Lies Christians Believe
Week 2: Everything Happens for a Reason
Pastor Svea Merry August 16-17, 2025
There’s a phrase that has been whispered in hospital corridors, murmured at gravesides, shared across coffee cups after a breakup, and texted to friends who have just received devastating news. It’s meant to offer comfort. It’s meant to point to hope. It’s meant to reassure us that there’s some kind of order to the chaos we’re feeling.
It’s only five words: Everything happens for a reason.
You’ve probably heard it. You might have said it. And if you’ve walked through something unexpected, possibly difficult, it might have been said to you. Or it might not have even been in the context of anything difficult, but simply the mundane. Have you ever gotten in a traffic jam on your way to work and chalked it up to, “Whelp, everything happens for a reason. I must not have been meant to be at that first meeting.” Or seen an athlete lose an event. It just wasn’t his day, and he consoles himself with the everything happens line?
It sounds spiritual. And for many people, it feels like it should be in the Bible.
We’re in week 2 of our series, Lies Christians Believe. We’re exploring phrases in Christian culture that are well-intended and truth-adjacent, but without being fully consistent with all of Scripture, they can lead to some kind of messed up theology and leave us thinking things that God didn’t intend for us to think.
We’re going to go to Scripture to see what truth we can extract from these phrases and seek to remove the baggage that clings to them. Our series thesis is that half-truths will lead to whole messes, but the whole truth will set you free.
Maybe you can hear in my voice—I’ve been sick this past week. I felt fine last weekend, but on Monday I was wiped out, with a sore throat setting in. It’s been a long, rotten week, and today’s the first day that I’ve emerged back out in public. So, if I trip over a word or thought, I hope you’ll extend me a little grace.
Pastor Caleb kindly offered to preach for me, but this is a message I’ve been thinking about for months and have been eager to share. And here’s the ironic part: while I was curled up on the couch writing it this past week, a few people told me—and I even thought at times — “Well, God probably has a reason for this illness right now.”
Why do we grab onto this idea so tightly? I think the everything happens for a reason phrase entices us with three very desirable things. It suggests that things are explainable After all, if we can explain the reason that someone is happening, it gives meaning and purpose to it. It also suggests that what happens is predictable. It we can pinpoint the reason something happens we can likely anticipate it or avoid getting blindsided by it in the future. And it suggests that we’ll find comfort in knowing the answer to the big “why” question that often comes with suffering.
But that way of thinking can get messy. Here’s something I’ve processed this past week.
If I felt like I could discern God’s specific reason for why I got sick, it would definitely change my behavior. If I determined that he zapped me with an illness because He didn’t want me to preach this weekend, I’d have taken a pass and Caleb would be up here right now instead of me. Or, if on the other hand, I decided that God was making me write this message while sick, it must be because He had a special purpose in that and maybe this message was destined to be uniquely orchestrated by God. And that’s not necessarily a healthy headspace for a pastor who should instead be focused on simply seeking to rightly handle the Word of God and to make Him known, and trust that God will speak to hearts through truth however He will.
Now, I don’t have any sense that God doesn’t want me to be here this weekend, and He has restored me to enough health to be here. And I am praying that this message is nothing but God-honoring and that it does land in a special way, but if that happens, I want it to be all because He did it, not because I convinced myself that I knew what He was up to something special.
Claiming we know God’s specific reason for something invariably shapes how we think and how we respond. And what if we get it wrong?
I’ve contemplated a few things about how God has worked in my life this past week: I have no doubt God knew I would be sick and that He’s been with me in it, and that He’s used it to work in my heart. I have seen His fingerprints on me this past week. But there’s a difference between watching for God’s fingerprints in a situation and claiming we know His reason for it. One is humble attentiveness; the other is presumption.
The presumption in the everything happens for a reason phrase can hurt far more deeply than this. Another pastor once told me about being at a funeral for a young child and someone went up to the mother and, though intending to offer comfort, softly said, “Everything happens for a reason” to her. And the mother got angry and yelled, “If there is one, I’d like to know it. And I want to know it now.”
Her response was raw, but it was reasonable. And it reveals something important: we may think this phrase brings comfort, but it can wound.
And yet, for many of us, there’s something in us that wants to believe the sentiment behind the phrase. We want to know there’s some bigger picture always at play—something more than random pain in this sin-filled, evil, disease-ridden world. That longing isn’t wrong. It’s God-given. But the way we phrase it matters, because bad theology, wrapped in a nice-sounding sentence, can lead to a mess.
The problem with “everything happens for a reason” is that it leads us to believe things we can’t possibly know for certain.
It also risks portraying a sovereign God as the constant cause of everything, whether the frivolous or the horrific. It gives God the credit for every green light you get on your way to work when you’re running late to blaming Him for every violent act committed against someone. The former may or may not be the case, but the latter leads to thinking that distorts His character and leaves people wrestling with confusion or resentment toward Him. It mixes up the sovereignty of God, with God being the cause of all that happens.
