96. Theology of Suffering with Jon Seidl

Carrie: Welcome to Hope for Anxiety and OCD episode 96. I’m very excited about today’s episode. I have an interview with Jon Seidl who’s the author of Finding Rest and also the president of Veritas Creative, which is a digital consulting firm, Jon happened to send me a copy of his book, so I’ve been able to look at a lot of the topics he covers are things that we often talk about on the podcast.

We’re gonna take a little bit deeper dive in today on the Theology of Suffering and from his own personal story with anxiety and OCD, what he’s learned and the benefits to us suffering, because oftentimes we run from suffering, want to get away from it, and we don’t see how important it is as part of our Christian journey.

Carrie: Jon, welcome to the show.

Jon: Thank you so much for having me, and I’m so excited to talk about this topic. 

Carrie: You are a writer, really, and have been writing thousands of articles in various formats, and various topics, and one day you just wrote an article and came out about your anxiety and OCD. Was that huge, like sharing that part of your story?

Jon: Yeah, it was one of those where it’s not like I woke up that morning and I said, okay, today’s the day. Right? But at the time, I was editor-in-chief of the non-profit. I’m second, and I was in charge of especially over all of the writing that went out from the organization and I needed an article for our blog.

We had just been dealing with a lot of heavy stuff recently on the blog. I just kind of got that prompting of like, okay, you know, you need an article. And everything that’s been published up to this point recently has been very vulnerable. I was was like, “What is that thing that I can be vulnerable about?” That kind like started welling up and I’m like, no, no, no, no. Anything but that, right? You just kind of step it down.

Carrie: “No, God no. Don’t let me know.”

Jon: Yes. As I went throughout the day, it was like, I need to write about this. It’s time. Then the title of the article ended up being It’s Time to Tell the World My Secret.

I literally just shut my office door and I sat down and it just poured out, and I was like, okay, all right, here we go. And so I published it and wow, the response was just incredible. Overarchingly, I mean, was positive towards the article, but what really took me aback was how many people said, you know what?

I am a Christian and I’ve been suffering in silence, or I’ve brought this to my pastor or my parents, and I’ve just been told to pray about it more, to have more faith to repent. Maybe there’s some sin in your past or maybe you just, you drank too much this past weekend or we’re a little too mean to this person, and so this is just what happens. That was similar to my upbringing and got this kind of righteous anger and just knew that, okay, I need to be talking about this more. That really started the journey and that was the impetus for the book. 

Carrie: That’s awesome. That’s very similar to some righteous anger that I had before starting this podcast. You know, I’m tired of these negative messages towards Christians, and I wanna put out something more positive. That’s about reducing the shame and stigma, but also letting people know there’s help and there’s hope, and you don’t have to continue to suffer in the same way that you were suffering before. Not to say that we won’t continue to have struggles sometimes, but with the level of shame, at least that they were dealing with related to their mental health. 

Jon: So much that says, again, I don’t know if you guys have covered this, but yes, it’s just about believing more, right? 

Carrie: Having enough faith. 

Jon: Yes and I grew up in a very charismatic household that was subscribed to a kind of prosperity gospel-type teaching. Your father owns the cattle on a thousand hills. If you just want and claim victory in this area of your life, then it’s yours. And if it doesn’t happen, it’s a problem with you. What we’re gonna talk about today is that is not the proper theology of suffering that I came to learn as a result of my diagnosis.

Carrie: Did it take you a long time to get diagnosed with OCD specifically? 

Jon: Yes, only because of the way I was brought up. It was so taboo and so ingrained in me not to get medication, not to go to a doctor for mental health that it’s like I never really considered it growing up. I always knew there was something different about me. I just kind of figured I’m a little high-strung. That’s what I told myself. That’s the term I used. My grandma was high-strung. My mom was a little high-strung, my sister was high-strung, and I’m like, okay, I’m just wound a little tighter. When it finally came to a head, as many people may know, marriage has a way of revealing your blind spots.

Carrie: Absolutely.

Jon: About five years into my marriage, there was an incident and my wife just kind of said, okay, listen, I’m not going anywhere, but I can’t continue like this. You understand this and people listening to you will understand this. It was like the wrong sweetener was in my coffee. We went to a coffee shop.

