Anyone who knows me knows that I’m an avid Kentucky basketball fan. Did I say avid? I was ministering in Romania in 2014 when the Wildcats made it to the March Madness Championship Game. I had taught a full seminar on Friday/Saturday and was scheduled to speak at three different churches on Sunday. So, what did I do? I got up at 4:30 am Sunday morning, Romanian time, to watch UK beat Wisconsin in the Final Four. I was up again Tuesday at 4:30 am to watch them play the championship game where, unfortunately, we lost to the University of Connecticut. But since the game wasn’t broadcast outside the US, I ended up watching it on my iPad via FaceTime through our son’s computer, which he placed in front of his TV in his apartment in Dallas, Texas. I know that’s a bit crazy, but I told you I love Kentucky basketball.

Kentucky has a new Men’s Basketball Head Coach this year. Mark Pope was a co-captain of UK’s 1996 Championship team, and he bleeds Kentucky blue. He has brought a new energy and excitement to the team and fanbase, with the media covering everything Coach Pope says and does. Recently, I was intrigued by a clip of him addressing his team after a practice session. He said, “Gratitude is a skill that, if you practice, will give you a joyful life regardless of your circumstances. It’s a skill we need to practice. You can practice it every single day. Grateful people are joyful people. There’s no way around it. If you’re grateful, you’re joyful.”

Our recent trip to South Korea may have been our most consequential trip to date in terms of the number of significant pastoral leaders we had the privilege of connecting with. I taught 24 sessions to 11 different groups in the two weeks we were there. We shared the message with pastoral leaders from some of the largest churches of various denominations in Korea and, in one case, the world. A conservative number of congregants in the churches represented by these pastors would be well over 125,000 people. We were blown away at the privilege God afforded us on this trip.

To be candid, we were a little apprehensive heading into the sessions with the pastors. It has been our experience that, for a variety of reasons, pastors are often the ones who are the most resistant to the Forgiving Forward message.  With this in mind, we enlisted our prayer team and prayer partners to beseech God specifically that He would open the hearts and minds of the pastoral leaders to whom we would be teaching. And God answered in incredible ways.

Recently, Toni and I were teaching Forgiving Forward in Costa Rica. On the Sunday we were there, I had the privilege of sharing the message in a church in Santa Cruz. Each week around 40 people meet in a small cinder-block building with light circles on the floor from the holes in the tin roof. There was no AC, fans, projector or screen for media. There was no worship team or worship band. The worship was led by the pastor who played prerecorded worship songs from his phone through a small PA system. It was hot and dusty with little airflow. It lacked anything that many consultants would consider to be “essential elements for an effective worship environment.” But did it really?

One evening in our darkness and despair, Toni and I decided to get out of the house and take a walk around our neighborhood. It’s a 2-mile circular trek around a series of six cul-de-sacs. We were pretty quiet through the first two cul-de-sacs when one of us said, “God has not abandoned us. Where have we seen Him in all this mess? What have we seen Him do in us and for us in the last three months?” We began quietly recounting all the ways our gracious Lord had revealed Himself to us, sustained us, delivered us, provided for us, and worked in us in the three months since everything began to fall apart. For the rest of our walk, we took turns reminding each other of God’s goodness to us in a period of time when people had not been. With each memory, our hearts got lighter as our praise began to drive out the darkness.

I thought about those conversations in downtown OKC this week as I listened to news of the horrific murders of nineteen children and two teachers at the Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas. One of the things that struck me as I listened to all the media’s reports and commentary is that the questions haven’t changed. “How could this happen, and what can we do about it?” Each time an event like this occurs, politicians, pundits, and ordinary people argue back and forth about the why and offer various iterations of ideas that will never provide hope for effective change. Why can’t we fix this?

When we are faced with sorrow, grief, uncertainty, suffering, and pain, the way to respond that is most fitting for a disciple of Jesus is to surrender to His will and to die to ours. Jesus is showing us how to agree to His plan and give up ours. When I yield and pray, “Father, glorify Your name in and through me in this situation. Reveal Yourself. Lord let me see You.” I experience peace amidst the sorrow. I find myself filled with strength and hope knowing that God will glorify Himself in my life.