When I was a young woman, I was very new to Christianity. I was attending church, and trying to be all that I thought a young wife and mother should be. The problem was that it just wasn’t working for me.
For a long time in my Christian walk, I was pretty sure Jesus existed, and that if I died I’d go to heaven. I pictured myself as a tiny dot in an endless sea of faces all looking to Jesus for hope.
But what I really needed was a faith that made a difference in my life here and now. What was really urgent to me was having a God who cared enough and was effective enough to make my life worth living.
I had a hunch that since God was the Creator of the universe and everything in it, He should be able to fix my life. Or at least help me. Thus I started asking questions.
I didn’t think they were hard questions, but maybe they were:
“If God can do anything, and He loves me, why didn’t he choose to...?”
“If God is strong enough to protect me, then why didn’t he prevent...?”
“If God’s design for marriage is for the husband to love his wife as Christ loves the church, then why...?”
The more I asked, the more it became clear to me that there either were no answers, or nobody knew the answers. I always seemed to get one of those stupid, worthless pat-answers.
You know the ones:
“It won’t matter in light of all eternity.”
“All things work together for the good.”
“God is sovereign,”
“This too shall pass.”
And my ultimate worst-favorite,“You gotta let God be God.”
None of these meaningless slogans helped. The things I had been through, and all I was still struggling with, simply could not be smoothed over by ineffective, sweet-nothings. If Jesus really was real, I needed to know how He could make a difference to me. Right here, right now: in the midst of all of life’s biggest uglies.
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