I told her, “Hey, I’m going to the bathroom. I don’t like Splenda, so make sure that there’s sweet and low in it. I came back, took a sip of the coffee, and there was Splenda in it, and it just ruined our entire weekend. 

Carrie: Wow.

Jon: I could not stop ruminating on that. I think that when the person you love is broken down in front of you saying, this is not working, that’s when I finally decided to get help. That was in about 2014, I believe. I went through my whole life up until that point just thinking, eh, okay. It’s a little annoying. I’m a little high-strung like I said, but not thinking that anxiety in OCD.

Carrie: What was that journey like for you? I know you talked in the book about telling your mom like, Hey, I’m taking medication now, and there were some struggles there.

Jon: That was not a fun conversation and it wasn’t what my mom said because I think my family has gone through an evolution since the way that we were when I was younger. She didn’t say like, “Oh my gosh, you’re sinning. How dare you.” It was the dead silence on the other end of the phone. It was the, well, I just don’t know what I did to raise you kids wrong.

She started inter like, “Oh my gosh.” Again because there’s always someone at fault in that type of theology. It’s like, what did I do? Right? Then you get into things about generational curses and this is her. “Did I not pray hard enough for you?” I think I remember getting off the phone, I talked about this in the book, and I just cried like a baby in my wife’s arms.

I just wanted some acknowledgement and it just didn’t end well. I mean, since then, listen, my mom and I, it’s not like we had to reconcile because I think by God’s grace there was a grace that he gave me for her, but yet even in that grace, it can still be heartbreaking. We’re in a great place.

She had to sign a release from the publisher to be featured in the book. It’s nothing that she didn’t know was gonna be in there, but God has, like I said, not quite reconciled. I think that’s too dramatic of a word, but we’re in a great place. But it was still hard. 

Carrie: Talk to us because we have other people, like family members and friends who listen to the show as well, that are trying to help someone. What was it that you really wanted to hear, whether it was from your mom or somebody from the church?

Jon: I think for me, from my mom, even just more of the bare bones of, I’m so sorry you’re going through that. 

Carrie: Yes. 

Jon: Because of the theology and the way that we were raised, like her mind immediately went to, “Okay, I did something wrong, or this isn’t right, or What’s going on?”

There wasn’t a,” just sit with me in this for even just a minute and acknowledge that this is hard.” This has been that point of 20-something-odd years of struggle that I’m just now starting to unpack. I’m looking back at things when I was 8, 9, 10, and I remember that. My mind just starts getting blown in so many ways.

I think for me, I wasn’t even looking for her to be like, doing an about-face on mental health medication. I was really even just looking for a bare minimum of, I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry you’re going through this. I can only imagine how tough this is. And so that is my encouragement to family members. You don’t have to promise the world.

You don’t have to say, okay, I’m gonna drop everything and just fly to you right now if you live across the country or something like that, but just acknowledging that this is tough and everything that they may be going through is a bare minimum and yet can go a long way. 

Carrie: Talk to us about what you’ve learned through suffering with anxiety and OCD, whether spiritually or other things.

Jon: I think for me, and this goes back and you had asked that earlier question like. How long did it kind of take me to realize adopting what I call a proper theology of suffering wasn’t an overnight thing? The origins of it were, that I grew up in Wisconsin, went to college in New York City, and I live in Dallas now.

I was back home in Wisconsin for Christmas break, the DJ came on the Christian radio station that my stepdad and I were listening to and said, “We’re big Packer fans up there, right? I’m a Packer’s owner. ” I got their fake Super Bowl rings behind me. And he said, “Reggie White who had this title, minister of defense,” He was a preacher. He was evangelizing in the locker room, like you talk about a godly man and the DJ comes on and says, “Hey, Reggie Whites died of sleep apnea.” And my stepdad looks at me and goes, “Hmm. Well, that’s sad because Reggie must have had an unrepentant sin,” and I was like, “What?” And he’s like, “Yes, the bible promises us 70 years. If that doesn’t happen, obviously there’s an issue there.” I just remember getting so upset in like this righteous anger. That really started my journey, because I know there’s something inside of me that says that’s not right, but I don’t know why. Over the next few years, I started really absorbing the book of Job and so it was the book of Job that really, I would say is the first domino in my understanding of a proper theology of suffering.

