Rick Vollema

Order of Service

• Prayer of Invocation
• Sermon
• Benediction

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Sermon Title: All Things Work Together for Good

Scripture: Romans 8:28

I. The Reality of Suffering and the Limits of Human Comfort

A. Well-meaning words often fall short when someone is suffering B. Silent, present comfort — weeping with those who weep — can be the greatest encouragement C. Romans 8:28 is often misapplied as a quick fix; the promise requires lived faith to understand

II. God's Providence Displayed Through Personal Trial

A. The 1985 loss of a first son, Joshua

1. Grief tested the marriage but ultimately strengthened it
2. The speaker's father — a stoic factory worker — weeping at the graveside was a formative moment B. The 1998 diagnosis of terminal medullary thyroid carcinoma
3. Diagnosed at the end of seminary with no health insurance and four young children
4. God providentially worked through the lack of insurance: the unusual circumstances led to proper identification of a rare cancer (tall cell variant) and treatment at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda
5. Had the speaker remained an engineer at Ford, the cancer would have been misidentified and mistreated through standard insurance protocols
6. Jeremiah 29:11 was given by three unrelated sources within days of the diagnosis: plans for welfare, not harm, to give a future and a hope
7. Just before a planned megadose of whole-body radiation, the cancer unexpectedly began to recede; the researcher had no medical explanation
8. The cancer was eventually declared gone C. Subsequent trials: a 2018 pancreatic mass and 2020 seizure-like episodes causing disability and the eventual surrender of full-time pastoral ministry D. Two daughters diagnosed with Alport syndrome (a rare genetic renal disease)
9. The eldest daughter later testified that watching her parents endure the cancer taught her how to face her own kidney failure and eventual transplant

III. The Community of Faith Formed Through Suffering

A. The seminary community rallied around a student with terminal cancer and no insurance — prayer gatherings, fundraising, and service B. A Detroit church candidated and called the speaker two days after the terminal diagnosis — an act of faith that itself testified to God's work C. Suffering became a training ground for pastoral ministry

1. The speaker acknowledges he would not have been equipped as a pastor without these trials
2. Watching others suffer, and being seen in suffering, forms empathy and pastoral wisdom

IV. A Wrestling, Pilgrim Faith

A. Ralph Erskine (1685–1752), minister of the Abbey Church in Dunfermline, Scotland: Faith without trouble or fighting is a suspicious faith, for true faith is a fighting, wrestling faith B. Jacob wrestled with the angel and would not let go until he received a blessing — Genesis 32 — a model for persevering faith in suffering C. Hebrews 11 and Abraham: the patriarchs knew the real promise was a heavenly homeland; trials press believers to live as pilgrims with eyes fixed on that hope D. The world is broken because of sin, but God has not abandoned it or us

1. Keep your eyes open for what God is doing — he is always active, every moment
2. The good God brings may not be the good we expected, but he always brings good for those who love him