I believe that God has a grand plan for the Universe, and that each of us has a job to do in that plan. I also believe that the relative “worth” of that job in the plan is a human misconception. Each job is of equal worth in God’s eyes, as each human is of equal worth in God’s eyes.
I also believe that The Plan holds not only the greatest Good for Man, but also the greatest Good for each individual person. This can be hard to reconcile for people who may lose a car, or house, or child, or spouse. How can that be good? I say it is good because it builds and shapes us the way God would have us built and shaped.
Does this mean these things should bring us no pain? Of course not. When someone joins the Marines they’re built and shaped, and it brings great pain. Experiencing pain, and expressing that pain, is very normal and right. I do not believe however, that it should bring anger and distrust.
When you say you Trust God, what does that mean? That you’ll trust Him to not bring you any pain? Trust him to keep your family healthy and whole? Trust Him to keep you happy?
What if He needs you to do something that hurts? That doesn’t make you happy? What if He needs your wife or husband or child to give their life? Do you still trust him? Do you still Love Him? I say that if not, you didn’t trust Him in the first place.
This week’s article from Terry Mattingly is about just that sort of thing. He discusses the fact that there are large groups of people in the world who live with great pain and difficulty every day, and deal with it while trusting God. When someone like me loses their house and has to live under a bridge (I haven’t, and we don’t), and “loses faith in God”, they are confused. Why would something like that make one lose faith in God? Do we choose to only follow Him when it’s easy?
Read Terry’s article, if nothing else he’s better at stringing words together than I am, and it’s a good article.
Here Here! The Scriptures say we should consider it pure joy brethren when we go through trials. It does not say IF it says when. We are called to a trying, brutal, often heart-breaking life in following Christ.
But God has promised to give us the strength we need when we need it.
I, for one, am encouraged by the faith of these in other lands…
Dogfish
I haven’t experienced significant loss yet, but in spite of that I *have* been at a point where my entire world was shattered and my emotional and psychological pain were so bad that they became physical pain.
I agree with you that distrust should never be a part of that process, although I think that’s true more from a practical standpoint in that it’s trusting in our Father that gets your life back in motion again.
But I do think that anger can be important also. I’m of the opinion that God wired us that way. It can certainly be misused, but it’s been my experience that anger can be the greatest motivator, and also that anger at God can result in a quick education from Him about the real nature of the situation you’re in ; )
The problem is we misunderstand what “living by faith” really means. We often think it means trusting God to provide funds for the mortgage payment andy by doing so we are somehow being faithful. The fact is, as you point out, living by faith means we have faith in God himself – in his goodness, his wisdom, his *sovereignty* over the affairs of men – and believe that he is good even if we miss last month’s mortgage payment, even if he takes a child, even if we are afflicted with a terrible disease. God is good not because he does good things. He is good because he is God. Our circumstances have *no* bearing on his goodness, other than as a reflection of his wisdom and sovereignty.