Tag: faithful

Why Do Bad Things Happen To Good People?

Job 2:3 Then the Lord said to Satan, “Have you considered my servant Job? There is no one on earth like him; he is blameless and upright, a man who fears God and shuns evil. And he still maintains his integrity, though you incited me against him to ruin him without any reason.”

Some people believe that good things happen to good people and bad things happen to bad people.  They believe in the Law of Cause and Effect. But then why do bad things happen to good people? The book of Job in the Bible is a story about just that; bad things happening to a good person. I will be honest with you, the first two times I read the book of Job I was weary from what I perceived as constant complaining and wallowing from Job. But the third time I read it, I used a Study Bible and it helped me understand what was really going on.

Job was a man of faith, patience, and endurance. He was known as a generous and caring person and he was very wealthy. Then Job lost his possessions, his health, and his children. Job’s friends gathered around him wanting to help comfort him. But they wrongly assumed his suffering was a result of some awful sin Job had committed. They proceeded to try to convince Job to admit that he had sinned so that it would end his suffering, i.e. cause and effect.

Job was a patient man and he argued with his friends that they were wrong, that he had not done anything to deserve this suffering. But in the end, what broke Job’s patience was not the suffering, it was not knowing WHY he suffered. When God finally spoke, he did not offer Job an answer. Instead he drove home the point that it is better to know God than to know the answer.

God is beyond our comprehension and we cannot know why he allows each instance of suffering to come into our lives. Our part is simply to remain faithful. Job finally learned that when he had nothing else left, he had God, and that was enough.

Knowing God is better than knowing answers

Heavenly Father, when we are suffering, help us to remain faithful to you and to remember that knowing you is better than having all the answers. Amen

Large Family

Exodus 12:37 The Israelites journeyed from Rameses to Succoth. There were about six hundred thousand men on foot, besides women and children.

Everyone typically gets together with family for the holidays.  Do you have a large family?  If I add all my aunts, uncles and cousins together on both my mom and dad’s side of the family, we total about 58.  Our family is not huge, but it is still hard to keep up with what everyone is doing.

It says in the Bible that when the Israelites left Egypt, there were 600,000 men.  Scholars believe that the total number of Israelites that left, including women and children, is more like 2.4 million!  Now that is a big family.  Have you ever thought about the logistics of moving 2.4 million people?  It’s not like they could load up in a bunch of cars, buses, planes or even a bunch of trains because they wouldn’t fit, not to mention they didn’t have those back then.  In fact, that many people wouldn’t even fit in AT&T Stadium where the Cowboys play football.  The stadium only holds 100,000 people. 

What about communicating with that many people?  How on earth did Moses connect with 2.4 million people to let them know it was time to go?  Sacrifice a sheep.  Paint your door frame.   Roast the meat.  Eat fully dressed.  There were lots of details that needed to be relayed to the Israelites that night with very little time to spread the news. 

To try to put it in perspective, there are about 2.4 million people that live in the city of Dallas and the city of Fort Worth combined.  Now imagine that there was one man in charge of leading us all out of Texas.  If we started marching together in a single file line, the line would be 450 miles long.  If we started marching in a line that was 100 people wide, the line would still be about 45 miles long.  What I’m trying to do is help you imagine how incredibly large this group of people was.  It was crazy big. 

Over and over again, after the Israelites left Egypt, they started to doubt God.  They complained about the provisions.  They even stopped worshiping God and started worshiping idols.  I wonder if I was on a 40-year camping trip with 2.4 million people, would I start to grumble too?  But then I remember that God showed up.  He was a cloud of smoke during the day and a pillar of fire at night. He parted the Red Sea so the Israelites could escape the Egyptian army.  He sent manna from the sky so that they were not hungry.  He provided water from a rock so that they were not thirsty.  If I witnessed all these miraculous signs and wonders that God performed in Egypt against Pharaoh and on the journey in the desert, I hope I would have stayed faithful.

What about you?  Do you sometimes find it hard to stay faithful?  Christians still have struggles today, but we should never allow difficulties and unpleasant circumstances turn us away from trusting God.  Proverbs 3:5 says “Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding.”  You may not understand why God is taking you on a journey through the desert, but your job is not to understand His plan.  Your job is to trust the Lord.  Lean into God when you have doubts.  Look for Him in your everyday life.  If you seek Him, you will find Him.

Dear Lord, thank you for showing up in my life when I have doubts.  Please help me to stay faithful to you even during the difficult times in my life.  Amen