The Journey to Trust

Beth Moore said in the Anointed, Transformed, Redeemed study that, “God is not harsh. He is holy” (p. 83). That statement along with a comment from a friend made me think about the magnitude of God’s holiness. That created a desire to really want to understand what holiness is and how He could be holy, yet allow tragedies to occur. When tragedies happen it is hard to believe in God’s goodness and trust Him in those times and sometimes for a long time afterwards.

I have to admit that even now, I have a hard time trusting God. I am fearful. I fear that He will lash out at me to punish me, or He will take away something, or someone that I care about. The reason I think like this is probably due to two reasons. The first one is because my Mother died when I was seventeen. The second reason is because I am human.

In my humanness it is hard for me to understand that when stressful, difficult, or tragic things happens there must be a reason for it. I imagine Job had a hard time believing God had a reason for allowing him to suffer too. However, God is a big God and he uses big sacrifices & difficult circumstances in our lives to accomplish big things, i.e. Esther, Abraham, Job. As a result of Job’s suffering we now have a book in the Bible (Job) that offers comfort and hope to many Christians. So, perhaps, our tragedies are used by God to accomplish His purposes that we cannot see or understand now. Just as Job surely did not know that his life story would be recorded and used to teach many others about God’s character.

When tragedy strikes we can have faith that it is not from His hand (Job 1:12 & Job 2:6-7), as the story of Job teaches. We also know that God is holy, so He will work everything out according to His plan. Understanding His holiness is helpful in being able to trust Him. Since He is accomplishing big things and He is holy, then He can be trusted even during dark, difficult times. (Psalm 46:1)