Chapter 1 - The Causes of Suffering

Every pleasant and complete gift comes from above, and proceeds from the Father of those that give out light, who does not change nor cast a shadow as he turns.

Probably the biggest unanswered question that many believers ask is this.

Why does a God of love allow suffering in the world?

Have you heard it? Unbelievers always like to throw this one at us and say,

"You say that God is a God of love? Then why does He allow all the pain and suffering that goes on?

Two Different Viewpoints

Many people try to answer this question using their favorite theological viewpoint. There are only two main stands that you can take, so I am going to mention these here.

In this chapter, we are going to look at the Book of Job. He is a perfect example of somebody who was serving God and suffered. There are a lot of questions asked about the Book of Job and a lot of confusion, and I hope to try and answer some of those questions here.

There are two main theological viewpoints and the first one goes like this. Some people believe that our sins result in the judgment of God and that suffering is a punishment from God.

Others believe that God is sovereign. He chooses what He is going to do in this world, and He decides what He is going to allow in our lives.

If you overemphasize the first view, you are going to end up living a life trying to earn God's favor. You will try to make an effort all the time to please the Lord.

The second view on the other hand brings a kind of fatalism with it. It is like the old song that says,

Que sera sera, whatever will be will be.

A lot of people seem to think,

"God has allowed this in my life. He must have a purpose in it, so I won't try and argue or reason what is going on. God obviously has a reason for letting me suffer and go through this thing right now."

You have probably been in either or both of those camps at different times in your spiritual experience. The Book of Job actually displays both of these viewpoints very clearly. Although we can't go into a lot of detail here, I am going to give you some of the highlights.

The Origin of Suffering

What is the origin of suffering? If we look at the original creation that God made, the Scripture says that God pronounced it as good. There was nothing evil, nothing bad, no pain and no suffering in the original creation. Evil was unknown.

Then God created His man Adam and his beautiful wife Eve, and He handed over to them the full authority in the earth. He said,

"Dominate the earth and control it. Exercise authority over all of creation and be the rulers of this world."

God said, "I have done My part here now. Whatever happens from now on is in your hands. I will come and visit you every day in case you need a bit of help and advice on how to do this."

So God met them every day and Adam could say,

"God, those lions are tearing into each other. What should I do here? Those plants are also growing a bit wild there. How should I handle this?"

Adam never said,

"God, please would you do something?"

If he did, God would have said,

"I told you it is in your hands, Adam. You have that authority."

Adam effectively became the God of this world. And God designed us human beings, by putting a piece of Himself inside of us so that we can act just like Him in this world.

Adam had full authority in the earth. Then he did something really stupid. He handed that authority over to Satan, by submitting to his lies and the temptation. He partook of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and opened the door for evil to come into this world.

And now, instead of Adam being the God of this world, Satan became the God of this world. And now he began to change things to suit what he wanted.

Up until then everything was a blessing. There was no such thing as a curse. But now suddenly blessing was not automatic. Curses and bad things began to appear in the earth.

Man is Sovereign in the Earth

God made man to be sovereign in the earth. He gave Adam and Eve full control. And since that time, there is one thing that God has not changed. He has set it in order, that whatever He does in this world is only going to be through human channels. This is because He has put man in charge of this world.

In the heavens, the universe and everywhere else, God rules and reigns and does as He pleases. But in this earth He said,

"I am not going to interfere in what I put in the hands of my creation."

For God to work in the earth, man must invite Him and give Him license to work. He will never impose His will on us or force on us what He wants to do.

Those who like to boast in the sovereignty of God like to say,

"God is God, and He can do as He pleases in this world. Therefore if there are bad things, then God chose to let them be, and if there are good things, God chose to bless."

The confusion lies in the fact that we think we are like little puppets. We think that God has decided our future and what is going to happen to us, and we must just somehow get in line with what He has decided. We don't have a choice.

But that is not true. God will never overrule the will of a person.

When Adam handed that authority over to Satan, his descendants continued to do the same thing. And if mankind will not invite God and allow Him to work in and through them, they block the power of God's blessing in the earth.

God wants to bless. He wants to pour out in abundance and recreate what was in the Garden of Eden, where everything was good. He wants to do that, but He is waiting for a man or woman to invite Him and give Him license to be a channel of His blessing in this world.

Satan Wants to Rule

Satan however wants us to give him license. And when we give him that license, he brings bad things, curses and destruction.

All the evil that is in this world does not come from God. It comes from Satan. And it is not because God stood by and said,

"Okay devil, go ahead."

No, God didn't make that choice. Man made that choice. Adam made that choice at the beginning, and we are still making that choice today. We give Satan license in the earth and allow him to act and to destroy.

Back in the Old Covenant already God always looked for a man or a woman. He chose specific people; those who approached Him in faith.

If you want to see a list of them, go and read Hebrews chapter 11. You will read a list of all the heroes of faith of the Old Testament, who did amazing things with God working in and through them.

His blessings to them were based on faith. Because if you read the chapter, you will see that it says by faith each person did something. God is a faith God, and if you want to please Him and you want to involve Him in your life, it is going to require faith to do that.

None of those people earned God's favor by what they did, by their goodness or their righteousness. God entrusted His power to those who had faith in Him, and He offered His blessings in place of the curses that were coming from Satan.

Blessings vs. Curses

It is very easy to see when there is a blessing or when there is a curse. Sometimes we take blessings for granted and we don't identify the good things that God has given us.

