Bill Johnson, the Senior Leader of Bethel Church in Redding, California, a leader loved and respected by many of us, went through one of the most painful experiences anyone could imagine. His wife, Beni, passed away. 

In a sermon offered only days after Beni’s passing, Bill made a profound statement while walking through his personal valley of the shadow of death. Bill said, “I don’t want my “why” to take me away from Him.” 

In every healthy and enduring example of faith, the presence of mystery will always be with us. We are not provided with answers to all our questions. At some point, we must move beyond the need for answers as to why some things happen and embrace mystery.

Bill went on to say that to experience a peace that goes beyond understanding, we must give up our right to understand. This is the value of God’s presence. His presence keeps us moving forward even when tragedy visits and we ask why. The Israelites were instructed to continue following the presence of God carrying with them all their unresolved questions.

I have seen good people become chained to the need for answers to all of life’s tragedies. That demand eventually will devolve into enslavement to their unresolved questions. It is an act of profound worship to surrender our need to know why something happened and offer that surrender as a sacrifice to God. At the point of surrender, we step into the wide-open space of mystery where the most profound forms of freedom exist – freedoms not experienced until a surrender takes place.

When I concluded 33 years of pastoral ministry and devoted my time to writing and speaking, I wrote a small book titled “Thoughts to Leave Behind.” It was a collection of writings I wanted to leave behind for our leadership team. The book included topics critical to maintaining a healthy focus when life presented its blinding challenges. Mystery was such an important topic that it became the subject of the book’s first chapter.

In that first chapter, I wrote, “Life and ministry can too easily become predictable and lose a sense of adventure if we live within human reasoning alone. Developing a sense of wonder and mystery will help you believe that something bigger and unexplainable is taking place. Wonder and mystery are spiritual pry bars that will leverage you out of the ruts of predictability.” (pg. 3 The Leadership Rock)

When we know something bigger and unexplainable exists beyond our present pain, we can stand up in the midst of our deepest sorrow and take the next step of faith empowered by our knowledge of the unfailing faithfulness of God. That step allows our faith to keep moving and not stall and die in the desert of our unanswered questions.