you running around as a kid and that’s got to be interesting.

Nate Pickowicz:

Yeah, some of them do. It’s interesting because I actually went away, for when I was in high school and college, I actually went out of town, went somewhere else. Then I went to Pennsylvania for college. You guys are up in Canada there, so maybe not all of your people know where the geography is, but Pennsylvania is probably about eight hours south. So when I was in my ruckus years, I was not a believer in my earlier years, but all my ruckus, all my problems, I was doing somewhere else. So that was a kindness of mercy of God that when I came back, I was a Christian and then we planted the church. So it’s a unique thing where people know me, but they don’t. I never egged anybody’s house when I was a teenager so I think they’ve got a decent view of me. I would hope so.

But yeah, it’s just been very cool. Some people who are members of my church now, we were a churchgoing family, so some of them were members of the church I grew up in as well. So they did see me when I was running around the pews when I was a kid. So yeah, it’s a very interesting dynamic and I just feel very fortunate to be in the ministry that I’m in, so very happy with that.

Daniel Markin:

Yeah, it’s really unique that you get to have a very small, personable ministry in a small town. It’s easy to compare to what other cities and churches, it’s like, “Wow.” One, it’d be interesting, and maybe this is a time for another podcast, but I’d love to know what you think success looks like in a church in a small town, because oftentimes, we just gauge success by numbers. But more to that point, it’s been unique that with an online ministry presence, you’re able to reach people that you never would’ve been able to reach. And I think it’s important to realize that that’s also very unique and impactful ministry.

Nate Pickowicz:

Yeah. So my first book I ever wrote was actually called Reviving New England, and for those in your audience who maybe know something about New England being the sixth state in the upper northeast part of the country of America or of the United States, I should say, because America is everything up here. So I’m in New Hampshire, right smack dab in the middle. But we were at one point, sort of the spiritual ground zero. I mean, the Great awakening started here, the founding of Harvard College, back when it was a Christian institution, Yale being a training center for pastors, Brown being a training center for pastors, Dartmouth. So we were really, the second great awakening came out of New England. The Modern Missions movement was birthed out of New England. So we were a spiritual hot zone for over a hundred and something years, and then liberalism swept through and just destroyed, decimated all of our churches, decimated our gospel witness. And so for the last 200 years, we’ve been hobbling along trying to rebuild and get Christ to be well known up here.

And so some people call New England the graveyard of pastors, where you go and you go and die. But being born and raised here, I knew that, I knew that it was hard to find gospel churches and Bible churches, so really wanted to just plant that. So that’s why we planted the church that we did. But it is a unique opportunity. And to your point about success, I agree that, you’re not going to have a megachurch in Saskatchewan. You’re not going to have a megachurch in New Hampshire. For us, a large church is 500 people. That’s big for New England. And even for bigger cities that have these large, seeker churches or attractional churches, you’re not talking about 10,000, 20,000. You might be talking about maybe 2000.

But even that is suspect, I think, on some level. So it’s not about the numbers at all, and you’re not going to see big numbers, but what is success in ministry? Well, I think it’s faithfulness to the gospel. It’s faithfulness to the word of God. Are you faithful? Whether you have 20 people or 20,000 people, are you faithful, certainly as a pastor, but as a believer, are we faithful to preach Christ? And so that’s been the big focus on our ministry. We’re not here because we want to set the world on fire numerically, but we want to set our town on fire for Christ. And I think if we can do that and encourage other towns around us, we want genuine, spiritual, revival. Christ-centered, bible focused, spirit empowered revival, that it’s true and not emotional and not mechanics driven.

But again, you’re getting me off tangent because like I said, I’ve written about this and it’s exciting for me because I care about ministering in a dead region, that’s important to me. And I just want to do everything I can to be part of the solution and just do my part on Nehemiah’s wall, so to speak. So yeah, you’re hitting on a hot topic for me, for sure.

Daniel Markin:

That’s awesome. Well, why don’t we talk a little bit about some of the other things you’ve written? In particular, we want to talk about your new book and you talk about kindness. So what’s the title of this book, but then also, what inspired this book? Tell us a little bit about how you thought, “I should write on kindness.”

