More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
But I know that God does not need my experience to validate the truthfulness of His Word.
amen
Wisdom is commonly defined as good judgment or the ability to develop the best course of action or the best response to a given situation.
Nineteenth-century theologian J. L. Dagg described wisdom “as consisting in the selection of the best end of action, and the adoption of the best means for the accomplishment of this end.”
As John Piper says in his book Desiring God, “The chief end of God is to glorify God and enjoy himself forever.”
Even more so, the wisdom of God is displayed when He brings good to us and glory to Himself out of confusion and calamity rather than out of pleasant times.
“Our fathers disciplined us for a little while as they thought best; but God disciplines us for our good, that we may share in his holiness.”
But we must be transformed more and more into the likeness of Christ. That is the purpose of discipline.
If you stop and think about it, you will realize that most godly character traits can only be developed through adversity.
God in His infinite wisdom knows exactly what adversity we need to grow more and more into the likeness of His Son.
But God never explains to us what He is doing, or why. There is no indication that God ever explained to Job the reasons for all of his terrible sufferings.
So we should never ask why in the sense of demanding that God explain or justify His actions or what He permits in our lives.
When I say we should never ask why, I am not talking about the reactive and spontaneous cry of anguish when calamity first befalls us or one we love. Rather, I am speaking of the persistent and demanding why that has an accusatory tone toward God in it.
whaa sort of why we should ask
By contrast, there are sixteen whys in the book of Job, according to author Don Baker.6 Sixteen times Job asked God why. He is persistent and petulant. He is accusatory toward God. And, as has been observed by many, God never answered Job’s why. Instead He answered who.
to stop asking why.
to stop asking why in a faithless sinful way
where God through Elihu confronts Job with his audacity, that met my need at the time, causing me to realize and repent of my own accusations against God.
asking a demanding why of God.
demanading why! takding the place of God as jufge
But even here we must be careful that we are not seeking to satisfy our souls by finding some spiritual “good” in the adversity. Rather we must trust God that He is working in the experience for our good, even when we see no beneficial results. We must learn to trust God when He doesn’t tell us why, when we don’t understand what He is doing.
“For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways,” declares the LORD. “As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.” (Isaiah 55:8-9)
The fact is we do not know what God is doing through a particular set of circumstances or events.
God taught the nation through His divine providence—through putting them in a situation where they could not simply go to the cupboard for their daily bread—that they were utterly dependent upon Him.
“It was good for me to be afflicted so that I might learn your decrees” (Psalm 119:71).
But we can be compassionate without questioning God about His government of the world.
compassiknate without questioning
Most of us are tempted, from time to time, to question God’s love for
Satan, whose very first act toward man was to question the goodness of God, will even plant the thought in our minds that God is up in heaven mocking us in our distress.
My own experience suggests that Satan attacks us far more in the area of God’s love than either His sovereignty or His wisdom.
satan attcks us by saying God does not love us
I have done so for two reasons: First, that we might see the depth of God’s love, not only in giving His one and only Son, but in giving Him to die for such people as Paul has described us to be.
If God loved me enough to give His Son to die for me when I was His enemy, surely He loves me enough to care for me now that I am His child.
if God loved me so much as an enemy how much more as a child
If God’s love was sufficient for my greatest need, my eternal salvation, surely it is sufficient for my lesser needs, the adversities I encounter in this life.
Henry observed when commenting on Zephaniah 3:17, “The great God not only loves his saints, but he loves to love them.” God takes great delight in loving us because we are His very own.
God loves to love us
Young then quotes Calvin, “In a word, the Prophet here describes to us the inconceivable carefulness with which God unceasingly watches over our salvation, that we may be fully convinced that he will never forsake us, though we may be afflicted with great and numerous calamities.”1
What was it that caused such a dramatic mood change in the heart of the writer? He turns from the circumstances at hand to the Lord.
turns from curcumstances to the hand if the lord
We, too, if we would speak of the Lord’s great faithfulness, must turn from our circumstances to the Lord.
We must see our circumstances through God’s love instead of, as we are prone to do, seeing God’s love through our circumstances.
seeing c ircumstances through God love
As Lamentations 3:33 states, “For he does not willingly bring affliction or grief to the children of men.”
The assurance here is that God will show compassion. It is not enough to say that He is compassionate, but He will show compassion.
God will show compassion
He is with us in our troubles.
amen
Because His people were in union with Him, to persecute them was to persecute Him. This truth is no different today. You are in union with Christ, just as surely as the disciples were in the time of the book of Acts.
to harm the church is to hrm Christ
God’s unfailing love for us is an objective fact affirmed over and over in the Scriptures. It is true whether we believe it or not. Our doubts do not destroy God’s love, nor does our faith create it.
Did He create you with an incurable speech impediment?
He did so because that particular infirmity uniquely fits you for the life He has planned for you.
We are to look beyond our adversity to what God is doing in our lives and rejoice in the certainty that He is at work in us to cause us to grow.
