Ep. 65: Do You Believe God IS and DOES Good? w/ Garrett Kell

Andrew Marcus:

Hey, this is Andrew. Welcome to THE INDOUBT SHOW. Listen, we got a wonderful program for us today. We have Garrett Kell, who is a pastor in Alexandria, Virginia, and we’re going to be talking about suffering, what it looks like to suffer well. We talk a little bit about George Mueller, who was an evangelist and started an orphanage and seeing God move in amazing ways, but had a lot of suffering, let’s be honest. But his faith and his answer to prayers and how he focused on God is just truly inspiring. And so we hope you tune in and enjoy today’s program. God bless.

All right, well we have Garrett Kell all the way in Alexandria, Virginia. You were saying you can look out your window, you can see…

Garrett Kell:

The whole thing. I can see Washington D.C. right over there, can see the Washington Monument, can see the Capitol building, Potomac River is right here, so yeah, we’re right-

Andrew Marcus:

So cool.

Garrett Kell:

Right across from a lot of interesting stuff, so, yep.

Andrew Marcus:

That’s amazing, man.

Garrett Kell:

Yeah, I’ve been pastoring here at Del Ray Baptist Church for about 13, well, September will be 13 years and never thought I’d be in this area, but the Lord has a sense of humor and here we are.

Andrew Marcus:

That’s amazing, man. And what’s family life for you?

Garrett Kell:

Well, not much going on. I have one wife and six kids.

Andrew Marcus:

Six kids?

Garrett Kell:

And mama’s pregnant with number seven, which-

Andrew Marcus:

No way!

Garrett Kell:

It was not on my bingo card for this year, to be honest with you, but the Lord knew. And so yes, it’s full. It’s full at our crib. But yeah, thankful and the Lord’s blessing us and we’re grateful.

Andrew Marcus:

Come on, man. God is so good. That’s amazing. I read through an article that you released, but I was so encouraged by it. God is good and does good even in our pain. And I selfishly wanted to connect with you some people who have been watching the show I’ve mentioned nerve pain and pinched nerves and all this kind of chronic pain with my back and neck. And I’ve been struggling a lot in this last season. I’ve never shared this, but not a day goes by where I don’t weep. And it’s just been very, very hard. And so when I read your article, read the title and read the whole thing, it just really encouraged me deeply to trust and to know that God is good and does good even in the midst of physical pain, emotional pain, all kinds of things. And so I’m so grateful for your ministry, even outside your church ministry, just your writings.

And so, I want to walk through and hopefully be an encouragement because maybe there are people who are watching who has a similar answer to we had before we started, “How’s it going?” “Well, I’m okay I guess in the world, but I’m doing really well in the Lord.” You even mentioned that for yourself these days. Is your life pretty crazy these days?

Garrett Kell:

It is. First of all, thank you for sharing a little bit about that. I know sometimes it’s hard to just be open and honest about pain, so thank you for sharing that. And I’m sorry, brother, it’s hard when your body doesn’t work like it’s supposed to or like you’re used to, it makes things, raises a lot of questions and yeah, I appreciate you letting us in on that a little bit.

Yeah, my world has been, the past five months or so have been just dramatically different than what’s normal. On December 21st of last year, my daughter, 15-year-old daughter had a seizure that lasted 20 hours, which is a long time for a seizure. And she was taken to the hospital. She had to be intubated, put on a ventilator. She was in a coma for 17 days.

Andrew Marcus:

Oh my goodness.

Garrett Kell:

There was a little bit in there where she didn’t have any brain activity and we were pretty sure we might lose her or if we were to get her back that she would be distinctly different. And there’s so many questions that come with that.

Ended up being in the hospital for 51 days before we were finally got to go home. In God’s kindness, he gave her back to us. One of the first things we did that very first night was my wife and I, we gave her back to the Lord and just, she’s always been His before He gave her to us. So we tried to give her back to Him at the very beginning to try and open hands. Corrie ten Boom one time was talking with Chuck Swindoll, who’s a pastor down in Texas, said she took Chuck’s hands and opened them and turned them upwards like this and said, “Learn to hold everything like this. That way when the Father takes it, it doesn’t hurt so bad”.

Andrew Marcus:

Oh, man.

Garrett Kell:

Because if we’re clinging onto things, even things that are precious, like our children or our lives or our health or whatever else it might be, if we’re clinging onto them, it’s hard as the Father is working in the midst of that sometimes to know how to do anything. So we try to give her back to Him early on and had to do that a number of times along the way. But yeah, after 51 days and God’s kindness, she came home.

