Blog

by Steve Risner

This week in my musings, I thought I'd share some thoughts concerning the trustworthiness of God. I've known far too many people who trusted God when it was easy—when everything went as they had planned. But when times were tough or a situation didn't work out the way they'd wanted it to go, all of sudden God didn't know what He was doing. He somehow had become untrustworthy and didn't deserve their time, love, devotion, or respect. I'm sure we've all seen it, or even some of us have experienced it, too. I would like to suggest to you that regardless of how things are going, no matter the circumstance or outcomes, God is worthy of our praise and of our trust. I base this statement on the Word of God. Let's take a look.

The book of Job, considered by most to be the first book of the Bible that was fully written and put together, has a huge amount of application and study. The gist of the story is this: Job was a righteous man. God was happy with him, so the devil asked to tempt Job into being angry with God. Satan believed Job only blessed God because God blessed him. God approved of Satan's plans to attack Job as long as he did nothing to Job physically. All at once, all of Job's possessions and his children were taken from him. But he never cursed God. He praised God anyway. So, Satan was granted permission to strike Job physically. As this happened, Job's wife said, “Are you still clinging to your integrity? Curse God and die.” Job's response was still to acknowledge that God is sovereign, and His ways are better. He says in Job 2:10, “Shall we accept only good from God and not trouble?” Keep in mind that after Job had lost all his worldly possessions (he was very rich), lost all of his children when a house collapsed on them, and he was very sick and suffering, he still chose to respect God and believe that God's ways were better—that He was high above all of us.

Think about that for a moment: Job suffered far more than just about any of us ever will and his question to his wife was, “Will we only accept good things from God and not bad things?” The deal is really found in Jeremiah 29:11. God says, “For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.” Here is God Almighty, sovereign Lord of the universe, telling us He has plans for us—and they're awesome! But He says His plans include not harming us. What's the deal? Well, I do believe that sometimes things happen to us because of us—we earn something bad that's happened to us. Sometimes not. So how does that work?

I believe that it's true that bad things can happen to us that are part of God's plan for us. Again, sometimes not, but it's definitely possible. The big picture is what God has in mind for us—His plans include eternity and, often times, impacting others for their good. The bottom line with Job, I think, is that God knew that in the end, none of the stuff that happened to Job on this earth truly mattered. His eternal destination was the big deal.

Now, I'm not suggesting that nothing that happens here is important. What I am saying is that it can be easier to deal with earthly trials and tribulations if we understand that heaven is at stake. God's plans are taking everything into account. His plans for us include spending eternity with Him in His awesome glory. Job, in all his sufferings—losing literally what would be equivalent to millions of dollars and losing his children and living in agony for a very long time—never abandoned his Lord. He looked to God for answers and didn't understand what was going on, but he never questioned God's goodness or His integrity.

Sometimes God's plans for us means we'll be healed. Sometimes it means we won't. Sometimes it means we'll have way more than enough. Other times it means we're in need. Sometimes God's plans for us include joy and peace and being on top of the mountain. Other times it could mean we're struggling in the valley, fighting for every breath and living in turmoil or adversity with others. But God knows what's going on and He's got great things in store for us.

Solomon, called the wisest man to ever live, repeatedly stated in the book of Ecclesiastes that this life is meaningless. What he's saying is this earthly life and all it involves—work, happiness, sadness, sickness, and so on—doesn't mean anything in light of eternity. (Check out Katie Erickson’s current blog post series for more on that.) Would you throw away everlasting life in eternal peace and glory with Jesus because you failed to grasp the importance of eternity (and the gravity of the alternative) and turned your back on God because you decided He didn't get something right? I would hope not.

We join this idea with James as he says in James 4:14, “Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes.” Our time on earth is so very short; what really counts is eternity. Let's keep it in perspective. If we live 100 years on this earth, that's nothing—it's not even a fraction of a drop in the bucket compared to eternity.

God's plans for us, if we are to believe Him, are awesome and for our benefit. We can choose to go along for the ride with Him, accepting that His plans are better than ours, or we can choose to reject Him and His plans and go it on our own. However, there are some things to consider if this is actually what we want to do.

1) We have to take responsibility for the outcomes. If we go it on our own, it's ours. When it crashes and burns (and it most likely will), we must own it. We also forfeit any reward we might have had from the Lord for sacrificing our will to His. In other words, if we choose to take responsibility for everything, we immediately give up any hopes of spending eternity in heaven with Christ because we can't possibly pay our way in. More on that in a moment.
2) God's plans for us are far better than our plans could ever be. He knows more, loves more, and is much wiser than we could ever hope. So in effect, we're sacrificing awesome plans for our selfish and often foolish plans. How does this make sense?

It's like this analogy: God is offering us a huge sum of money—say $1 billion. He's offering it to us if we want to take it. We just need to accept it. Or we can go it on our own—we can fight and scrape and sweat and bleed for whatever we can earn. The bad news is, at best, we can earn about $0.25. The ticket to ride to heaven for all eternity is $1 billion, so if we choose to go it ourselves, we lose and in a big way. If we accept the free gift of God and choose to trust Him with our future, we win and in so many ways. Most importantly, we win for all eternity.

God is worthy of our trust—our unconditional trust in His goodness, His love, and His wisdom. Keep in mind that trials, tribulations, sufferings, hurts, and loss are all part of living. We lose people we love. We can lose jobs or money. We can lose our health. But none of this is what we take with us to eternity. We take our soul to heaven and nothing else. This life is a vapor—it's like smoke that comes up from a flame. It's visible for a second and then disappears.

In the end, God restored everything Job had many times over. He blessed the man in this life for being faithful to Him when it was hard. That might happen for you and me as well, but it may not. God may allow us to walk through the fire so we are pure as the purest gold when we pass into eternity. Stay the course! God's plans for you are so much better than our plans for ourselves. He doesn't owe us a thing. He's already given us far more than we ever deserved. Trust Him!

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