If God is righteous and just, why has he left my life in shambles? Often, we find ourselves facing situations that challenge our trust in God. We’ve said our daily prayers, read our Bible, have gone to church every Sunday, and even tithed our ten percent, yet, we find ourselves faced with financial difficulties, uncertainty about life direction, and turmoil over our relationships.
This trial is the fork in the road where believers struggle to find answers to justify their wavering faith in a God who could have but didn’t. If God is sovereign—omniscient and omnipotent, he should have foreseen my situation, stepped in, and changed the course.
So what do you do?
First, be honest with yourself and make sure that this question isn’t merely an intellectual exercise (or smokescreen to avoid God’s will).
Second, understand that we don’t and can’t know all there is to know about God. We can’t necessarily understand the connections between his kindness and our anguish. But the Bible continuously affirms that our Creator is kind and just so we can correctly assume that God allows these things for our benefit.
The best way to approach our turmoil is to wait and see how God acts on our behalf. Whatever evil comes our way, God will enter into it and bring something extraordinary from it—bringing good out of evil displays God’s rescuing power to those who love him and are called according to his purpose (Romans 8:28). It increases our trust in his loving care. What we need to know is that he loves and cares for us, even though we might consider what he’s doing to be confusing or cruel to us.
Abraham reached this rock-solid conclusion about life not on the grounds of the passing moment, but his long walk with God. So whatever might be happening right now to you, me, or our loved ones or friends, we can rest assured that what God is doing behind the scenes is merciful even without knowing the details. When we don’t get the meaning or purpose of the moment, we can be as sure as Abraham was that the Judge of all the earth will do right (Genesis 18:25).
Like Abraham, we will arrive at this same conviction about the character of our Creator. It takes the experience of walking through a series of long, dark, sometimes blind alleys to do so. There may be weeping for the night, but there will be joy in the morning. Wait for it; it is the faithful promise of our God (Psalm 30:5).
For his anger is but for a moment,
and his favor is for a lifetime.
Weeping may tarry for the night,
but joy comes with the morning.
-Psalm 30:5
-Photo by Andrew Coelho on Unsplash
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