Physically, she’s much, much better. Brain injuries take a while to recover it from, so there’s still, yeah, some just adjusting to everyday life and trying to figure out what schooling looks like and all those kinds of things. And I mean, she had never had any history of anything. So that was hard. And then in the midst of that, my mother was diagnosed with stage four pancreatic cancer, which is not, I mean you do chemo for it, but it’s a terminal diagnosis. And then my dad’s dementia got worse. So we’ve moved them across the street. Actually, before coming here I was at doctor’s appointments all morning with them. So a number of those things.

I have a first cousin who’s dying with leukemia right now. And in God’s providence, this is what’s going on in this season of life. So yeah, that’s hard. It takes toll. It’s not me who’s suffering. It’s a different kind of, I’m not suffering the physical pain that a lot of the people around me are, but it has its own pressures and beliefs and sorrows. I just was telling my wife, texted her before we got on here, I was like, “I don’t know how to both grieve for what’s going on with my parents and know how to navigate all the practical tactical stuff that needs to happen”.

And it makes sense that it’s hard. I mean suffering, we weren’t built for a world where suffering was the reality. We were built for Eden, the Garden of Delight. We were made to live in a world where we didn’t know evil or its effects. That’s why God says, “You don’t want to know what evil is, Adam. You don’t want to know. The knowledge of good and evil, you don’t want to know it. You don’t want to know what a cancer word’s like. You don’t want to know what a terrorist is. You don’t want to know what arthritis is. You don’t want to know what chronic fatigue is. You don’t want to know what a funeral is. You don’t want to know, Adam.” And Satan’s like, “Yeah, you do”.

And so there’s a lot there and I think that’s why it’s so hard for us. But the Lord is good and He meets us in the midst of our misery and gives help. And that’s why we’re talking, right? We have a reason to not grieve as the world does, and it’s because we have a good God who shows us His love through Christ in the midst of the deepest sorrows.

Andrew Marcus:

Praise God, man. Well, I do appreciate you sharing with us as well. That’s just lots of heavy stuff and I’ll make sure that we pray for you and pray for your family, bro, it’s not easy and you’re right. God is good and He does good and He meets us in our misery, in our hardship, and our suffering in our pain and our discomfort and glory to God that He sustains and helps.

You walk through the article and you walk through George Mueller’s life. Some people who are listening might not know who that is. If you want to just give us a quick summary of who he was.

Garrett Kell:

Sure, yeah, I’ll do my best. So he was a pastor. He was an evangelist. He lived in the 1800s. He was born around 1805. Ended up living most of the century, died when he was 92, I think it was in 1898. And he was a pastor. He was an evangelist. But the main thing that people remember him for was that he was the director of an orphanage in Bristol, England. And it’s really interesting when you read his biography, the reason that he started an orphanage wasn’t that he himself personally had just an overwhelming burden for orphans. He did. But when he read through the scriptures, he saw God cares a lot about orphans. And if I know what pulls on God’s heart, and it’s interesting that the man, what he cared most about orphans and evangelism, God cares about those who are hurting and those who are lost.

So his whole life, he oriented around how can I put myself in a position where I need God most? So he thought, “I’m going to be an evangelist and I’m going to start an orphanage because those things pull on the heartstrings of God and I’m going to set myself up in such a way that unless God shows up, I’m doomed. And I know God’s going to show up because I know His character and His character is that He’s good.” And so he built his whole life upon that. That’s why he did the orphanage, which is pretty baller. You know what I’m saying?

Andrew Marcus:

That’s actually quite genius. That’s a genius plan.

Garrett Kell:

I know. Well, and throughout the Psalms, the boast of God’s people is that the Lord will not put His people to shame. So I mean, just one little anecdote from his life. In the orphanage, often they would get low on resources. So this one particular morning they got up and there was no bread. So he gathered all the orphans together and he said, “We need to pray that God would give us bread. He tells us in His word to pray for daily bread, so let’s do it.” So they all huddled up and prayed and as soon as they said amen, there was a knock at the door of the orphanage and he goes to the door and a bread truck had broken down out front and they’re like, “We have all this bread. We’re not going to be able to do anything with it.” And there was some milk guy there as well, and they just had a feast.

And I have actually, I pulled it over. I knew we were going to talk about that. This is his book, I don’t know if you can see how thick that joint is. Most of this is prayer requests, some 50,000 prayer requests in his autobiography of just things he wrote down that God answered. And his whole life was a life of prayer, trusting God for people who needed to come to know the Lord and for the orphans who needed cared for. And he said, “Pure and undefiled religion is to care for orphans and widows in their distress. So Lord, show yourself.” And he said he did it for their good certainly, but God’s glory and his own souls benefit that he knew that if he kept seeing God show up, that he would trust Him. And he did.

