There is something underneath the anger you can’t quite name. It sounds like disappointment. It feels like betrayal. And it has God’s name on it. You prayed. You believed. You held on as long as you could. And then the thing you were afraid of happened anyway. So somewhere in the quiet, you decided — without maybe ever saying it out loud — that He let you down. That He was responsible. That if He were really good, really powerful, really in charge, this would have gone differently. Ryan Maher joins me for a conversation that goes straight to the root of that wound. Ryan is the founder of The Prayer Channel and Trust God Bro, the most-followed Christian channels on Instagram, and the author of The God Worth Trusting — a book born out of losing his mother to addiction, losing his friend Brett, and losing his faith in the version of God he’d been handed.
What he discovered in that wreckage was not a tidy theology but something far more durable: a distinction between a God who controls and a God who is sovereign, and why confusing those two things has done more damage to the church’s trust than almost anything else. We cover the difference between sovereignty and control, what it actually means that God is good at the level of nature and not just activity, and why the phrase “everything happens for a reason” is not only unhelpful; it’s a theological lie. If you have walked through something that feels impossible to reconcile with a good God, this conversation will not give you easy answers. What it will give you is a more honest starting place — and the invitation to build a history with the Lord that holds when the circumstances don’t. The question is not whether you can trust Him. The question is whether you are willing to let scripture define who He is rather than letting your worst moment do it.
Guest Bio
Ryan Maher is a pastor and evangelist who uses every digital tool available to share the Gospel, reaching hundreds of millions of people each month through the ministries he has founded and leads, including The Prayer Channel — the number one most popular broadcast channel on Instagram. He is the author of The God Worth Trusting: Restoring Faith in a Good God, a book he describes as the resource he wished someone had handed him in his own darkest seasons. Ryan and his wife, Brittany, are based in Michigan.
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Resources Mentioned This Week
- The God Worth Trusting: Restoring Faith in a Good God
- Healing What You Can’t Erase: Transform Your Mental, Emotional, and Spiritual Health from the Inside Out
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