I’m sure your listeners know the story of Job. There’s a little detail in there that I think a lot of people missed, and it’s this. It’s that Job is called a righteous and upstanding man. There’s this conversation that opens the book of Job between the devil and God, and I think a lot of people and me too, right?

You kind of assume that “the devil goes to God and asks God if he can inflict all this stuff on Job. God says yes, just as long as you don’t kill him,” but that’s actually not the story. The devil and God are having this conversation and God brings up to the devil. Have you considered my servant Job? Wait, so God is the one that kind of, Hey, bad job. Sometimes God is the one that’s allowing these things to happen. Now, he didn’t cause it. The devil was still the causer if you will. Right? He was still inflicted, but God is the one that kind of allowed us. He could see that in the end. This was a story that needed to be told that needed to happen why?

Well, you get to two reasons for the job’s good and God’s glory, and that starts to form the basis of a proper theology of suffering, knowing and understanding that our afflictions are mental health situations are allowed to happen for our good and his glory. That’s the basis, right? And then we can just take off from there.

Carrie: Yes. One of the things you talked about was losing some family members pretty tragically, and the pain and the hurt that you went through for that. I really appreciated what you said about your mom saying, are you believing for healing for your stepfather? And I just want you to kind of talk through that response because I just feel like, oh, this is so powerful.

Jon: Yes and it was the middle of Covid and I was helping my church. We had gone completely online because of my digital media background and the consulting work that I do. I was in charge of filming capturing and editing and posting our services. There we were doing the Easter service and we’re getting ready to film it and my pastor’s giving the message and I get a call from my sister.

My mom is not in great health. Whenever my sister calls, even if I’m just like, Hey, is everything okay? Yeah, great. Okay. I’ll call you back. I answer, I answered it and she goes, “Hey, have you heard?” And I said, “Heard what?” She said Mike, who is our stepdad, collapsed at home. He came home from work early. He wasn’t feeling well. He started vomiting, and he collapsed. He’s in the hospital, but he’s unconscious and it doesn’t look good. Long story short, my stepdad, who, one of the healthiest people I know, the guy who said we’re guaranteed 70 years died on Easter Sunday within two days, and he had a massive stroke in his brainstem and went brain dead and that was it.

Ironically died before he was 70 years old. Again, one of like, you talk about prayer warrior, you talk about the guy who every time the church doors were open, my stepdad was there. TYhe most generous person too, sometimes my mom chagrin, my mom’s like, “Hey, we need that bread. I could use that bread.” He’s like, “Ah, they need it more.” When I’m sitting there, this was right before he died, my mom pulls me aside or we’re sitting at my brother’s kitchen table, I guess, and she said, they called me Johnny growing up. That’s my name. Everyone back home in Wisconsin calls me Johnny. She looked at me and she said, “Johnny, are you believing for a healing?”

It was one of those kind of out of body experiences that came out of my mouth? I knew it was me talking. I’m not saying I was taken over by the Holy Spirit, right? Or something like that. But it was definitely the holy spirit in a sense, giving me that. And I said, mom, listen, I do believe that Mike is gonna get a healing.

What I don’t know is if it’s gonna be on this side of glory or on the next, and if he doesn’t get it here, I know that the Lord is still faithful to give him a healing because he will wake up next to Jesus tomorrow, being able to talk and dance and all the stuff that he’s wanted his whole life. It was just kind of this seminal moment between my mom and I.

I’m not saying like right then and there, she’s like, oh my gosh, that’s the most amazing thing I’ve ever heard because she lost her husband the next day. But I think we lose sight of that sometimes. We say I’m gonna claim my healing. I’m gonna be healed now here when I want. And the Lord is saying, maybe I wake up every morning, I say, Lord, like please take this from me, and he hasn’t. So then what? That’s where the proper theology of suffering comes in. What I would say is, and I’ll expand on what I was saying earlier, is you look at Job, but then you look at Paul and you look and you see the story where Paul talks about the thorn in his flesh, and I think there’s some important words there where he says, to keep me from being conceited, if you just stop there.

That’s all you need to hear. I mean, it gets better, but to keep me from being conceited, I was given this thorn in my flesh. That is the summary of a proper theology of suffering because he was given a struggle that made him better and glorified God. I mean, I love Paul. You should be on the Mount Rushmore of faith.

