The Mission of God and the Nations

This is part one of a missions series, focussing on four themes from Scripture: God’s mission and 1) the nations, 2) covenant, 3) salvation, and 4) eschatology. I teach missions and missions theology, so this may become a bit academic, but that is not a bad thing. We could tell stories to inspire and motivate, but instead I want to ask what Scripture tells us about missions. “Biblical”, not “academic”! I assume for these four sermons that Christian faith is true and that the Bible is God’s Word Written for our guidance in all of life.

At the heart of the Great Commission in Matthew 28 lies the command to “make disciples of all nations” (NIV, NRSV). I think that “all nations” is an unfortunate translation – it should be “all Gentiles”, expanding the reach of the gospel across the greatest boundary line of Jesus’ day. But it makes the point anyway: The gospel is for everyone, Jews and Gentiles, men and women, people of the lower classes as well as of the ruling class. The gospel is for everyone; God calls everyone to new life in Christ.

We begin our four-part series on missions by focussing in on this basic truth: Everyone throughout the world has rebelled against God, and God calls everyone throughout the world to new life in Christ. We consider this truth by looking at the theme of “God’s Mission and the nations”.

 

Genesis 12

The call of Abram (as the subtitle in my Bible reads) is the first step in God’s grand plan to enter the world as the Incarnate Word. In Genesis 11, Abram’s father, Terah, had started the journey from Ur of the Chaldees (Iraq – in today’s geography) to Canaan. He got about halfway – as far as Harran (in modern Turkey, close to the border with Iraq) – and settled down there.

 

In our text, God calls Abram to finish the journey to “the land that I will show you”. We call this “the Promised Land” because God had promised Abram’s descendants a home there. The Children of Israel (as they came to be known) eventually made it their home, and it is the place in which the Messiah was born.

There is much that we could dwell on here. We could spend time considering what Abram and Sarah gave up. As one preacher said, this is real consecration and sanctification: Leave everything you know and love behind and follow God. We could trace the way that God’s covenant with Abraham worked out, using the further statements of the covenant in Genesis 17 and Genesis 22 to understand more of its shape. We could explore the meaning of the blessing and the cursing found in verses 2 and 3.

In keeping with our theme, we zero in on the end of the blessing: “All peoples on earth will be blessed through you.” It is unusual in the way that we speak to say, “all peoples”. People is already plural. Why do we make it a further plural, with “peoples”? Because it does not mean simply “everybody”, “every person”. The blessing comes specifically to all groups of people. The word in Hebrew is “mishpahot”. A “mishpaha” is a family of people, a clan, an extended family. Abraham and his family were a “mishpaha”. It would be easy for Abraham and Sarah and their children to think that they were special and that God had come to them for their benefit. After all, God had blessed them specifically. So, God makes it clear in the blessing that God’s action and blessing are for the sake of every family on earth.

Sometimes I wonder if this passage was placed in Scripture for the special benefit of Mennonites. We can be preoccupied with family. We can think that our own family is better than others. The truth is that many different churches face this same danger. I come from the Brethren in Christ, where “Climenhaga” was once one of the names at the centre of the church. When we moved here, I stopped at Kipe’s Garage over in Tourond. The owner came from BIC country in Pennsylvania and knew that someone was coming to Providence from one of the families he knew well. He asked me, “Are you a Climenhaga or a Hostetter?” naming two possible candidates. Of course, we are not special – or at least, we are no more special than anyone else. 

 

When God acts in our lives, God does so for our benefit and for the benefit of everyone else around us. This is the taproot of the missionary call: God acts in you and me for the benefit of everyone around us. 

 

Notice something else about the plural of groups: Mishpahot; families; groups of people. This apparently simple observation reminds us that God saves people in community and for community. We come to the family of God from our own family. We live in community, and we live for community. The missionary task belongs to the whole community. We don’t send someone out and breathe a sigh of relief that they are doing our work. We are engaged in the mission of God, “missio Dei”, as the whole church of God.   

