When Evil Wins: God's Sovereignty Over Evil and Suffering
God's sovereignty does not mean every tragedy is secretly good, that grief should be rushed, or that evil carries divine approval. It means God is never at the mercy of human rebellion, and that he can redeem what he never delighted in. That distinction is not a small one; it is the difference between a faith that flatters suffering and a faith that tells the truth about it.
Does God Redeeming Evil Mean He Approved It?
There is a question most people never ask out loud in church: where is God when real evil happens? Not the abstract kind. The real kind. On March 3, 2026, Tim Tebow sat before the United States Senate and reported that over 89,000 children remain unidentified in the International Child Sexual Exploitation database. A staff member standing beside him at a protection center, looking past a counseling room full of teddy bears and toys toward a wall topped with razor wire, leaned over and said, "Isn't it such a thin line between tortured and treasured?" God redeeming evil is not a comfortable conversation. And Pastor Travis Woernley, delivering this message to Miracle City Collective in Titusville, Florida, did not make it comfortable. He made it honest.
Acts 8 begins not with revival but with a funeral. Stephen, a faithful, Spirit-filled, real human being who served widows and bore witness to Jesus, has just been murdered. Saul of Tarsus approved the execution. Devout men buried Stephen and made great lamentation over him. What is important here is that the text does not skip the grief. Suffering and faith are not opposites in Scripture. The Bible does not tell mourners to call evil good because God is in control. It stays at the grave long enough to feel the weight of what happened there.
There is a dangerous shortcut people reach for when pain hits. They say, "Everything happens for a reason," and what they mean is: this must have happened because God wanted it. That sounds spiritual. Pastor Travis named it plainly as something else. The Christian hope is not that bad things are secretly good. The Christian hope is that God is good, that God is sovereign, and that God redeeming evil is possible even for things he never delighted in. Those are three different claims, and collapsing them into a cliché does real harm to real people in real pain.
What Do Christian Grief and Lament Actually Look Like?
Christian grief and lament are not signs of weak faith. They are faith refusing to lie about the brokenness of the world. That phrase deserves to land before moving past it. Lament is not unbelief. It is the honest acknowledgment that something died, something sacred broke, and rushing past that to appear strong is not faith; it is performance. Christian grief and lament have deep roots in Scripture, from the Psalms to the book of Job to the moment Jesus wept at the tomb of Lazarus before raising him from the dead.
Pastor Travis Woernley returned to the story of Joseph in Genesis to make this concrete. Joseph was thrown into a pit by his brothers, sold into slavery, and imprisoned on false charges. He was not spared the evil done to him. When God brought him face to face with his brothers years later, Joseph did not say it was fine or that betrayal was all part of the plan. He named what was done as wrong. He acknowledged the evil intent in his brothers' hearts. And then he said the thing that makes sovereignty real: what they meant for evil, God used for good. Not: the evil was secretly good. Not: the brothers did nothing wrong. The evil was real, the wrong was named, and God moved in a different direction with what sinful people intended for harm. That is Christian grief and lament lived across decades without shortcuts.
Someone in pain right now may need permission more than information. Permission to sit at the window and stare out at the razor wire and weep. Permission to stand at the grave and say, "This is not okay." Christian grief and lament are not a detour from faith; they are the road. Something that has not been acknowledged as wrong cannot be made right. Something that has not been declared dead cannot experience resurrection. The justification camp, the one that spiritualizes suffering and races toward resolution, is dangerous precisely because it leaves people with no honest ground to stand on.
How Persecution and Mission Move Together in Acts 8
Persecution and mission converge in Acts 8 in a way that is either deeply comforting or deeply disorienting, depending on where you are standing. Jesus had given the early church a clear mandate in Acts 1:8: be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all of Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth. The church had been faithful in Jerusalem. But the movement had not yet traveled outward in the full sequence Jesus described. Then Stephen was murdered. Saul began dragging men and women from their homes and throwing them into prison. The church scattered.
Where were they scattered? Into Judea and Samaria. Pastor Travis observed that Acts 8:1 mirrors the sequence of Acts 1:8 almost exactly, and that the direction of the scattering matches the commission Jesus had already given. Persecution and mission became the same event. Saul tried to silence the church; instead, he multiplied its voice. He tried to bury the movement; instead, he scattered seed. The enemy intended to spread fear; God scattered witnesses. The result recorded in Acts 8:8 is that there was much joy in Samaria. Great lamentation in Jerusalem. Much joy in Samaria. Grave to gospel. Sorrow to mission. Persecution to proclamation.
That movement from persecution and mission to widespread joy was not something Saul intended. It is not something the scattered believers planned. It is what happens when God, who is never at the mercy of human choices, works through what sinful people do to accomplish what he always intended. Persecution and mission will always look like opposing forces from the outside. In God's economy, they often become the same force moving in two directions at once. God is never surprised. He is never defeated. He already knows every move.