Nate Pickowicz:

Yeah, it’s interesting because when I was getting into my prayer life, I was praying, often I would find myself leaning into thanking God for being kind. And I don’t know why I started praying that way, but it just started to happen, like, “Lord, thank you for being kind to me and this, this, this, this area. And my mind was just trained on the ways that God had demonstrated kindness to me as a believer. And then I started thinking about, so just to give you an idea, when I’m considering a book project, this is my seventh book, but when I consider writing a book, I try to first find if it’s been written already, and if the topic that I want to study has already been written about, well, I just get rid of the project, and I go buy the book. But if I can’t find what I’m looking for, then usually, the wheels turn in my head and then I think about, maybe I should consider writing something ’cause I want to be helpful.

So when I wasn’t finding exactly what I was looking for, I said, “Well, maybe I should write about this topic. Maybe this would be something that’d be helpful for people, to consider seeing God’s kindness in their own life.” And then as I was developing the book, I started to realize, this is a bigger question than I first considered. That God’s goodness and his kindness has sort of come up on the dock where people are starting to question. Certainly people in the world, nobody in the world thinks that God is good or kind because they don’t understand who He is. But even the church, even believers, I think, struggle sometimes to apprehend how is God good and how is He kind? And we know He is because the Bible tells us he is, but when we go to experience that and when we go to pray and thank him and talk to him about it, I think sometimes we don’t always have the right language for it or we don’t see it through spiritual eyes.

So I just tried to write something that was going to be helpful. If you were to read the book, you’d see there’s different chapters that cover different topic areas, salvation, repentance, sanctification, marriage and family, things like that. How does God demonstrate kindness in those specific areas? And so that was really the origin of it, just to try to be as helpful to people as possible and give them a way to think about God’s kindness in their own lives.

Daniel Markin:

Absolutely. So then in your writing and your preparation, tell us what you found. I guess it would be, how do you define kindness? And then you can search the scriptures for that. So maybe let’s start with that. How would you define maybe secular kindness, but then let’s expand that to actually, within God’s kingdom, what is kindness?

Nate Pickowicz:

Yeah. So I began with looking at the attributes of God. I began with just what does the Bible have to say about him? Because I mean, just for me, for the ministry I have, I don’t really care too much about what the world thinks about God. I don’t need to deal in those terms. I know evangelistically, it’s good to be conversant, but just for my purposes, I mean, I’m writing for the church. So my goal was, all right, what does the Bible have to say about God and his attributes? And so when I was studying it, it kind of became clear that God’s kindness is actually rooted in his goodness. So God’s goodness is the origin of all of that. And so what is God’s goodness? Well, God’s goodness is everything that is morally upright, what is pure, what is righteous in God, that God Himself is intrinsically good.

Everything about Him is good. He is the standard for what is good. And so it’s out of that goodness, out of the character of his goodness that he actually displays his kindness to us. So it’s the goodness of God on display. That’s his kindness. So I very simply, I mean, dealing with an English Bible, I just went and found times that I saw the word kindness. I obviously did some word studies and found it in the Hebrew, found it in the Greek, but really, just I tried to blend that together because I didn’t want to get hung up on semantics of, “Well, that’s technically this and technically that,” but really just try to work in more broader categories. Anytime that God is displaying goodness to somebody, I want to look at that. And there was even times in the book where we see God displaying goodness, and there wasn’t technically kindness in the actual verse, but you see it on display.

I think about David with Mephibosheth demonstrating goodness to him, as an example. So I just tried to look at, okay, how does God interact with people in the Bible and how does he interact with us as his people, as the church, and what can we learn about from that? And then I just tried to divide it up into categories. How is God demonstrating all these things to every aspect of life, even into our relationships and even beyond how we treat each other. And even into the world, even how do we deal with the world and just the absence of kindness in the world. So just tried to be as full-bodied as possible in this study and just to be, I keep on using this word, but I think it’s what I’m trying to do, is just be helpful to the church and helping them consider these things.

