God speaks through the Bible primarily. Most of life can be navigated by the precepts and statutes of the Bible. I look at the climate of the western church and I am saddened by how few of “God’s Children” are acquainted with God’s word. With our attitude towards the Bible, we declare that God’s word is not worth knowing.
The Bible is a living word (Hebrews 4:12). It is made alive by the work of the Spirit of God. 2 Timothy 3:16-17 Says that all scripture is God-breathed; literally that it is God-in-Spirited. You see if you read the Bible in your flesh it is death to you. It is rules and regulations, a constant reminder that you are unable to save yourself. The Spirit of God, however, takes the Bible and shows you the heart of God. The Spirit reveals the life of God.
For instance, we read in the Old Testament that as a farmer you weren’t allowed to harvest your whole field (Leviticus 23:22). You were to leave the edges of the field unharvested. The wheat, accidentally dropped, was to be left in the field. Without the Spirit of God, it’s another rule or regulation. With the Spirit of God, however, we know that God was feeding the poor and the refugee. Without the Spirit, every law is inconvenient and constricting. If you walk in the Spirit, you see life in the law. You say “Wow God cares so much for the immigrant and the poor, I should change my life to care as well.”
Unless you are reading the word of God; you will not give the Spirit a chance to speak to you. Can God speak to you without using the Bible? Yes, but let me be clear, unless you know the voice of God from scripture, you will not be able to recognize His voice. Except you recognize His voice in the Bible, you will not be able to distinguish between your own thoughts and the thoughts of God.
You may think that the Bible is boring. Sometimes it is. If you read the Bible every day, you might only hear something from God once a month. Keep reading because after a year maybe you’ll hear Him once a week. Maybe after a few years, you’ll hear Him three times a week. Is it worth hearing from God every day for you to endure? If, when you’re 84 years old, you can hear from God as your oldest and dearest friend; it will be worth any boredom you endure.

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On a visit to see my family, my mom asked me this question. “Does God have a sense of humor?” she was frustrated. My mom has a no-nonsense view of God. My little sister, who is a bit of a trickster and comedian, was sitting nearby listening. I was being invited into an argument that was already happenning.
I said “yes.” I could tell my mother was about to give me a lengthy lecture. There are some arguments that go like this: “God has a sense of humor just look how goofy that person looks” or “you know God was playing a joke because He made me go through that.” These were my sister’s arguments. Some people think because aardvarks look silly to us, God wants us to laugh at them.
I don’t know that God laughs at His creation. God isn’t some trickster, making odd creations intended to be mocked. Humor as we understand it is almost always critical. We laugh at comedians pointing out the inconsistencies of human logic. We chuckle at someone falling over and hurting themselves. I don’t think God’s humor is like that.
God’s humor is about goodness not failure. If you watch a parent who swells with joy and laughter at their child’s success, I reckon you have a good picture of God’s humor. God’s humor is not primarily critical; it is a pure delight in good (Zephaniah 3:17, Psalm 18:19, Psalm 147:11).
That is not to say that God doesn’t deride and laugh at the foolishness of people who hate His children. The Bible is clear God delights in justice and He finds pleasure in overcoming wickedness. God’s humor might be extended to this type of laughter, but His delight is primarily with good even in these circumstances (Psalm 2:1-12).
We laugh at pain and foolishness. These are learned human responses. We would be wise to recognize that God doesn’t share our human responses. We can, however, share in His delight for good. There’s something about western humor that almost despises pure good. We ought to be like God and rejoice in good and delight in righteousness.
When God created the world, He did not look at His creation and laugh at the funny looking creatures. He delighted in how good they were. When the disciples did something illogical or foolish, Jesus didn’t laugh at them and mock them. When the disciples did good things, He delighted in their faith.

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Does God have a wife? Yes. Kind of. The wife of God is pictorial language He uses to describe Israel. We see it all throughout the Old Testament, especially in the prophets (Isaiah 54:5, Jeremiah 2:2). The whole book of Hosea is a picture of Israel as the unfaithful wife of God.
Does this mean that God literally has a wife? No, it’s a picture. God also compares Israel to trees, chicks and all sorts of other pictures. Pictures are meant to help us understand complex truths in a simple way. Just as Jesus used stories and parables God used archetypes and imagery in the Old Testament.
The picture of God’s wife is a picture of how much God loves Israel. It is also a picture of our personal relationship with God. God has a desire for us to be faithful. He wants us to love Him with steadfast love (Hosea 6:6)
This picture is revisited in the New Testament Church. The Church of Jesus is called the bride of Christ. She is shown as a pure bride free from unfaithfulness. The early belief (many of whom were Jewish) would see this picture as a kind of redemption for Israel to be made a pure bride in Jesus in contrast to the unfaithful wife Israel was under the law.

