Where's God?

Disclaimer

I'm going to talk about our God. Your God may not be the same. If not, that's ok. I'm just talking about our God.

If God is a God of Love - why are we experiencing this? Where is God?

We want God to be the parent who makes things right. We want God to do what we want Him to do.

Where we are coming from

But who is our God? Is He a just a "force?" Is He "love?"

Trudie and I believe that our God is the God described in the 66 book collection known as The Bible. We believe that this collection was written over 600 years by many different authors and yet has a consistent message. We believe that God, as described in The Bible, has the power to do anything He chooses. We believe that He is the maker and creator of all things. We believe that God is very DIFFERENT from us. We believe that this difference is based in His GOODNESS. We also believe that He wants to have a personal individual relationship with each us.

We all have messed up at one time or another and having messed up we cannot be in the presence of TOTAL GOODNESS. We believe that the Bible says that without the payment of punishment deserved for those "messes" then we can not have anything to do with TOTAL GOODNESS. We believe that nothing we can do will restore us to total goodness.

We believe that the Bible says that God loves us so much that He came up with a way to have relationship with Him. Since nothing we could ever do could blot out the blackness of our offenses, He took the punishment of our offenses on Himself. He did this so that if we accept His payment for our bad deeds, we could have a personal relationship with Him now and forever in eternity. We believe that God did this by setting aside most of his OTHERNESS and became one of us - as a man - Jesus Christ. We believe that Jesus, as described in the Bible, was not just a wise man, nor just a prophet. We believe He was who He claimed to be. God. We believe that Jesus never "messed up." We believe He accepted the punishment that He didn't deserve but that we deserved. And by doing so, He offers to us the gift of making things right between God and each of us. By accepting that we are powerless to EVER make up for our bad stuff and by accepting that He, Jesus, God has done all that was needed to wipe our slate clean, we can enter into a new relationship with Him. In this new relationship He calls us His children and we can call on Him as Daddy.

That's the kind of relationship Trudie and I have with our God. You may not agree and that's OK but that is our belief.

So why did God allow this?

We believe that God will heal this cancer. We are just uncertain if it will be healed soon and Trudie be allowed to live many more years or if it will be healed with Trudie being ushered into eternity. There is no cancer in eternity so it will definitely be healed when she dies. We all, of course, will die someday - it is just a unknown as to when.

But if God loves us as a Father loves his children, why is He allowing us to suffer this? A good Father wouldn't allow his children to suffer - or would He? From our standpoint of human Fathers we wouldn't knowingly allow our children be in pain needlessly.

But let's look at things from the child's point of view. If a parent denies a child sweets before a meal doesn't the child consider the parent being mean? When a parent sets boundaries around what a teenager is allowed to do doesn't the teenager accuse the parent of being unfair? From the child's point of view they are truly suffering. From the parent's point of view the goal is a greater good. That goal may be an appetite for vegetables or safety from temptation beyond what they have developed so far to bear.

Where does that leave us?

God is good and loves us His children. We may feel like He is being "unfair" in making us endure this. But this we can believe, if Christ endured the cross for us so that we can have a right relationship with him, He has a greater good that is the goal of all this. By the Cross we have assurance that nothing that comes our way can separate us from His Love.

We also know that God is walking through this with us. Many, many things have happened that have let Trudie and me know that God hasn't abandoned us through this. Almost daily we see the "footprints" of God along our path. We know He is walking beside us. We believe that although we may not know all that God is up to, we can know that He is up to something of which this is a part. We trust in Him and that He is working for a greater good.

Why Should We Pray?

If God is going to do what He has in mind, why pray? Because the Bible says He wants us to pray. He wants us to beseech Him. He wants us to ask Him for what we want.

So please, keep praying for us. Please pray for healing. Pray for strength for both Trudie and I as we deal with the practical things of this time. But also pray that God will use this to draw people to desire a relationship with Him. And that they, too, can find the true happiness that we have found in spite of this disease.

Resources

Louis Gigilo 9/16/07 message The Anchor of Hope available at North Point Community Church Messages Online (for the next week it is available free as an MP3 download or Podcast ) .

John Piper and David Powlison message Don't Waste Your Cancer

Philip Yancy "Prayer - Does it Make any Difference? " This is a great book!