As a pastor, it is not uncommon to speak with believers who have been “offended by God” because he didn’t act in the way they thought he should. A child died, a marriage ended in divorce, a promotion was given to someone less deserving, and cancer was diagnosed in a young woman.  All of these situations and more challenge our faith.

Here’s what we need to know.  The enemy loves to whisper that God took the child, sent the cancer, and didn’t save the marriage when he could have.  One of his primary strategies is to plant a seed of doubt in our minds about the goodness of God.  That is the first diagram in his playbook.  To entice them to sin, he sowed a seed of doubt in the minds of Adam and Eve about God’s heart for them.  He insinuated that God might be withholding good things and even the best things from them because he didn’t completely love them.   In response, they took offense at God and ate the forbidden fruit. 

It is human to hope that God keeps every crisis and every tragedy from us from the time we are born until we step across the threshold of heaven.  But that is not what we are promised. Every person of faith in scripture dealt with trials.  Jesus told his disciples, “In this world you will have trouble (Jn.16:33).  Paul reminds us, “Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles” (2 Cor. 1:3-4). We will be in trouble.  We could list dozens of other scriptures that confirm our dilemma. 

Many times, God does keep tragedy and disappointment from our door.  But there are other times when we have to face the harsh realities of living in a fallen and hostile world. The promise is not a trouble-free life, but that God will meet us in our troubles and give us the grace to endure. He will then set us on a level place with seasons of blessing again.  

The difficulty is in holding on when what we are experiencing doesn’t make sense to us or rubs against our understanding of how God works. However, when things go our way and make sense, not much faith is required. Greater faith is required when we are facing that which doesn’t go our way or meet our expectations. What do we do when we believe we had faith for healing, but our loved one died anyway?  What do we do when we believe we stood on the promises of God, but our marriage dissolved in spite of that?  What do we do when we have cried out to the Lord for years but God has not yet sent us a mate or given us a pregnancy?

Those are the moments that Satan rushes in to accuse the Lord.  If we are not careful, we will believe the accusations, judge God as unjust or uncaring, and distance ourselves from him.  We may deny it, but somewhere deep within we may hold a grudge against our Creator. Our view of him will be tarnished and our prayers will lack conviction.

We will all have to face a mystery at some point about unanswered prayers.  So how do we face that moment?  We must learn to judge God on the basis of what we do understand, rather than on the basis of what we don’t understand.  When Satan comes to accuse, we must already know what we believe about God and stand on his Word and our past experiences with his faithfulness. 

I believe the definitive verse in scripture comes from the mouth of Jesus.  “If you have seen me, you have seen the Father” (Jn.14:9).  How much does God love us?  How much did Jesus love us?  How much is God willing to sacrifice for us to be saved?  How much was Jesus willing to sacrifice?  Is God willing to heal?  Was Jesus willing to heal?  Does God send tragedy?  Did Jesus send tragedy?  Does God drive away the imperfect and broken sinner?  Did Jesus drive them away?  

No matter what, our faith must rest not only in the power of God but also in the character and the goodness of God.  We must make up our mind about him before the accuser comes. We have to be able to say. “Even though I am disappointed and confused, I still believe God is good and that he loves me. He will see me through this and set me once again on a level place.”  

How often have we judged God to be unfair or unloving because of one prayer he didn’t answer while ignoring the hundreds that he did answer and the way he cared for us even when we had not prayed? Take note of God’s care now and all the ways he has loved you, so when the accuser comes, you can take your stand.

Job could make no sense of the tragedies that had come his way.  He asked lots of questions. He wrestled with the mystery of the loss and suffering he encountered although he was a righteous man.  But in the end, God declared that Job had not failed to speak the truth about God and so God restored his losses and blessed his life in greater ways than before his suffering. Remember the old saying, “God is good…all the time.  When we are not sure of anything else, we can be sure of that and, being sure of that, we can hold on through the fires. 

One of the most insidious strategies of Satan is to convince us that we are unworthy of anyones love. I have battled this in my own life and I constantly see it as a huge hindrance in the lives of believers. It begins in our childhood when parents or other parent surrogates do and say things that communicate we don’t measure up and that we have failed to earn their love or approval. Those things may be a constant drip of criticism that communicates the child is never good enough and never meets the parents standards or it may be in the form of abuse or angry outbursts. Those behaviors leave the child with a deep conviction that he or she is somehow defective and deserving of the physical or verbal abuse. The other side of the coin that has the same effect is neglect or abandonment. When a child’s needs are not met, when a parent never has time for the child, when a parent is emotionally unavailable or physically leaves, the child is left with the impression that he or she doesn’t matter. The belief is, “There must be something terribly wrong with me for them to always be angry, never be pleased, never have time for me, or to leave me.”

As adults, we carry the imprint of that rejection and live with the fear that if anyone really knew us, they would not love us. We may also live with a belief that sooner or later the person who says they love us will leave us. Demonic spirits love to come in and amplify the thoughts that we are unworthy of love, that others only pretend to care for us, or that eventually we will be abandoned again by those we love and need. He accuses us day and night of our unworthiness.

One response to that belief and ongoing accusation is that we close our hearts and quit loving in order to avoid the anticipated pain of rejection. We may never express our needs because we believe we and our needs don’t matter or that our needs won’t be met and we will feel rejection all over again. Of course, the other strategy to avoid pain is to become a control freak believing the only way to avoid being hurt or abandoned again is to control everything and everyone in our lives. The irony is that the very behaviors we employ to keep people from leaving or hurting us actually drive them away.

The most devastating part of this strategy is the belief that we are unworthy keep us from believing that even God can love us. The premise about love that we are sold as children and that sets us up for Satan’s lie is that love always has to be earned by doing enough or by being enough. If that were true, only God could be loved because the rest of us and even the best of us always fall short in someway.

The truth is we actually love imperfect people all the time. They are called children. They cannot express themselves well. They are by nature selfish. They constantly mess up our house. They cannot tie their own shoes. They take and rarely give back. Yet we love them because we love them. They have done nothing to earn our love, yet we give them our best all the time, unless we are horrifically broken.

The truth is, we aren’t loved because we do better. We do better because we are loved. God’s constant message to us that we were a mess when he came looking for us and are still a bit of a mess today, but he loves us inspite of our shortcomings. If we cannot accept the fact that he loves us because of who he is rather than because of who we are, Satan wins. Without a belief and a revelation of God’s love, we can never love him back or pray with any faith that he will meet our needs. We can never worship him with passion. In fact, until we feel loved, we struggle to love the imperfect others, even though he commands us to do so.

I believe the only way out is for God to give us a revelation of his non-performance based love and how he sees us. Paul told the Ephesians, “I keep asking that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the glorious father, may give you the Spirit of wisdom and revelation, so that you may know him better (Eph.1:17). Keep asking the Father to give you a Holy Spirit revelation of his love for you…just as you are. The sneaking fear that we aren’t good enough or haven’t done enough to deserve God’s love is a trap and a lie. Love is given, it is not earned. Most of the time, when someone asks, why you love them, you can’t really answer. You love them because you love them. You can love them, even when you don’t like them. That is why teenagers survive to live into their 20’s.

Make that your constant prayer and, by faith, thank God ten times a day that he loves you deeply. When you start to accept that truth, you will able to trust him for your care, give up your control, be yourself, be transparent, love others and accept their love for you. May the Lord bless you with a revelation of his amazing love for you. Blessings in Him.