Bestselling author Philip Yancey remembers a time when one Christian leader, whose name many believers would recognise, was going through one hard time after another.
His teenage kids were regularly getting into trouble and he was diagnosed with a rare form of cancer.
"I have no problem believing in a good God," Yancey recalls the man saying during a small group discussion. "My question is, ‘What is God good for?’"
It's a question Yancey has also pondered, especially during encounters with women struggling to feed their children, sex slaves or oppressed Christians in other countries.
"What can we count on God for? What difference does it make whether you believe or not? What difference does it make at a time of testing and challenge?" he asks.
The Atlanta native, whose books have sold more than 15 million worldwide, has had some theological training but he does not pretend to know the answer. In fact, he is famous for addressing commonly raised questions honestly, from an investigative standpoint rather than an authoritative one.
He took the same approach, as a journalist, when trying to provide some form of answer to the question "What good is God?" – which is also the title of his newest book.
Of course as a Christian, when he was visiting with people around the world who knew only poverty and shame or who were enduring emotional or physical pain, Yancey had to at some point stand up and declare the hope that he had in God.
But his own faith seemed to go through some transformation as he came away from the ten travels that he recounts in his book more convinced that faith really does matter and does make a difference.
That is easy to say when he hears Hilda (whose name was changed in the book), a Costa Rican, talk about how she was sold by her mother at the age of four into sexual slavery and the renewed life she is now living because of a Christian's helping hand.
But when he's back in America, where the news of the day is Lindsay Lohan and where more money is spent on beauty products than on education, it is a lot harder to conclude whether faith really does matter.
"Every day, the broader culture is tempting me to think about 'Am I driving the right car?’ ‘Do I have the right haircut?’ ‘Do I have enough money?’ ‘Am I wearing the right clothes?’ ‘How am I coming across?’'" Yancey said in an interview with The Christian Post.
"Really, we should be asking ourselves, 'How are we coming across to God?'"
Interestingly, Yancey says the hardest place to be a Christian is in a place like the United States – "a nice, prosperous country with a lot of entertainment options".
The sophisticated University of Cambridge, he believes, is a place harder to live out the Christian faith in than communist China or multi-faith India
