“None of us knows and this makes it a mystery, if life is a comedy then why all the tragedy?”
—Chris Rice
I was sixteen years old the first time I heard Chris Rice over the radio ask God questions about why life is so difficult for all of us in the song, “Big Enough”. The rub of this song is that Rice gives no answers to this question that at some point we all ask in our lives; but instead presents the very real reality that we all are blessed to have a God that we can ask questions of, and that He’s “Big Enough” to handle the scope of whatever that question may be.
Why is life so hard? Why did I lose my job? Why did I get sick? Why am I so helplessly addicted? Why can’t I just understand?
These are just a sampling of thousands of questions we could ask ourselves or God in our lifetime. So many different ones that all point to the difficulties we inevitably will face as we live and breathe every day. And while I can’t take away the difficulties that you might be facing today, I do hope to offer some insight and clarity on how to stay positive and keep pushing through the seeming resistance.
First, in order to approach God with our questions we need to know Him.
And I’m not talking about the once or twice a week we go to church and hear a pastor speak of God…we open our Bibles…we pray. Those things are all good, but we need to ask ourselves if that is really KNOWING God…or if we’re just satisfying our own conscious with lip service to Jesus.
“People honor Me with their lips, but their hearts are nowhere near Me.”
–Matthew 15:8 (Voice)
You see, while our actions towards God are important, these things mean very little if our hearts are not in it. The truth is, we get out of a relationship what we put into it…and if we’re not pushing ourselves to have conversations with God through pray and reading His Word as often as we can…then how can our hearts ever really grow in love for Him? How can faith every truly be whole? How can we trust a God that we don’t really, truly, try to get to know? If we want wisdom, clarity, or some kind of understanding from God, we have to get to know Him; and that takes work…but work that’s well worth it.
Second, we have to be willing to accept that God might require us to have unanswered questions in our life.
I know this is a frustrating truth…I really do. But it’s important that we realize that we’re not always going to get answers to our questions in life, and we have to find a way to be okay with that. You might ask, “but how do I deal with not having an answer to my question?”
Well, that’s why knowing God is so important. If we know God, then when we don’t get answers to life’s questions, we can rest assured in the fact(s) of what we DO KNOW about God.
He loves me. He is all-knowing and all-present. He sees the big picture. He is big enough to take care of us. He is strong enough to handle any giant that we face in life. He never leaves us alone. He has a purpose in our time of suffering.
That last one should really speak to us all…because God has a purpose for our suffering in life, and the sooner we can really take that in and understand it…the sooner we can go about facing that difficult time in life and allow God to make us stronger in the process.
“We also celebrate in seasons of suffering because we know that when we suffer we develop endurance, which shapes our characters. When our characters are refined, we learn what it means to hope and anticipate God’s goodness. And hope will never fail to satisfy our deepest need because the Holy Spirit that was given to us has flooded our hearts with God’s love.”
–Romans 5:2-5 (Voice)
The more we know God the more we know that when life gets difficult, we can anticipate that God is going to do something amazing in our lives.
How do we know this? Because God has a plan for us.
“For I know the plans I have for you,” says the Eternal, “plans for peace, not evil, to give you a future and hope—never forget that.”
–Jeremiah 29:11 (Voice)
Though we are bound to face difficult times in our lives, we can rest our faith in the fact that God has a plan for us, and no matter the circumstance, we will always have a reason to hope and trust that God has an amazing and purposeful future in store.
