I’ve been thinking a lot about wickedness lately. (Not a likely topic, I know, for a website called “Here’s the Joy.”) Deep, horrific, shocking wickedness. It isn’t pleasant to think about, it causes me to lose sleep, but the time has come.

People are making documentaries, readily available online. The Dark Side of Chocolate. Tears  of Gaza. Nefarious. All of them, and more, are worth watching. But they all raise the unspoken question.

Where is God?

And I’ve gotten to know several wonderful women who were sexually abused when they were young. By men of the church.  Men of respect. Sometimes their own fathers.  They’re the ones Jesus was talking about when He said, “If someone is going to hurt one of these little ones, it would be better for him if a millstone would be hung around his neck.” I have visions of millstones.

 Where is  God?

O God, where are You? Don’t You know that the heathen are mocking Your Name and saying that You don’t exist? How can you allow this wickedness to continue?

In the past when I would read psalms about the wicked, I would confess to God, “I know that these psalms must be very meaningful to people undergoing persecution. But I don’t know of any wicked people in my life. Sinners, yes, of course, but none whose hearts are set against God, who would actually trample underfoot the weak and helpless in order to advance their own agenda.”

I didn’t ask God to make me aware of those people in my own life. But He did it anyway.

If wickedness were only a theoretical thing, or if it were only the “proud thought” that we all have, then the exceeding sinfulness of sin would never be truly manifested.  Living in a wicked world isn’t theoretical. As God hit me with wave upon wave of the wickedness of man—even people that I would have formerly respected—I had to run to Him again and again with the horror. I knew that Christ was my Rock. I fell flat on Him.

Is man basically good, as our atheist and pagan friends want to tell us? Let’s look at the Nazis who would dunk a man’s head in human excrement in order to get him to confess to something he didn’t do. Let’s look at the Americans who are performing Nazi-like science experiments on their fellow humans. Let’s look at the Hershey’s chocolate company who is using children to work to death in their cocoa fields so that they’re dead by the time they’re 15, but it doesn’t matter because there are always more. Let’s look at the elder in the church who will give everything to maintain the respect of the church—even sacrificing his own family that he’s abusing behind closed doors. Let’s look at the very young sex slaves in Bangkok who are at the beck and call of English and American businessmen. The sex victims . . . oh yes. Let’s look at the sex victims in our churches.

Stopping the wickedness is what we who trust in Christ believe He’ll do when He returns. And oh, God, speed the day.

So I cry out to God against the wicked. That’s what we must do–cry out to God against the wicked. We don’t need to hate them, but we long to see righteousness prevail. All creation groans in anticipation of this setting right.

And now, in my small way, I’m a warrior against this monstrous evil. I take up the sword of the Spirit and the weapon of All-Prayer in defense of the weak and helpless as God brings them to my awareness, many of whom have no voice. I pray for the victims. I pray that they will know that these men, some of whom incredibly claim to be men of God, do not truly represent God to them.

This is the cosmic battle. Good and evil are slugging it out. Good will triumph. But evil is very, very evil. And yes, sometimes the victims will be us. A significant aspect of the peace I finally felt in confronting the wickedness was a fresh willingness for my life to be sacrifice to the evil I had uncovered. And in that, there was peace. In that, there was even joy.

The Lord has brought me into a place of darkness. But Jesus said, “In this world you will have tribulation. But be encouraged! I have overcome the world!”

For victims, the most important thing in the midst of this evil, is to know the love and grace of Jesus Christ that Paul talks about in Ephesians 1. The most important thing is to know, even in the darkness of great wickedness, that He is there, and He is love. I long for them to know, the weak and broken and cast off and kicked aside, that they can find hope and healing in Christ.

And yes, even joy.

I owe a debt of gratitude to Gregg Harris.

My younger friends may not know who he is, but back in the earlier days of homeschooling, when Joshua Harris was just a child, his dad Gregg was a mover and shaker in the world of homeschooling. Writing books. Speaking at homeschool conventions.

