Wow, life is tough…I know in my last post I said I’ve been going through a tough patch in life, but gosh, I’ve really been struggling since my trip to Africa.
While I was in Nigeria my life was flipped upside down. And that is an understatement! I went to Africa to tell the Nigerians that God loved them. And as it turned out, I didn’t even know that myself.
I was in my room one day (in Nigeria) searching my bible for something that said God loved me. Well, I ran into a scripture in the sixth chapter of Genesis. It was right before God was going to flood the earth and He said He was sorry He ever created man. I was angry! I was so angry at God and asked why the heck He even created us then… Why would God have created us when He knew how everything was going to turn out? And knew He was going to be sorry He created us?
…I didn’t get an answer…
I’ve been trying to figure out how God –the King of the universe could be Love when there is so much hurt in the world.... The kids at the orphanage in Nigeria, the ladies working the gravel pit or even a broken heart… How could God see that and not do anything about it?
…I don’t want to have my own children because I believe it is greater love for my unborn children (if that makes any since) that they are not brought into the world at all. (I'm not talking about abortion, I'm talking about not having kids at all.) I would never wish the pain of this world on anyone! (This is simply my own personal opinion that is liable to change next year or even tomorrow, because it seems I’m capable of changing my mind about everything more than the average person.)
So, how can God, being Love, send us to the world to deal with this pain? And how could a loving God send people to hell?
Well, I read awhile back in a book titled “A Time to Dance” that going to hell is our/my choice. God does not send people to hell. We make the decision for ourselves of where we go when we die and God simply just honors our choice… He didn’t make us robots, but actually loved us enough to give us a choice to follow Him or not.
We are given a free gift of eternal life with Christ (that we certainly don’t deserve). But it’s our choice whether we take it our not. God loves us so much that He gave us a choice!
I don’t have the answers to my questions above (so any input would help me so much!), but I do know that there are MANY people I love dearly. And I ask myself, “how do they know I love them?” Besides the fact that I have told them, do they have proof of my love? Or is it simply just believing? Is it just trusting even?
How do I know that Debi, Amanda, Rebekah or even my family love me? And I guess I know because they say they do and I trust them. Because we have a relationship and I can see it in their actions that they care…
So if that’s the case, than why would I not believe God when He says He loves me? (Ephesians 2:4-5, Ephesians 3:17-19, 1 John 4:10 & 16, Romans 5: 5-8, Jeremiah 31:3, 2 Thessalonians 2: 15-17 and the list continues.) Especially when He is unable to lie and actually sent his Son to die in the place of MY sins. Is there a greater love? ...I haven't heard of any.
So, I guess that's where the faith thing comes in. I know God loves me because it's evident in my life. But I wanted to be able to explain how I knew God loved me, to be able write it all out in some sort of a formula or something. But as I hear it's like trying to explain how God IS, always WAS and always will BE. And I won't even go there.
It seems like I would have had these questions figured out by now. But I guess it took being in Nigeria with nothing but God to realize that I really knew nothing about Him for myself, but only what I had been told.
