Tough times in life can lead to struggling with doubt about God

Linn Winters - [00:26] Okay, so we're going to spend the service doing our very best to answer questions that you have asked. I just want to say to say to you, man, we had really, really good questions and a ton of them. So, there's no way, there's just no way I'm going to get all the way through. And then the other part is some of your questions are hard questions. I mean, they, there's a complexity to it and there's no way I can do justice to that question for minutes as I'm flipping through questions. So, here's another opportunity: starting in August, we're doing a thing called The Mind. It's a verse by verse study through scripture, but part of The Mind is the opportunity to ask questions. So, if your question doesn't get answered today, my encouragement is to come to The Mind and take the time to go hey, you know, talk about this and let us go after it.

Linn Winters - [01:17] Don't leave your questions unanswered because the wonder, the wonder, the wonder is that God is willing to answer your questions. There are answers on the other side. You and I may not like them, but there are answers on the other side of your questions, so don't leave them unanswered.

Linn Winters – [01:38] One of the questions that came up over and over again (as you guys sent your questions in) was, "What's going on with the building project?" So, I just wanted to take a second before we dive into scripture and talk about that for a moment. I think you all know the building project is kind of stalled. That's where it is. The reason it stalled is because you and I are having a horrible, horrible, horrible, horrible time trying to secure a loan. Let me see if I can explain that to you, and again guys this is one of those things we could talk all service for me to give you all the nuance of it. I'm going to give you a flyover.

Linn Winters – [02:13] Banks notoriously hate to give loans to churches. They hate it. Churches terrify banks. Hence, why there are so many Christian organizations that loan to churches because that's where churches get their loans. The dilemma that you and I have is that we are so large. As you go to these Christian organizations you say hey, we've got this project, all the numbers add up, and everything makes sense. And they go, yeah, but the problem is we don't have the resources to put into a loan of that size and of that magnitude. We just can't do it. We also live with the reality that say we only loan to our denomination, which then eliminates tons and tons and tons of Christian lending organizations. So now you and I are back dealing with banks who hate to give loans to churches. Again, our size plays in because here's what the bank asks, hey, if a meteor hits the building tomorrow and you stop holding services, that's not really the question. The question is what if you go bankrupt? What if you can't pay your bills and we have to repossess this building? Who Do we sell it to? How do we get our money back? And it's a legitimate question because think about it. If we were a church of 400 or 500, there's plenty of churches of 400 or 500 who would buy the buildings because they need buildings. You and I are a church of 6,000, and so they say, who in the Hay is going to buy that campus? As a matter of fact, as you expand it, it's going to be even bigger. Central Christian already has their buildings. Chandler Christian Compass is sitting right there. Who would buy these buildings if we ended up with them in our hands? And the answer is no one. There's no one who needs this big of a campus, right? So, then they go, okay, so here's the deal. We're going to give you fifty cents on the dollar. We'll give you fifty cents credit, which guys I don't know about you unless you moved here from California. Anybody here put 50 percent, probably very few of us, right? And you and I just aren't there. We're at about 30 percent equity in our buildings. When we build new buildings, think about it, the new building is probably going to have 12 percent equity in it. Our equity position actually goes down, not up by building new buildings. We can't meet a 50 percent equity position unless we had hundreds of unused acres, and we just don't. And so, banks are terrified because banks always asked if worst case scenario happens and we have to sell this facility, how do we get our money out? And the answer is they wouldn't. They wouldn't. They're going to have to take a risk. It's a bad word in the banking world. Okay. So, we are still working on it. We are still having conversations. We're doing everything we can, but that's why getting a loan has been so tough.

