How to Navigate the Worst Season of Your Life Pt 3

Today I will answer the following question: What is your relationship with God like now?
Whenever we experience spiritual disappointment, through what we call, “Unanswered prayer,” it can create issues in our relationship with God. And that’s understandable. This doesn’t mean you are a bad person, a weak Christian, but rather a disappointed human being. I mean, we are in a real relationship with a Person who has promised certain things, and we know that He can do anything, and so when we cry out to Him, and trust Him to do what we most desire, and it doesn’t happen, we have to wrestle with questions, disappointment, and even disillusionment.

The first thing I want to say is that God can handle your anger, even if it’s directed at Him, as well as your disappointment, sadness, and all the other emotions you are wrestling with. He just wants you to do it with Him. For me, I’m shell-shocked. But I knew I would be. Contrary to what many of my friends counseled me to do – which I totally understood – I chose not to begin grieving until she went to heaven – because I was busy believing for her healing. So, now that the battle is over, I am dealing with all the emotions you would expect, and I’m decompressing from a very long, hard-fought conflict. And I give myself a ton of grace for where I am right now. I encourage you to do the same in your trials. Be good to yourself. Be as merciful and kind to yourself as you would be to one of your friends going through a valley. Jesus understands, and He is with you.

And here is what I know, not matter what, God is good. This foundational knowledge enables me to weep and wail and thrash and lament and be sad and disappointed without fearing that I will offend God or fall into a bottomless pit of despair. Why, because I know God is there, and His goodness is immovable, unshakable, and unchangeable. Am I deeply frustrated, confused, and even angry that Hope is gone? ABSOLUTELY! But I process all these things with God, not apart from God. I firmly believe that God is on my side. You might ask, “Well, if that’s the case, then why didn’t Hope get healed?” I don’t know.

But my relationship is not based on what He’s done for me lately, but rather what He did for me at Calvary. As one of the members of my church said to me after His wife died of Cancer, and I asked him how he was doing with the goodness of God, he said, “The goodness of God was settled for me when He died on the cross for me.” Not that he, or others in our church who have lost loved ones, don’t struggle to find the goodness of God in the midst of their loss. It’s that their bedrock belief in the goodness of God sustains. When you believe that God is good, you look at every situation in life and say, “Well, God is good, so even though I don’t understand this, and even though this situation is demanding that I conclude that God is not good, and that I should hold God in contempt, I will not because I know He is right. I know I do not see the whole picture, and one day, maybe in heaven, He will show me things from His perspective, and I will say, ‘Ohhhh, I see now.’”

But for now I have the opportunity to get to know God in a different way than I ever have before. Like how when my dad died of Cancer, I came to know God as my Father more deeply than I had before, because I needed to know Him more in this way. Now, is this the way I wanted to get to know Him more? NO. But there is a depth of the knowledge of God that can only be known through suffering. In fact, did you know that all of God’s names revealed to us in the Bible have to do with Him responding to our human need? It’s true. Look them up. See where His names are revealed in the Bible and then read the story around them. It’s God responding just in the way the person, or people needed Him to. He is that good.

In closing this post I would like to say that its imperative to your spiritual health to move towards God, not away from God, in your pain and disappointment to experience His goodness. I am devasted and frustrated, but what I do know is that if I were to walk away from God, I would be empty, lost, and wandering around purposely, for who knows how long, and I would eventually come back anyway, so I’m just not going to leave. I will sit in the dust with God – or Him with me.
Question: Why would you choose to go through grief and suffering without God? That would be like, because you are cold, you are going to walk farther away from the sun, rather than towards the sun. In the same way, if you are feeling spiritually cold because of your suffering, move closer to the Son, not farther away.

And finally, the one thing I am committed to through it all is to not give Satan a double win – the loss of my wife, and the loss of my relationship with God, which is his ultimate goal. I hope you will make the same commitment.
I hope these perspectives have helped you. I will post part 4 soon.
John