Amanda encouraged those who feel like there’s no hope that God promises an end to suffering.
RELATED: ‘We Stand With Israel’—Dallas Jenkins, ‘The Chosen,’ Says While Accepting K-LOVE Fan Award
“We’re seeing it in ‘The Chosen,’ where Jesus is telling the disciples what’s going to happen,” Amanda said. “And it’s not great news. It’s, ‘I’m going to die, I’m going to suffer, and you’re going to be scattered and they aren’t getting it,’ because, I think we are opposed to suffering.”
And that’s “because we weren’t made for it. We were made for right relationship and the whole world being in right working order,” she added. “So we’re rebelling against this ourselves, in our spirit.”
Amanda said that she challenges herself daily to find “encouragement in eternal things.”
“He’s told us the world is going to spin out of control, and he’s the ultimate solution,” she said. “And so I feel like there’s a lot of people that are looking towards certain leaders to fix things, and he’s like, ‘I’m the fix, and I am coming, and it is not going to look the way you want it to look.'”
Amanda told ChurchLeaders that she is having to “grapple” with the fact that although she wants to fix her daughter’s illness, God has “written” a different story.
RELATED: ‘Obsessed’—Gwen Stefani Responds to Blake Shelton’s Praise for ‘The Chosen’
Through their suffering, the Jenkins family has seen the gospel “spread like crazy.” Amanda said that she doesn’t think Christians “spread the gospel or receive the gospel when things are going really well. I think we are compelled out of our selfishness and out of our comfort to higher things when we suffer.”
“When things go well, I wander. I’m less disciplined about my quiet time. I am less desperate to experience the presence of the Lord when all is well,” Amanda shared. “I think that this is our opportunity to meet people in their suffering in ways that we wouldn’t if all was going well and to see [Jesus] as the solution to suffering.”