 

Matthew 28 

These verses stand at the heart of the church’s mission in many people’s thinking. Our concern this morning is to note simply its approach to the nations, but first a note about whose mission our mission is. Jesus gave the commission to the twelve disciples. The essence of the commission is the command to make disciples, divided in the text into the tasks of Baptizing (that is, bringing people to faith and incorporating them into the body of Christ) and Teaching Obedience (that is, walking together into a constantly growing life modeled on the life and teachings of Jesus). Conversion and ongoing spiritual growth are both part of the commission. 

 

Many people think of missions as an evangelistic task, sometimes reduced to preaching or witnessing the need for salvation to as many people as possible. I know some who have left tracts on the beach in resort areas, hoping that the words written there will lead people to Christ. I know another person who was in Spain as a missionary intern. She was told to distribute tracts, even though she could not converse with people in their language. The idea was that this distribution of the word discharged her responsibility to “make disciples”. 

 

The written word does work miracles, and God reaches people through many different methods. I do not discourage any of them, but the examples above rest (I think) on a basic misunderstanding – that we are responsible for missionary outreach. We are indeed responsible to do all God commands, but the mission is not ours. It is God’s. That is why this series is called “missio Dei”, (the mission of God). The Great Commission begins with the words, “All authority in heaven and on earth is given to me.” The commission comes from Jesus, God the Son, and the task of bringing the nations into God’s Reign is God’s mission, not ours. When we speak about the mission of the church, we are talking about our participation in God’s mission. With these thoughts in mind, consider the specific command: Make disciples of “all nations”. 

 

Some mission scholars (such as Donald McGavran) emphasise the Greek original (ta ethne) here. We get the English word “ethnic” from this Greek word – a reference to cultural groups similar to the mishpahot of Genesis 12. It’s an attractive thought, but I believe it is not what Matthew had in mind when he recorded Jesus’ command. 

 

Go back to Matthew 10. When Jesus sent out the Twelve (Matthew 10:5), he told them, “Go nowhere among the Gentiles …” They were to preach only among the “lost sheep of Israel.” The word he uses for Gentiles is “ton ethnon” – the same root word as in the Great Commission. I think we should translate “ethne” the same way in both places, so that in our passage we hear Jesus say, “Make disciples of the Gentiles (as well as of the Jews)”. 

 

This is important because the Jew-Gentile divide was almost absolute in Jesus’ day. Jesus tells his disciples to make disciples of everyone – of people like them, people they connected with naturally, and of people they would normally avoid if at all possible. We should hear Jesus’ words clearly in our day: The gospel is for everyone, not just for the people we are most comfortable with. 

 

This theme sounds a warning to us as Mennonites (and as Brethren in Christ). Our denominational identity is important to us, so we insist on our own way of doing things. For example, I have heard us say that MCC’s program supporting children is better than World Vision’s child programs. We may be right; I think we are! But I hear something else underneath – the idea that we are better Christians than non-Mennonites. I think that Jesus is warning us about human barriers that we erect between ourselves and others. 

 

Remember that the mission belongs to God. We work together as God’s people – tearing down the barriers that some erect within the church, and we reach out with the gospel of Jesus Christ to all people – tearing down the barriers that our world erects between people. We are God’s instruments to work towards the unity of love that characterized Jesus’ life on earth. 

 

Revelation 7 

Our journey through the Scriptures brings us to the last book of the Bible. We look briefly at this wonderful scene in heaven. I believe that this scene is not simply a picture of the end, but it is also a picture of the spiritual reality that exists behind the events of our day. The picture is of those who followed Christ faithfully through all that happened to them, who followed Christ to their death. They are the saints of God gathered in triumphant joy before God’s throne. 

 

What concerns us is their ethnic makeup: “All nations and kindreds and people and tongues”. Here again we see the family units and clans of Genesis 12. Here again we see the diversity and breadth of God’s people. Here again we see the place of community in the mission of God. God’s diverse people are a family bound together by the blood of Christ. We are brothers and sisters with all of God’s people around the world, gathered in joyful community with Jesus, our elder brother, in the presence of God our Father. 

 

This is the goal of mission: God’s people gathered before God’s throne with every barrier between us destroyed. 