When we talk about kindness to other people, I think, when you get into the term culturally, I think people get confused about kindness versus niceness, that we want to be nice to people. Well, again, that’s a sliding scale because what culture says is kind or nice or good, that’s depending on their standard of what is goodness and what is righteousness. So let me give you an example. If you have a cultural conversation going on and you say, okay, it’s good for a man and a man. So if you say that the standard is a man and a man getting married, that that’s a good thing. Well, the Bible says that that’s actually not a good thing, that it’s a man and a woman, that’s marriage. Now you say things like that and people will immediately say, “Well, you’re being hurtful. You’re not being nice. You’re being a bigot,” or whatever they’re going to say to you.

But the truth is, is that to hold on to something that culturally, is valuable or culturally, is good, I can’t in good conscience call that a good thing. Now, I don’t have to be mean and nasty, and I don’t have to be vitriolic, and I don’t have to attack people. But that’s just saying that I agree. That’s just nicety. But true kindness is the goodness of God that’s put on display. Now, even for believers, even for people, whenever we have something that’s morally good and we demonstrate that to somebody else, whether it’s selflessness, giving of yourself to somebody else, whether it’s demonstrating compassion, like you’re talking about care, even I would say, being truthful in a loving way, speaking the truth in love, as the scripture says, that’s a kindness. A doctor that tells you that you are sick with cancer, well, that’s not very nice, but when he tells you the truth and then offers you treatment, that’s actually kind, isn’t it?

Daniel Markin:

Yeah.

Nate Pickowicz:

So I think we have to go into how do we define goodness and moral purity and righteousness? The standard has to be set somewhere. And in the Bible we understand that that standard is set by God. So as soon as we are taking God’s goodness and his standard of righteousness, and then we give that to other people, that’s when we’re demonstrating true kindness to them. And that’s how we know that we’re doing the will of God by being kind to other people in that, of course.

Daniel Markin:

But what would be almost an anti kindness in today’s… What sort of issues or examples can you see of common things where people are not kind, not gracious? What are things that you see keep popping up?

Nate Pickowicz:

So I’ll give you an example. I mean, we’re going to cover some heavy stuff here, but I think it’s important because I think the reason why this topic is so timely is because we’re living in a world that’s upside down right now. And I know that the Canadian legislation’s doing it, it’s actually happening in New Hampshire right now. Tomorrow it’s being voted on, this whole idea of state assisted suicide or what they call, ‘Dying with dignity.” They think that by telling a person that it’s okay to end your life if you don’t want to live, they think that that’s being kind, that that’s being good. It’s a moral purity, it’s a good thing, that there’s something nice and something wholesome about letting a person take their own life. But as believers, and as what the Bible teaches, that there’s actually the imago dei that all of us are actually made in the image of God.

And because we’re made in the image of God, even if we’re sick, even if we have some kind of deformity or infirmity, whatever the situation, preborn, if they’re a baby in the womb, every single person has inherent dignity because they’re made in the image of God. And so for believers, we say, no, that’s actually not good. It’s not kind to tell a person they can end their life because they’re facing adversity. It’s actually kind to say, “No, you have value. You have worth given to you by God. And even though you’re in difficulty right now, and I’m going to pray for you and I’m going to love you, and I’m going to try to provide for you and minister to you, but stay alive and watch God work in your life,” that’s kind. But when someone tries to pass off immorality and a demonic philosophy that says, “Take your own life,” that’s not kindness.

And again, the world’s turned upside down right now. And I’ll tell you, a younger generation is struggling because the societal moorings, what this culture and what the government and what the schools and the state, everybody, what they tell them is right and good, according to scripture is not necessarily right and good. So we have an obligation as believers, I think, to tell the truth, to wrap it in love and to demonstrate true kindness to people. And that means integrity, that means godliness, and that means real compassion. Absolutely.

Daniel Markin:

The medical assisted assistance in death, I mean, that’s a huge hot topic here in Canada. If it hasn’t affected everyone yet, it will. And that’s the thing is-

Nate Pickowicz:

That’s right.