Andrew Marcus:

Such a cool story, man. I love it. I know there’s so many stories with him of God’s provision. And again, like you said, it’s just such a baller idea, “Okay, I’m going to just take the things that God loves the most. That’s just what I’m going to do for my life. It’s like how could I…” That’s just amazing. I love it so much. So in the midst of all the ministry he’s doing, he endured a lot of hardship and a lot of sorrow and a lot of pain. What was that part of his life?

Garrett Kell:

Yeah, I think it is pretty typical of the Lord for those that He’s blessing greatly to also entrust them with 2 Corinthians 12:9 the sorts of trials that help them to remember their need for Him, which is not cruel. It sounds cruel to some, but it’s a very kind thing of the Lord to do because we’re least useful and least safe with our own selves when we trust ourselves the most. So I think the more we know that we need the Lord, the better. But there was physical pain. There was a lot of different kinds of hardships along the way. I think the one that I wrote about in that article was the death of… He had two wives, but not at the same time, but his first wife. And yeah, that’s hard. I mean, I haven’t lost a spouse. I have dear friends who have, and there’s something about that.

I mean even now as I think about my dad trying to care for mom as she’s deteriorating with her cancer to watch how much he loves her, they’ve been married for 53 years. And to watch that, I walked in the other day and he had tucked her in and was just kneeling over the bed trying to pray for her, and he’s got arthritis and his back hurts. So he was in pain doing it, but I’m like, to me, my dad’s no perfect man. But it was a picture of Christ in a way that was really encouraging that I just drink that up and want to try and emulate in that in some way. And I think Mueller had a similar sort of posture in his life. He cared well for his wife, but losing her was very hard. And so that’d be one example of the hardship that he went through with her.

Andrew Marcus:

And you wrote a little bit about his sermon that he preached quite soon after. Unpack some of the big things that he spoke on. It was just so powerful.

Garrett Kell:

So I’m just looking at it here. His text, he had a couple texts. During the last minutes of her life, he read to her Psalm 84:11. He read this to her, “The Lord God is a sun and a shield, the Lord will give grace and glory. No good thing will He withhold from those whose walk is upright.” It’s interesting, it’s actually on my wedding band. Carrie and I love this verse and we’ve kind of built our lives on that, that we can trust Him.

And he says of that last phrase, this was a quote from him, he said, “No good thing will He withhold from them that walk uprightly. I am in myself a poor, worthless sinner, but I have been saved by the blood of Christ and I do not live in sin. I walk uprightly before God. Therefore, if it is really good for me, my darling wife will be raised up again, sick as she is, God will restore her again. But if she is not restored again, then it would not be a good thing for me to have her back”.

Andrew Marcus:

Wow.

Garrett Kell:

I think what you see there is just a, that’s later in life a man who’s seen God be nothing but faithful, nothing but good for a long time, and he trusts God. He knows that none of us are promised to not die in this life. Everybody’s going to. He also knows that God has the power to raise her up. He can raise Jesus from the dead. He could raise her off that sick bed. But he also, he trusted that whatever God was going to do, it was going to be good. It was going to be aimed at good for her, good for him, and good for the glory of His name among the nations. And I was just so moved by that posture of surrender because I’m a control freak. I tend to think I know how things ought work and I’d prefer it this way or that way.

And so I’m constantly happening to surrender and open my hands and say, “Lord, not my will, but your will be done. Your ways are not my ways and lean not on my own understanding and all my ways acknowledge you. You’ll make paths straight.” He is good and does good. Right? And that was actually the text that he preached the funeral sermon from. So a few days later, five days after he had penned that right before she died, he had the funeral. And according to historical records, there were some 1200 orphans there and thousands of grieving friends that came to this funeral. And the sermon text was Psalm 119:68, which says, “You are good and do good.” So great… I mean, if you’re looking for a verse to memorize, start there, “You are good and you do good.” It tells you everything you know about who He is and what He does. And everything needs to be read through that grid and everything that doesn’t, we got to revisit that.

So his outline came from that. The Lord was good and did good and giving her to me and so long leaving her to me and thirdly and taking her from me. And he reflected on those three things. He reflected on God’s goodness that He gave me a wife. I didn’t deserve that He gave her to me for so long, for the decades that they were married. And then God did not stop being good because He took something precious from me. She was always his and it was her time to go. So he still knew that God was good even though there was great hardship that he faced in the midst of it. So what an encouraging word I found for me.