One honest step you can take today: write down one situation in your own life that you have been calling fine, that is not actually fine, and name it honestly before God without skipping to the resolution.
What Does Acts 8 Reveal About God's Sovereignty and Suffering?
Acts 8:1-8 is one of the clearest pictures in Scripture of what God's sovereignty over suffering actually looks like, as opposed to how it tends to be described. The passage does not resolve the tension neatly. It holds it. Stephen died. Saul approved. Devout men grieved. The church scattered. And God, without delighting in any of those events, used every one of them to accomplish what Jesus had already said he would accomplish in Acts 1:8.
The cross is the definitive picture of God's sovereignty and suffering meeting in the same moment. At Calvary, human evil and divine redemption collide in a single event. The worst thing that had ever happened was simultaneously the vehicle for the greatest rescue ever accomplished. That does not make Judas a hero. It does not make Pilate righteous. God's work in the world was in response to the evil acts, not the cause of them. God is sovereign enough to have seen every act of rebellion coming, to have known every consequence, and still to accomplish his purposes without being limited, surprised, or defeated by any of it.
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The Justification Camp |
The Lament and Redemption Camp |
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"Everything happens for a reason" |
"This is not okay, and God is still good" |
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Skips grief to reach resolution |
Stands at the grave before moving forward |
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Treats evil as secretly good |
Names evil as real; trusts God to redeem it |
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Spiritualizes suffering |
Acknowledges the cost honestly |
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Bypasses lament |
Waits for resurrection without lying about death |
When the Space Coast Carries Real Weight
Titusville sits at the edge of the Indian River, in the shadow of Kennedy Space Center, and it carries what many communities across Brevard County carry quietly: real loss, real families in real pain, and a hunger for something that does not require performance before belonging. Whether you are in Titusville, across the county in Melbourne or Cocoa, or anywhere along Florida's Space Coast, the questions Acts 8 raises are not theoretical. They are the questions people in this county are actually living with. Miracle City Collective meets at South Lake Elementary School in Titusville every Sunday at 10:00 AM. It is a small, new church meeting in a school. No pretense. No grand footprint. Just people trying to carry good news into places where the razor wire is visible.
God Can Redeem What He Never Delighted In
God did not kill Stephen. Sinful men did. God did not delight in the persecution of the early church. But God did not waste Stephen's suffering either. What began as great lamentation in Jerusalem became much joy in Samaria; not because the grief was erased, but because God's sovereignty and suffering do not cancel each other out. They produce witnesses.
If your life right now contains something that feels beyond redemption, something you have been holding onto because you are afraid of what it looks like to let go, that is where this sermon points. You are allowed to say it is not okay. You are allowed to stand at the grave. And you are also allowed to believe that the builder knows how to restore what he built, even when the damage was never part of his desire.
Reach out to Miracle City Collective and take the next step toward a community that tells the truth about suffering; connect here.
If you are just beginning to explore, the I'm New page walks you through what a Sunday at Miracle City Collective looks like and what to expect; start here.
Frequently Asked Questions
Q: Does everything happen for a reason according to the Bible?
A: The phrase is often used to mean God directly willed every event, including evil ones. Scripture does not support that reading. Choices have consequences, sin leaves real wreckage, and evil is actually evil. What the Bible affirms is that God is sovereign enough to redeem what he never delighted in, which is a different claim than saying he approved it.
Q: How can God be sovereign when evil happens?
A: God's sovereignty does not mean he causes or approves of evil. It means he is never at the mercy of human choices. People are responsible for their decisions, sin is real, and evil is real. What Acts 8 and the cross demonstrate is that God can work through the worst of human actions to accomplish his purposes, without those actions becoming anything less than wrong.
Q: Where is God when children are exploited?
A: This is a question Scripture does not deflect. God does not delight in the suffering of the vulnerable. The image of 89,000 unidentified children in an exploitation database is not hidden from a God who knows every image-bearer by name. The Bible calls the church to stand on the thin line between tortured and treasured, not because we are saviors, but because we know the Savior who is making all things new.
Q: Is lament compatible with strong faith?
A: Lament is not weak faith; it is faith refusing to lie about the world. The Psalms, the prophets, and Jesus himself grieved openly. Lament is how believers acknowledge that something wrong has happened without abandoning the conviction that God is good. Bypassing grief in the name of faith often produces spiritual fragility, not strength.
Q: What is the difference between God's sovereignty and God's approval?
A: God's sovereignty means he is never limited, surprised, or defeated by what happens in creation. God's approval means he takes pleasure in or directly wills something. The two are not the same. Judas's betrayal was not approved by God; it was sovereign over by God, who used the darkest event in history to bring salvation to the world. That distinction is what makes it possible to grieve honestly and trust God at the same time.