Daniel Markin:

… It’s getting to the point now where everyone knows someone who died like that, and it’s painful. I’ve experienced that in my own family. And the thing they never tell you is, that the people that are left behind have to deal with that in different ways. And for me, I wasn’t able to mourn my family member well on their passing because they chose medical assistance and death. And truthfully, what I’m left with is, it’s not a sadness that they’re passing, but just an anger by how it all went down. And it’s sad that’s my last memory. And do they tell people that before? And so as you were describing that, I think I found the anti word I was looking for, which, kindness and most fulfilled and seen through the law of God and the love of God, and how He sets up the world to exist and seen in His face and His love. And I think the anti to that is cruelty.

And I think in that instance with the assisted suicide, it’s cruelty, but then they slap some lipstick on it and make it look nice. And so it’s in that sense that niceness is covering up for cruelty, that deep down, everyone, I think… I can’t speak for everyone, but I imagine a lot of people, there’s a gut impulse, I would say, written on our hearts by God, which is, “Hey, this is wrong.” But then, they’re like, “What do I do with this?” And then someone says, “Well, actually, it’s the nice thing to do.” And it’s almost like we’re deceiving ourselves. And so that, yeah, it is a heavy way to think of that.

Nate Pickowicz:

It’s heavy, but that’s what we’re up against right now, Dan.

Daniel Markin:

Totally.

Nate Pickowicz:

We’re up against, and I think that’s why the topic is so important, because the world, they’re shoving things down our throat to say, “Oh, this is good, this is kind, this is right,” but we know, especially for Christians who have been born again, have a new heart and understand the mind of Christ, we know that there’s a right and a wrong. And I’ll tell you, even in the midst of that, how do I make sense? “God, when you allow or when you decree something to happen in my life that’s not good or feels to me like it’s not good? When someone dies, when someone gets sick, when I lose my job, when my twins are in the NICU, battling for their life, how do I make sense of that, God? How do I understand your purposes and how do I understand your character?”

So I think we’re constantly fighting error and fighting lies with truth. And I think that’s what I want to do, is just to reinforce truth because I think people are starving for it. They want to know. They want to know what is God’s answer? What does God have to say about these things? And I think, as believers, if we can give answers and give truth and give the clarity of scripture, I think it’s an incredible weapon.

And I think, even going back to the whole dying with dignity thing, when you tell a person who’s struggling with depression or struggling with an illness, “Listen, you’re made in the image of God and you are meant to worship him. And so turn from your sins, put your trust in Jesus Christ, He will give you a new life in him spiritually, but he will also walk with you in this life now, and he will be your God and you’ll be belong to him.” You tell people that, I mean, that blows their world up in a good way. That is the most kind thing you can do, is to preach the gospel to them and love them through that.

So again, we’re hitting on heavy things, but I think this is where people are. I mean, these are heavy times, so face heavy times with heavy truth.

Daniel Markin:

And we face a lot of suffering in life. And so maybe this is where I want to go next is, how does a good God, how does a kind God allow or permit, sustain even cause suffering? How does a sovereign God also appear as kind? Could you maybe share your thoughts there?

Nate Pickowicz:

Yeah, the scriptures are chockablock full of instances like that. I mean, you look at the life of Job. I mean, Job, he’s the penultimate example of suffering, just behind the Lord Jesus Christ, really. But Job lost everything. He lost his health. He lost his kids. He lost his wealth. I mean, basically, lost his wife and went through intense suffering and wrestled with God, bad counsel from friends. I mean, just a terrible, terrible time. And yet, he knew that God was doing something. Joseph sold into a life of slavery, went through absolute torment, and at the end of his testimony is, “What you meant for evil, God meant for good.”

So there’s a framework we have to understand, and that is, that all of us are sinful, all of us are part of the curse of the fall here. So everything in this world, even when a baby gets sick, when something bad happens, sickness, death, poverty, pestilence, whatever, it’s all part of the curse of the fall. Romans 8 says, “The creation groans and suffers the pains of childbirth together until now.” So we’re wrapped up in this degrading cycle of fallenness because of the original sin of Adam and Eve.