There are so many things we take for granted. If you just consider the ability to see, hear and smell alone, we take the senses for granted. We don't really see that as a specific blessing, but it is what we have.

However, if you want to understand blessing better, let's look at what a curse is. We have seen that there are three main signs of when a curse manifests in your life.

The first one is theft. Things get stolen from you. The second one is destruction where things start to break. It can be as simple as knocking a glass over and smashing it. Or you are driving along and suddenly your car packs in. Things start to break down.

The third sign of a curse is conflict and strife. Suddenly your relationships with other people turn sour. You find yourself struggling, getting into arguments and there is just no peace.

If you see any of those in your life, prick up your spiritual ears and say,

"Hold on, this is not a blessing. God doesn't steal from us and He doesn't destroy."

The Bible says that the children of Israel walked for 40 years and their shoes didn't wear out. I know most women wouldn't like that because they like to get a new pair of shoes every now and then.

But it could save us a lot of money. Us guys on the other hand can wear the same shoes forever. Imagine if your shoes never wore out. That is the blessing of God.

Everything that God does is good. But when destruction comes, God is not the author of that. He is not the author of a curse.

There is another big sign that you may have a curse in your life. This is when you are suddenly overwhelmed with fear.

You can see that happening in the garden already. From the moment Adam and Eve sinned and lost all the blessing, they were immediately filled with fear and they went and hid away from God.

Fear is one of the first signs that there is a curse operating in your life. In fact, fear is faith in reverse. Fear licenses Satan and opens the door for him to bring havoc into your life.

The New Birth and the Holy Spirit

When Jesus died on the cross He reversed the sin of Adam. As a result, we can now have a new reborn spirit and become a partaker of the power of God's Holy Spirit which Adam didn't have.

Believers now move to a much higher level than what Adam had. If Adam had control of this world, I wouldn't mind getting back there. Maybe Adam said,

"Hey plant, you're growing too fast. Slow down."

There was automatic pruning. He didn't need shears. I reckon that is the kind of authority that Adam had. Or maybe he said,

"Hey elephants, stop your roaring and your noise, and stop fighting with your fellow elephants now."

There was instant peace. Adam had authority, but God has given us more because of Calvary. Because now He came to give us a new spirit.

Adam's spirit was already pretty good. It had terrific power in it, but now God has given us a new spirit. We have even more power, and He has also given us more power to overcome some of that evil that came in.

He then gave us the full power and anointing of His Holy Spirit. This takes us to an even higher level than before.

If you want to see what that looked like, look at Jesus. Jesus came to show us what man should look like. People say,

"Jesus came to show us what God looked like."

Yes, but what did God look like? He put Himself in man. Man should be showing what God looks like. Jesus came as a man the way man was supposed to be, and He showed us what both God and man should look like.

You might say, "Well you know we can't all be like Jesus."

But Jesus said something different. In John 14:12 He said,

Most assuredly, I say to you, He that believes in me, the works that I do he will do also; and greater [works] than these will he do; because I am going to my Father.

Yes, you can be greater than Jesus, because now we have His fullness inside of us!

You have the fullness of Him inside of you. That means you can overcome Satan and his demons. It means you can overcome this World System that is pushing you into sin and forcing you to live a life that God doesn't require.

You can do all of that, and you can even overcome your own sinful desires which the Bible calls the flesh.

Wrong Beliefs

We should be living a life of victory. The things that we believe however mess it all up.

This is one of the first things that we believe. We say,

"Our fate has been determined by God. He has decided what is going to happen to us and there is nothing we can do about it.

I'm afraid that is just not true. That is not what the Scriptures teach.

Then we say, "Well both good and bad things can come from God."

Well would you trust Him? Would you trust somebody that might give you something bad?

Imagine a child coming to a parent, hoping that maybe today they might get something nice, or maybe they will just get a smack. I know that some parents are like that, but that is not the way it should be.

When we come to our heavenly Father, we come to receive His hand of blessing. We don't want something hard or painful.

God is not the author of bad things. There was no evil in the world that God created. Evil only came in when Satan was allowed to take control. Bad things in our life come from the enemy, not from God.

Another mistake that we learn is that we need to earn the right to the blessings of God. We say,

"I have to do the right thing. I've got to avoid sin, and I have to live a good and holy life. If I do that, God will bless me.

Because you see I have been faithful in doing what I am supposed to do, but I have to keep avoiding those things that are forbidden to me. If I fail in that, God is not going to be happy and He is going to withhold His blessings from me."

You would be surprised how much of that thinking is riddled in human nature. You can see it illustrated in the book of Job as we will see shortly.

How do you respond? Things are going great and you are happy. You say,

"Isn't the Lord wonderful? Isn't life great?"

But out of the blue, something goes wrong. What is our first response? We say,

"Why me, Lord? What have I ever done to deserve even one of the blessings."

Do you know that song? It is a stupid song.

We say, "Why me Lord? Why did this happen to me? It's not fair. Things are going great with everybody out there, but not with me.

Lord, I did nothing wrong and I don't deserve this in my life."

We have all been there. The other thing we say is,

"I must have done something wrong. I upset the Lord. What is God punishing me for right now? I must have done something. I must have missed it.

Maybe I failed to do what He told me to do. Maybe He's angry with me and He's punishing me now. What must I do to fix it?"

Then we start examining ourselves. We go all introverted and start to think,

"Where did I go wrong?"

Satan is laughing all the way to the bank because it isn't what you did. It's what he did, and he is getting you to blame God for it. He has won.

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Unblocking Your Inner Resources - Chapter 1 of 8