God Is Good
And we know that all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are the called according to His purpose.
“If God is so good, why does He allow evil?” This is always at the top of the list of questions about God, along with, “Why does God allow war or tragedy or injustice?” These very questions have a flawed premise: that we can determine what is good or not good about God. By asking these questions, we are really passing judgment on God.
Let’s just take the basic question that presumes that if God is all-powerful, then He isn’t loving. Or, maybe God is loving, but He isn’t all-powerful. These assumptions place all responsibility for evil on God.
Yes, God could have made a world with no suffering, a world with no pain, a world in which we are all robots. But that is not what God wanted. He wanted us to make the choice ourselves whether to love Him, so He gave us free will.
When we look at many of the problems in our world today, we can place the blame not on God, but on man. God gave us standards to follow. He gave us laws to govern a society. But what does humanity do? It says we don’t need God. And when we inevitably reap what we sow, we say that God blew it. But we really brought it on ourselves.
In spite of it all, we know that God answers prayer. Sometimes God can use our problems to bring us to Him. God can even use suffering in our lives.
The great hope we have as Christians is that one day, we will be in heaven with Him. So whatever suffering or trials you are facing right now, know that if you are a Christian, God has something good beyond this life for you.
For more relevant and biblical teaching from Pastor Greg Laurie, go to www.harvest.org.
Copyright © 2006 by Harvest Ministries. All rights reserved.
Scripture taken from the New King James Version. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved. Bible text from the New King James Version is not to be reproduced in copies or otherwise by any means except as permitted in writing by Thomas Nelson, Inc., Attn: Bible Rights and Permissions, P.O. Box 141000, Nashville, TN 37214-1000.