We have to start here—God is never the author of sin. James 1:13 tells us:
“When tempted, no one should say, ‘God is tempting me.’ For God cannot be tempted by evil, nor does He tempt anyone.”
That means no act of injustice, no betrayal, no tragedy that flows from sin, whether caused by us or done to us, has God as its source. The world is fractured because of human rebellion and the curse on creation, not because God willed sin into being. And yet—this is the mystery of His sovereignty—while He does not cause sin, He is never powerless in the face of it.
We see this vividly in the life of Joseph in the first book of the Bible. His brothers’ betrayal was rooted in jealousy and hatred. Their intent to get rid of their brother, setting him up to be taken captive as an Egyptian slave, was undeniably evil. But God with him through it all, and years later, Joseph could stand before his brothers and say in Genesis 50:20:
“You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good to accomplish what is now being done, the saving of many lives.”
God did not cause their sin, but He wove the outcome into His redemptive plan. The harm was real; the evil was real; but God’s ability to redeem was greater still.
How many of you count this verse among your favorite verses? Me too!
Romans 8:28: And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.
In all things, our successes and yes our failures, even the wrongdoings of others, or the brokenness of the world—God is at work for the good of those who love Him and are called according to His purpose. Not everything is good. But in the hands of our Redeemer, nothing is wasted.
Romans 8:28 does not promise that everything that happens is good or explainable, and nowhere does it say that God caused it to happen for a reason. Instead, it assures us that God is actively at work in all things—good and bad—able to take the broken pieces and reassemble them into something good for those who love Him and are called according to His purpose.
Romans 8:28 gives us a truth that is both richer and sturdier than “everything happens for a reason.” The emphasis in this verse is not on uncovering a reason for every event, but on trusting the God who is actively working in every event. This verse shifts our focus from an abstract cause-and-effect system to the personal presence and sovereign care of God. It reassures us that, even when circumstances are senseless, painful, or chaotic, they are not wasted—God is weaving them into His good purposes for those who love Him. Rather than trying to decode life’s “why” in the moment, Romans 8:28 calls us to rest in who is holding our life and future.
This perspective is far more life-giving because it doesn’t require us to solve the mystery of suffering to have hope. The “reason” behind a hardship might be hidden for years—or until eternity—but Romans 8:28 assures us that the ultimate outcome is secure in God’s hands. It keeps our eyes on the big picture: God’s redemptive work, His eternal promises, and His loving character. Where “everything happens for a reason” can lead us to hunt for neat explanations (and sometimes arrive at harmful or false conclusions), Romans 8:28 invites us into humble trust. It frees us from the pressure to make sense of it all and grounds our peace in the unchanging truth that God is good, He is with us, and He is working all things—both the beautiful and the heartbreaking—for our ultimate good in Christ.
I meditated a lot on this verse this past week, and it was a great exercise. While letting go of trying to figure out why I was flat out sick, I paid attention to the good coming out of it. I received so many texts of love and prayers from the handful of friends and coworkers that knew I was out. The reminder of their love and care for me was good that God brought out of this. I had a lot more time than I typically do to sit silently in God’s presence. That was good. And so much more. Focusing on the good that we can see in any situation is such a healthy practice. Long before our culture “discovered” the power of gratitude, Scripture has been urging us towards it for the very health of our soul and spirit in all things.
This verse was written by the Apostle Paul, a man commissioned by the resurrected Jesus to spread Christianity beyond its infancy within the Jewish community and into the Gentile world. But as Paul faithfully went about that, he earned some street cred to talk about experiencing challenges and suffering.
In a follow-up letter that he wrote to the church in Corinth, he lists the many bad things that had happened to him. Just listen to this:
I have worked much harder, been in prison more frequently, been flogged more severely, and been exposed to death again and again. 24 Five times I received from the Jews the forty lashes minus one. 25 Three times I was beaten with rods, once I was pelted with stones, three times I was shipwrecked, I spent a night and a day in the open sea, 26 I have been constantly on the move. I have been in danger from rivers, in danger from bandits, in danger from my fellow Jews, in danger from Gentiles; in danger in the city, in danger in the country, in danger at sea; and in danger from false believers. 27 I have labored and toiled and have often gone without sleep; I have known hunger and thirst and have often gone without food; I have been cold and naked. 28 Besides everything else, I face daily the pressure of my concern for all the churches.
I had to include that last verse for everyone who has ever served in vocational ministry. People have no idea how much pressure it is care for the needs of the church!
