When things are going your way, it is easy to trust the Lord. But when painful trials come into your life, leaving you frustrated, anxious, or despairing, do you trust Him then?
In the face of adversity, many people wonder, Does God really love me? and conclude that a truly caring Father would not allow sorrow and difficulty to touch His children's lives.
Oftentimes they start to question whether or not He is even able to do anything about our circumstances.
In Psalm 50:15, God said to David, "Call upon Me in the day of trouble; I shall rescue you."
Can we rely upon Him to do that?
It is important for followers of Jesus Christ to understand that He is not only able but also trustworthy to fulfill every single promise in Scripture. Even when we cannot fathom why God would allow certain situations to occur, there are three absolute essential truths that form the basis for trusting Him no matter what.
The first truth is that God is perfect in His love.
In other words, He always does what is best for us. If we really believe this, we will trust Him even in our most difficult trials. But Satan, who wants to undermine our faith, frequently takes advantage of Christians' troubles by calling the Father's motives into question. He whispers, "If the Lord really loved you, He would not have allowed this to happen"—he wants us to associate the sting of spiritual discipline with a lack of divine caring. However, the exact opposite is true.
Hebrews 12:6 says, "Those whom the LORD loves He disciplines, and He scourges every son whom He receives." So, while human thinking says peace and happiness are a token of divine love, the Bible says that difficulty and discipline are actually evidence of our membership in God's family. The reason is simple: the Lord cares for us so much that He will not allow us to stay as we are. Instead, He wants to transform us into the likeness of His Son.
We can depend on God's love because of His character—it is His very nature to love. (1 John 4:8) The Bible says, "In Him there is no darkness at all" (1 John 1:5); in other words, He is absolutely holy, righteous, and perfect and therefore could never mistreat one of His children. He will always do what is positive and caring in our life.
Calvary is another proof of God's profound love for mankind. We were all in dire need of forgiveness and rescue from the penalty of sin, but we could not save ourselves—our debt could be satisfied only by the payment of a perfect life. (Deuteronomy 17:1) The heavenly Father made our salvation possible by sending His Son Jesus to die on the cross as our substitute, which is indisputable evidence of His sacrificial, infinite love for humanity. (Romans 5:8) God's love is also revealed in the covenant expressing His intention to make us His children. (Jeremiah 31:33). Once we trusted Jesus Christ as our personal Savior, we became members of God's family. And our perfect heavenly Father is patient, loving, and kind toward us; He understands that we are children learning to live in this life.
God loves us flawlessly. Every single thing He performs or permits in our life is an expression of His love, though He allows some situations that we, in our humanness, think could not possibly be for our good. But remember that God is omniscient—He sees the end from the beginning and knows exactly what fruit will come from our pain and challenges. So while we may not understand His reason for allowing certain hardships, our difficulties in no way indicate He is anything but a good God.
The second essential truth is that God is infinite in wisdom.
He never has to poll the angelic host—or anyone else—to get a consensus about the correct action to take. In His unlimited wisdom, He always knows what is in our very best interest and acts accordingly. Regardless of what our circumstances look like, we ought to remember that God knows the optimal course of action in every situation and can do only good for His children.
Sometimes we look at difficulties facing us and think, "Well now, Lord, I know You are infinitely wise, but I think You must have forgotten something." Be assured He has not overlooked a single factor. In our limited understanding and reasoning, we simply do not know every detail. We may have all the information that is humanly possible to gather, but God is aware of everything influencing the situation as well as all the potential consequences for you and those around you. Therefore, He alone comprehends the totality of every single decision we make. And because He is infinitely wise, He simply cannot make a mistake. (Proverbs 3:5-6)
On occasion, we may be able to understand what God is up to, but oftentimes we cannot. While every situation is 100 percent clear to Him, He is under no obligation whatsoever to let us in on the rationale for His actions or decisions. For example, God did not reveal why He let Joseph languish unjustly in prison for a number of years before elevating him to the position of prime minister. (Genesis 39-41) Nor did He spell out why the Israelites had to live over four centuries in Egyptian bondage before He miraculously rescued them and made them into a nation. (Exodus 12:41)
While we have no right to expect to know God's reasons, our lack of such information is the very thing that creates our feelings of frustration, anxiety, and doubt. Consider the irony of the situation. If we in our limited human wisdom could completely comprehend God's motives and actions, that in itself would be cause to doubt Him, since His thinking would be no better than our own! But the fact that God's logic vastly supersedes ours (Isaiah 55:8-9) is why we can trust Him—we have no legitimate reason for doubting because He is an infinite, all-wise God who knows the best thing to do in our life every single time.