So that’s where we are. So when God interacts with us, he meets us where we are in the midst of a fallen world and interacts with us and does things. And then what does Romans 8, 28 says? It says that, “God causes all things, even the bad, to work together for good to those who love God and who are called according to his purpose.” So God, to answer your question, will use suffering and pain and difficulty. He will use those as tools in the life of the believer, and even in the unbeliever who’s coming to Him, He’ll use those tools to refine us, to purify us, and to draw us closer to Him.

I’ve talked to countless believers, more than I can even number who have gone through a severe adversity and come out the other side stronger in their faith and growing closer to God, and actually on the other side of the trial, praising him for the trial. Well, why is it ’cause the trial is a good thing? Well, no, the trials are awful. They’re terrible things. But what do they produce? They’re the tools in the hands of a master, a master refiner.

So God has purposes for our suffering. He has purposes for our trial. We just have to get our perspective right on what is this life really all about? Is it about my pleasure and my comfort? Or is it about me coming to Christ by faith and God purifying me and making me ready for heaven? So again, it’s about perspective. But God does amazing things through all kinds of difficulty, and I would even just, if I could talk to your listeners for a second, if you’re finding yourself in a trial, be encouraged that God is working through that. Just don’t become frustrated. Draw near to Him, the Bible says, and He’ll draw near to you, so be encouraged. Yeah.

Daniel Markin:

Well, and I would even add to that too. If you are frustrated, tell him that. Tell God you’re frustrated and just cast it at Him.

Nate Pickowicz:

That’s it.

Daniel Markin:

Throw that at Him. Don’t internalize that because that’s going to be even worse. It’s just going to, like a poison, you’re just going to feel sicker and sicker the more you internalize it. And God can handle you being frustrated with him and the situation.

Nate Pickowicz:

Well, 1 Peter, 5, 7, “Cast all your cares on Christ because He cares for you.” The Bible tells us to do exactly what you’re saying. So absolutely. I mean, He is strong enough to carry our burdens.

Daniel Markin:

Totally. And those are big or small.

Nate Pickowicz:

Yeah, I mean, the reformers used to call that the theology of the cross. We’re not meant to live in the theology of glory where everything’s going great and we’re these wonderful exalted people. There’s a theology of the cross, there’s a theology of suffering that we are conformed to the likeness of His death, and we die to ourselves, the Bible says, and Jesus instructs us to take up our cross and follow Him. So yeah, I mean, suffering is good for the believer. It’s good for us. Again, not that it’s the suffering itself, but what it produces. I think about James chapter 1 to count it all joy when we encounter various trials. He says, because knowing that the testing of your faith will produce endurance.

So if we want to be… You guys want to be bulletproof Christians out there, we want to have this dynamite faith. Well, how do you get that? You don’t get it by living a life of ease. You get it by suffering well for Christ and being… Not even just suffering, but being refined by the Lord, by becoming disciplined, by becoming obedient to Him. It’s hard. It’s a difficult thing, but in the end, Hebrews chapter 12 says, “It yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness.” So it’s not a bad thing for believers to go through that and have the right thinking about it when we go through it. And even, there’s a whole chapter in my book about that, about how God demonstrates his kindness to us, even in the midst of suffering. He can do that as well, yeah.

Daniel Markin:

Well, amen. Well, thank you, Nate, for your time.

Nate Pickowicz:

Thank you so much, brother. Have a good day.

Andrew Marcus:

Hey, thanks so much for joining us today. For more great content, check out THE INDOUBT SHOW on YouTube, Spotify, Apple Music, or wherever you stream your podcasts. We hope you enjoyed it today. Feel free to check out indoubt.ca. We have some great resources available to you. Have an awesome day.

Hey, well thank you for tuning in for this week’s episode. Listen, I want to tell you something very exciting. We have a free premium for the month of April. If you go to indoubt.ca, we have a booklet called Missions at Our Door, How We Can Be Reaching Our New Neighbors for the Gospel. Look, we don’t have to look far to know that we can be on mission everywhere we go, and so this is a great resource for you. You can go to indoubt.ca, there’s a promo code there. God bless you.

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