A bazillion years ago we came home from a few days out of town and found our refrigerator broken. Water was all over the floor from melted ice. We had already been smacked with other unexpected expenses. We were stuck. It would be weeks before we could replace the fridge.
I was a new Christian. Stuff like this is a big deal when you’re first learning who God is and which end of the Christian stick is which.
I remember struggling with conflicting thoughts.
“I can’t believe God would let this happen. Doesn’t he know what’s going on with us right now? Couldn’t he have done something?” (Yeah, I know, it’s just a fridge).
I also thought, “Well he says he provides for my needs. I guess I don’t need a refrigerator right now.”
This is a question you might think about during this series over the next eight weeks.
Who is God? How do you decide who God is?
Do you decide from what the Bible says and do your best to believe it, then interpret your circumstances and struggles based on what you decided to believe about God?
If you did it that way, you could still believe God was loving and just and all-powerful even if it looked the opposite. You might say things like, “Well, there must be more to the story that I don’t understand right now.”
Or do you decide who God is by using circumstances and struggles and what you see in the world? And so you use how life looks to decide to what degree God is loving or just or all-powerful.
If you did it this way, you would trust your reason and logic and intellect to interpret the evidence and have the final word on who God is. You might say things like, “God is good but he has his limits – he can’t be all-knowing AND all-powerful AND all-loving and still let this happen.”
People do it different ways. Everybody uses something for the final verdict to decide. I think most people probably don’t pay much attention to how they do it.
Seems to me that however you do it with a broken fridge is probably how you do it with all those bigger challenges and struggles.
How do YOU decide who God is?
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