Linn Winters – [05:02] It's our size, and we've even chopped the project up in portions. It's the size and their ability to resell the campus. So that's a big part of it. The other question that comes up a little bit is, hey, what happened to the building money that we already gave? And here's what you need to know. One hundred percent, 100 percent, 100 percent of everything you gave has gone to the building's 100 percent. Okay. As a matter of fact, we've actually used general funds to pay for part of the buildings that are there. Here's what you need to know. In a typical church build, about 30 percent of the cost happens before you ever get above ground. You have to pay for architects. You have to build the ancillary streets on the side. We've built those streets. You've got to build the supporting parking lots. We've built a supporting parking lot. You've got to do groundwork and groundwork in Arizona when you're sitting, shifting, expanding, and swell. It's a lot of money to do groundwork in Arizona. Thirty percent of the cost of a building happens before you ever break ground and go above ground. You and I have broken ground. We're above ground. You and I have in essence paid cash because of what you gave for almost every bit of that. That's what's out there right now. That's the good news because you and I already have a level of equity in the building. Besides that, the builder, when we first started building, made a decision, unbeknownst to us, but probably a good decision. They looked at the price of steel and said, hey, steel looks like it's on the rise and going up. We better put the steel order in now even though we don't need it till later.

Linn Winters - [06:34] So they ordered tons and tons and tons of the steel for the building. You own a lot of steel right now. You paid cash for it, so this is actually a picture of our San Tan site at the land that we own in San Tan. There's actually an industrial kind of old warehouse that's dilapidated, but you and I are storing our treasures of steel inside of that building. You own that outright. If you want to go build a shed, I guess you can do that, but we own it outright. And then beyond this, we've got another massive stack of steel that's being stored for us down in Tucson and you own it outright. Okay. Somewhere I think we get in our minds, there was zillions and zillions of dollars that came in on the building project. No. There was not zillions and zillions of dollars that came in on the building project. We made pledges and when we started out, you and I were dead on with the pledges. The money was coming. The moment the building stopped, anybody want to guess what happened to our pledges? Right through the floor, right through the floor. And here's how you're looking. I get it. I get it. I've even said to my staff, hey, if I was just average joe blow in the Pew, if I wasn't the pastor of this church and the building project came to a halt, here's what I would do. I would say, I'm going to stop giving. I'm going to wait until I see a building going up. I want a building. I'm all in favor of a building; sign me up for a building, but I don't see anything happening. I'll give when they get going again, that's exactly what I would've done, so I don't fault anybody in the room that that's what you did in this moment, but here's what you need to know. The reality of it, the pledges that we made and for us to move forward, it was $50,000 a month. I mean $50,000 a week, I'm sorry, $50,000 a week.

Linn Winters - [08:31] If you just look at the weekly, which you get every week and you look at what's being donated to the building, we get less than that. We get less than that in a month right now, and so the reality is that you and I have paid for everything. We paid for that steel in cash. We've been paying for the architect's work. We paid all that off on cash and it's literally about 30 days ago that we broke even on all our bills. We own it. It's ours, but every penny that you've given to the building fund has gone to the building fund. It is not lost because you own a bunch of piles of steel. You own a wall out there that I call the Wailing Wall. You can go out there and pray and anytime you want to pray at the Wailing Wall. You can do that. Here's my best guess guys. Somewhere, you know because I'm not sure we can count on the banks. Somewhere, we got to figure out how to move forward and my best guess from here is we're probably going to need to start building a building and just do it in cash. Here's the irony of the thing. If we had been better than me, if we wouldn't have said, hey, I don't see a building, I'm going to stop. If we hadn't behaved the way that I would have behaved, we actually would have had enough money in hand, to have already built a building in cash, and we could have done it.

Linn Winters – [09:23] So we're probably just going to have to go back and do that. The good thing about building a building in cash, is it only increases, remember, the equity and it gets us that much closer to a bank potentially doing the rest of the projects with us. Okay. So that's my best guess. You just need to know every penny, every penny, every penny, every penny has gone into your buildings and you own a whole bunch of steel. Okay. All right. Good. Nobody applauded but good. Okay. Alright. Alright, here we go.

Linn Winters – [10:19] First question, "Where is Noah's Ark?" How the hay am I supposed to know that? I can't even remember where I parked my own car. How am I going to remember where Noah parked his now? Hey, here's where that comes from. It comes from, I think about 25 years ago. If you've been a Christian for a long time, there were a bunch of guys saying, hey, we found Noah's Ark. It's up on the top of the mountain. And it is not. It is not. Okay. Can I just tell you it's not? Noah's Ark was built out of wood. It rotted about 3000 years ago. There is nothing left. Okay? Some eskimo got up there and used it for firewood. It's gone. There is no Noah's Ark. But guys who cares, right? I mean, who cares? Because you think if they had found Noah's Ark that everybody would go "Oh, I'm going to be a Christian now. They found Noah's Ark." No, that's an Assyrian Bathtub. That's an initiative that would have made other ideas up. So, it's not there. It is long gone. Thanks for the question.

