Life Choices

We all struggle with the “why” and “what if” questions of life. What we discover while wrestling through them is that God seldom answers these questions. Instead He uses them to draw us closer to him.

Job never found out why he went through all the heartaches he did losing all of his children, possessions, health but eventually had to accept that God was sovereign and he simply had to trust him.

These questions are more often about us trying to control our past and second-guessing what we can never change. It’s a huge effort with nothing to show for it but depression, anxiety, anger…..

What I’ve learned and continue to learn over the years from wrestling with these questions is the same thing Job and probably every other wrestler has learned and that is God is sovereign and I just have to trust him.

But I’ve also learned that it’s far better to wrestle with God through the questions than simply accept things as a fact of life. God wants us to understand and totally rest in his sovereignty with every bit of our emotional, psychological, spiritual, etc. being and not just to accept it intellectually.

I guess that is the way God deals with most of us because many times when Jesus was asked a question, he answered with a question of his own for the questioner to consider, wrestle with and dialogue with him through. Jesus didn’t give pat answers but rather challenged people to think through and search for the answers themselves. In the very good book “Jesus The Greatest Therapist Whoever Lived” we learn that Jesus knew he wasn’t going to change people’s lives by them remembering what he said, but rather by them having a personal relationship with him. That’s why he said “follow me” rather than follow my spiritual principles. Jesus wants us to eat his flesh and drink his blood (John 6:53-56) to devour him, to be totally consumed with and by him.

We meet God during life’s journeys and it’s during the journeys that we come to realize who God is and who we are. Perhaps this is a lesson that can only be experienced through living our lives and not learned through a text book.

I read somewhere years ago that God doesn’t want our lives to be easy or hard, he wants them to be impossible. We see in the Bible that when we draw near to God, that he draws near to us. We encounter the true living and loving God in the everyday and impossible’s of life and in the end come to see that in all of life situations, we ultimately only have two choices. Take Job’s wife’s advice and curse God and die; or simply trust God. Simple advice that often times takes a lifetime to learn.

Mason Swinney