Honestly, you know what I think, and if you think about Paul’s past, I think Paul had a proclivity to be a very prideful person, and that’s not me saying that I’m literally just using Paul’s words to keep me from being conceited. Here you have Paul. He says, to keep me from being conceited, I was given a thorn in my flesh and goes on to talk about how it does glorify God.

I think what we have lost in the church is the idea that our suffering, while in an unfallen world, God wouldn’t need to use suffering for our good in his glory, but we do live in a fallen world. Now, when you look at Job and you look at Paul, it’s like the Lord is saying, listen, I love you and because I love you, there are times that I’m gonna allow you to go through things.

Sometimes maybe it’s a day, maybe it’s a week, maybe it’s a month, maybe it’s five years. Maybe it’s your entire life because I know that I need to keep you from being conceited because pride is much harder and is gonna lead to much worse things than if I allow you to go through this and you have to trust me.

Carrie: Wow, that’s good. Obviously, like really being able to lean and depend on the Lord every single day. When you have a condition like anxiety and OCD and you don’t know how that’s gonna impact you, sometimes people can get really worked up when they just wake up in the morning, like, what’s it gonna be like today? And to be able to bring that to God and say, regardless of what happens today, I know that you’re with me and I know that you love me and I know that you’re for me, and somehow you’re gonna work this situation in my life for good. 

Jon: Here’s the thing, like someone once told me, they’re like, I was kind of talking on this and they pushed back, which I was grateful for, and they said, is that the same message to someone who loses a loved one tragically, or whose husband cheats on them and lives the family. And the way I respond to that is a, I’m not like out here rooting for you to go through bad things. I’m not out here saying that. I hope that you go through some of the worst crud in your life. I’m giving you a framework to make sense of it. Then I tell people, listen, I can’t make sense of my mental health struggle without that. I can’t make sense of it without the idea. And this is, I borrowed this from a pastor out in Phoenix and I name him in the book, can’t remember it off the top of my head, but where I get to a place where I don’t judge God by my circumstances, but I judge my circumstances by who I know God to be.

I know he’s good. I know he will work all things together for the good of those who love him and are called according to his purpose. Now, I grew up in a tradition that claimed that if you like, needed a good parking spot at Walmart, but I think it goes much deeper and it’s much more comforting than that.

Listen, the only way that any of this makes sense is by adopting that framework, that proper theology of suffering and knowing, okay, God, kind of those baseline problems that you do in like Philosophy 1 0 1 in college. If I know A to be true, and I know B to be true, I know A equals B and B equals C, then A equals C.

Carrie: Yes.

Jon: I know God is not bad. He can’t be bad. I need to start there and then work backwards in my circumstances, right? Okay, well then I know that God is gonna use this for my good and his glory. 

Carrie: That’s so good. I was thinking about my mom. She died of pancreatic cancer last year and it was tough because, kind of similar to your stepfather, she had been very healthy and was walking and she wasn’t overweight and she was eating right and doing the things. That was a big struggle for me because I said, God, I prayed and I said, God, I don’t understand. She literally served God her whole life was in church and involved in everything. I said, why did she have to go out like this? Because if you’ve ever watched somebody die from pancreatic cancer, it’s a very painful and very awful way to go, probably any cancer, but that one kind of hits you hard and hits you fast and really what God showed me through prayer in that situation was how much opportunity my mom got to witness to people in the hospital. Because if you’re on your deathbed and you know the Lord, you know what is holding you back at that point.

For her to give little informational tracks to people and different things and just say, Hey, this is what I believe, and I hope that you read it and take some time to consider it and think about it. That was the good that came out of that ending and probably a lot of things that I may never know on how God was glorified because I didn’t see everything behind the scenes and how he was working in other people’s lives who interacted with my mother.

Jon: I talk about my stepdad, but I also talk about my sister and it was a very similar situation. My sister was, did lead a very troubled life. She was an addict. She was in and out a rehab. She was in and out of jail. And she was going to pick up a part for her car. She had a retired mechanic who was helping her out.

They were in a van driving down the interstate and one minute they’re driving down the interstate. The next, someone from the other side of traffic going the opposite direction, crosses the median, hits some head on, and all three of them are killed instantly include my sister, who then left three kids.

Without a mom and looking at that funeral, I grew up in a smaller town in Wisconsin. We had to rent a local junior college auditorium for that funeral because so many people attended. And what that meant is so many people heard the gospel of Jesus and more people than I know that my sister ever told in her life because she was struggling.

