To My Flock at Marion:
Why Does God Allow Suffering?
The question “Why does God allow suffering?” is a complicated one. We believe in an all-powerful God who has everything in His control. This is true; God the creator of all things could control every detail of every life and every circumstance of life. What is difficult for us to understand as human beings is why would anyone who has the power to control everything choose not to. Unfortunately, we see control as the absolute best way to create order in our world. Fortunately for us, God, in His ultimate wisdom gave mankind free will, the freedom and ability to choose between right and wrong. Sin was mankind’s choice, not God’s, and with sin came death and suffering. Now that does not completely answer the question. God can still stop suffering and bring healing, and He does, all of the time. Suffering is a natural part of life and nobody is immune to it. Like everything else in our lives we tend to look at and dwell on the negatives and look past the blessings. Why does God ever intervene to make our lives better? Why does He protect us from so much evil which is all around us? We make it through a day and our attitude is “Why wouldn’t we?”, or we get through a tough situation or survive an accident and we attribute it to luck. There is no such thing as luck. God keeps us from far more than He ever allows us to go through.
The other question that we hear a lot is: Why do bad things happen to good people? This is another flawed question. Most of you know how I preach about this. Jesus, in His own words says, there are none who are good except God. Jesus is not comparing us to each other in that statement; He is comparing us to a Holy God and when compared to God none are good, and all fall short of His glory. God doesn’t judge mankind based on good or bad, God looks at one fact and one fact alone. When we stand before God all that will matter is have we accepted Jesus as our Savior or not. God has given all of mankind a way back to Him: accept the sacrifice of His Son, Jesus the Christ. I repeat this to you often because it is really the only thing that matters in this lifetime. But I bring this out again today to illustrate how God uses hard times and sufferings in the lives of both the saved and the unsaved.
Let me speak first to anyone who might be reading this who has not yet made a decision for Jesus. You are going through this life handicapped. What do I mean by that? Because of your refusal to accept Jesus you are going through life without access to God. No matter what happens in your life you can’t ask God for help through prayer. You can try to pray, you can sit down and maybe put together some nice words hoping that God will respond to your prayer, but if you have not come through Jesus you have no access. Jesus very clearly in the bible tells us that no one comes to the Father except through Him. Here is the other half of the equation: while you have no way of communicating with God, He loves you so much that He is still allowing bad situations and suffering to take place in your life. Now don’t get me wrong here, God is not sitting in heaven trying to make you miserable. He is not punishing you for not coming to Jesus. I truly believe this. If you are meant to be in God’s kingdom and you are repeatedly turning away from Him, God will pursue you. If you are one of God’s lost children He will give you no peace until you claim your salvation. When nothing seems to go right, when everything that you try fails, when no matter what direction you try to go you end up in the same bad situation, maybe, just maybe, God is waiting for you to finally choose His way, Jesus. Choosing Jesus will not guarantee that life will be smooth, but you will at least be going in the right direction and have the ability to ask for help. In a very real sense if God is pursuing you and you continue to go the wrong way, you are running against the wind.
For those of you who have committed your lives to Jesus, God allows you to go through some bad times and suffering for different reasons. I would like for you to read 1 Peter 4: 12 – 14 & 5: 6 – 11. There you will find some clarity for why we go through things as Christians. We must always remember that God loves us and causes all things to work together for good for those who love Him. God is making and molding His people into the perfect bride of Christ. We can always grow and become more in tune with God’s will for our lives. Sometimes God is seeking to make us more obedient. How many times do we just go our own way and never bother to ask God? When things don’t work out it’s not God’s fault, but through the failure we can learn to ask before we run ahead. How patient are you? We might think to ourselves that we could be more patient if people and things would go our way, but from God’s point of view the way for us to achieve patience is to put us in situations where it is required until we learn. I know, that is not how we want to learn, but God knows that it is the only way that we will. How proud are you? All of us can fall into the sin of pride. It is probably the most common of all of our shortcomings. Pride is dangerous. We are told in God’s word that pride comes before a fall. Over and over again we are told to humble ourselves; but it is a very difficult discipline. That’s why God many times puts us in humbling situations. It is not fun to be humbled; many times we have to discover that we don’t know everything, and others may see that we are wrong. Sometimes we can get so full of ourselves that we think that we are right about everything. God knows that our pride is leading us into danger, so He corrects us for our own good. The temporary suffering is far better than what the end result could have been. These are just a few of the many reasons why some suffering is necessary in the lives of Christians. I challenge you, the church, to study this scripture and find some others.
In Christ’s Love and Peace
Pastor Bob
23 May 2020
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