Andrew Marcus:

That’s so good. Yeah

Garrett Kell:

I need to remember that regardless of whether I’m in a hard season or helping somebody who’s in one, so.

Andrew Marcus:

Absolutely. I need to hear that and I needed to be reminded of it when I read it. It was so encouraging to me. So it’s interesting you mentioned with his life, he comes to this point towards the end, he’s had just such a long history of just seeing God’s faithfulness. What would you say to a young person who hasn’t had that experience yet of seeing God so much? How do we encourage them that, “No, that is the truth of who He is. He’s faithful and He’s kind,” but they just haven’t had opportunity to, maybe they just don’t think they’ve seen it as much as someone like George?

Garrett Kell:

So I would remind them that we walk by faith and not by sight. So our experience does not determine reality, but rather God determines reality. So the way that we can help our inexperience is twofold. I think first, is by reading the scriptures. So the scriptures are largely narrative. And the reason they’re narrative is because God is capturing the lives of people who have trusted Him and not trusted Him. And he preserves their example of what it looked like to trust Him and how He showed up in the midst of all of the different situations and circumstances that they faced. And we are to learn from their examples. Romans 15 says that the scriptures are given for our encouragement that we would learn and read and be encouraged to persevere in faith.

So I think you don’t read the Bible because it’ll check it off your list. You don’t feel guilty that you skipped a quiet time or something. You read the Bible because you need it. You need God’s word to live. “It’s your daily life,” Deuteronomy says. So I think read the Bible like a desperate person saying, “God, show me who you are and how you act in your people throughout history, centuries of lives of testimonies”.

And then secondly, as you’re praying and pleading with God to help you, secondly, surround yourself with brothers and sisters who are a little further down the line than you are. This is why the local church is so important that you’re going to be around saints who have been around for quite a while, who have trusted Him and who have leaned on Him and who could remind you.

So for instance, one of the things that I got from there was a sister named Sarah Fuel. She’s gone to be with the Lord now probably seven or eight years ago now. But I remember being with her in some of her latter weeks there, and during one of our visits, she gave me the best, my favorite quote that I’ve ever heard from any Christian. She had dementia and she had a moment of clarity and she said, “I may forget the Lord, but He will never forget me.” And you can see that she was just at peace. And I’ve just held onto that. I’ve been sharing that with my dad. I’m about to get that made into a thing and put it on the wall for him and just to remind him. So there’s something about borrowing faith as it were, from the saints of old who have walked, and that’s why you need to be with other people.

This is why podcasts are good things, but this does not replace being in a local church.

Andrew Marcus:

No.

Garrett Kell:

Tuning into some live stream is not going to church. You need people, you need relationships, you need others around you, and you need a diversity of relationships. And that’s not just ethnic, that’s important, but it’s also ethnic, cultural, I mean… And then also age range. We need older saints need the young cats for some zeal, and that zeal needs some wisdom. So let’s put this together and do some good and we need help. So I would say that to somebody. I’d say, don’t give up. Keep trusting. Read the word. I’ll read it with you if you want some help or help find somebody to do that. And let’s meet with some older saints who have walked with them and let them say, “Won’t He do it? He will do it. He is faithful,” and surround yourself with those kinds of people.

Andrew Marcus:

I love that. That’s such a good word. We talked about this idea that these situations, God allows for good and it actually refines our faith. Walk through and maybe elaborate how experiencing suffering actually shapes an understanding of God. Because a lot of people, like we talked about, it’s like, we go through hardship, and it’s like, “Oh, it seems cruel.” How can we get a proper perspective of, “Actually it’s not cruel, in a weird way, it’s good”?

Garrett Kell:

Yeah. I think the first thing to remember is that God never does evil. There is evil, but God never does it. So God works all things together for the good of those who love Him and are called according to His purpose. So He is working all things good and evil things together for the purpose of making us like Jesus. So just remember, it’s not God who’s doing evil to you. He never does evil. He will ordain, arrange, allow, permit, all the words you can process how all that lands together. I think a beautiful picture of that is how Joseph thought about it. If you read the story of Joseph and where he lands, Genesis 50:20, right? At the end of his life, after he’d been betrayed by his brothers, he’d been kidnapped, sold into slavery. A whole bunch of unjust stuff happened to him for a long time.