In her death, more people were witnesses to Jesus than ever in her life. And again, we live in a fallen world. I’m not saying “Oh, that’s great.”Well, no. I mean, her kids now don’t have a mom and I don’t have a sister. yet the Lord takes what’s meant for evil, and I think that’s a good distinction too.

Well, I think the Lord allows things, right? There is also a prowling lion out there trying to seek, kill, and destroy. We can’t discount the fact that the devil is at work as well. There is spiritual warfare. There are things that he is putting into place, and yes, I guess we know that God could stop anything at an instant.

He doesn’t. Again, that’s one of those things that we know about God. We know that he’s good. We know that he can, but he doesn’t stop every tragic thing. What are those ultimate conclusions that leads us to, and so for me, it’s like seeing how many people were introduced to Jesus at her funeral was just mind-blowing.

With my stepdad and my sister, let me put it this way, those deaths broke certain people in my family. I’m not gonna say who but there’s a lot of hardship that has come from those deaths. And in God’s grace, Well, I’m still navigating there. I’m still in therapy for staff. My sister still comes up and my stepdad still comes up in therapy, but I was able to navigate those deaths in a way that a lot of other people in my family were not.

I don’t say that to bolster myself, but I say it to bolster God because the only way was because I had gone through this suffering. I had gone through these trials of like being undiagnosed in my mental health and then getting diagnosed and then doing that work of Paul and all those things that then when those tragedies struck, I was in a much better position to acknowledge that I serve a God who allows things for my good in his glory. And my wife sometimes jokes. She’s like, why aren’t you more messed up? You know? Like, only by Jesus.

Carrie: Absolutely true. 

Jon: I’ve actually now gotten to a place where I thank God for my mental health struggle, and it’s in the sense of like, it’s in looking at what Paul said, That’s really got me there is that like if I didn’t have my mental health struggle, who knows?

Maybe I’m the most maniacal, prideful, arrogant, conceited, mean nasty. I don’t know, fill in the blank with whatever adjective you want. But because Paul can say to keep me from being conceited, I can say, Lord, obviously I’m still struggling with this because I need to still be struggling with this. Maybe there is humility and grace that I can give to other people not just in mental health situations. but to my wife and my kids in certain situations because I’ve struggled and know what it means to be in the depths of despair. And by the way, it still happens, right? I just got out of a depressive episode that happened over the fall that I can say, you know what, God, thank you. I thank you for my mental health struggle because obviously, I’m a pretty rotten person without it even more rotten than I already.

Carrie: Yeah, and just thinking about it, you’ve had a lot of success in your life. You’re the president of a company, you’ve written a bunch of articles, you’ve had your share of accolades on your book, finding rest and other things that you’ve written, and I could see that. I could see how you could kind of lean on that and say like, “Okay, well look at me. I’m successful.”

Jon: If you’re watching the video version, you can see I always have a CS Lewis book behind me. He has done so much great writing on pain and suffering. He has that really popular quote, and it’s popular for a reason that basically like God shouts to us in our pain. It says, megaphone to rouse a dead world.

Guess what? You and I are really hard of hearing how many times, I mean, I’ve fallen into this trap a lot when things are going well, in my spiritual life. It’s way more easy for me to set that on cruise control. When things are going well, I am nailing it since. This is awesome. My kids are behaving. I haven’t had a depressive episode or an anxious thought or an OCD thought cycle and whatever, and that’s when I really easy for me to put my spiritual life on pause, I’m good, but it’s in those times where man, I just can’t get out of bed. Then I’m like Lord, I need you. My prayers become shorter during those times, but man, they become a lot more desperate and I think that’s when we crawl up into his lap and find that comfort. At least I have.

Carrie: One thing I like to ask all of our guests who are sharing a personal story towards the end is, what would you tell your younger self who is going through anxiety or OCD?

Jon: That’s a good question. I’ve thought about this. There’s a lot of things. First of all, like I think back to my first intrusive thought episode, and it’s even more scary for a reason. I’ll get to you in a second, but. I was going to get the mail. We lived in the country in Wisconsin and so we had this long winding gravel driveway past a couple of old barns and it’s an old farmhouse.