Linn Winters – [11:20] Where in the Bible does it deal with depression and with suicide? Okay, so here's the first thing you've got to hear me say. When you get to depression, when you get to anxiety at that level, you've got to do some research. You've got to do some figuring out because one of the core questions that's going to be there is simply this, "Is this a physical issue, you know, is the brain not manufacturing some of the chemicals the brain should be manufacturing? Did the brain not form the way that it should have formed in the womb?" And you need to know that it is absolutely legitimate that someone would suffer from depression and it not have anything to do spiritually. Okay? In the same way someone can be born without a finger, right? Somebody, you know that is, that is a real, real possibility. And so, you and I need to figure out, is this a physical thing? Because here's the deal. If it's a physical thing, then it has a physical solution, right?

Linn Winters - [12:23] You need to go to the doctor or you need to get some prescriptions. You need to go after it that way. The other side of this is: it could be a spiritual thing. Hey, I'm depressed and angry because life's not turning out the way I wanted. This isn't about not having enough chemicals in my brain this is just about me being angry and disappointed in my life, which is a spiritual conversation. You've got to figure out what am I dealing with? Am I dealing with a truly physical conversation. Am I dealing with a spiritual conversation? Because here's the deal. If it's physical, then there's a physical solution, but if it's spiritual, there's a spiritual solution and you don't want to treat a spiritual solution with drugs. It's not going to help. So, you've got to determine that, and that's part of what you have to wade through when you have this thing.

Linn Winters – [13:10] When you get to a depression and when you get to thoughts of suicide, most of the time this comes from a place of disappointment. I can't believe how people have treated me. I can't believe that my life has been so unfair. I had these hopes and now it just seems so apparent to me that my hopes, my dreams are so far out of my grasp and will never be realized, and I'm just in despair. I am. I don't know how to deal with that level of heartache and disappointment in my life. And yet in midst of this, scripture offers some things that it says that I'm going to read for you right now. Look, as I read these for you, if you've dealt with depression, it's going to bother you when I read these for you, and here's what you need to get where I'm coming from. I'm not just coming from this place in this topic. We're coming from this place all day. So, hear this: you and I, as we live our lives, have got to figure out what becomes the reference mark for my life. Is my reference point my friends? Is my reference points my experience and my own personal understanding and knowledge? Is my reference point what everybody else is doing? Here's the deal. You may sit here today, and you go, look, I'm 43 years old. I have figured out the secrets of life. I'm right everybody. If, if that's how you're going to choose to live, if you can do that, I'm just going to tell you that is a highly unsuccessful way to navigate life because you don't know what you don't know, and you don't understand what you don't understand.

Linn Winters – [15:02] You need to hear me say that as we talk today, and as for me on every single occasion, my reference point is my career, and that your reference point be this: that it is the Word of God because there is a God who is bigger than you and he is smarter than you and he is stronger than you and he designed you and therefore He knows you better than you know yourself. And you may go, Linn, that's just because you're super spiritual, etc. No. Do you know how I've come to that conclusion? Because I was just as skeptical as you. I came to that conclusion because every time I leaned into the word of God, God was true. Every time. So, yeah, now that I'm where I am and some zillion years old and an old fart, it's easier for me, but only because of the experience of every single time I trusted God. God came through, and you're going to have to make that decision for yourself to, okay? About everything we're going to talk about today, not just about depression. Okay?

