The Lord is gracious and full of compassion, slow to anger and abounding in mercy and loving-kindness.
Psalm 145:8
It grieves me to see people live with a fear that God is angry with them because of their sins, weaknesses, and mistakes. God does hate sin, but He loves sinners and is ever-ready to forgive and restore us when we do sin. Don’t receive the lie from Satan that when you have trials and difficulties in your life God is punishing you for your sins. Although disobedience can bring unpleasant results, we must remember that when we ask God to forgive our sins He removes them as far as the east is from the west—He remembers them no more (see Psalm 103:10–12). Our sins don’t have to separate us from God’s goodness unless we let them. If God only blessed perfect people, then nobody would ever receive blessings in their lives.
The inherent nature of God is that He is good! He is good all the time, and He only does what works for good in our lives. We live in a world that is not always good, and at times bad things happen to good people. When they do, it is not fair, but God never told us that life would always be fair. He does promise us that He is a God of justice, which means He will ultimately, in His own proper timing, make all wrong things right. That promise gives me great comfort and it fuels my faith to continue believing God for good things even in the midst of trouble.
I am particularly fond of the following verse of Scripture…
Every good gift and every perfect (free, large, full) gift is from above; it comes down from the Father of all [that gives] light, in [the shining of] Whom there can be no variation [rising or setting] or shadow cast by His turning [as in an eclipse].
James 1:17
Everything good comes from God. We don’t earn or deserve God’s goodness, but thankfully we are on the receiving end of it. He is good because it is His nature to be good, and the Scripture above tells us that there is not even the slightest turning or variation in God’s goodness. It is impossible to live without the fear of God’s anger and judgment if we don’t fully believe that God is good to the very core of His being. Let me say again, GOD IS GOOD and He delights in being good to you! If we don’t believe He is good, then we will automatically believe that He is angry with us every time we make a mistake. We will also expect judgment and punishment from Him.
My father was an angry man, and anytime I did not please him I got punishment of some kind, but God is not like that. The truth is that we can repent of our sins, and instead of expecting anger and punishment, we can expect the enjoyment of God’s presence and blessing. God is not looking for an excuse to punish us; He looks, longs, and waits to be good to us.
And therefore the Lord [earnestly] waits [expecting, looking, and longing] to be gracious to you; and therefore He lifts Himself up, that He may have mercy on you and show loving-kindness to you.
Isaiah 30:18
This verse says plainly that God wants to be good to us. It goes on to say that He is looking for someone who is waiting for Him to be good to them. What are you expecting in your life? Do you focus on your mistakes and expect God to punish you for them, or do you repent of them and expect God to forgive you and show you His favor, blessing, and goodness?
I believe we should look for the goodness of God in our lives and make a really big deal out of it. Sadly, we often make a big deal out of our problems and challenges and barely notice God’s goodness. What we focus on is what looms the largest in our lives; therefore, we should fix our focus on things that increase our joy, not on things that steal it. If we don’t take notice of the good things that God does in our lives, we are in danger of beginning to think that somehow we have missed them and that perhaps God doesn’t love us as much as the people who have it good in life. Just imagine: We could be extremely blessed and not even be aware of it just because we focus on the negative things we experience instead of the good ones.
What we focus on is what looms the largest in our lives; therefore, we should fix our focus on things that increase our joy, not on things that steal it.
Janet is a woman in her early fifties and she is the wife of Harry and mother to Andrew, Joshua, and Lacy. They have a nice home, are financially secure, and are all in good health. Over the past five years Janet has grown increasingly depressed, and when she is asked what is wrong, she readily offers a long list of complaints. Her house is too small, her husband works too much, she never has any fun in life, too much is expected of her, and it seems that nothing good ever happens to her. A woman we will call Ann has recently met Janet through another acquaintance, and she has no family, has diabetes, and suffers from fairly serious back pain on most days. She also lost her job of 20 years recently, has had to start over in an entirely different line of work, and the pay is much less than what she is accustomed to.
As Ann listened to Janet lament her problems, she told Janet that she would trade lives with her in a second. She said, “You have someone who comes home at night that you can do things for and talk to. You have children who love you and that you can be proud of, you have good health and that is one of the greatest gifts you can have.” Ann went on describing the blessings she recognized in Janet’s life. Ann saw Janet’s blessings, but Janet could not see them because her perspective was damaged. She looked at her life and saw blessings she didn’t have that others did have, instead of looking at problems she didn’t have that she could have had if God had not been protecting her from them.