 

Synthesis 

We bring these Scriptures together in our understanding of God’s mission to the world. All people are separated from God by the human rebellion that began with our first parents. God is the only one who can heal that ancient breach and restore all people to communion with their Creator. God sent God’s Son into the world for precisely that purpose. 

 

Our part is to participate in God’s great reconciling work. “God was in Christ reconciling the world to God and has committed to us the ministry and message of reconciliation.” (2 Corinthians 5: 18f). What do we learn from this emphasis on “God and the nations”? What does this theme tell us about our participation in missio Dei? 

 

I said earlier that as Mennonites we face the danger of turning inward. We used to live in Lancaster County, and I know well the way that Swiss Mennonites can play the in-group games. Now that we live in southern Manitoba, I see that Russian Mennonites have their own version of the game. As do the BIC from whom I come. My grandfather used to pride himself on being able to name the extended family of anyone he met. “Who’s your father?” he would ask, and when you told him he would name your siblings and cousins. 

 

This inward focus has its strength, much like the Children of Israel becoming God’s People so that the Messiah, God’s Anointed One, could come to them. But the inward focus with its purifying fire is always for the sake of the whole world. We take care of ourselves spiritually at SMC so that we can be God’s hands and feet in Steinbach. We take care of ourselves spiritually in Mennonite Church Manitoba so that we can be God’s hands and feet in Canada. We take care of ourselves spiritually in MC Canada so that we can be God’s hands and feet in the whole world. Our membership in Mennonite World Conference follows naturally from this identity. 

 

Still we ask, what does this outward focus mean for how we engage in God’s mission? Some bullet points: 

• We work with our brothers and sisters around the world – first of all, Mennonites, but also Christians of all kinds who are in our circle of relationships.
• We break down relationship barriers wherever we find them. We embrace our unity with our Metis brothers and sisters in Manigotagan. We break down barriers with marginalized people in our community and country. We become aware of ways that people around the world are disenfranchised and we embrace them.
• We recognize the extent to which all of life depends on the authority of Jesus Christ. When we meet marginalized people who are excluded by their own rebellion, we embrace them, and we invite them to a new relationship with Jesus.
• The blessing given to Abraham and Sarah was that their family would be God’s family. The nations then would share that blessing. The blessing given to us is the same: That the people around us will come into God’s family through their relationships with us. The Great Commission has the same focus: That the people around us will come into God’s family through us. The picture in Revelation 7 is of the family that has come to God through relationships with followers of Jesus. We receive God’s blessing and we become part of God’s work reconciling the world with God. That’s what we are about: Reconciling the world to God. That’s who we are: God’s reconciling people. That is our ministry and our message: Be reconciled with God.

 

17 January 2021; Steinbach Mennonite Church 

1) Theme: God and the Nations 

 

Genesis 12: 1-4 

The call of Abram

12 The Lord had said to Abram, ‘Go from your country, your people and your father’s household to the land I will show you. ² “I will make you into a great nation, and I will bless you; I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing. ³ I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse; and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you.” 

⁴ So Abram went, as the Lord had told him; and Lot went with him. Abram was seventy-five years old when he set out from Harran.

 

Matthew 28: 16-20

¹⁶ Then the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain where Jesus had told them to go. ¹⁷ When they saw him, they worshipped him; but some doubted. ¹⁸ Then Jesus came to them and said, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. ¹⁹ Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptising them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, ²⁰ and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.”

Revelation 7: 9-17

The great multitude in white robes

⁹ After this I looked, and there before me was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, tribe, people and language, standing before the throne and before the Lamb. They were wearing white robes and were holding palm branches in their hands. ¹⁰ And they cried out in a loud voice: “Salvation belongs to our God, who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb.” 

¹¹ All the angels were standing round the throne and round the elders and the four living creatures. They fell down on their faces before the throne and worshipped God, ¹² saying: “Amen! Praise and glory and wisdom and thanks and honour and power and strength be to our God for ever and ever. Amen!” 

¹³ Then one of the elders asked me, “These in white robes – who are they, and where did they come from?” ¹⁴ I answered, “Sir, you know.” And he said, “These are they who have come out of the great tribulation; they have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb. ¹⁵ Therefore, they are before the throne of God and serve him day and night in his temple; and he who sits on the throne will shelter them with his presence. 

