The Choice is Yours

I have a sweet friend near and dear to my heart who’s son is currently trying to determine if her God should also be his God. He’s at a familiar crossroads. Choosing whether or not to believe that God is who He says is a struggle we all face. Not all of us make it to the other side, which makes this mother’s heart cry for her son even more compelling. The enemy knows we all have doubts and he uses that to his advantage.

One of the best accounts of this very real struggle is the story of Jacob, found in Genesis.  An interesting thing occurs in chapter 28:10-21.  Jacob has a dream of a ladder reaching to heaven with angels ascending and descending on it. When he awakes from the dream he said, “Surely the Lord is in this place, and I did not know it”.  He then makes a conditional “If/then” statement (IF God will be with me… THEN I will worship Him).  Jacob recognizes God for being God, but is not yet convinced he wants to acknowledge God as HIS God.  That does not happen until years later, when we see Jacob wrestle with God in chapter 32.  Jacob then asks for a blessing. In verse 28 of that chapter, the blessing given is “Your name shall no longer be Jacob but Israel, for you have striven with God and with men and have prevailed”.  That was the pivotal moment when Jacob finally chose of his own free will to love and worship God.

One of the biggest lies of the enemy is to get us to doubt that what God says is absolute truth.  Can God be trusted?  What about XYZ?  That is part of the struggle, the contending and striving, and is also why I personally believe there are so many promises made to the overcomer.

I was reading parts of the book of Job recently and OH MY, the blithering of Job and all his friends that goes on and on and on for nearly 40 chapters is, quite frankly, hard to get through! Although Job says some wonderful things, I admit (such as in 2:10 when he states, “Shall we indeed accept good from God and not accept adversity?”), he spends a great portion of his time bitterly complaining and wallowing in self-pity, loftily explaining God’s sovereignty as if he understands it. 

In chapter 3 Job curses the day of his birth (v1), wondering why God does not hide trouble from his eyes (v10), and questions “why is light given to him who suffers, and life to the bitter soul” (v20).  All this is just another way of saying “If God is so good, why does He allow suffering”; or “I’d rather not have free will if it means I have to suffer”. And in almost all of chapter nine we see Job justifying himself as he condemns God and slanders God’s character.

In the meantime his friends are no better. Fully believing that God would never allow an innocent or righteous man to suffer, they believe Job must have done something to bring all of the suffering onto himself.  Really?!!  Look around peeps, everybody suffers!

Oh I know, I know, I have never had to suffer like poor Job.  Perhaps I would blither too, if that were me. Job may not have outright cursed God, but as God Himself points out in chapter 38:2 “Who is this that darkens counsel by words without knowledge?” (which is another way of saying “so you think you know it all, eh?”).  And then again in 40:8 when God says “Will you really annul my judgement? Will you condemn Me that you may be justified?”  It’s a valid question!

What I find funny is that not once does Job or his friends ever accuse Satan of being the one who caused all of his troubles, even though chapters 1 and 2 clearly tells us that it is.  John 10:10 confirms for us, too, that it is by the hand of Satan that man suffers.  Satan has free will too, and he has been condemned to this world.  He hates God so much that he is constantly attempting to steal the authority God has given to man so he can use that authority to kill and destroy everything and everyone God loves, trampling everything sacred. 

God Himself is the only one who came that we should have abundant life.  On the cross He restored to us the authority robbed of us by this evil one, returning to us what is rightfully ours.  It is God alone who is not willing that any should perish throughout eternity in a condemned state, and so He is longsuffering for our sakes (2 Peter 3:9).  He alone is the one who is able to take what Satan destroys and turn the ashes into something beautiful.  No one else can do that, only God.

Are you also one who may go so far as to reason that it would be far better for mankind to have no free will, no choice at all, than to have free will and to suffer?  Would you, too, believe that it would have been much better for God to have given mankind no choice at all, and forced us to live a life of slavery to keep us from a life of suffering?  How is it that you (or anyone for that matter ) should judge me happier as a forever a condemned slave in a fallen world than I would be without any choice or hope for redemption?

How could a loving God force us to love Him? He cannot, for by definition that is no longer love.

Like I said, we all suffer.  The difference is, will we choose to invite an all good, all loving God into our suffering so that the pain is not wasted.  The choice is yours.