Where was God when the tornado hit? Where was God when the phone call came, when the diagnosis dropped, when the marriage fell apart? Pastor Trevor tackles the question so many in the Fox Valley have been asking quietly since late July, and his answer is not a Christian cliche.

This sermon is part of an August teaching series at Alliance Church on how to read the Bible well. Pastor Trevor picks up where Pastor Brandon left off the week before and offers one of the most important guiding principles in Bible interpretation. The Bible is its own best commentary. Before you reach for a study Bible, a podcast, or a theologian, let the clearer passages of Scripture help you understand the more difficult ones.

He walks through three real examples that trip up Christians all the time.

First. Can a Christian actually lose their salvation? Hebrews 6:4 through 6 sounds terrifying if you read it alone. But when you let John 10, Philippians 1:6, 1 Peter 1:5, and Ephesians 1 also speak, a fuller and much more secure picture of God's keeping power emerges. The warnings are real. And so are the promises. And they do not cancel each other out.

Second. Is judging others actually a sin? Matthew 7:1 alone has become the eleventh commandment of modern culture, but Jesus himself finishes the same passage by telling us to deal with the log in our own eye first, then help our brother. Add John 7:24, Galatians 6:1, and 1 Corinthians 5, and you discover Jesus never told us to stop caring. He told us to stop being hypocrites.

Third, and this one lands the whole sermon. If God is fully sovereign, how are we responsible for anything? And when tragedy hits, was God part of it? Pastor Trevor takes the room to Acts 2:23 and Acts 4:27 and 28, where the early church holds both realities at the cross. The crucifixion was God's deliberate plan and also the willful act of wicked men. Jesus himself said in John 10:18 that no one takes his life from him. He lays it down. One event. Three real causes. All true. All held together without contradiction.

Then he makes the pastoral turn. The Bible never pictures God standing helplessly on the sidelines. Jesus spoke to the wind and it obeyed him. It had always obeyed him. And if God can take the worst day in human history, the cross, and turn it into the greatest good the world has ever known, then he can take your worst day and use it for good too. That does not make cancer good. It does not make the tornado good. It means no diagnosis, no funeral, no accident, never have the final word in your life.

If you have been wrestling with the Bible, or wrestling with where God has been in a hard season, this teaching from Pastor Trevor is for you.

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