¹⁶ “Never again will they hunger; never again will they thirst. The sun will not beat down on them, nor any scorching heat. ¹⁷ For the Lamb at the centre of the throne will be their shepherd; he will lead them to springs of living water. And God will wipe away every tear from their eyes.”

 

Focus Statement: A commitment to community can cause us to look inwards. God’s desire to reconcile the world to God expresses itself by calling us to look outwards. We are God’s hands and feet in the world to carry out the mission of God (missio Dei). 

 

Looking Ahead Question: How do we participate in the “mission of God”? What is God’s mission? What is our part? 

 

Going Deeper Questions: 

 1) I said that breaking down barriers is basic to Christian mission. What are the barriers that we face, which we need to surmount with the gospel? 

 

2) I suggested that sometimes Mennonites are too inclined to work only with other Mennonites in our missionary outreach. Is this a fair criticism? How do we balance a proper commitment to MCM and to the work of the larger church of Jesus Christ? 

 

3) What is our role within Mennonite World Conference as regards the mission of the church? 

 

4) What is the place of the evangelistic appeal for conversions in the overall mission of God, as well as in the mission of the church? 

 

5) Which mission agencies are part of the Mennonite world as SMC experiences it?

Big Churchy Words: Justification

I have wondered how we might use this word, “justification”, in a normal sentence. I use it as a teacher, because I ask my students to write their essays using left justification only, with a ragged right margin. Some of you aren’t sure what I just said, because that’s still a fairly technical use of the word, even if it’s not a churchy word. [To illustrate: I typed this sermon “left-justified”.]

I gather (thanks to the resource of Wikipedia) that “Justified” was also a TV show that aired on American TV from 2010 to 2015, based in contemporary Lexington, Kentucky. Its basic idea was to dramatize the exploits of a US Marshall, Raymond Givens, who made his name through shooting a mob hit man in a “controversial but justified quick-draw” contest. From the story arc, we can guess that the show wrestles with the idea that bad and violent actions are sometimes justified by the good results they bring.

This show introduces us to several basic ideas in the word “justification”.

• Justification assumes the rule of law, in which people are either just – righteous (or good) people, or unjust – bad people.
• Justified is a legal term, indicating that someone has been found to be in compliance with the law.
• Behind the rule of law lies a further idea – that we should want to be just or righteous people, i.e., people whose lives fit with the good.

When we start to speak theologically, we go deeper and further. Consider the passages we read from Genesis and Romans.

Genesis 15

Abram’s encounter with God is one of a sequence of encounters in which God promises that Abraham and Sarah will have many descendants – God said, “Look up at the sky and count the stars—if indeed you can count them. So shall your offspring be.” The point of the passage for our purposes comes in the final verse: “Abram believed the Lord, and he credited it to him as righteousness.”

I chose this passage because Paul uses this verse in several places to invite people to trust God. Romans 4 and 5 use this verse to help us understand what the church means when we talk about justification. (See Romans 4: 3 and 22.)

Romans 5

•           Verses 1 to 5: Paul notes that we are “justified by faith.” On another day, we could explore the way that God’s people experience trouble in this life. “Suffering produces perseverance, perseverance character, and character hope.” That is to say, the troubles of our lives lead to God’s glory revealed in us as God’s Spirit cares for us. Today, we note simply that “justification”, whatever it is, comes through faith.
•           Verses 6 to 8: We were powerless and “ungodly”, but Christ died for us. This “for us” assumes a substitution in which we face death, but Jesus dies in our place. What exactly that “for us” means is part of what Lee explored two weeks ago as he preached on atonement. Whatever else it means, Jesus’ death demonstrates God’s love for us. Our care group was studying a book some time ago in which we read about two American soldiers in Iraq. They were close friends throughout the war there, until one day when a grenade was thrown into the place they were sitting. The one closest to the grenade looked at his friend and smiled, then threw himself on the grenade. He was killed instantly, but his friend lived. The author used that sacrifice to remind us that God loves us so much that he “threw himself on the grenade that would have killed us”. How that exchange works belongs in further conversations about “atonement”. For us this morning, it is enough to say that God loves us and that we live because God loves us.
•          Verses 9 to 11: Sin has made us “enemies of God”, and we can expect God to destroy God’s enemies. In that dangerous situation, God saves us through Jesus and makes us God’s friends – “reconciled with God”. Next week, Lee will take us into the waters of reconciliation, so I say no more here about that. Only this: That, being “reconciled with God” and therefore God’s friends, we have real life!
•          Verses 18 to 21: At the end of the chapter, Paul locates our enmity with God in the way that we share in Adam’s sin, and he locates the saving action of God in the work of Jesus. All of which we receive by faith, like Abraham – trusting God to make us what God wants us to be.