Linn Winters – [16:06] Let's go to a passage. Go to Matthew Chapter Six. If you're not familiar go to the back of your Bible, start working left. I'm just telling you again out loud it's going to bother you, but let's have the conversation before you get too frustrated. Matthew 6:25, and this is actually Jesus, I think talking about in many ways this very topic. Here we go to Matthew 6:25. Jesus said, "Therefore I tell you, do not worry." Oh, thanks a lot Jesus. "Do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink or about your body or what you will wear. Is not life more than food and the body more than clothes? Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your Heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they?" And the answer is yes. You, you are more valuable than them to the heart of God. "Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life?" He didn't say, look, I know, I know it's convenient to worry. I know that's the natural human default, but the answer it doesn't work. Have you ever worried to a successful conclusion? "And why do you worry about your clothes? See how the flowers of the field grow? They do not labor or spin. Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these. If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, will he not much more clothe you—you of little faith?” I get it. I get it. Right now, you want to throat punch Jesus. You just want to go deep. You apparently don't understand. You apparently don't get it, Jesus, because I've got stuff worth worrying about. I've got stuff worth being disappointed. I've got stuff that I deserve to be angry about. The unfairness that's happened in my life.

Linn Winters - [18:42] Isn't it true that the things that break our heart, the most, the things that bring us the deepest amount of sadness are the things that happened in our life and we would say, Hey, you know what? That thing was bad, and I apparently have more bad things, or the bad things that I have are bigger bad things than other people's bad things and I'm just telling you because as I view my life and just the over whelming amount of disappointment and unfairness in my life, I, I, I can't even imagine getting to the good side of this from where God has allowed me to be. So, here's my question. Who decides when something is bad? It's a big question. Who gets to decide when something is bad? Hey, you lost your job. Is that good or is that bad? You know, Linn, it's bad. It's bad. Are you sure? Are you sure that's bad? Your friend betrayed you, said horrible things about you on Facebook. Is that good or is that bad? Linn, it's obvious. It's bad. Are you sure? Your boyfriend, who you've been dating for six years and you were this close to a ring cheated on you with another girl. Is that good or bad? You know, Linn, it's bad. Right? It's bad. Are you sure because isn't the truth that the reason that you and I struggle, the reason we become anxious and angry and frustrated with ourselves, with God, with life in general is because we've had an inordinate amount of bad, but my question is who decided that that was actually bad? Because isn't it true that bad usually means my plans aren't happening.

Linn Winters - [20:51] My ideas, my goals, where I thought I was going to be, what I thought was going to be fair didn't happen. My boss was a jerk. He fired me for no good reason, and I just felt like as long as I did my job, I should be able to have my job. That was my plan and my plans didn't happen and therefore it must be bad. But, let me ask you a question. Who gets to decide the plans for your life? Because whoever you answered that with, is God. If you get to decide your plans, you are your God. Grab your Bibles again. Go with me to Romans Chapter Eight. Some of you guys know this verse. The truth is all of us should have it memorized. Go to the back of your Bible and start working to the left. Romans 8:28. Okay, here's what it says, "and we know we have this confidence. We absolutely believe this. We absolutely trust this. We know that in..." What's the next word? "All". That thing you hate the most. That thing that disappointed you the most, the thing that was so highly unfair, "in all things, God works for the good." And you go, whoa, whoa, wait, wait, wait, wait. There's no way. There's no way that losing my job was good. There was no way my boyfriend breaking up with me cheating with another girl is good. Scripture must be wrong. Is it? Or, have you defined bad and good the wrong way?

Linn Winters - [22:50] Because here's the deal. When God defines success, when God defines good for you, it has nothing to do with how big a house you live in. It has no nothing to do with how many friends you have on Facebook. That's not how God defines good or success for you. It doesn't even have anything to do with whether you get married or not. That's not how He defines success and goodness for you. Watch. "For the good of those who love Him, who have been called according to His purpose. For those God before God knew, He also predestined." He decided the destination of your life. He decided how this story was going to end before you were ever born, and here's the destination. You Ready? Those he foreknew, he predestined to be conformed to the image of his son. So, here's the answer. Guess what good is? Good is not financial stability. It's not financial stability. Good is not 2.3 children. I've always wondered what you do with the three tenths, but anyways, that's not good. Good is that you look like Jesus, so if you lose that job and losing that job makes your prayer life stronger because some of you are going "God, I need some help with my bills." Wasn't that good? If it gave you more trust for Him, because good is that you would end up looking like Jesus. Good is not the amount of money in your bank account. Good is not how popular you are. Good is not that your plans turn out. Good is that you look so much like Jesus that people who don't know Jesus see Jesus all over you. That's good. And, here's the deal. You can fight God on that and you can go oh God you know I'm not interested in looking like Jesus. If you're going to argue with God about that. If you're going to fight God on looking like Jesus, guess who's going to win that argument? You don't think that.... hey, maybe this helps. What if today I said to every one of you in the room that I'm going to give everybody in the room a chunk of coal. How many here going, man, sign me up! Chunk of coal. That's what you get the bad kids at Christmas, right a chunk of coal.? What if I said to you, instead, I'm giving everybody in the room a one carat diamond. Sign me up, baby! Best church ever! Now I know where my tithe is going, right? That's right. Where do you get diamonds from? Coal. And how do you turn an old miserable worthless chunk of coal into a diamond? You ready? Heat, pressure, and time.