Sometimes after driving home in heavy traffic I think, I wonder how many accidents I would have had today if God wasn’t protecting me? When I get unhappy because I weigh three pounds more than my “target weight,” I try to remember the woman I met who had a metabolism disorder and was 150 pounds overweight. I spent a lot of years unhappy, like Janet, until I finally decided to be happy on purpose, and one of the ways I accomplish that is by counting my blessings—magnifying them, making a big deal out of them, celebrating them, and being thankful for all of them.
Some of you might be thinking, Joyce, I don’t really see that many blessings in my life, nor do I feel that God is good to me. I have had lots of loss and trouble in my life. If that is you, I want to strongly encourage you to “fix your focus,” and begin to seriously consider all of the ways that God is helping, protecting, and providing for you. Are you breathing today? If so, then you are a recipient of God’s goodness. Do you have a home, a job, family, or friends? If the answer is yes, then you are experiencing the goodness of God. Do you have food to eat, clean water to drink, clothes to wear, and can you walk, talk, hear, and see? If so, you should be rejoicing that God is good to you. Perhaps you don’t have all of these things, but you do have some of them and you can rejoice in what you do have. I can assure you that no matter how difficult your circumstances are right now, there are countless people in much worse conditions than you.
I recently met a woman while shopping who shared with me that she had experienced tremendous loss in her life, and because of it, she felt that she could no longer trust God. This is the case with many people. They are angry at God because things have not worked out the way they thought they should have in their lives. I am always saddened to see someone with this mind-set because God is their friend, not the cause of their troubles. They blame God for their troubles when they should trust Him to help them get through the troubles.
Just as I know people who blame God for their problems, I also know people who have experienced great tragedy and their testimony is still, “God is good!” We cannot determine the goodness of God by the amount of loss and pain we have in our lives. Trouble comes for many different reasons, but God is not the source of our disappointments and troubles. Some even erroneously believe that when they experience hardship in life that God is punishing them for their sins, but they are wrong. Our troubles don’t come from God. We do, however, have an enemy named Satan, or the devil, and he does relentlessly come against us. His goal is to kill, steal, and destroy, but Jesus came to give us life and that more abundantly (see John 10:10).
I cannot totally explain why some people have more difficulty in life than others do, but I do know that God never allows more to come on us than we can bear, and He always provides a way out if we trust Him (see 1 Corinthians 10:13). His deliverance may not come in the amount of time we would prefer, but it will come at the right time. If we do not get delivered from our difficulty, then God will give us the grace to endure with a good attitude. Our goal should be to remain stable and strong in faith and never to think God no longer loves us because we are having problems.
God never allows more to come on us than we can bear, and He always provides a way out if we trust Him.
How can we even reasonably say that we have had more trouble than other people? After all, we don’t know all that goes on in other people’s lives. We are not to compare ourselves with other people anyway, but if we were to try, we would have to compare an entire life with an entire life, not one event compared to another. What I mean is we may be having difficulty, so when we look at someone else who seems to be in the midst of many good things that are taking place in their lives we make a comparison, but we don’t know what they have gone through in the past, or for that matter, what they may still have to go through in their future. I tend to think that we all have our share of difficulty before our lives are over. God’s Word tells us that suffering is appointed to the whole body of Christians throughout the world (see 1 Peter 5:9). We must remember that if we never had any trials we would have no need for any faith in God. Faith trusts God for good things that we don’t see yet, but that we believe are forthcoming. Until we have them manifested in our lives, we have them by faith! We have the privilege of believing that God’s promises are true!
We are urged to withstand the devil (who is the author of all bad things)—to be vigilant against him at all times, for he roams around like a lion roaring in fierce hunger, seeking someone whom he may devour (see 1 Peter 5:8–9). We don’t have to trust in our own strength to withstand the devil—we have the privilege of trusting God! We can enter the rest of God and enjoy our lives while God deals with our enemies and problems.
I spoke this morning with a man whose sister-in-law died at the age of 40 with cancer. She left behind young children and a husband, siblings, and parents, all of whom are very sad and deeply feeling their loss. But none of them are blaming God! I also know of a wonderful pastor who recently lost his beautiful wife due to cancer, and I am happy to say that I have not once heard him blame God for his pain and loss. As a matter of fact, he told me personally that he would never ask God “why” she died so young. He felt that out of respect for God, he should continue trusting God as he had done in the past, and keep working even more diligently in his ministry to others. I was so proud of him and very inspired by his attitude of faith in the midst of adversity.