Justification, then, is the story of God making us right when we went wrong. God justifies us through the work of Christ. This we call “God’s grace”. We receive this grace by faith. Faith is our response to God’s grace at work in our lives. And Paul promises that “where sin increases” – that is, wherever human rebellion makes life destructive and horrible – “God’s grace increases even more.” [Notice that this story is the opposite of our world’s story, in which we have to “justify ourselves”. We cannot make ourselves “right with the good”, “consistent with the reality of God’s creation.]

Do We Get It?

There’s a problem here. As I look around the congregation this morning, I see people who are for the most part good people. We have been tried in the fire, and God has reshaped our lives. Can Paul’s description apply to us? Do we feel as though we live “where sin increases”? God’s grace has increased in our lives, and we thank God for dealing kindly with us. Do we even need “justification”?

Go back to the TV series, “Justified”. The US Marshall at the centre of the series appears to be a generally good man, truly desiring justice – “law and order”. He does some things that are questionable on the way to stopping the bad actors from doing bad things. His actions are justified by their results, but he remains a person of questionable character. In North America, we worship power and success, so we are often willing to justify bad actions by their (apparently) good results.

That kind of thinking is wrong. The whole of Paul’s argument leading up to this chapter has been to show that all of us – Jews and Gentiles, men and women, religious and irreligious – all of us “fall short of God’s glory”. We fall short of what God wants us to be. Which brings me back to my comment a moment ago, wondering if we really think we are that bad, wondering if we believe that we fall short of what God wants us to be.

A Brief Example

Some time ago I was at supper with some friends, and one of them was describing a recent event in his life and then burst out, “I was surprised at how I reacted! I didn’t know I was so vindictive!” I would not describe my friend as vindictive. He works hard to show care to other people, but in the case he was describing, something in his character surfaced. I admire his willingness to name it.

The truth is that such feelings lurk beneath the surface for most of us. (I would say: “all”, but I am not the judge of all people.) This week as I was cleaning out the coffee maker, the lid slammed down and cut my hand. I was alone at home, and the shouting that followed reminded me that an uncomfortable level of anger lurks beneath the surface within me. The part that scares me is how easy it is for me to fail to see what lies in my subconscious. [This kind of thing happens often enough to let me know there really is a problem. I say no more here: My job is to work that out elsewhere.]

Have you experienced depression or despair? Depression can be anger turned inwards against one’s own innermost being. Do you find yourself wishing that God would remove someone from the face of the earth? Hatred of others can grow out of hatred of evil. I don’t want to preach about politics, so I will say no more, except to say that only by God’s grace is sin removed from our lives.

God loves us, and so Jesus died for us. His self-sacrifice “justifies” us – something we could never do for ourselves. Marshall Givens in the TV show is not truly “justified”. He remains a man who has killed other people. He remains someone who is separated from God by his own choices to act violently. Only God can justify him. And God will do so, if – like Abraham – he believes God and receives God’s grace, making him righteous, making him the person God wants him to be.

Without God’s grace, every one of us is separated from God and deserve death. Through God’s grace, we are reconciled with God and receive life. God makes us right. That’s justification!

What Do We Do? The role of sanctification

From this description, justification is all God’s work. God makes us the way that God wants us to be. The Bible uses many images to describe this new way – “new birth” or regeneration is one of the most common. The point is expressed in 2 Corinthians 5: “If anyone is in Christ, he/she is a new creation.” We become new people when God makes us new. Obvious, when you put it that way! Just as we become new people when we are born again.

