Don’t confuse God with Life.
This quote comes from one of the greatest books I have ever read. Disappointment with God by Philip Yancey is a hard hitting, no nonsense approach to dealing with times that God “let’s us down”. I suggest you get a copy for yourself AND a friend.
This quote explains in 5 words why many Christians stumble and falter when difficulties come. I lose my job. My child gets sick. I get sick. A loved one dies. Random tragedy shatters my life and dreams. Why God? Why! Why! Why!
Logic says, “If God is all powerful, all good, all loving and I serve Him then His power, goodness and love will ensure I have an easy life with no problems.” That makes sense to me. How about to you? I would believe that if I didn’t have or read His Word. Unfortunately, and contrary to what many of today’s name-brand preachers proclaim, it just ain’t so.
Hard times are part of life – especially the Christian life. Life can stink and Christians are not exempt. I’ll give you a dollar if you can find one Bible character used by God who did not have hard times.
Living in this world ensures we are going to have problems, pain, loss and grief. Following Jesus ensures you will have a friend who goes through them with you.
To be honest, I wish following Him ensured He would save us from all the evils that befall normal, mortal men. Sure would make it a lot easier to convince people to follow Jesus. “Come be a Christian and nothing bad will happen to you. You will have no problems and nothing but sunny days.” Who could resist that invitation?
Instead, from the start, Jesus said, take up a cross. Come, follow me and die. Not very good PR. Not the best way to get volunteers to sign up for your program.
But we cannot confuse Life with God. Bad stuff happens because we live in a fallen world. Bad stuff happens because we are not in heaven yet. It rains on good people and bad people. Bad stuff happens. The only choice is, do we want to have to face the crises alone or have a friend who understands loss, grief, rejection, the deepest pain known to man – have Friend like that go through it with us.
God has promised that if we trust in Jesus, He will give us eternal life as well as abundant life. Before this, we were dead and worse, we did not know that we were dead and due an eternal punishment. He owes us nothing more than what has already been given. Our place is to be thankful and give Him the worship that is more than deserved. Our calling is to see saved and discipled others who get rained on in this fallen world but do not have any hope. We need to get our focus off the few minutes of light affliction that we have(and are promised when we obey Jesus) and onto the glory of God