Day 2 - Rom. 8:28

I'm working through this short series that Piper is speaking on....Rom. 8:28. Today's thoughts are about God knowing, planning, allowing all things to happen to us, good and bad. Piper gave the example of Joseph. Do you know it was 17 years from the time he was sold until he was put in charge of the lives of a whole nation. In those 17 years, his father was grieving for a son whom he thought was dead. Joseph was given small windows of relief, but kept being put back in prison and forgotten. Piper was saying that God worked all of this out for Joseph's good and to bring glory to himself and to save a whole nation from starvation.

The next example was Job. And as he was describing all of this, he read a reference of scripture from James 5 that the reason God did this was to show his mercy and compassion. Now, I have be honest. I was challenged in my thinking for a second about God's nature. From the outside, it would seem that God hurt his own "son" Job in order to show him his mercy. Would we do that to our children? Hurt them only to show them comfort? Immediately I knew this was stinkin thinking because we're talking about God here. Then, he made the statement, that God also did this with Jesus. And I was humbled to the depths of my soul.

God allowed his son to die on the cross.....Jesus took on my sin...and everyone elses so God could show his mercy and his compassion on me....the undeserving sinner. The daughter who deserves hell.

Then he said this.....if God was a God who came in and cleaned up only after something terrible has happened...what does that say about him being God? Is it not comforting to know that God has control before the horrific event, during and after? God always shows up in our pain. He always does something good out of it for those who love Him. He has to, because he said it. And he's faithful.

I know these are heavy posts. But it is so helpful to write them out. I want to be faithful, yet I can't deny the struggle. And my prayer is, in the struggle, that I will believe and trust Him deeper and the dark corners of my soul would be lightened by Him. I want to be faithful. I want God to be my rock.