We just had a deacon in our church die of a lung disease. He was a faithful man of God, very involved with children’s ministry, and had led many kids to Christ.
People prayed earnestly that he would either be healed or survive long enough to get a lung transplant. Neither happened and he died yesterday. He leaves behind a wife if 34 years and 4 grown lids.
Now...my question is : why didn’t God answer the many prayers lifted on behalf of this man? It makes absolutely no sense to me.
Beats me.
I have that question about way too many people in my life.
For all the health, wealth, and prosperity teaching out there, and all their claims of all these miracles they claim to have witnessed and have testimony of, I simply don’t see it in the people around me, even those who hold to that doctrine.
And they’re always explaining away why it doesn’t happen, or just never mentioning it again.
Better minds than mine have wrestled with those questions and have never come to an answer, and I doubt I’ll be the one to figure out the answer.
Far as I know, Job was never told what happened to him, they why of it all. We’re privy to that now, but there’s no indication that he ever found out.
Interestingly, two of the more vocal proponents of the name it and claim it crowd at our church have serious, debilitating, life threatening conditions, that they are praying for and *believing* for.
Sometimes I can’t help but wonder if God is trying to make a point that most of them continue to miss.
“It makes absolutely no sense to me.”
It doesn’t to us. And somehow we need to be satisfied with that. (See Job).
There was a husband/wife church youth leaders and their baby that were killed here (Washington State) when a huge chunk of concrete from a bridge landed square on their truck as they were driving by, killing them all instantly. One second later and it would have crashed to the ground behind them.
Their pastor said “What is there to try to understand? There is no understanding. But God is Good. All the time.”
There is a gal in our church that our pastor used in a sermon. She has had a rough go of it, and numerous set-backs in life, and now is carrying for her invalid children.
I forget how the sermon all went, but not that she had given up in praying for relief, but that she somehow figured that this was her lot in life, and that she was to be faithful in it. And that her “justice” or relief (or whatever) would not be found on this side of death.
I’m not sure I have that kind of faith. And I think that is the point - it is about faith, in the absence of things not seen.
All I can tell you is that His ways are not OUR ways.
And the potter and clay thing; too.
No-one understands fully what Christ wills...dead children...malformed babies....weather disasters...it's really hard to understand what He has in mind......on the other hand, it is not ours to judge....God is God and we are just here....the world is a big place and eternity is a long,long time....it is for us to accept, not necessarily understand.....
I have always suspected that God does not answer Why questions.