The third essential truth is that God is completely sovereign in His control.
He has perfect authority over everything in creation. In other words, if even one tiny event in the universe happened outside of God's power and control, we could no longer trust Him—in that case, we could not have absolute certainty that He would work every situation for our best interest. But we can trust Him because He is sovereign and therefore has perfect, complete control over every last detail of life.
When Pilate asked Jesus, "Do You not know that I have authority to release You, and I have authority to crucify You?" the Lord answered him, "You would have no authority over Me, unless it had been given you from above" (John 19:10-11). Earlier, Jesus reassured His disciples that not even a common sparrow—worth only half a penny—could fall to the ground apart from the Father's will. (Matthew 10:29) In other words, whether the circumstance is large or small, God has absolute control.
You might ask, "Then what about fires or plane crashes or terrorist attacks? Where is God in all that?" He is still in total control, though this is a difficult idea for the human mind to reconcile. Some people find comfort in the idea of luck, fate, and chance because trusting God can seem difficult when tragedy strikes. But what happened to God's perfect love, infinite wisdom, and total sovereignty if luck, fate, and chance play a role? These words shouldn't even be in the believer's vocabulary—we would never be able to trust God if events could take place outside of His control.
We live in a wicked, vile world where we are subject to the consequences of sin. Many occurrences which are not in God's ideal will are allowed through His permissive will despite the pain they cause. Why?
Because in His omniscience, God knows what is ultimately best, including long-term consequences of tragedies that seem heartless and cruel. But we should not doubt God or throw away our trust when we lack understanding. Instead, we should surrender to Him, accepting by faith that He is good and worthy of our full trust.
Your life and mine belong to our loving, sovereign, all-knowing God, and nothing can touch us except what He allows. Sometimes that includes hardship and suffering, which leaves us wondering, How can this possibly be good? And yet many people who have gone through tremendous trials later look back and say, "I hated the difficulty while I was going through it and wondered if God had deserted me. But now, on this side of it, I can see what He is up to." While not everyone gets such spiritual insight, it happens frequently enough that we can take comfort, realizing God has His purposes and with perfect timing will bring blessing from our trials. (Romans 8:28)
So when you face struggles, remind yourself that our loving Father has your best interest in mind. He wants you to trust Him as your personal Savior and surrender your life to Him. There is no reason to doubt Him, because He is perfect in His love, infinite in His wisdom, and sovereign in His control of the entire universe.
Why should believers ever fret, when even in the deepest, darkest valleys of life, there can be abiding joy and confidence? No matter what befalls you, the all-loving, all-wise, all-powerful heavenly Father has you in the cradle of His hand.
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YOUVERSION BIBLE PLAN:
Here is a bible plan to explore this topic further:
PRAYER:
Father, thank You for being totally trustworthy. No matter how chaotic the world may seem around us, You are always in control. Help us to trust in You at all times, knowing that one day You will make all wrongs right. In Jesus’ name, amen.
VIDEO MESSAGE:
In the midst of the chaos, there’s a hope you can cling to. In this message, Pastor Craig Groeschel shares two prayers you can pray that will help you build your obedience to trust God and to surrender to Him what you cannot control.
VIDEO: SONG BY CORY ASBURY
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