But seriously, isn’t it powerful that Paul could endure this long list of hardships and could later write about God working for good in all things with full conviction while scars healed on his back, memories of near-death in the seas on his mind, and a body and heart that carried the burden and the pain of betrayal and abuse. For Paul, “in all things God works for the good of those who love him” was not a theory—it was hard-won testimony. He had lived through a lot of “things,” and yet could still affirm that God’s redemptive purposes run deeper than any wound, any loss, or any setback.
What did Paul know that unlocked this for him? What did Paul know that could give us, too, the deep confidence of knowing God’s goodness in all things? And help us let go of the veneer of comfort offered by “everything happens for a reason”?
I think it starts when we trade the why question and the need to assign a reason to things for how questions that reveal the goodness God could be bringing out of it.
Oh, but it’s so easy for us to cling to the “why” question, isn’t it – you know, why is this happening to me or to my loved one? But is it really a helpful question? Even if we could get a definitive answer to that question, would knowing why accomplish what we wish it would? Do you think when I became a 30-year-old widow and single mother there would have been any answer that would have been satisfying or made my pain worth it? Getting an answer to “why” may not produce the healing that we long for. But there are “how” questions that can lead to healing and growth.
What we see throughout Paul’s letters is that when he speaks about suffering, he is not wrestling with why something happens, but rather how God is at work in it.
I want to show you three Scriptures that offer us what Paul knew that can give us a productive approach to all that happens to us. And it flows out of asking a series of how questions. Specifically,
- How might God use this in my relationship with Him
- How might God use this to help or encourage someone else
- How might God use this to make me more like Jesus
Focusing on these things can lead to the peacefulness and contentment that we see in Paul, and more importantly that we see in Jesus. Let’s consider each of these in turn, starting with how might God use this in my relationship with Him?
In the same letter to the Corinthians where Paul listed the many ways he’d suffered, he began the letter telling them what he’d discovered through it.
In 2 Corinthians 1, Paul describes how he and those with him were:
“under great pressure, far beyond our ability to endure, so that we despaired of life itself. Indeed, we felt we had received the sentence of death.”
This is not a man blowing off the reality of suffering. He is confessing that the weight of it brought him to the end of himself.
When we suffer, our self-reliance is stripped away. The illusion that we are in control begins to crumble, and in that vulnerable space, health comes from leaning more heavily on God’s strength.
Not to make more of my illness this past week than it deserves, but I have been living this in a practical way. How quickly our plans can change. How quickly we realize that we cannot always to count on our own strength but might be sapped of it and down for the count.
This message was written through desperate dependence on God. And the fact that I am here today is only because this came together in His strength, not my own.
Paul continues:
“But this happened that we might not rely on ourselves but on God, who raises the dead.”
For Paul, the pain was not meaningless—it had a refining purpose. It is precisely in that extreme desperation that he encountered the sustaining presence of God. It was a training ground for trust, a way for God to loosen the grip of self-sufficiency and ground his faith in the One who has the real power.
Continuing in this passage, Paul reflects on the outcome:
“He has delivered us from such a deadly peril, and he will deliver us again. On him we have set our hope that he will continue to deliver us.”
Suffering deepens our relationship with God because it gives us a personal history with His faithfulness. Each time He carries us through, our confidence in Him grows. We begin to see Him not only as the God of the Bible, but as the God who has shown up in our story, in our darkest moments. And this lived experience of His deliverance fuels a hope that is not theoretical—it’s rooted in the memory of His past rescue and the assurance of His future care.
For those of you who know God as your deliverer, think back on how He has walked you out of the wilderness of suffering in the past. Do you see that by keeping that in mind, as you face trials in the future, asking yourself, how could God now use this to reveal Himself to me, to show me more of His care and faithfulness, is so much more productive, so much more satisfying than asking why it’s happening?
God can powerfully use everything that happens to us to powerfully reveal Himself to us and to deepen our relationship with Him.
Let’s look at the second “how” question which is, “How might God use this to help me to comfort or encourage someone else?”
Earlier in the same chapter, Paul writes one of the most beautiful things in all of Scripture about how God works in suffering. Look at 2 Corinthians 1, verses 3 and 4 with me.
3 Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, 4 who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves receive from God.
I’ll never forget the first time that I experienced the power in these verses. I had suffered a miscarriage and because we had shared the news of our pregnancy pretty widely, had to then share our heartbreak widely as well. A gal who was in my friend group but not really someone I considered a close friend reached out to me and brought me the kindest care package with a card that contained perfect words of empathy. The way that she interacted with me was so sensitive, so effective. About a week later, we went out for coffee, and I told her how much I appreciated her thoughtfulness and how touching it had been to me, and she then told me that she had had a miscarriage about 9 months prior to that. In fact, her baby would have been due just around the time we were meeting.
Then she said something that formed me: She said, “I went through my grief alone. We didn’t tell anyone about our loss and I was so lonely in it, but God comforted me, and I learned that I could depend on Him. So when I heard about your experience, I wanted to share the comfort that God gave me with you. And then she showed me these verses. And as we talked and cried together, she expressed how being able to comfort me in ways that she could only do because of our shared pain was helping her to heal.
