This week we’ve been exploring ways to trust God when it’s hard to trust God. When we plead with him for help with our suffering but he seemingly refuses to do what we ask, our confidence in his love and power can be shaken. Today, let’s consider three biblical explanations for such a response from our all-loving, all-powerful Father.
How do we trust God when he doesn’t do what we’re trusting him to do? Each of us experiences disappointment with God on occasion; only the most naïve would expect the Lord to give them everything they ask for every time they ask for it. However, when a true challenge arises and God does not give us what we ask, our faith can be shaken to its foundations. We can question whether God is who the Bible and the Christian faith claim him to be. Or we can question whether we are who the Bible and the Christian faith claim us to be.
The Psalms explore the full range of human emotions from a God-centered perspective. Some Psalms leap off the page as they call worshippers of the one true God to lift their voices up to him with thankfulness and joy. We also see Psalms in which the writer laments the horrible position he finds himself in. The Psalmists speak to God honestly about the pain they are facing. They speak clearly and honestly about their pain. When Christians sing songs that sound like the lament Psalms, we gain a vocabulary for how we talk to God when we are suffering.
If you are grieving or otherwise suffering this Christmas week, I urge you to “seek the LORD and his strength; seek his presence continually!” (1 Chronicles 16:11). Go to him directly and personally. Put words to your pain; ask him your honest questions. If, as Philip Yancey put it, you are “disappointed with God,” know this: he is not disappointed with you. He welcomes your honesty (cf. Isaiah 1:18) and will meet you where you hurt.
One reason many struggle to make God their anchor in the storm is that they blame him for the storm. If he is all-knowing, all-loving, and all-powerful, why are tornadoes allowed to kill little girls clutching their dolls? Why are pandemics allowed to ravage the planet? I have struggled with this question personally.
I was privileged to talk with Chris Brooks on his national radio show yesterday. We discussed the tornado outbreak and the recent high school shooting in Michigan that occurred not far from the church where he serves as pastor. Chris made the profound point that God uses suffering to point us beyond this world to the next and to call us from our finitude to his omnipotence.
Tragedy is a tragic fact of life. It is normal and natural for us to ask with the psalmist, “Why, O Lord, do you stand far away? Why do you hide yourself in times of trouble?” (Psalm 10:1). But the fact is, God does not hide himself in times of trouble. He grieves as we grieve (cf. John 11:35) and walks with us through the “waters,” “rivers,” and “fire” of our broken world (Isaiah 43:2).
Few Americans blame God when bad things happen in their lives, according to a new Pew Research Center survey that looks at how people respond to suffering in the wake of a pandemic that has killed more than 750,000 Americans.
Unlike other religious figures, our Savior has experienced the pain he now redeems. He walked through the same terrifying storm from which he spared Peter (Matthew 14:22-31). Here are 5 ways we can join God in redeeming diaster.
Whether you are struggling with physical disease like former America's Got Talent contestant and cancer warrior Jane Marczewski, dealing with the kind of harassment Gov. Cuomo was recently accused of committing and fostering, or suffering in some other way, you can be as honest with God as the biblical psalmist.
