“Sometimes I feel like God likes to see us squirm in different kinds of suffering. That He likes to just make bets with the devil to just see if we’re faithful, like He did with Job. All totally unnecessary.”
Are you thinking to yourself, I feel like God likes to see us suffer?
If so, you’re not alone. Today’s question comes from a good friend of mine. Let’s all spend some time to align our thoughts and hearts back up to God. Because things like this, no matter how innocently thought, can REALLY derail us for YEARS if we’re not careful.
I Feel Like God Likes to See Us Suffer
Deep down you know it’s not true. God doesn’t enjoy seeing us suffer. In fact, it’s blasphemy to say He does! Did you realize that?
It’s blasphemy
Any time we call God bad or have defiant irreverence for Him, it’s blasphemy and very serious.
In Revelation 13:6, it says, “It opened its mouth to utter blasphemies against God, blaspheming his name and his dwelling, that is, those who dwell in heaven.”
“It” is referring to the anti-Christ here. So Satan blasphemies against God. We definitely don’t want to be found doing ANYTHING that Satan does, right?!
Matthew 12:22-32 is another great place to look. In verse 31, it says, “Therefore I tell you, every sin and blasphemy will be forgiven people, but the blasphemy against the Spirit will not be forgiven.”
It’s saying if we blasphemy against other people, it can be forgiven, but if we blasphemy against the Spirit (God), it will not be forgiven.
When I first came across this a few years back, I was petrified. I realized that I had spoken ill of God before and it’s something so terrible that we must not ever do.
If you’ve ever said anything bad about God, it’s a good idea to stop now from reading this and take time to repent. Tell Him that you didn’t know what you were doing. You didn’t know it was blasphemy and you won’t do it again. Fall on His mercy and grace and ask Him to forgive you.
He will forgive you if you repent. 🙌
Why?
Because punishment is not for people who are struggling with their sin or who may have committed a sin they didn’t realize was sin. Punishment is for those that are willfully disobedient.
The Hebrew word for it is Marah. If a child, in Bible times was Marah, the people of the city were to stone and kill that child. It was that serious. That really makes you rethink the Prodigal Son story (Luke 15:11-32), doesn’t it? 😮
Some suggest that’s why the father ran out to meet him when he returned, so that the town didn’t kill his son because he was known as Marah. The father loved his son, looking for his son, as Jesus loves us and watches for us to come to Him.
Blasphemy is not someone who’s rebelling for a short period of time or has a moment of rebellion. It’s a person who refuses to repent, a person who will not STOP rebelling, someone with deliberate rejection for God and His precepts.
The Pharisees (who Jesus was confronting in Matthew 12) were so set in their ways, they would not change or repent and were calling good (God) bad (Satan).
This is why I say, stop now and go and repent. So that you do not find yourself becoming Marah. So that it does not take root of your life and you continue rebelling.
So how do we be honest with our thoughts and feelings then, without blaspheming His precious name?
Talk to God alone about how you feel (or ONE trusted friend, not more than that or it would be gossip. Think: Satan blasphemed and gossipped to all the angels and took 1/3 of the angels with him when he fell).
If you feel a certain way, it’s okay to express it to God. He knows how we feel, He knit us together in our mother’s womb (Psalm 139:13-14), so trying to hide how we feel is a little pointless, but we can’t STAY there.
It’s like a spider. When you first see a spider and he lands on your leg, you may let out a scream. You’re afraid for a second. You run around trying to get him off you or swat at him to kill him. You’re spooked in that moment. But you’re not FOREVER spooked.
You don’t go around the rest of your life, raving like a crazy person saying there’s a spider on your leg when there’s not.
It’s okay to talk to God and tell Him how you feel, just so you understand you can’t STAY there.
God is right and holy and just. He is perfect. Even in times we do not understand HOW He is right, that doesn’t negate the fact that He IS right. We must ultimately come to terms in accepting that we won’t be able to understand everything this side of Heaven (Isaiah 55:8-9) and that’s okay.
Forgive God
That may sound a little backwards, but if you’re mad at God it’s never right and we must forgive Him in order that it not cause bitterness to take root in our hearts. If bitterness takes hold of us, we begin to think God is bad and can go in a very bad direction. We need to stop the thought immediately, tell ourselves we may not understand it but we believe the Bible and God is good.
Using Forgive essential oil is something that is great to use when you need to forgive someone, whether it be a person or God. All you have to do is smell the oil and put one drop on your wrist and rub it in. If the essential oil is medical grade (doTerra is), it will affect your emotions and make you feel better within seconds.
Tell Him that you know you’re wrong and you’re sorry. Ask Him to change your heart and show you wisdom so that you can see it from His point of view and understand. He may show it to you, or He may not, but either way, we have to trust Him that He knows best and always does what is best for us (Jeremiah 29:11).