Making us new is God’s work, but we have a part to play – the part of response. “Abraham believed God, and God ‘justified him.” We believe God. We live into the new person God has made us. We open ourselves to the fullness of God’s Spirit at work in us. This is what we call “sanctification” – being made holy, filled with God’s Spirit.

In Romans 6 and 7, Paul explores the way that our tendencies to sin that lurk beneath the surface struggle with the new person God has made us. He finishes his description thus, “Thanks be to God who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ!” Then come his stirring words: “Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, because through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit who gives life has set you free from the law of sin and death. For what the law was powerless to do because it was weakened by the flesh, God did by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh to be a sin offering. And so he condemned sin in the flesh, in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fully met in us, who do not live according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.”

For this morning, we note just this much from Romans 8: God “justifies” us – makes us righteous – so we live that way through the presence and power of God’s Spirit within us. This “sanctification”, then, is our response to God’s work in us. We embrace God’s Spirit and open every door of our life to God.

I have heard described this way. Your life and mine is like a house. When we choose to follow Christ, he saves us and we give him the key to the front door and the title to the house. That’s justification. But this house has many rooms, and there are doors down dark corridors that we have never explored. Whenever we find another one of this unexplored rooms, we fish out the key and open it and give it to God’s Spirit to clean up and live in.

Conclusion

Big words: justification and sanctification. A simple core at their centre: God loves us and we grow in God’s love. Paul understood this. He ends the long section (chapters 1 to 8) in which we find our passage this morning with a soaring description of God’s love: “What can separate us from the love of God? Nothing! Absolutely nothing! (Romans 8: 31 to 39) No matter what happens to you in this life, God has your back. We give ourselves to God completely, and in return God gives us life to the full.

Steinbach Mennonite Church

2 February 2020

Genesis 15: 1 to 6

Romans 5: 1 to 11, 18 to 20

Genesis 15: 1 to 6

The Lord’s Covenant with Abram

15 After this, the word of the Lord came to Abram in a vision: “Do not be afraid, Abram. I am your shield, your very great reward.”

² But Abram said, “Sovereign Lord, what can you give me since I remain childless and the one who will inherit my estate is Eliezer of Damascus?” ³ And Abram said, “You have given me no children; so a servant in my household will be my heir.”

⁴ Then the word of the Lord came to him: “This man will not be your heir, but a son who is your own flesh and blood will be your heir.” ⁵ He took him outside and said, “Look up at the sky and count the stars—if indeed you can count them.” Then he said to him, “So shall your offspring be.”

⁶ Abram believed the Lord, and he credited it to him as righteousness.

Romans 5: 1 to 11, 18 to 20

Peace and Hope

5 Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, ² through whom we have gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand. And we boast in the hope of the glory of God. ³ Not only so, but we also glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; ⁴ perseverance, character; and character, hope. ⁵ And hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us.

⁶ You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly. ⁷ Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous person, though for a good person someone might possibly dare to die. ⁸ But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

⁹ Since we have now been justified by his blood, how much more shall we be saved from God’s wrath through him! ¹⁰ For if, while we were God’s enemies, we were reconciled to him through the death of his Son, how much more, having been reconciled, shall we be saved through his life! ¹¹ Not only is this so, but we also boast in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation.

…

¹⁸ Consequently, just as one trespass resulted in condemnation for all people, so also one righteous act resulted in justification and life for all people. ¹⁹ For just as through the disobedience of the one man the many were made sinners, so also through the obedience of the one man the many will be made righteous. ²⁰ The law was brought in so that the trespass might increase. But where sin increased, grace increased all the more, ²¹ so that, just as sin reigned in death, so also grace might reign through righteousness to bring eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Questions:

·         What does justification mean?

·         Why do we need to be “justified”?

·         How does justification happen?

·         What does justification lead to?

·         What does it look like every day?

Bonus Questions:

·         Can you think of hymns that help us sing about “justification”?

·         How does sanctification fit into the picture?

·     I said that “God has your back” when bad things happen. How do we experience God’s love when life falls apart?