Self Improvement Facts and Tips

Why does God allow suffering? This is the age-old question of Christians and non-Christians alike, and it’s unlikely to be answered to anyone’s satisfaction this side of heaven. Even though I’m just an ordinary guy, I’d like to take a stab at it.

Most people want to be able to have money to pay for their kids college, enough to pay bills and go on vacation once a year. They want to be happy and not have problems. They want to have good health. I’m no different than everyone else. Doesn’t it make sense that God would want the same for us? I don’t think He necessarily does, because He wants more than that for us!

I’ve read many books by Dr. Larry Crabb, best-selling author, psychologist, and counselor, and while they are always excellent and insightful, most of the ones I’ve read have been kind of hard for me to follow, because they’re so intellectual. Some of the books he’s written are “The Marriage Builder”, “Inside Out”, and “Finding God”.

I read a book by Larry Crabb recently that was quite different from the other’s that I’ve read by him before. This book was called “Shattered Dreams - God’s Unexpected Pathway to Joy”, and I think it was different because it was something that Dr. Crabb had personally experienced and very intimately touched him. The book was much easier to follow, in my opinion, than the others I had read by him.

The premise of this book is that joy and happiness are two distinctly different things. Most of us believe that the most important thing that we can have is happiness. Plenty of money, a loving spouse and obedient kids, good health, a good job, a nice house, etc. The list could be quite long. But my belief is that this isn’t necessarily what God wants for us.

The Bible says that God wants to give good things to his children, even more than we want to give good things to our children. So God obviously wants us to be happy, right? That could be true, and while He does want those things for us, if they get in the way of having relationship with Him then He’ll take the relationship every time. That’s where we will find true joy.

However, quite often when we have the happiness, we either become content or we get so wrapped up in keeping that happiness intact that we don’t see the need to find the time for that relationship with God. It is in these times that God might allow some pain to come into our life to draw us closer to him. It’s at these times that many of us tend to do what we can to minimize that pain, basically because it hurts!

Larry Crabb tells us in “Shattered Dreams” that we need to experience that pain and not try to minimize it or turn away from it if we’re going to experience the joy that God desires us to have, and that we really hunger for in our hearts. This is no fun, but the bottom line is that’s it’s the only path to experiencing true joy. After reading this book, I believe that this is why God allows pain and suffering and why bad things happen to good people.

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