I remember we would always basically draw straws for who had to get the mail at the end of the driveway. And because in Wisconsin, like nine months out of the year, it’s like 30 degrees. I remember my sister and I drew straws and I got the short draw. And so I get out there and I go to get the mail and I look through it.

Never thought about this before, but it’s like there’s nothing for me in here. Not even a piece of junk mail. And I just could not get that out of my head. I tell you that because that’s set in motion. Way more of that kind of intrusive thoughts and I think, I thought I was. When I said I knew there was something different about me growing up, I think a lot of times that ended up being I’m just like, shame. Not shame in the sense of, I knew what it was, but just frustration. Maybe that’s the better word. And so I think I would tell myself, it’s okay, you can’t control this. And in the end, my anxiety in OCD I talk about this as in the book, is like there’s a physical component. My brain is broken, but there’s also a spiritual component. I’m willing to recognize that now the church has historically treated it only as a spiritual issue. While the world has historically treated it only as a physical issue. it’s both and, but in the end, it’s a pride issue. It says I can control everything, not just I want to, but I can. So then in my OCD all the stuff that I do, the rituals and all that, it’s a fight for control.

I think I would tell myself, listen, this is not something you can just control. I think I would tell myself, you’re not alone. I remember growing up in the household that I did that they said like, my mom would say live like all the people at school wanna, would want what you have. And I remember thinking this was in my high school, ninth grade, freshman year hallway.

I remember walking and doing classes and like someone had said something in class and looking back, it was pretty innocuous. I just was ruined. And I remember thinking, walking down that hallway, why would anyone want what I have now? Even at the time, I didn’t know I had it. I just like, whatever this is, no one would want that.

What I’ve gotten to the point of is I’d say, you’re not alone. You can’t control this, but then I would also say, you are broken. One of my favorite messages of all time from a pastor here, we went to the church for a long time, Matt Chandler, who said, I was talking to someone the other day and they said Christianity is a crutch for the week.

I told them, absolutely, it’s a crutch for the week. You just don’t realize that your legs are broken. My legs are broken. Your legs are broken. It would be to rest in the fact that, yeah, you are broken. And to the conversation I had with my mom, we’re not gonna be fully healed of anything until the next side of glory. Our bodies are gonna continue breaking down. Right? 

Carrie: Right.

Jon: You can probably hear my voice right now. Allergies here in Dallas area and it’s just like we’re gonna suffer from that kind of crap. Tell kingdom come so long answer. You got me on a good day when I’m just nice and long winded. Those are what I would tell my younger self.

Carrie: I think that’s great and I appreciate you taking the time to talk with us today. Everyone, find the book Finding Rest and there’s also a workbook companion to go with the regular book, however, you say that, but the first book and the workbook both called Finding Rest. Just so we’ll put the links in there to Jon’s information for you if you are looking for him.

Jon: Well, thank you so much for having me. The book has been such a great conversation starter. I just got back actually from a luncheon that we were talking about offline, the opportunities to talk to people who even aren’t Christians, because I think so many people are struggling with this, right? And if you can bring up that proper theology of suffering that we were talking about, here’s the beauty of that.

It doesn’t just apply to mental health. It does apply to the person who’s lost their job. And again, I’m not saying you like, if someone comes to you tomorrow and says, I lost my job, or my husband or my wife just walked out on me, I’m not saying that you go, okay, I wanna show you in job one, one this really cool thing. No, sit with them for a little bit, but as long as you have that understanding, pray for the right time to bring that up and to engage people in those type of conversations. But Yeah, it can apply to mental health. It can apply to so many other things, and that’s the beauty of the gospel. It’s not just a one-trick pony. It answers everything.

Carrie: Yes. Very good. 

I love podcasting because I have gotten the opportunity to interview some wonderful people with amazing stories. So thank you for tuning in and listening today. We will be back with you in a couple of weeks for a compilation of some of our stories of hope episodes. We’re going to do a couple episodes on that as we get prepared and ready for our 100th episode that will be coming out, which is going to give you a hundred tips on managing anxiety,

Hope for anxiety and OCD is a production of By the Well Counseling. Our show is hosted by me, Carrie Bock, a licensed professional counselor in Tennessee.

Opinions given by our guests are their own and do not necessarily reflect the use of myself or By the Well Counseling. Our original music is by Brandon Mangrum. Until next time, may be comforted by God’s great love for you.