God loves us; He died for us. God didn’t go to Satan, but Satan came to Him (Job 1:6-8). He doesn’t NEED to test us to see if we’re faithful. He already knows the outcome. The test is for US to know our OWN hearts! In order that we become aware of it, repent, and change.
Remember the flood?
God cares so much about us that He promised never to flood the earth again. Think about that from His angle.
The Lord was hurt and upset that no one cared about Him. No one loved him, only Noah. And you say to yourself, Noah AND his whole family was saved, 8 total.
But it does not say that the other 7 people loved God like Noah did or were righteous. 💯
It says that NOAH did (Genesis 6:9). We could assume that Noah was the ONLY person and the reason that God saved his family was because of Noah. God didn’t want to hurt Noah, He wanted people to continue to pro-create (Genesis 9:7), etc. But we do not know if Noah’s family was actually faithful and loved the Lord. It’s my opinion they didn’t. Otherwise, it would have said, “Noah and his family were righteous.” It doesn’t.
Either way, what we CAN be sure of is that God was hurt and upset that no one cared about Him and so He just wanted to start over and get rid of everything.
Can you put yourself in God’s shoes for a moment?
You’ve been faithful with your children for 18 years of their lives and all of the sudden, they are 18 now and they curse your name and treat you very badly. They hurt you so much that you just want to get away from them. You don’t want to be around them. You want them to leave. “How could they treat me like this”, you think to yourself, “After all I’ve done for them their whole life?!”
Or maybe you have an enemy who makes your life miserable day and night. He’s constantly ruining your whole life, everything you do, constantly sabotaging you and God’s work, constantly oppressing you and you are in tears every single day about it, asking, begging for God to save you. You just want to get away from that person who torments you night and day. You just want it to end, you don’t care the outcome (whatever God’s will is okay with you), you just want it all to be over NOW.
We can understand the deep pain and hurt God must have been feeling. He created a generation to love Him and no one cared about Him. It must have grieved His heart and so, He was going to get away from humans, be done with them. And He destroyed all but those 8. But when He was pleased with Noah by Noah’s burnt offering, God promised never to do it again (Genesis 8:20-22).
Even though, we pain God, even though we, as a nation, as a society, forget God, treat Him badly, blaspheme Him, never remember Him or give Him the honor and respect He so rightly deserves, He does not just wipe us all out. Why? Because of Noah’s offering. Because Noah pleased Him.
God doesn’t throw us away.
We deserve death (Romans 6:23). We all do; we are, even at our best, most righteous state, filthy rags before Him (Isaiah 64:6). Yet He does not kill us. He does not wipe us all out and flood the earth. Even though we deserve it.
So how can we be mad at God? When we deserve death and even just by merely LIVING is proving His everlasting kindness, grace, and mercy toward us.
So if we are suffering, we can count it all joy like James 1:2-4 tells us. That’s not the easiest thing in the world to do, and I get that, but it is the RIGHT thing to do.
God loves us. He works day and night for us, to refine us and mold us because He wants to use us, because He wants to give us more heaven rewards, and for many other reasons…
Why is God letting us suffer? Why is He refining us?
There are many reasons why God allows us to suffer. He is refining us (Isaiah 48:10). He is removing impurity from our lives to make us more like Him.
Submit to the refining process. The more we fight it, the more He will refine us, which usually means MORE trials and suffering.
Ask Him what He’s trying to teach you so you can hurry up and learn it and get through this suffering quick!
More reasons He may be refining you…
- To give you a different perspective
- To prove to the watching world that you are a genuine believer (1 Peter 1:6-7)
- To help you become more loving and gracious to others who are suffering
- To help you connect with others better (suffering connects others going through the same thing with a common sympathy)
- To tenderize your heart
- To humble you
- To make your bond with God stronger
- To be closer to you (Matthew 5:4)
- To test you (Deuteronomy 8:2)
- To chasten you (Hebrews 12:5-13)
- To connect us with the people who went before us (Paul suffered a lot, for example: 2 Corinthians 11:24-29. In heaven you’ll meet Paul, let your mind wrap around that!)
- To get you to trust Him completely
- To cut down your self-sufficiency (only HE can get you through the trial)
- So that we appreciate more when everything is going okay
- So we can practice self-denial for Him (1 Corinthians 9:27)
WHO is refining us? It is not Satan or a demon. It comes from a loving Father, who loves us. He is good and wishes none to perish (2 Peter 3:9). He never just leaves us there in our afflictions either but is near to us (Matthew 5:4; Deuteronomy 31:8).
He never puts more on us than we can handle (1 Corinthians 10:13). He never does anything unnecessary. He only gives the lightest amount of affliction possible till we get it right. It’s US who cause Him to dose out more affliction because we are not submitting to Him or because we are not taking the time to try to figure out what He’s trying to teach us.
Listen, EVERYONE is dealing with some sort of trial in their lives, be kind to others. Be loving. Be tender-hearted toward everyone around you as Christ is to you.
