Why, God?

Do you ever ask God, “Why?” Why won’t this pain go away? Why don’t I heal? Why did I have to lose someone so precious to me? Why was the heart of my very being ripped away from me? Why do You allow suffering? Why do innocent children and adults have to die or suffer at the hands of evil? Why is Satan allowed to torment me with accusations and lies? And it goes on and on…

In Kay Arthur’s When the Hurt Runs Deep: Healing and Hope for Life’s Desperate Moments, she addresses God’s Answer to Our “Why?” in Chapter Nine. A few words were balm to my weary heart, and I hope they will be to yours as well:

“Satan’s ultimate aim, just as with Job, is to get you to curse God and turn your back on Him. Don’t be taken in by the devil’s lies! The truth is that whatever come into your life is filtered through God’s sovereign fingers of love.”

No matter what happens to us in this life, each and every circumstance and event is filtered through God’s fingers of love! Amazing thought, isn’t it? Sometimes God allows Satan to test us. He can bombard us with lies that we’re not good enough, that God doesn’t really love us, that we have no purpose in this life, etc. But in the end, he is not going to win! Why? Because he is still under God’s thumb. Jesus has already defeated him by suffering and dying for us, and that makes him so angry. He will try his hardest to get us to bend his way, to discourage us, to get us to doubt God’s love. But he still can’t do a thing without God’s permission. And if God allows him to test us, God still sifts what happens through His fingers of love.

But why would God even allow Satan to assault us? Can’t God just put an impenetrable wall around us? He can, but we wouldn’t grow then either, would we? God wants what is best for us. He wants us to need Him. He wants us to grow in the grace and knowledge of Jesus. He wants our roots to pierce deeper into His faithful love. That means we will sometimes have to be tested and tried so we can become stronger in our faith in Him as the Almighty Ruler over all and the God Who will never leave us or forsake us.

As long as we’re on this earth, we will ask “Why?” But someday all the missing pieces will come together, and we will be in awe of God’s unfathomable wisdom of creating an even more glorious picture because of the suffering we went through. “Yet what we suffer now will be nothing compared to the glory He will reveal to us later.” (Romans 8:18 NLT)