What do you do with God when life gets confusing?

You’ve always loved and served God in church and in the community. Then all of a sudden your husband decided to leave you and cut off all your financial support. And he has also been a faithful “Christian”. Is this what a “Christian” does? What does that tell you about God then? Can you still trust God?

How about this one? I gave up my career, my dreams, and my freedom to raise my children. We sent them to private Christian schools, taught them Christian morals, prayed with and for them, took them to church, and helped them make Christian friends. Then when our children reached teen years, they began to show alarming, rebellious (even oppositional) and compulsive behaviors. They then went off to college and crashed and burned. Is this what God had in store for me, the faithful disciple of His Son Jesus Christ, for sacrificing everything dear to my heart for the welfare of my children? Where has God gone in all of this? I thought he was in charge. I thought there was a direct correlation between effort and results even in the Kingdom of God.

This is far more confusing than I could handle. How do I, a believer with a graduate level theology degree, resolve all of this?

I find myself being tempted to choose between two answers: either God doesn’t care or He has gone on vacation? But wait, I thought Psalm 121 says he never sleeps nor slumbers.

So what can I make out of this confusion?

1.   I stop struggling. Struggling will only make the mirky water even more mirky. I finally refused to take control to make things better, easier, or more pleasant.

2.   I acknowledge I don’t understand. I have come to a place of quiet surrender, much like a weaned child. I no longer demand understanding. I now truly get what it means to walk by faith, not by sight.

3.   I always go back to God’s character. My basis of trust is not my experience, my efforts, or my circumstances.The one thing that is rock solid is his character, not my circumstances.

4.   I visualize a chasm separating God from the human beings who have caused me pain. It is so incredibly simplistic and tempting to transfer the responsibility for these painful experiences onto God. In psychology, they call it “transference” or “projection”, I believe.When I am feeling bad about life, it’s my father’s fault or my mother’s fault; when I am feeling exceptionally bad about life, it must be my Heavenly Father’s fault. To fight off this temptation, I routinely visualize the big chasm that separates sinful human beings from God. He is that Holy Other who has no equal.

5.   I spend time with God even when I don’t know what to say. When life is painful and confusing, praying is the last thing I want to do. I’d much rather stay away from God, particularly when I don’t know how or what to pray anymore. Then I realize that God my heavenly daddy is not grading me on the quality of my prayers. He is happy to just hold me in his arms and love on me when I am hurting so much I don’t even know what to say.

Are you in the crucible of confusion? What are some thoughts and feelings about God that are dominating your mind? What could you do to shift position? What have you done in the past that was helpful for making it through the painful and confusing transitions of life?

Please visit me at www.transitionslifecoaching.org and feel free to ask me any question by clicking on the button “Ask Me A Question” in the sidebar.