Gregg produced a seminar called “The Seasons of Life.” At a crucial time in my own life, I listened to that seminar. I’m thankful that I listened to it not in the middle of the dizzying overload of a homeschool convention, but on cassette tapes in the quiet evenings of my own home when my little ones were asleep and I was trying to organize my kitchen that never seemed to quite get organized.

As a visionary, I had so many things I wanted to do for God. Pretty much every brilliant idea that popped into my head, I wanted to do it. Every urgent need that I saw around me, I wanted to fulfill. Every compelling speaker I listened to, I wanted to be like. Every inspiring writer, I wanted to emulate. So much to do for God. So little time.

And here I was, at home raising my children and teaching them and trying to keep a house that I didn’t quite know how to keep. I knew, I KNEW it was the right thing for me to be doing, and I didn’t want to stop doing it, but I wanted to do everything else at the same time.

Gregg poured some perspective into my life, reminding me that the things I dreamed about doing didn’t need to be done all at once. God generally runs our lives in stages, usually around three or four of them: growing up and getting educated, raising our children and working a business, and finally, reaching out in a wider way to others, through the church and community. Of course there’s overlap, there are exceptions, but generally that’s the way it works.

It seems so obvious to me now, but at the time I had never thought about it.

Listening to this Seminar made a difference in my heart. I became content. I waited, and I prepared. I set a goal of the age of fifty for being a Ready Woman. Ready for what? Well, I was pretty hazy on the specifics, but whatever ministry the Lord had for me. So in the intervening years while I was raising my children and teaching them, I sought diligently to know the Lord, and to grow in Him, and to reach out to the people God set before me.

God still sets people before me, and that’s always extremely exciting and a tremendous privilege, but now, as I’m approaching the end of my child-raising years, I have the delightful opportunity to turn my attention more fully to writing and speaking.

Not exactly in the way I had anticipated. (Strange as it may seem, there was a time when I thought that someday I would speak on how to keep a clean house. If’ you’ve walked through my house, you may feel free to guffaw heartily.) But, rather, in a way that is exactly perfect for what He has called me to do. Storytelling and speaking to inspire and encourage and challenge Christians. And, to my joy, writing missionary books, one of my formerly back-burner dreams.  Those are the opportunities He has so graciously brought to the forefront of my life.

There’s more, much more, that He’s doing even right now. And I know there’s even more ahead. Some of it seems cool and exciting, and some of it daunting and maybe even a little scary-looking. But His Spirit goes before. He prepares the way, as I keep in mind that the most important things in life are the things that are unseen.

And so I look forward to the unfolding Season of Life that’s ahead. And as I look, I’m filled with anticipation, and I’m filled with joy.

When a book that I love has never been reviewed on Amazon, then I feel that it’s incumbent on me to write a review. So, for this obscure book published eleven years ago and apparently now out of print, I’ve written one. Here’s the link to read it.

John Van Gelderen still speaks in fundamentalist circles, and I’m not sure where he stands on some issues about fundamentalist that I think are problematic. But the vast majority of this book was outstanding. I count it just as important in my life as, for example, Martyn Lloyd-Jones’ Joy Unspeakable (which, appropriately, left me nearly speechless). I hope that this little-known book will be able to have a wider readership, especially in the circles of fundamentalism, where from my experience the Holy Spirit is given far too little credit for the mighty works of God.

NOTE added November 2012: I was alerted by a reader that Ed Nelson, whose name is prominent on the cover here, has failed to stand for right and truth and love in the circles of fundamentalism. Tim Anderson, the reader who alerted me, commented here.

I corresponded with John Van Gelderen about this issue, and he said that though he was unaware of abuses being covered in fundamentalism, he was willing to be taught about it. In the last three months he has been true to his word, responding with humility and graciousness. I pray that he and others like him will go forward to call men like Ed Nelson to humility and repentance.