How can some people have such a good attitude during times of loss and pain, while others are quick to blame God and even feel that they did something wrong in their lives and they are being punished? It has a lot to do with how well we really know our God, and our willingness to trust Him even when it makes no sense to our natural mind. Sometimes we can see the reasons why things happen, but most of the time they are none of our business, and we should not even need a reason for everything anyway. Trust doesn’t have to know why.
Trust doesn’t have to know why.
You might think that is not good enough for you, and that you must know why bad things happen to good people, while bad people seem to be blessed. I don’t think I have an all-inclusive answer, but I do know a few things that I will share. First, the devil is the author of all evil things, and he is still roaming the earth spreading his misery. There are times when our faith is tested and we feel as if we are sheep being led to the slaughter (see Romans 8:36), but we are promised that even then we are more than conquerors through Christ who loves us (see Romans 8:37).
When I talked with the woman I met while shopping that I mentioned before, I told her she had two options. One was to continue on as she was, and she had said herself that she was lonely and miserable due to shutting God out of her life. Or, I suggested—actually I pleaded with her—that she could choose to trust God even in the midst of the loss she was experiencing. I know that God wants to help this woman, but she needs to open the door through believing He is good and asking Him to do the best thing for her.
One thing that God does require of us is that we believe in Him and His promises to us. He does all the work of providing, but we cannot receive unless we believe. Believing is free, it doesn’t cost us anything, so why not do it? It is a decision we can make, and one that opens doors of possibility. Believing releases joy and peace (see Romans 15:13), and anything other than that drags us down mentally, emotionally, spiritually, and even physically. We need hope in order to live happy lives, and our only true hope is found in God.
We overcome fear with faith! No matter what kind of fear it is, even the fear of God’s anger and judgment can be defeated through simple faith and believing as a child would.
While I was growing up as a child I always feared that I would get into trouble because my father was an angry man, and it was a great relief to me when I discovered that Father God is not like that at all. I suffered greatly with the pangs of guilt and fear of being punished each time I did even the slightest thing wrong. I felt when things were not going well in my life that I was receiving punishment from God, and that I needed to do better. My believing was wrong! I didn’t know God, nor did I know His character. I thought He was like my earthly father, but that was not true at all.
God can get angry, but He is not an “angry God.” He is good, full of mercy and compassion, quick to forgive and slow to anger. God’s anger is toward sin, not sinners. The Bible teaches us that Jesus is a friend of sinners. His goodness draws men to repentance. He hates sin because He knows that it produces death in our lives. It steals every good thing that God has in mind for us. God works to draw us into a love relationship with Him, away from sin and misery, and He doesn’t do it by heaping tragedy and loss on us as payment for our past mistakes.
Millions of people suffer because of the deception that God is mad at them, just as I did, so last year I wrote an entire book on the topic and I recommend it for your further education on this subject. It is simply titled Perfect Love.
A story is told of a little boy who accidentally killed his grandmother’s pet duck. He hit the duck with a rock from his slingshot while he was playing. The boy didn’t think that anyone saw the foul deed, so he buried the duck in the backyard and didn’t tell a soul.
Later the boy found out that his sister had seen the entire thing. Not only that, she now had the leverage of his secret and used it. Whenever it was the sister’s turn to wash the dishes, take out the garbage, or wash the car, she would whisper in his ear, “Remember the duck.” And then the little boy would do what his sister should have done.
There is always a limit to that sort of thing. Finally, he couldn’t take it anymore—he’d had it! The boy went to his grandmother and, with great fear, confessed what he had done. To his surprise, she hugged him and thanked him. She said, “I was standing at the kitchen sink and saw the whole thing. I forgave you then. I was just wondering when you were going to get tired of your sister’s blackmail and come to me.”
Jesus took all the punishment and judgment we deserve from God, and we are free to come to Him and enter into an intimate relationship of love and acceptance. Just as the little boy’s grandmother was probably waiting to give him a big hug, God is waiting to give us one, if we will just stop letting the devil blackmail us.
Jesus took all the punishment and judgment we deserve from God, and we are free to come to Him and enter into an intimate relationship of love and acceptance.
God is focused on you and His love for you, not on what you have done wrong in your life. Instead of you focusing on what you have done wrong and the punishment you are afraid of getting, focus on God’s love and mercy. Run to Father God and get your hug! Focus on the fact that He is good at all times, and continue believing in His promises no matter what your circumstances look like. Things are always changing, but God never changes. He loves us forever and will never leave us nor forsake us.