God and His providence ends up restoring Joseph and using him to get bread to the world and famine. His brothers come back, they’re like, “Oh no, he’s going to kill us.” And he says, “Am I in the place of God?” He’s like, “Listen, what you intended for evil God used for good.” So Joseph didn’t say, “What? Hey guys, it’s cool.” He’s like, “Listen, vengeance is the Lord. He will repay. My job is to be faithful. My job is to forgive. My job is to extend mercy.” They had repented at that point. So there could be reconciliation. So to answer your question, again, I think your mind has to be shaped by the word, but you come back to stories like that and you grab a hold of verses and you ask the Lord, “Lord, show me what this means, right, help me to understand what it means to trust you that you’re working all things together for the good. And Lord, right now, this isn’t good”.

And listen, when you read the Psalms, they’re filled with the sort of language that God wants us to use in the midst of our pain. How long, oh Lord, will you forget me forever? That’s not a sinful prayer. That’s a legit prayer because sometimes we feel forgotten. And that same prayer is actually prayed in heaven by the saints who have been martyred, who are waiting for Jesus to come back. They say, “How long, oh Lord, until you avenge our blood on the earth?” Even in heaven, everything’s not finished until Jesus comes back. And then He makes all wrongs, right. So even in heaven where it’s good and you’re with the Lord and you’re away from evil, even there there’s a sense of, “Lord, when are we going to get rid of evil? And when is that going to happen?” And I think that’s a good prayer to pray.

So don’t act like it’s not happening. It’s not… Real faith isn’t like, “Oh, I’m okay. Praise the Lord. I better not deserve,” and all that kind of stuff. And that may be true that you’re better to deserve, but that doesn’t mean that it’s not awful. That’s why when you asked me before we got on, “How are you?” I’m like, “I don’t know. Kind of, okay. I’m well in the Lord, but life is hard. I’m tired.” Right? And then I think you just got to grab some verses. You got to find verses like that one that I just read from Romans 8:28 or think of the end of Job, right? Job at the end of his life after everything he’d been through his resolution is this, “I had heard of you by the hearing of the ear, but now my eye sees you.” I went through some stuff and I had heard about you before, but now I see you. I see you for who you are.

And there’s a way that we get to see God show up in the midst of our sufferings in this life that does bring life and healing and hope and comfort. But there’s also the hope of what’s to come, right? Like 2 Corinthians 4:17, “This light, momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison. Whatever we’re facing right now is light.” Hold on, “Light. Momentary,” that makes sense. Momentary. Okay. It’s only for a little while. Light, though? He didn’t say it’s not heavy. This light, momentary affliction is preparing for an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison.

So compared to the weight of glory that is coming, whatever we’re going through right now is light. So the most horrific things imaginable, which there’s horrific things done to people and by people on this planet, the deeper those wounds are, the more grace that is going to be filled in to heal those wounds, which takes a deeper weight of glory he says it’s preparing for you. So in one sense, more suffering now brings more glory later in some way that I don’t know what that looks like, but the Lord says, “I want you to memorize it. Put that in your heart and believe that”.

So again, there’s no secret to this other than find promises in the Bible that you can’t live without. I need that to be true. I need that to be true. You need that to be true because that helps. It helps right now. Say, “Lord, you know that this is heavy, but you say compared to what’s coming, so help me to trust. Help me to believe.” And this is why the gospel, we don’t graduate from the gospel. The gospel is not for just people who don’t know Jesus. The good news of the gospel is that God gives you what you don’t have and don’t deserve. And we need that.

I need gospel grace. You need gospel grace to make it another step and another step and another step. And that’s what perseverance and faith is. It’s fueled by the promises of God that lift our hearts and our minds and affections and our… up on Him and locking arms with others who are helping us do the same. Remembering we’re not all strong at the same time. So this is why you need each other. And we’re leaning in and looking up, pressing on, almost home. And that’s what we say to our congregation all the time, “We’re almost home. We’re almost home. We’re almost home.” And brother, listen, I mean we’ve been going for 40-something minutes. We are closer now than when we started this thing. So y’all who have been listening to one and a half speed, like, listen, we’re almost there. You’re getting closer. And that’s the hope of the Christian is that we’re ever closer to home to seeing Him and we can trust Him.

Andrew Marcus:

Man, that is so good. Thank you so much for your time today. I know this is going to be such an encouragement to our people, and it’s been such a blessing and encouragement to me. Just appreciate all you’re doing. God bless you, man.

Garrett Kell:

Well, it’s been mutually encouraging and yeah, thank you and I’ll continue to pray for you and pray for those of you who are hearing this. Just remember, if you’ve listened today, it’s not by accident or chance. There’s no such thing as luck in God’s universe and He wants you to hear some of this. So yeah, you don’t have to do it alone.

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 podcast. 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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