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If God can change His mind, does that mean He can change His mind about me? If He can change His mind can God be trusted? Don’t be afraid to ask these questions. God desires for you to have assurance in His word.
In the times of Abraham people would make covenants. A covenant is an ancient contract. The process of making a covenant required a sacrifice to be made. They would take an animal, kill it, and cut it in half. The two halves would be separated so that the two individuals making the covenant could walk between the two halves. This was a picture. The two individuals had a co-responsibility for the covenant.
God made a covenant with Abraham, He made Abraham make a sacrifice and divide the animal just as he would for any covenant. Then Abraham fell into a deep sleep. While Abraham slept God made His promise that He would make Abraham’s descendants into a great nation. Then a smoking pot and a torch appeared and walked through the two halves of the animal. This was the presence of God. God alone was responsible for this covenant. Abraham received the promise of God, but Abraham was not required to do anything to receive it. (Genesis 15)
In the same way, God made another covenant with anyone who believes on His Son. He sacrificed Jesus and passed through the sacrifice by Himself again. You see, the covenant God has made with you, is not about whether you can keep the conditions of a promise. It is all a work of God. (Romans 3:24-28)
It may appear that God changes His mind in the Bible. Every time it appears that God changes His mind it is because of a conditional agreement God has made with man. There are two types of promises God makes, those that require our obedience, and those that He fulfills by Himself.
Some of the promises God makes to you will require you to obey Him. They are conditional. However, the promises He has made by Himself, He is faithful to complete. You can have the assurance that God will keep all the promises He made to you.
Does God change His mind? No, but some of His promises are conditional, and require our obedience. You can be assured that the promises that depend only on Him will be fulfilled.

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If God already knows what I need then why does He want me to pray? This question is very telling about a person’s prayer life. In a modern western way of thinking, we assume that prayer is about us talking to God. Prayer is not about you affecting the heart of God. Prayer is about you aligning your heart with the heart of God.
When Jesus was in the garden of Gethsemane, He was overwhelmed with what was about to happen to Him. Jesus knelt in the garden and prayed “Father if you are willing, take this cup from me; yet not my will but yours be done”(Matthew 26:39). Jesus dreaded the cup. The cup wasn’t the physical pain He would endure in His trial. He wasn’t afraid of a painful walk to the cross. Jesus wasn’t overwhelmed by death. Jesus was heavy because He would endure the wrath of God. He was going to become the object of God’s hate. Jesus didn’t just die for us, He became what God hated most so that God’s wrath could be poured out on Him. (2 Corinthians 5:21)
Even in the face of this, Jesus prayed that the will of God would be accomplished. Jesus aligned His heart with the heart of God. This is the most powerful reality of prayer. Prayer by its virtue allows us to surrender ourselves to His will.
When I was a young Christian, I was disappointed that my prayers weren’t answered. I would ask for enough money to pay this bill or to afford that car, or for a new job and they would all pass me by. James 4:3 says that we do not receive because we ask according to our own desires. Prayer is about submission to the desires of God.
There have been much wiser men who have taught on the prayer Jesus taught His disciples (Matthew 6:9-13). I will point out that everything in that prayer is in alignment with God’s desires. Our prayers ought to serve as a reminder of the promises, provision, and work of God. It should remind us that God desires for us to forgive. He wants to be our source of provision. God does not want us to fall into temptation. We pray so that God’s desires become alive to us.
You should pray for things that are on your heart, but your heart should be under continual transformation. By prayer, we say to God, not our will, but yours be done. Our prayers should be the arms of faith stretching out and laying hold to the will of God in our lives.

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I struggle with a small view of God. When I look at the trials I go through, that God allows, sometimes I imagine God as a feeble old man who is unable to keep the tyranny of evil away from me. I must put to death this lie. He is strong and mighty. He has overcome evil. My trials have no power over Him. When I remind myself of His power over my trials, I conclude that my trials are because of work He is doing in me.
When the Israelites were freed from Egypt, they underwent the trial of the wilderness. For forty years they endured the wilderness, knowing they were made for more. Moses after attempting to save an Israelite from death endured the wilderness of Midian for forty years. David was anointed king as a teenager, he endured the wilderness until he was thirty years old. Jesus spent thirty years in relative obscurity and then spent forty days in the wilderness before His ministry began.
Are you seeing a trend? God’s children undergo great trials. Jesus promised us trials John 16:33 but He tells us to take heart! The Israelites endured the wilderness so that God might know what was in their heart (Deuteronomy 8:2). David was anointed because he was a man after God’s own heart (1 Samuel 13:14).
God tests our faith by exposing our heart. Trials and troubles do a wonderful job of showing us what is deep inside us. If you’re a disciple, you should rejoice that God is refining you. He has said that He is putting you in the fire to refine you like gold (1 Peter 1:7). Count it all joy when you fall into trials because the testing of your faith produces patience (James 1:2,3). Patience is the eager waiting for God to perform His promises. When your faith is tested your heart has nothing to hold on to but God.
In our world, we grow more and more in love with comfort. Our trials show us that there is no comfort apart from God. What is your heart holding on to rather than God? God does not test your faith for you to fail. God tests your faith so that you may know Him.
Everything you endure is creating a lasting patience in your heart. He is making your heart long for comfort that only He can provide. Through your trials, your heart is becoming more connected to God and less connected to the world.