Linn Winters - [26:00] Do you realize God just told you I'm in the business of turning people who didn't know my son, didn't live the way that was going to make their lives work, chunks of coal, and I'm interested in turning them into diamonds. Sons and daughters who on every facet of their life reflect Jesus. I'm turning them into something that is worth untold amounts. But guess how we're going to get there? Heat. Some of us are going to lose jobs. Some of us are going to have rebellious kids. Hey, some of us are going to struggle in our marriage. Heat. And then pressure. Right about the time you go "God this is all I can take", God's going to go look at me and hear me. And I promise you right now, it will take longer than you think it should take. You're going to go, God, I learned my lesson. Stop it. God's going to go, Nah, let it cook a little longer. You're a little raw around the edges. I'm just telling you that's what God does, but at the end he turns coal into diamonds, which is why there's this horrible verse in the Book of James that says, "Count it all joy when you face trials of many kinds". Are you kidding me? Because the trying of your faith produces in you because guys, guys, guys good is not your plan. Good is that you look like Jesus.

Linn Winters – [27:34] Here's the thing you've got to get. See, there's some of us in the room right now and you're angry and you're frustrated is part of why you're depressed and struggling because God has brought his little chisel in your life and things aren't going quite right and he's got his little hammer and he's working in your life and you're just saying, God, I don't give a flip. I'm not going to. Listen, I'm not going to do it. I'm not going to look like Jesus. I'm just not going to do it. Do you think when you resist God, if this is God's plan for you, this is the good he has for you and you resist him and you go, God, I'm just not going to cooperate. I'm not going to look like Jesus in my life. Do you think God goes, Awe, I was trying to be nice, but they don't want to do it? Oh, you think God does that? You're crazy. You know what God does when you and I resist "I am not interested in looking like Jesus", do you know what God does? He gets a bigger hammer. He gets a bigger chisel hall because he is going to make you look like Jesus and I'm just telling you, if you're struggling right now, one of the most powerful prayers you can pray, you say, "God, let me see the good you're doing in my life. Let me have some sense of why I lost that job and what you're trying to teach me right now. Let me have some sense of why you let that relationship fall apart". Because, because, because your heavenly father loves you more than the grass of the field. And is it possible that he let you lose that job, that you would learn to depend on him more and that he actually might have something better? Young Lady is it possible that He let that relationship go because he knew where it was going to go, and that the kindest thing he could have ever done is let you break up. Who gets to decide good?

