Why? – God’s Answer

I’ll admit it. There are things I realize God knows about me…about how my sometimes twisted mind works and my self-centered heart pines, about the questions I ponder and the anxieties I rumble through…but I sometimes choose not to articulate those things to Him. You, too?

As though I somehow think I’m hiding something from the Most High, Sovereign, Omniscient God.

Yeah.

But recently I’ve realized that nothing shocks God, not a single thought or longing or question or idea. He doesn’t drop His glorious jaw in disbelief or shake His holy head in dismay. He doesn’t roll His eyes, huff in frustration or put his head between his hands and close His eyes with weary disgust.

He loves me too much for all of that. Psalm 103:11-14 tells me that even though He is all too aware of what I’m made of (dirt), He loves me with a love that is bigger than anything I can ever imagine or picture.

And so, since we have such a loving God, we can ask Him anything!!

Not only that, but He has an aswer. Sometimes we have to search for it; sometimes we have to wait for it. But He is lovingly willing to answer our questions…silly, crazy, depraved, immature, or self-centered as they may be.

And that’s why today we’re going to start a new blog post series of simply looking at some of the answers God gives to those deep (sometimes embarassing) questions we toss around in our head.

And we’ll start with a big one:

Why?

Have you heard that God doesn’t tell us why? That He owes us no explanation? That there are some things we’ll just never understand? Well, that may be sort of true. But I’ve found, both in practice and in the Bible, that God actually does give us a very satisfactory answer to the weighty question of “Why?”

One example of God answering this bold question is found in the Old Testament book of Habbakuk. This prophet opens his discourse with God by insisting that the Lord tell him “why” He was allowing such wickedness and mayhem without putting a stop to it. Why was God doing the things He was doing and not doing the things He was seemingly not doing? Why, oh, why?

Sometimes I wonder the same thing. Occasionally I even get bold (or arrogant) enough to demand that God explain Himself. And every time He’s patiently, calmly spoken the same thing over my frustrated soul that He proclaimed boldly to Habakkuk: