Thesis 54- We must believe that all we experience God sends because He loves us.
There are two great evils that travel side by side with hardship and suffering, two lies hissed by the forked tongue of the serpent. One says “God is absent. He either doesn’t care, or can’t help.” The other says, “God did this, because He hates you.” As the most potent lies contain an element of truth, there is one here- “God did this.” Every hardship you have ever been through, no matter how horrific, was ordained by the hand of God before you were even born. It came about, whatever secondary or proximate causes there might have been, ultimately because of His sovereign decretive will. He is never absent. He always cares. He is ever able to help. And He not only doesn’t hate you, but loves you with an infinite, personal and immutable love.
Karma isn’t just a female dog, but a lying female dog. When things go well for us it is not because we have done well. We haven’t, ever. They go well for us because of what He has done. Our standing before the living God is wrapped up in our union with Jesus. If the Father loves the Son, and you are in the Son, the Father loves you. If you are in the Son, and the Father hates you, the Father hates the Son. When things go poorly for us it is because of the same love from which the good times flow.
Why would God, in His love, send hardship into our lives? He is the Potter and we are the clay. His end is to remake us, filthy, muddy clay that we are, into vessels of His glory. That means spinning us in circles on His wheel until we are dizzy. It means His hand pressing into us. It means of deluge of water. And finally it means the blazing heat of the kiln. It is His process, and boy howdy can it hurt. That said, His promise is that what we go through is not worthy to be compared with the eternal weight of glory (II Corinthians 4:17).
This glorious truth ought to ease the pain He puts us through. Believing Him to be indifferent or hostile makes it worse. Reformation in the church requires that we submit to all that He has told us. He, altogether holy, unable to lie, calls on us to trust Him. He tells us “When through fiery trials thy pathway shall lie, My grace all sufficient shall be thy supply. The flame shall not hurt thee, I only design, thy dross to consume and thy gold to refine.” We are to count it all joy, knowing the testing of our faith produces patience (James 1:2).
Every good and perfect gift is from the Lord (James 1:7) and everything is from the Lord (Isaiah 45:7). Which means of necessity that everything we go through is a good and perfect gift from the Lord. Bless us O Lord with the gift of gratitude for all Your kind blessings, even those that hurt.