Linn Winters - [29:32] All right, next question. What about the dinosaurs? I like them; never met one I didn't. So, I get it. I get it. The struggle here is that you and I live in a world that says, hey, this world is like zillions and trillions of years old and we've all evolved and therefore genesis is a fairy tale and all that. So, here's what you just need to hear me say real, real, super quick. I cannot possibly go through all the scientific evidence that just refutes all that in the next four minutes. I can't. I can't. So, here's what I'm going to do. I'm going to give you a couple snippets. I hope if you really have swallowed the lie of evolution, that it will just bug the holy poop out of you and that you will then go do some research to find out if you really, really do have scientific evidence to support what you're thinking and that you'll come to the topic with honesty and want to know more. Okay? And then you can come to The Mind and we'll talk about it. But here's the deal. One of the things that gets everybody.... well, first off, let me just say this, so dinosaurs were real. This was actually the jaw bone of a dinosaur. I have actually got a whole shelf in my office full of dinosaur fossils. You Go, "why would a pastor have dinosaur in his office?" I'll tell you in a minute. Okay. So, they, they were there. The question is really a question of time. How much time did it take this world of form and get there, and are there really millions of years between dinosaurs and humans and did all that happen? So, here's what you need to know. Everything you hear when somebody tells you how old something is and once you get past a couple of thousand years, everything is a guess. I spelled that right? Yes? No? Okay. Because I went to Seminary School, not to literacy school. All right, everything is a guess. And here's, here's why. Because in order for something to be scientific it has to be testable, it has to be observable and it has to be repeatable. As a matter of fact, did you ever had like one of your kids that entered a little science fair and they built a volcano and what they were doing is they were demonstrating through a testable, observable, repeatable process that for every action there's an equal and opposite reaction. You pour these two chemicals in the top of the volcano. It's spits out. You had a pendulum swaying and when it hit it went the other direction. Science at its simplest form must be testable, observable, repeatable.

Linn Winters [32:21] There is no dating process that any one espouses right now that meets the very simplest criteria of science. You cannot go back and test whether something actually is 100 million years old. You know why? Because we have no reference point. We do not have a rock that was 100 million years old and somebody wrote on it "Today, I formed". We don't have that reference point. There's, there's nothing to test it against except a guess. Okay? It is not observable because there's no way you can put a brand-new rock in a room and wait 100 million years to see how the radiation dissipates out of it. It's not observable; and then it is definitely not repeatable. You cannot have a single scientist who can say, I actually know how old this rock is and I can show you a test that shows you how old that rock is. It's undoable which means you do not have science, you have a theory when you date. That means every single dating that a scientist does is a best guest and here's something that you ought to know. They have dated the same rock. Okay, and in dating, the same rock one test came up and said it was 400 million years old. They tested it again and it came up 800 million years old. Now that's a hundred percent miss, and guys in case you don’t understand a 400-million-year miss is kind of big. If you were a batter in the batter's box trying to swing at a pitch and you miss it by 400 million years, where you even up to bat? Right? I mean, how far off is that? What happens in science is when it gets fuzzy, you just start adding a few zeros to it and then it sounds more convincing. How they came up with their dating is incredibly simple. They basically said, it takes this long in our minds for evolution to happen. Rocks must have formed before that. Therefore, rocks must be somewhere in this category of this old. It is a guess.

Linn Winters - [34:47] It is an absolute guest. Why in the world that bothers you and me for a half a second - I have no idea. It's a guess. All right, so let me give you this and then we're going to move. I know I haven't answered it. I've only thrown rocks at it. Okay, so remember I said I'm a pastor who has an office with a whole case filled with fossils. Here's why, and I can't explain it. I'm just going to give you enough to bother you. Fossils, fossils are the death nail of evolution, that if you even do a cursory study of fossils, evolution cannot, cannot, cannot, cannot, cannot possibly for any thinking person be true because there's no transitional forms. This is a linchpin of evolution. In order for evolution to be true, there needs to be billions of transitional forms, and there are zero. This piece of dinosaur jawbone and a rock is your greatest testimony to a creator who was intelligent and designed you, the animals that are out there, and even this snaggletooth guy right here. It screams creator. If you're honest with the data.

Linn Winters - [36:27] Let's pray. Dear Lord Jesus, thank you. Thank you that we don't have to apologize for our faith. Thank you that when we open scripture and even when there are people who would laugh at us and give us a hard time, that if we would simply be honest in our investigation, we find you to be true and the skeptics to be wrong over and over and over again. God, I just ask for anyone in the room because I promised I've rubbed some the wrong way, that God rather than run away, or rather than just get angry and dismiss, that they would have the integrity to explore, to lean in and say, I'm going to look at the facts. I'm going to, see for myself and I'm going to make an intelligent decision, not an emotional knee jerk decision with the facts. God, thank you for being bigger than us, smarter than us, stronger than us, because we need that, and this we pray in Jesus' name. Amen.


Recorded in Chandler, Arizona.