Since then, I have experienced this phenomenon many times, and some of the greatest healing I have found has been through sharing the comfort I have received from God in the hardest things that He’s carried me through with other people going through a similar thing.
The Greek word that Paul uses here for comfort is parakaleo, which means to call to one’s side. He’s speaking of this beautiful aspect of comfort that happens when we come alongside someone else. Maybe you’re already connecting the dots that it shares the root word para, the term we still use for an aide who comes alongside a student who needs some help in school.
I love this aspect of comfort as para, of coming alongside someone who needs aid, but remember the full word is para-kaleo. The kaleo part means “to call” or “to summon.” And what is so beautiful about this aspect of the word is that it encompasses the idea that when someone is suffering, it’s not just that someone should come alongside the hurting person, it’s that someone is called or summoned to come alongside them. And just look at who does this first.
It’s first attributed to God: The Father of compassion and God of all comfort. Our God is the first one summoned to come alongside us in all our trials. Like we saw a moment ago, it might be in our trials that we become most aware of God coming to us, and from what we see here, how would it impact your perspective on the trials you face is you realized that every time His children suffer, He’s summoned to come alongside us. We might not realize that He’s with us, but He is.
And then, He delights that we take that same comfort we’ve experienced through Him and to look for an opportunity to be called up to come alongside someone else who also needs that comfort.
Rather than asking why something happened to you, how different would it be if you began thinking or dreaming about ways that you could come alongside someone else going through something similar.
Some of the greatest ministries have come about because of this idea. Beautiful things happen when people want to comfort and encourage others in the shared pain they’ve experienced and the comfort they’d received from God in it all. What might God be calling you to do to comfort someone else?
The third “how” question to explore is how God might be using what happens to you to form you into someone more like Jesus.
In the verse that comes immediately after “all things work together for good”, Paul writes:
For those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brothers and sisters.
Romans 8:29 informs what is the very goal of Christian spiritual formation: to become more and more like Jesus. Everything that happens in the believer’s life—including seasons of suffering—is something that can be used to shape us into someone more like Jesus.
Suffering becomes a refining fire, burning away the impurities of selfishness, pride, and misplaced trust, and shaping us into the likeness of Jesus’s humility, dependence, and obedience. C. S. Lewis famously used the analogy of God, like a sculptor using a chisel and hammer to reveal the beauty hidden in stone, uses the hardships of life to form the character of Christ in us.
Three chapters earlier, Paul wrote that:
4 suffering produces perseverance, perseverance character; and character, hope. Have you seen this play out. Think of the person who has the faith you admire the most. The kind of faith you hope to have one day. How has that person suffered? What have they learned through it?
If you’ve been through our amazing Practicing the Way course, you may remember that the experiences we have, particularly the trials and tribulations we go through, are one of the most important elements of our formation – if we let it. In it, it’s pointed out that the exact same experience with suffering can form or deform us. It can make us soft and supple, or hard and bitter.
But that if we intentionally open our pain and suffering to God, God will not only meet us in it, He can use it to form us to be more like Him. To be formed into people who are known for love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.
If you haven’t already taken this course or would like to process your way through it a second time, we have two new sessions beginning in September, one of them specifically for young adults seeking to build community as they encounter Jesus together. It’s one of the best things you could do to strengthen your practical skills in turning everything that happens to you into an opportunity to become more like Jesus and I cannot commend it highly enough.
When we release the demand to know “why” and instead lean into the “how,” we create space for God to work in a way that deepens our faith in Him, expands our compassion for others, and shapes our character like Christ. This shift doesn’t minimize the pain; it dignifies it, giving it purpose beyond what we might be able to see in the moment. We can begin to view each hardship as an opportunity for God’s Spirit to chisel away what doesn’t look like Jesus, leaving us more radiant with His love and grace.
So, the next time you or someone you love is walking through difficulty, resist the urge to reach for “everything happens for a reason.” Instead, look for God’s fingerprints. Ask the “how” questions: How might this draw me closer to Him? How might it equip me to care for someone else? How might it make me more like Jesus? Those questions invite us into partnership with the God who is actively at work in all things for our good. They turn our attention from speculation to transformation, from trying to solve life’s mysteries to being shaped by its realities.
Ultimately, our hope rests not in having tidy explanations, but in knowing that nothing—no illness, no grief, no betrayal, no setback—is beyond the reach of God’s redemptive power. Romans 8:28–29 assures us that He is both present in our pain and purposeful in it, and one day we will see the full tapestry He’s been weaving. Until then, we walk forward in trust, confident that in His hands, even the hardest chapters of our story can become part of something beautiful. And that is far better news than “everything happens for a reason.”