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God heard the suffering of mankind. He came to the Earth as Jesus, lived and suffered as we live and suffer but without sin. He endured temptation, betrayal, hatred, racism, sexism, and all other horrid human trials. Physically, He endured painful hunger, thirst, hard labor, He slept without a roof over His head, He suffered the threat of physical abuse and then finally in the passion endured cruel torture, was hanged on a cross and asphyxiated by His own bodily fluids.
You must know this about God, that for whatever reason God allows suffering it cannot be because He doesn’t care. God has endured; He has been afflicted with your same suffering. I don’t know what you’re going through but I do know this, God cares deeply for you and suffered for you.
Can we agree that God did not create suffering? Can we start there? If you believe that God creates evil and wickedness than you can never understand the reality and depth of God’s love. When God created the world, it was not full of death and suffering. This suffering is a product of a world apart from Him. What you’re going through is not because of God.
There is no one definitive answer as to why God allows suffering. Sometimes He allows suffering to remove the world from us, like a fire removing the impurities. Sometimes through suffering, we see the character and nature of Jesus, and we know Him in a greater way because we identify with Him in suffering (Philippians 3:10). Still, sometimes it is to keep our eyes focused on the coming glory of God and being with Him for eternity (2 Corinthians 4:17–18).
I suffer from a back condition brought on by an adolescent bone disease. Because of this disorder, I am often in discomfort and sometimes in pain. I also appear to be hunched over like an elderly person. There was nothing my parents did to cause this suffering, there was nothing I could have done to prevent it. At first, I blamed myself for not standing up straighter when I was a child. Then I started to blame God for making me endure it.
Then met Jesus and started following Him. My suffering became something I endured in order to know Him in His suffering. I learned to be content. Any good day was because of God. Before then I blamed God for the bad days. Now I look forward to the day when I am with God and my pain is gone.
Just because there is pain you don’t understand, don’t assume that it is useless. Let suffering and pain teach you more about God. Some people experience pain and shake their fist at God. They do not understand that God was enduring that pain with them. He cares deeply about what you’re going through. The suffering you now endure is creating a newness in you, full of joy and glory.
To answer this question plainly. Why does God allow suffering? There are so many reasons we endure suffering, God is working in your life to prepare you for eternity. Look to eternal things, remember that these are momentary afflictions.

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I worked on a painting for nearly a year. I wasn’t painting it for anyone. I was just painting for the sake of making something beautiful. There is just something in us that calls for us to create. The nature of God in us is a greater force for good art than propaganda or monetary gain. When I finished the painting there was a part of me attached to it. For any artist, there is an undeniable reality that creation requires intimacy.
It might be trite, or too easy, but it is the truest reality of God’s love. Because God has created us, He loves us. His love is not conditional upon anything other than Himself. He doesn’t love you because you’re without sin, He loves you because He has invested His image into you.
A few years after I finished that painting, the apartment I lived in was severely flooded. I had to throw away a lot of damaged things. Amongst the wreckage was my painting. It hurt to throw it away, but because of the flooding, it was wrecked and moldy. I had to toss it out with the trash.
There’s something to be said for the love of God. After we were wrecked and ruined by our sins, He didn’t toss us out with the rubble and junk of the fallen world. God loved us enough to enact a restorative and transformative process by which we could be saved. In the death of Jesus, God took all the sin and corruption of the world and put them all on His son and then destroyed all that corruption (Romans 8:3). After His death, Jesus was brought back into life. Just as He took our sin to the grave, He now brings our good works to life (Romans 8:10,11).
Think of it this way; all the work you’ve done selfishly or in fear God has condemned to death. All the work you’ve done out of love for Jesus, God will raise out of death into life. God has re-created you in Jesus, all the sin in your life died on the cross, but the works you do in obedience to His Spirit will live in resurrected life (Ephesians 2:10, Romans 8:5-8).
God loves you because He made you, but without Jesus there is death and corruption. The love of God was good enough to create us, but His love is deep enough to re-create us.

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