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. 

In 1 Samuel 13, we are told of an incident between the Prophet Samuel and King Saul, Israel’s first king.  In this section of scripture, we are told of a number of battles between Israel and the Philistines.  As they prepare for an upcoming major encounter, Samuel told Saul to take his troops, go to Gilgal, and wait for Samuel to come and offer sacrifices on behalf of Israel before going into battle.  Samuel told Saul he would come on the seventh day to offer the sacrifice (1 Sam. 10:8).  

In chapter 13, we are told that Saul was waiting at Gilgal on the seventh day.   His troops were terrified.  He was frightened and yet Samuel had not yet arrived. As the day wore on, some of Saul’s men began to scatter. Saul decided to take matters into his own hands and he himself offered the burnt offering and fellowship offering that Samuel was to offer.  Saul was not a priest.  He was not authorized to offer sacrifices and yet he did so out of fear of losing his army.  Of course, the moment the last billow of smoke drifted up from the offering, Samuel arrived. 

The text reads, “What have you done?” asked Samuel. Saul replied, “When I saw that the men were scattering, and that you did not come at the set time, and that the Philistines were assembling at Micmash, I thought, ‘Now the Philistines will come down against me at Gilgal, and I have not sought the Lord’s favor.’ So I felt compelled to offer the burnt offering.” “You acted foolishly,” Samuel said. “You have not kept the command the Lord your God gave you; if you had, he would have established your kingdom over Israel for all time. But now your kingdom will not endure; the Lord has sought out a man after his own heart and appointed him leader of his people, because you have not kept the Lord’s command” (1 Sam. 13:11-14). Notice that Saul decided to take matters into his own hands, blamed Samuel, and then said he needed God’s blessing even if he had to obtain it through disobedience. His thinking was skewed like that throughout his entire life.

Ultimately, this event and others like it cost Saul his kingdom and his life. We could take numerous lessons from this passage, but the one I want to emphasize now is the principle of waiting on the Lord.  Saul had received instructions from the Lord though Samuel to wait at Gilgal until the prophet, who was also a priest, arrived and offered sacrifices.  Saul depended on his own abilities and the abilities of his men for victory.  As they began to leave, he apparently had no thought that God could give them victory regardless of their numbers.  In fear, he went ahead and offered the sacrifices rather than waiting on God’s man to arrive. Saul believed that God would honor his actions even though they were disobedient. Saul always felt that the end he wanted justified the means.

There was a test woven into this circumstance.  Would Saul obey God even when it began to look like obedience might cost him his victory?  In a similar incident later, Samuel would say to the king, “Does not God desire obedience more than sacrifice?”  The issue is whether we will trust God and be obedient when things aren’t going according to our time table or our presuppositions about life and what it should look like.

Satan is quick to show up and whisper that God is not going to show up so we must take matters into our own hands.  When that happens, a lack of faith rushes ahead and tries to engineer the outcome we are wanting.  That is not a good idea! Remember Abram and Sarai.

God promised Abram a son, even though Sarai had been unable to bear children.  I’m sure they got busy trying to fulfill that promise, but time passed and nothing happened.  In Genesis 16, we are told that Sarai decided the promise was not going to be fulfilled through her, so she offered her handmaiden to Abram and he fathered a child though Hagar.  From a natural, fleshly perspective that made sense, but it was something that could be accomplished apart from God. God often wants to do something supernatural in our lives that leaves no question his hand was in it.  That brings him glory, increases our faith, and builds relationship with him.  But I have seen many people who waited on a promise or a prayer to be answered for a while…but then decided to make the promise or prayer come to pass in their own way by their own efforts.  

The enemy was busy injecting thoughts that God wasn’t going to come through for them or didn’t care about the need they so desperately wanted him to meet.  So, they moved ahead only to find that the decisions and the outcomes they engineered were catastrophic.  Just as Saul went ahead with the sacrifices, they ran ahead on relationships, marriages, job opportunities, major moves, and so forth.  Just as Saul lost his kingdom, they found the things they engineered did not work out well.

Very often, Satan prompts us to run ahead and take matters into our own hands. God wants to do things by his Spirit.  Satan wants us to operate in the flesh.  Abram and Sarai thought they would help God fulfill what he had promised.  But the way the promise was fulfilled was just as important as the promise itself.  Abram got Hagar pregnant.  But then Hagar began to despise Sarai and flaunt her pregnancy.  Sarai became enraged.  When Hagar bore a son, he was not welcome.  Ishmael and Isaac became estranged brothers and their descendants (Arabs and Jews) have been fighting ever since.  

Certainly, we have a part in many promises, but waiting on the Lord can be a significant part of spiritual warfare because God is aligning all things to birth the answer to our prayer and his promise.  If we run ahead, some ingredient(s) that will make the answer amazing will be left out.  The answer will fall flat, lack flavor, be bitter, or be inedible all together. Satan will have taken the best part and we will be disappointed. Satan will then rush to get us to blame God rather than ourselves for not having the faith to wait.

As we pray for significant things, we may also need to pray for God to give us the patience and even endurance to wait on his answer.  His supernatural outcome will always outpace whatever we can do in our own strength.