I've felt a little at odds with God
lately. I liked a girl for a year. I waited for the right time. Finally the time came and she said yes. We dated for two months and then it ended
abruptly. And now, many weeks later, I'm
sitting in a lonely chair processing the breakup and I have found myself asking
a couple of questions over and over.
"Why did this happen?"
And "what did I do wrong?"
Throughout the relationship, I always reminded myself that if I just
followed Jesus everything would be ok; if I just loved like Jesus the details
would work out. I genuinely believed
that. Well everything did not work
out. I felt like God abandoned me, or
maybe He never listened in the first place.
"I followed you God, I loved like you, I pursued you and everything
went to hell." It seemed like God
lured me into a trap. Either that or
life has no meaning and I am just a delusional trying to convince myself that
God knows who I am.
I was forgetting that God never made
that promise. He never said if I
followed him everything would be ok. He
never said that relationships would all make sense and work out if I just loved
as well as He did. God commanded us to
do those things despite the results, and have faith in Him that it is for the
best even when it doesn't work out. The
beginning of the book of James comes to mind, "Count it all joy, my
brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds, for you know that the testing
of your faith produces steadfastness. And let steadfastness have its full
effect, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing." James doesn't say "if you follow Jesus
then you won't have to go through hard stuff" or "Make sure you
figure out what you did wrong when everything seems to be falling
apart." He says when you
meet various trials just know that it's a good thing in the end. It's actually surprisingly encouraging to me
right now to know that hardships and suffering are just as much a part of the
life of a Christian as of anyone else.
Hard times in life come and go and just because you are going through
something difficult doesn't mean God has abandoned you or you were acting
outside his will.
The book of Job has been my greatest
source of comfort the last month. Job
was a great guy who loved God and was blessed tremendously with family,
friends, and good business; then one day for no apparent reason everything was
taken from him. Job went from praising
God for all the ways He had blessed him, to cursing the day he was born. As he struggles to find meaning in all of it
and wrestles through serious doubts about God and the purpose of following Him,
I feel better about my own situation and circumstances. God didn't provide a magical fix to all
life's pain, but he gave us people to relate to when we are going through it
and He tells us that even when it becomes literally impossible to find the
meaning in the suffering that there is indeed meaning; but His plans are bigger
than our vision and comprehension. The
tests of life aren't symptoms of something going wrong, they are bringing
perfection and completion.
So I guess in the end I am finding
meaning and encouragement after all.
Even sitting in an armchair in my bare-walled bachelor pad, processing a
breakup in dramatic self-absorption, I find that God's words bring healing and
inspiration and even now in my blinded condition I am a little better able to
understand God and life. So don't be
like me and get mad at God if you don't understand the why and don't conclude
that you are outside his will if things aren't working; but be encouraged, God
doesn’t cause all things to happen but He does cause what does happen to work together
for good for those who love God because neither death nor life, nor angels nor
rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor
depth, nor breakups, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to
separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.
