Status Updates From If God Is Good Why Do We Hurt?

Like taking Un-tasteful ingredients of a cake and putting them together it have something delicious so does God with our trials. "In a similar way, each trial & apparent tragedy tastes bitter to us. But God carefully measures out & mixes all those ingredients together, & in the end he will present to us a wonderful & perhaps unexpected goodness.

My trials have not been easy but compared to others though it might be unbearable whereas others it might be easy compared to what they are or have endured. It's not about what is easy or difficult for others but it's all about you and God and how He is growing you and using it in your life and others. Are we letting god use our trials in our lives or our we going to be bitter and hold out on His blessings?

Something Alcorn said hit me to the core and just what i needed to hear tonight. "Since our understanding is limited, it shouldn't surprise us that an all-knowing God might have purposes in our suffering which we cannot comprehend, at least for now."

...but it cannot explain goodness, humility, compassion, & mercy. What should surprise atheists is not that powerful people sometimes crush those weaker than themselves, but that many make sacrifices to aid the weak or risk their lives for a stranger." - pg. 31

Alcorn has such way of making me understand things so well I feel I am able to share these things with others. He makes it clear that God is not the creator of evil but human kind is. Yet even though He is a just and holy God, he is also good, merciful & forgiving. So glad He came to live among us and die for me. Thank you Lord!

"The problem of evil and suffering is the most common reason people give for not believing in God."
Though it is the reason why I started believing. I was sexual assaulted when I was a senior in high school and thought I don't know God but there has to be some justice for evil for then there is no purpose to continue living. It took me years to know Him though He was there the whole entire time calling my name.

Even on the first page of the introduction it hit me hard, "...if abuse, desertion, debilitating disease, or the loss of a loved one has devastated you, then your suffering isn't theoretical or philosophical. It's deeply personal; you need comfort, not intellectual answers."
Now don't get me wrong I love intellectual answers as well though that is not what made me believe. Evil made me believe.

There is always redemption in suffering because of the cross.